“Get in,” urged the man, coming around to help them in through the door he had kicked open. “Just hold him.”
D.W. held Quint in his lap with Quint’s misshapen legs across the seat and on the floorboard to the floor gearshift stick. The man, whom D.W. remembered as the harsh-faced man they were working for, saw Quint was losing too much blood and stopped for rags from his tool box to wrap around the legs, back and head. He worked surely and trembled only slightly and quickly had the pickup moving again. Shaking his head up and down, D.W. was too much in shock to be of much more help, the man saw. But D.W. kept his hold on Quint and steadied him against the bouncing and swaying of the pickup when they hit the paved road into town.
Chapter Sixteen - Quinton’s Fire
The doctor said Quint would live. He had been grievously hurt, but his vital organs were not damaged. The doctor and another doctor had put pins in the legs, and the right lung was been bruised but not punctured. “I called mother and daddy,” Johnny said. “They’ll be here tomorrow.”
“How did it happen?” the doctor asked.
“Don’t know yet. He was doing somethin’ he shouldn’t have.”
“The physical shock of injuries like that would kill some people.”
“Can we see him?” asked Alice, holding Regan asleep in her lap.
“In an hour or so. He won’t be coming around for a while. How long will you stay?”
“Till our parents get here,” said Johnny. The waiting room was dimly lit, and the doctor glowed in his white. Benny went to the window.
“I hope his legs are okay,” D.W. said. “He’s a good athlete.”
“Those bones were broken like sticks,” the doctor said. “It’s a miracle he has any legs at all. Did you say a combine ran over them?”
“No, he fell in one while it was going,” Benny said. “You know, where the wheat goes.”
“Good God!”
“D.W. got him out,” Johnny said. “I don’t know how, but he did.”
“I had to,” said D.W., leaning forward from a chair with his hands on the carpet.
“Tell his parents to ask for me,” the doctor said.
They woke Leigh and Mike from the couch and rode the elevator two floors down. A clock said midnight. “Somebody needs to stay here tonight,” said Johnny as they entered the parking lot. “What do y’all want to do?”
“I got all the clothes we need for a while,” Alice said. “I guess we’ll be all right till Hugh and Betsy get here or longer.”
“I’ll check you and the kids in somewhere,” Johnny said. “I think I’ll stay here.”
“I wanta go back to Carl and get some stuff,” Benny said. “I’ll be back before he wakes up. Why don’t you go with me, D.W.?” Driving north, he looked into the rear view mirror and said, “I never been to Great Falls before.”
“Neither have I,” D.W. said. “Why are we goin’ to Carl?”
“Just to get movin’ again mainly. We need to do something.”
“What?”
“Well, what we did that time after Ledbetter beat us.”
“Burn a house?”
“When ever’thing starts borin’ in, you gotta smash it to pieces. Like when the other team would have us going and somebody’d hit one of ‘em in the throat or somethin’ to shake ‘em up?”
“I never saw any of that stuff like that, but I guess things bothered you and Quint more than they did me.”
“It does mean something.”
They did not speak again except when Benny tired and asked D.W. to drive. They arrived in Carl at three in the morning. They parked at the trailer house, and Benny reached into the pickup bed for a gallon can. He opened the lock on the pump and filled it with gasoline.
“What?” D.W. whispered.
“Up the alley here,” Benny said, and they moved across the street.
Two blocks from the trailer house and trucks, they were hidden by the narrow alleys and stubby trees. Benny went into the abandoned house down a littered hallway to the right. At the end of the hall, he poured gasoline on the walls for six feet backwards. There was no window in the hall, so the flash was not directly visible from the outside in front when Benny took a match from the watch pocket of his jeans, struck it on the baseboard and pitched it onto the wet wallpaper. D.W. stood in the hall at the door and watched. Benny’s eyes were squinted and his teeth showed in a grin, and D.W. gaped at him in the whipping light, raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth in a silent shout. Benny set the can on the floor. They ran quietly and did not look back. They paused at the street in front of the trailer house; seeing no one, they walked across the street and went inside.
“I wonder if it caught,” D.W. said.
Benny cracked the door. “It caught,” he said.
D.W. squatted and looked out. They saw the house become a brilliant blaze that lighted up the area. “It’s really burning,” D.W. said. “I hope we get away with this.”
“They don’t have anything to go on. Nobody saw us, I don’t think.”
People were starting to gather. A fire truck arrived, but the fire had already reached its peak. The volunteers hooked up the hose and shot water ineffectively. They put out the grass around it several times to keep it from spreading. Benny closed the door and said, “Better get to bed. That way, we’ll look right if we get woke up. Set the alarm for five-thirty and drive out like we’re goin’ to work.”
Chapter Seventeen - The Wind
They saw Quint a little after dawn. Johnny was there. Quint was in a cast to his hips, and his arms and chest were bandaged. “He’s all doped up,” Johnny said. “I talked to daddy while ago. They’re going to move him to Lubbock in a few days.”
“Prob’ly a better hospital,” Benny said.
“Makes more sense. You boys don’t worry about him too much. He’s out of the woods now. He’ll be back workin’ next year, prob’ly drivin’ a combine. It’ll be a while before he can work the clutch on a truck.”
“I’m going back, too,” D.W. said, “if you don’t need me any more. Benny will stay.”
“I wish we could, but we have to move the stuff. Hard as it is, we gotta finish up.”
“I know it.”
“You can go on back, but I wish you’d stay. Not that we have to have you. Don’s comin’ up. His vacation starts the middle of the month.”
“I just wanta go home. It’s over with as far as I’m concerned.”
“I hate for you to go off by yourself.”
“I need to. I’m wore out. And sore.” He showed his abraded palms orange with dried Merthiolate.
Johnny left at mid-morning, and Benny and D.W. waited in the room for Quint to wake up. He finally opened his eyes a few minutes before noon.
“Who got me out?” he asked.
“I did,” D.W. said, getting up.
“How?”
“Pipe wrench and a pipe. How do you feel?”
“Okay. I don’t feel much.”
“We’re in Great Falls, Quint,” Benny said from the foot of the bed.
“I don’t remember anything, except I thought I was dead. What’d they do?”
“Put in some pins and stuff,” Benny said. “You’ll have to get the doctor to explain it.”
“Did they put any of me in file thirteen?”
“No,” Benny said.
“I don’t deserve to be alive.”
“What were you doing, Quinton?” D.W. pleaded, his face contorting.
“I thought I heard somethin’ goin’ out, a bearing squealin’ or something. I walked out on the header to see if I could pinpoint it. I did it all the time on daddy’s combines, but they were a lot less powerful.”
“Your mother and daddy are on the way up,” Benny said.
“Where’s Johnny?”
“At a motel. He sat up with you.”
“We burned a house for you,” Benny said.
“Where?”
“In Carl. It was really beautiful.”
�
��Might get in trouble.”
“Nah, you know us.”
“We ought to call somebody,” D.W. said.
“Goin’ out,” Quint said.
Before they could get a nurse, he was asleep again. They left the hospital.
“I’m gonna get on the plane,” D.W. told Benny in the pickup. “Tell Quint I’ll see him in Lubbock.”
“I don’t blame you,” Benny said. “I’m not goin’ back till I have to. All that mess about the wreck right after the fight Daddy had over the union. Not that I’m criticizin’ Daddy. He’s always been pretty good to us.”
“What are y’all gonna do?” D.W. asked.
“Prob’ly finish at Carl or just pull out. That’s what I’d like to do. Maybe move over to Gray Wolf and wait for Don. I doubt if it’s ready there yet. I may have to register late for college.”
“I don’t think ever’thing would have gone so bad if I’d been goin’ to church when I could have.”
“Who knows, man?” Benny said. “We could have all been better, but I think it was a miracle that you got him out. Remind me not to ever tell you to grab hold of my head and squeeze real hard.”
D.W. called the airport and made a reservation for a flight that afternoon. Johnny, Alice, Benny and the children went with him, and they walked out to stand inside a fence by the runway. The airplane, stiff and short with flat-ended propellers, whooshed up in front of them and stopped. D.W. hitched up his baggage, walked to the stairs and turned to look at the others. He was disconcerted that they and the children were all staring at him directly in the eyes. They each said something he could not understand in the noise of the engines, and he shook Johnny’s hard hand and saw his eyes well with tears. He smiled and turned away and waved at the top of the stairs.
D.W. made his way two-thirds to the back of the plane and pushed the suitcases onto the rimmed shelf overhead. He chose a seat, pulled a seatbelt up and in a short while felt the blades outside take hold of the air. A ride to the end of the runway, a turn around, a bumping, shivering rush by the building and the stolid figures, and the plane settled onto the air and lifted in a high slant until it was beyond the sight of anyone below. D.W. looked for a long time out the window. He watched the earth move under him, laid his face against the glass and felt the wind.
About the Author
James Robert Campbell graduated from West Texas State University with a B.A. in English and was a reporter at newspapers in Texas, Colorado, Kansas and Missouri. His poetry and short stories have been published in a number of literary magazines in the United States and Europe. He and his wife live in Cape Girardeau, Mo.
The Byrds of Victory Page 21