Rush

by Wozencraft, Kim

A blast, a roar that fills the room with heat and slams my ears, and my eyes are closed, am I here?

  The smell of gunpowder fills the room. I hear Jim scream, I smell, I am breathing. I open my eyes and the shotgun is pointed past me, aimed at Jim. He is reaching for the hole in his leg.

  The barrels are warm-hot against the skin of my hands, I grab, I push up, try to force the shotgun toward the ceiling. I am on my back, why was I sleeping, Jim is rolling off the couch, another blast, I feel the explosion blowing out of the left barrel toward Jim, it’s happening so slowly, I can’t stop it, so quickly. Jim screams again, still rolling, falling from the edge of the couch toward the floor, I am hanging on to the barrels and kicking out through the open window, trying to take the shotgun, screaming bastard-son-of-a-bitch-motherfucker, screaming into air, kicking at air, he yanks the barrels from my hands, I see Jim rolling, see him rolling off the couch onto the floor, I roll behind him, I am crawling, crawling on the floor and the sounds coming from Jim are animal sounds, wounded, dying animal sounds from deep inside, from pain, from fear and I can’t listen, I don’t want the sounds, we are crawling on the floor, I feel carpet burning my hands, I hear his sounds, and I feel pain in my gut, in my stomach and lungs, a wrenching, and those sounds are coming from me, from me and from Jim, the same sounds, the Please-God-don’t-let-us-die sounds, the begging moans, the bellowing coughs, the crawling-on-the-floor sounds, it hurts to make those sounds, it tears something loose inside, those moans, those cries for mercy from the bastard who is blasting eternity in through the window, gunsmoke and helplessness, we are crawling on the floor, it can’t end this way, it has to be worth something, not crawling on the floor, not begging, not this way. Please, God, not like this.

  The sounds keep coming, I don’t want them, I can’t stop them, slaughterhouse sounds, I see blood on the floor behind Jim, I feel warm on my arm I see blood on my arm, God damn the man who is making us crawl, God damn him. I am on the floor, I see my pistol, I reach for it and know that I will kill him, I will kill the bastard who is murdering us, I reach, I grab, I feel the grip in my hand, my finger on the trigger, I am looking for my target, looking for Gaines’s chest, Gaines’s head, anything, the curtains hang between us, I look and the shotgun comes back through the window, at me, at my face again, double barrel, two shots, has he reloaded? I can’t know, I pull back, half kneeling, raise my hands, Jim is crawling, the room glows gold, Jim is behind the couch, I feel the stringy shag carpet in my hands, I grip it, feel it pull loose from the floor, Jim is almost safe, I am looking at the shotgun aimed at my face. It disappears out the window. I duck, I crawl on the floor like a beggar, like a sinner, like a soul in hell, I crawl. I crawl for my life, waiting for an explosion in my back. I hear the sounds coming out of me, I hate myself for begging, I beg louder.

  I round the corner of the couch. Jim is in pieces. A chunk of his arm is missing. A perfect crescent of flesh and muscle and bone, gone from his forearm. He has the shotgun, trying to put a round in the chamber.

  The back door. We are at the end of the hallway, behind the couch. There’s the back door. Straight shot. How many are out there? Where are the windows, we’re surrounded by windows. How many? Where? Jim’s hand flops helplessly. He looks at me and at his arm, his eyes dull with horror. Where are they? How many?

  I grabbed the shotgun, the cool and solid of it, jacked a round into the chamber as I raised myself to kneel behind the couch, the hard crack of metal, salvation. Aim at the window and fire, eject, fire, eject, fire, eject. I did not feel the recoil or hear beyond the blast of the first shot. It was silence, smelling of smoke. How many were out there and would they come back? Jim was on the floor, blood everywhere. I jerked a pillowcase off a pillow and wrapped his arm. He screamed pain.

  “Press it,” I said. “Press it hard.”

  He couldn’t stop moaning. There was a fist-sized hole in his leg. Tendons floating white-loose in the dark red of his muscles, his tissue, I saw bone.

  I yanked the couch away from the wall, pulled the plug on the lamp. Darkness. Precious darkness, the sound of Jim’s hand flopping against the phone as I crouched across the floor toward the front door, how many are out there, where will they be, slapping the TV off as I passed, grabbing my pistol from the floor, kick the front door, go out shooting, gunfire flames above my head, shooting at the sky, shooting at air because I had to shoot something, anything, wanted bullet into flesh, bullet into bone.

  Then there were headlights in the drive and I crept along the side of the trailer and jumped out aiming at darkness, sighting on the driver, prepared, but too late, willing but tardy, and it was Walker and a woman, a girl with terror in her eyes, it was Walker, it was help. I ran to the car.

  “Jim’s hurt, get an ambulance.” The girl nodded, Walker dragged his shotgun from the back floorboard, “I knew as soon as I heard gunfire,” he said. As we approached the front door, three blasts, windows shattering onto the patio.

  “Jim,” I called, “we’re coming in.”

  He was on the floor near the front door, holding the shotgun with his good arm, saying, “Please. Please.” I knelt over him. Walker went into the kitchen, stared at the sink, walked back to the front door.

  “Watch,” I said. “They may come back.”

  “I thought water was running in the kitchen.”

  “It’s his leg.”

  I knelt over Jim, took the shotgun from him. Heard the blood pouring from the hole in his thigh, pumping in time to his heartbeat. Found the pressure point in his groin, knelt over him, pressed hard with my hand, heard the blood flow slow. I could smell it over the gunsmoke. The blood smell. The smell of Jim’s muscle and bone, the smell of his wounds. It was blood and dirt and sweat and sex, life smells mingled, rising up to me as I knelt over him feeling the carpet grow soggy beneath my knees, trying to stop the goddamn blood.

  “I’m gonna puke,” he said.

  I turned his head. Please. Who do I pray to? Please don’t. It meant shock, it meant death close by, minutes away.

  “Walker.” My voice is calm. I hear it talking, but I am choking, I need air. “Go next door, get help.”

  He ran crouched across the patio, across the lawn to the neighbor’s trailer, banged on the door. I saw him huddled against the thin aluminum wall, searching the darkness, his fist pressed hard on the locked-tight door of my anonymous neighbor’s home.

  A scared man’s voice trembled from inside the trailer, said, “Go away! We done called the police. We called for help. Go on now! I’ve got a gun in here. Get away.”

  Walker came back, stayed on one knee in the open doorway, holding his shotgun, waiting.

  “How is he?”

  “Not good. He needs a hospital. I’m afraid to move him.”

  “They said they called.” Walker nodded in the direction of the neighbor’s trailer.

  It was forever before I heard sirens, too far away. I pressed Jim’s leg, my arm shaking. I pressed.

  It took the sheriff’s office over half an hour to get there. I knelt over Jim, aching and waiting, terrified that the assassin would come back to finish his job before help arrived. Jim’s blood was everywhere, Jim’s flesh was splattered on the wall. I felt heat in my arm, I pressed his leg. I heard engines roaring, tires squealing, saw headlights and flashing red lights. Walker stood and held his shotgun ready to fire.

  “Sheriff’s office, we’re coming in,” a voice said.

  The lights went on, the paramedics stooped over Jim. White bandages flashed as they wrapped his wounds. I stuffed my pistol in my jeans and walked outside. In circles. Breathed the pine smell. I walked in circles and tried to form a thought.

  I turned to see six or eight deputies trampling around the patio. There would have been footprints in the mud. This much I could understand. There would have been footprints.

  One of them turned to me and said, “Looks like you got into a real shitstorm here.”

  “Ever heard of a crime scene,” I said. They stared. I walked
away.

  From somewhere came Doak Jones, standing before me in his uniform, and I knew him, I’d seen him in court, he was people.

  “They’re taking him on over to the hospital,” he said. “Let’s go over here and talk.”

  He led me to the next-door trailer. Now that the sheriff’s office was there, the man had opened his home. His wife offered me juice, water, coffee, she would not let me alone.

  “Can’t I get you something,” she kept asking.

  I wanted nothing. I wanted to breathe, I wanted to feel, I wanted to be with Jim.

  “Who was it,” Jones asked. “Did you see who it was?”

  We were in county jurisdiction, outside the city limits. It was the S.O.’s case.

  “It was Gaines,” I said, certain that it was, I saw the blond hair, I saw the sneer and the look in his eyes. I felt him there outside the window.

  “Are you sure?” Jones asked. “Absolutely sure you saw him?”

  I was not sure I was still alive. I was sure of nothing.

  “If it wasn’t Gaines,” I said, “it was his twin brother.” It had to be Gaines. He had reason. Out on bail. He had right.

  “Come on,” Jones said. “I’ll drive you to the hospital. You’re bleeding.”

  I looked at my arm. A bruise had started to form. There was gunpowder, a black stain out of which blood trickled slowly. I couldn’t feel it.

  I lay on the X-ray table with my gun in my hand. When the technician came it, he saw it and jumped back.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  The machine hummed above me and from somewhere in the room came the sounds of a heartbeat.

  “Lie still,” he said. There was a click and a short, louder hum. I had only two bullets left. I needed to reload.

  He worked the machine and I lay on the table, the air around me buzzing until he finished and inspected my arm. He poked at it with a prod and wrapped it in bandage. I could leave.

  I walked through glowing corridors until I found the emergency room. Jim was laid out on a steel table, yelling in such pain that it hurt to listen. There was a bag of blood and another of clear fluid hanging above him, the I.V. needles plugged into the back of his left hand.

  “It hurts!” he moaned, then screamed, “GOD DAMN IT, IT HURTS! Get me something for the pain! It hurts!” His eyes looked as if something were trapped in them. He saw me and reached, tubes dangling out of his hand. “Make them give me something,” he said. “They won’t give me a thing because of the Lude.”

  The doctor came in and told me I must leave. I felt myself lean to kiss Jim and told him I’d be waiting. His lips were cold. His face looked plastic. I wanted to know he would live. The doctor stretched surgical gloves over his hands and stared at me impatiently. I leaned over Jim and heard my voice say, “I love you.”

  In the hallway, I found Walker and the girl and we grabbed each other and something gave inside and I was crying, trying hard to stand up and holding on to both of them and crying, and then we were all crying. I saw Bachman, Nettle’s assistant, Nettle’s wing man, standing near the wall, staring at me with disdain. Tough cop. I didn’t care. I sobbed.

  I sat wrapped in a blanket, in a waiting-room chair outside surgery. They are trying to save Jim. It’s all right, I think he will live, there is blood here, blood in bags, they can keep him alive. I do not know about his arm or his leg, if he will have them when he comes out of surgery, but I know he will be alive. I think he will be alive.

  Dodd came in, his wife in tow. She plopped herself down across from me, snapping her words like bubblegum. I watched her mouth push them out, something about being in bed having the time of their lives when they got the call. I wanted to tell her to go home, go fuck her brains out, no great loss.

  Rob arrived. Drove from a meeting in Austin in less than three hours. Nettle lived twenty minutes away, but Rob was there first. Rob knew, he’d been through it. He sat next to me and held me, telling me I was safe. I couldn’t believe him.

  I sat in a chair, wrapped in a blanket, and rocked. Rocked back and forth.

  “He’ll be okay,” Rob said. “I thought Denny was gonna die too. He’ll be okay.”

  I hope he keeps his arm. He deserves to have his arm. And his leg. He deserves his arms and legs.

  My blouse was sticking to me and I looked down at it. I was covered with blood. My own blood on my blouse, Jim’s blood all over my jeans. Everywhere.

  Nettle made his entrance, his suit perfect, his tie neatly knotted, his hair combed. He walked over calmly and looked down at me.

  “You’re sure it was Gaines,” he said. Jim didn’t matter to him. Gaines mattered. The case mattered.

  “Pretty sure,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “The sheriff needs your statement. You’d better go with him.”

  “I’m staying here until they finish with him.”

  “That’s not possible,” he said tightly.

  I felt Rob’s arm on my shoulder.

  “I’ll be here,” he said. “I’ll wait.”

  Nettle puffed up like an adder, sucking air into his suited chest.

  “You go with the sheriff,” he ordered. “We want it on paper. It was Gaines.”

  19

  I saw his boots first, when he walked in the door and shut it quietly. Full quill ostrich, custom-made Lucchese’s. Burton Cash, twelve years a Ranger, stood behind the old wooden desk in the center of the room and stared down at me with implacable gray eyes. It’s a goddam shame the good old days have disappeared, we ought to just toss a fucking rope over the old oak tree in front of the courthouse and hang the son of a bitch right there on the town square. The good old days. What the hell is going on, anyway, got fucking cunts thinking they’re the police, bad enough the law’s fucking around with goddam narcotics enforcement at all, now they done dragged some broad out of the kitchen and hung a badge on her tit. What the hell is it? Goddamn locals can’t hold their mud, ain’t worth a shit, and here’s some bitch thinks she’s tougher than a nickel steak, I know what she needs, cure her ass of that goddamn liberation bullshit just right quick.

  He was tall, up around six three. He was, except for his belly, lean. But then he was expected to be a hard-drinking man, the belly could be excused. It wasn’t excessive, wouldn’t get in the way when he reached with lightning quickness for that real live pearl-handled six-shooter with the raised gold initials slung low on his hip. He wore boots and khakis and Stetson, he wore leather vest, he wore string tie. He had a diamond pinkie ring, fourteen stones set in the shape of a revolver. He even had the voice, deep and drawling. Slow-talking man, made in the image of lone Wolf Gonzaulles. Texas Rangers. The governor’s assassins.

  The interrogation room was tiny and square, with no windows and too much light. I sat shivering in a molded plastic chair, waiting for I don’t know what. I was still bloody, it had dried in dark purplish stains on my clothes, under my fingernails.

  After a moment, Cash set his Stetson on the desk, ran one large hand through his thick white hair, and said, “Tell me how it happened.”

  I’ll admit that I didn’t tell him about the drugs, but I told him everything else, exactly as I recalled it, with as much attention to detail as I could muster in that nightmare morning. I laid it out, sat there all balled up in the chair and talked to the man. He’d already heard the tapes from the P.D.—a frantic voice yelling, “Somebody’s shooting!” and then the sound of three shots in the background. Jim blowing the windows out while I was edging back into the trailer after Walker drove up. The whole thing was estimated to have taken less than three minutes. Three fucking minutes.

  “Write me out a statement,” Cash said, and handed me a few sheets of legal paper. “I’ll be back in awhile.” As he walked out the door, I heard him mumble, “Must be a hell of a period this month.”

  Jim’s blood on my jeans.

  I watched my hand from somewhere far away as I wrote down the words. Shaky, very shaky, I couldn’t calm myself, couldn’t get th
e smooth even script that was normally mine. I wrote and watched the pen form in scribbly, deficient letters the words that told what had happened, and when I looked at the words, my hatred, my realization of just exactly what had been done to Jim, to me, took form and grew until I felt that if I never did another single thing, I would find Gaines, and face him, and make him feel what I had felt only a few hours before.

  Doak Jones stood next to me in front of Judge Hammit’s desk while I swore to the truth of my statement. The sheriff’s office was asking for an arrest warrant on Gaines.

  When I got back to the hospital, Nettle and Rob were standing in the hallway of the intensive care unit, outside the door to Jim’s room.

  “He’s not awake yet,” Rob said.

  I wanted to ask him something. I wasn’t sure what.

  “They didn’t amputate,” he said. “They’re not sure yet, but so far they haven’t amputated.”

  “You gave your statement?” Nettle asked.

  “I want to help find him,” I said. Some rules Gaines would know.

  “Absolutely not,” Nettle said. “You are to stay right here.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw.

  I tried everything short of begging to persuade him to let me be one of the arresting party. When I realized I was getting nowhere I shut up and acknowledged his order.

  “I mean it,” he said.

  “I heard you, Chief.” He didn’t believe me, but left anyway. When he was around the corner, Rob pulled out his pistol and checked the clip.

  “Pussy motherfucker can’t tell me to stay away,” he said. “I’ll call you when we’ve got him.”

  “Before,” I said. “Call me the instant you get him put down somewhere.”

  * * *

  Jim woke up from surgery around three. I sat by his bed, watching his eyelids flutter in the afternoon light until he managed to open them. His arm was in a cast to the elbow and suspended from a shining chrome contraption attached to the bed. There was a single, thick metal stitch, like barbed wire, embedded in the front of his thigh and, beneath the stitch, his open leg wound. Ringer’s lactate laced with antibiotics drained drop by drop from its clear, bulging sack into the I.V. needle in his left hand.