Wounded

by Percival Everett

  “Tell her, John,” Howard said.

  I said nothing. I didn’t know what to say.

  Howard looked at Sylvia. “I came here for New Year’s to see David and we got into a fight. He ran out and got lost in the snow. John had to find him.”

  “He was fine,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s why he needed a doctor.” Howard was yelling at himself, looking to hurt himself.

  “A doctor?” Sylvia tried to catch up.

  “I came here with Pamela, the woman I’m planning to marry.” Saying it embarrassed him.

  This was news to Sylvia and it made her cough up an involuntary laugh, then her face went blank. “What about David? A doctor?”

  “We had a fight, an argument, like I said, and he ran out in the snow and nearly froze to death. He was drunk and I was drunk and, yes, it was my fucking fault.” He ran a hand through his hair and looked away.

  “That has nothing to do with this,” I said.

  “What if he’s just disappeared to get some attention? Maybe he’s okay, just out there waiting for the fuss.”

  “Shut up, Howard,” Sylvia said.

  “Tell me it’s not a possibility,” Howard said. “Look me in the face and tell me it’s not a possibility, Sylvia.”

  “It’s not a possibility,” I said. But I was lying. As much as it was unlikely and I didn’t believe it, it was, in fact, a possibility and probably one considered by the state policeman, McCormack.

  “What do we do?” Sylvia said.

  “You wait,” I said.

  Howard huffed, a sound suggesting that he had stumbled on a way to understand it all and a way to blame someone other than himself, namely his son. I didn’t like him right then any more than I had during our last meeting, but I did understand. I understood how fear was making his mind work.

  “Shut up,” Sylvia said to him again.

  Morgan and Gus came into the mud room and kicked off their boots. Gus used a towel to wipe the dogs’ feet and let them go.

  Howard reached down to pet Emily. His yelp went right through me. The coyote had ripped his hand open with her teeth. It bloodied quickly. He held it to his chest and rocked back and forth.

  “That son of a bitch bit me,” he said.

  “Let me see that,” Morgan said. She peeled his good hand away and looked at the wound. “It’s not bad.”

  “Has it had its shots?” Howard asked.

  “Yes, she has,” Gus said, showing no sympathy and certainly no concern. He called Emily and she followed him into the next room.

  I relaxed back into my chair. I didn’t have the energy for any kind of fuss. The dog had bitten Howard and that was that. There was nothing to do about it. There was no training that was going to happen that night. I didn’t know what had frightened the dog to make her bite, whether it was the way he had reached down to her or his smell, his voice. The truth was I felt like biting him, too, and I recognized that as my way of dealing with the fear.

  I returned to talk of David, telling Sylvia and Howard about the Jeep and where it was found, while Morgan dressed the wound. “I’m going back out tomorrow to look some more.”

  “Can I go with you?” Sylvia asked.

  I shook my head. “You’ll slow me down and I’ll be worrying about you,” I said. “I’m sorry to be so blunt.”

  “I understand,” she said.

  I was telling the truth, but not how she understood it. I would have been so occupied with her concern that I would not have been focused. More importantly, I expected trouble. I expected things the next day to be ugly.

  “We’ll wait here,” Morgan said.

  “It’s better if you wait around here in case someone calls,” I said. I looked at Morgan as she finished the bandage. I imagined her sitting around the house all day with the two of them, awkward silences and hard words, fear and nervousness.

  Gus looked at me and said, “I’m going to bed. You go to bed, too. You can’t be good at searching if you can’t see.”

  I nodded.

  Gus left the room.

  “Gus is right. I am going to bed,” I said to Sylvia and Howard.

  “I’ve put Sylvia in the back room and Howard in the study,” Morgan said. She gave me a nod of support.

  “Make yourselves at home,” I told them.

  “I’ll be right up,” Morgan said.

  That night Morgan and I lay in bed and we could hear the arguing whispers of Sylvia and Howard. I wondered what that car ride from Denver had been like for them. I knew how scared and upset I was, but I could not imagine their fear and confusion. Morgan stroked my forehead.

  I didn’t believe I could sleep, but I did. I awoke before sunrise and found Morgan still awake, still touching my brow.

  “Didn’t you sleep?” I asked.

  “No. I wanted to be sure you slept.”

  “I’m scared,” I said.

  “I know, sweetie.”

  But she couldn’t know all that I was scared of. I was afraid of what I might have to do. I sat up and looked out the window.

  “I’ll make some coffee.”

  “Thanks.”

  We dressed and walked down the stairs to find Gus in the kitchen with Sylvia. Coffee was already made and waiting.

  “Did you get any rest?” Morgan asked Sylvia.

  Sylvia shook her head. “I didn’t try.”

  I looked at Sylvia’s face. I had always liked her and really could never see her married to Howard. “I’m going to find him,” I said. “I promise.” The promise felt fat and thick in my throat and I knew I shouldn’t have said it, but I was more promising myself than her. I was convincing myself that I would find David, but I still blamed myself for his being missing.

  As we rolled away from the house in the truck, light just finding the sky, Gus commented on how bad he felt for Sylvia and Howard. Then he apologized for the coyote biting Howard.

  “I probably have been a little lax on the training.”

  I waved him off. “Emily’s fine,” I said. “She did what she’s programmed to do when she’s scared. Howard was scared, so she got scared.”

  In town, the deputy Hanks was just getting out of his rig as we drove by the station house. I rolled down my window and called to him.

  “Any news?” I asked.

  He looked cold, maybe nervous. “Bucky was planning to call you this morning,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “McCormack is cutting off the search,” he said, flatly, then looked as if he shouldn’t have spoken.

  “Why is that?” I felt hollow.

  “I guess he doesn’t think we can find him. Mr. Hunt, we covered damn near the whole desert. We didn’t even find a track.”

  I didn’t say anything. Gus was looking away out his window.

  “What’s the sheriff say?” I asked. “I mean, does he agree with McCormack?”

  “I guess. Listen, he’ll tell you himself. He told McCormack about that guy getting lost in the woods and McCormack listened. Just talk to Bucky.”

  I nodded and watched the lanky deputy walk away.

  “Mouse Canyon?” Gus asked.

  “Mouse Canyon.”

  Mouse Canyon was on the northern edge of the reservation. A narrow, rugged canyon, it was dry enough that no one cared to go there. Part of it had burned ten years ago and no one had gone to put out the fire. The new growth was thick and low. There was a small creek that managed to flow year round, but supported few fish, probably because of ranching, but no one remembered there ever being fish there. The road was deeply rutted, but not terrible, perhaps because of the lack of traffic and perhaps because the county didn’t attempt to maintain it. I had seen the line shack that Elvis described long ago and knew that it was well up near the end of the road. I wondered how anyone could get a BMW up there. A quarter-mile up the road that question was answered.

  “Why are you stopping?” Gus asked.

  I pointed.

  “What?”

  Look harder
. I got out of the truck and Gus followed me. The BMW was dressed in a green car tarp and covered with branches, fairly well hidden. I looked at the road. “Look here. Dually tracks.”

  “It would seem they’re at home,” Gus said.

  We climbed back into the truck.

  “Are you sure you’re up to this?” I asked the old man. In fact, I believed he was more up to it than I was.

  “Just drive.”

  I recalled that the cabin was well up the canyon, so I stopped about a mile in. I turned to Gus and said, “I want you to stay here.”

  “Why?”

  “If I’m not back in an hour, go get the sheriff.”

  I climbed out of the truck and reached in for my rifle. I studied Gus’s face and waited for his argument, but none came. “You okay?”

  He nodded.

  “Let me have that roll of duct tape from the jockey box.”

  He handed me the tape.

  “Thanks.”

  “An hour,” he said.

  “Then you go for help.”

  I walked away up the road and didn’t glance back at him. The sky was cloudless and blue. I unzipped my jacket, then felt for shells in my pocket. My heart was racing, but all this seemed correct. Sometimes things were just simple, I thought. The people you expected to do the bad thing did the bad thing. I believed the rednecks had done something to David and I was going to find out. Maybe I should have called the sheriff, but I didn’t know whom I could trust.

  Not quite a mile from my truck I heard the thumping of a motor, a generator. I approached through the brush and saw the cabin. It didn’t look as run down as I’d remembered. A black dually pickup was parked in front next to a defunct propane tank. Smoke came from the metal pipe chimney and was carried away from me with the wind. Then I became concerned that being upwind they could smell me. I realized I was thinking too much. I ducked down as I spotted the flash of a head in the window. I asked myself what I was doing there. The scene felt surreal. It wasn’t so much that I was scared, but I didn’t feel like I was standing on anything. I moved to the rear of the house and listened, but all I could hear was the generator. I kept low and made my way around the side to the front corner. I stood erect and was startled by a man. It was the larger of the two men with whom I had fought. He was holding a toothbrush in his hand. He started to back away.

  “I wouldn’t run,” I said, leveling the barrel of my rifle at him. “I just wouldn’t run.”

  “What—”

  “I wouldn’t talk either,” I said. I shook my head. “No sounds. Throw down the toothbrush.” He did. “Now turn around and remember that there’s a rifle aimed at your back.”

  I followed him into the cabin.

  “That was quick,” a man said to him. “What’s wrong with you?”

  I stepped inside.

  “What the fuck?” This was another man I had never seen. The shirtless man moved toward a counter near him and I fired a round through the metal roof. He stopped, stood straight. He had red hair and a red beard and a left sleeve of tattoos. His right arm was bare.

  “Sit around the table,” I said. “All of you. Now.”

  “Nigger, you done fucked up now,” the wiry man whom I had punched said. “You done fucked up bad.”

  They sat in the wooden chairs and I walked around the room. On the far wall was large Nazi flag. There was a pistol on the counter, a.357. I flipped open the chamber and let the shells fall onto the floor, then I tossed the gun through the window, breaking the glass. I took the roll of tape from my pocket. I nudged the back of the smallest man’s head with the tip of the barrel. “Okay, weasel, tape up your friends. Start with the redhead.”

  “Fuck you,” he said.

  I poked him with the tip hard. He cried out and I did it again.

  “Hey, fuckwad,” the redhead said. “We could just rush you. You can’t shoot all three of us with that thing.”

  “I think I can,” I said. “But if I don’t we’re going to be slipping around fighting in your friend’s blood and brains.” I poked the little guy again. “Take the tape.”

  He took it, then stood, rubbing the back of his head. “Tape their hands together behind their backs, wrap some around their arms and strap their feet to the chair legs.”

  “I’m going to kill you, you fucking nigger,” he said, as began taping his running buddy instead of the redhead, but I let him continue.

  “You’re not much for talking your way out of a mess, are you?” I said.

  “What do you want?” the redhead asked.

  “I’m looking for a friend,” I said.

  “I’ll be your friend,” the little one said. He was finished with the first man and moved to the redhead.

  “You know this is going to go on your permanent record,” the redhead said.

  I smiled and nodded.

  The small man stood up and away from the table. I gestured for him to have a seat.

  “Are you going to put your gun down and tie me up now?” he asked.

  “I think I’ll just let you sit for a while. So, have you men seen my friend? He’s about twenty, brown hair. A white guy.”

  “Haven’t seen him,” red said.

  “Are you sure? I ask because I believe this watch on the counter is his.”

  “My mother gave me that watch,” the little man said.

  “That’s a lie,” I said. “We all know you didn’t have a mother.”

  “I think you should put that rifle down and tie me up,” the weasel said.

  “Yeah,” said the man I’d met outside.

  “Where is my friend?” I asked.

  “Fuck you,” from the redhead. “I ain’t telling you shit.”

  “Your friend is a fucking pussy,” the weasel said. “He didn’t even fight back. ‘Please don’t hurt me, please don’t hurt me.’ Fucking faggot. At least the other faggot fought.”

  I was lost in anger. But I knew now that they had, in fact, taken David. I didn’t know if he was alive or dead and I was sick about it. I didn’t know what to do next, what to say it, how to say it. I’d exhausted my tough-guy act.

  Gus entered the cabin.

  “Fuck me,” the redhead said. “What is this? Nigger heaven?”

  What happened next was and still is a blur. I recall a flash and a loud pop and the red beard expanding and breaking, the chair falling over, the weasel sliding across the floor to the wall and Gus, standing there, a.45 in his hand.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” the remaining tied-up man kept saying.

  “Nephew,” Gus said, “tape that piece of shit to a chair.”

  I grabbed the weasel by his hair and pulled him to a chair, started wrapping him up. I was slowly coming to my senses, understanding what had just happened. “You killed him,” I said.

  “It would seem so,” Gus said.

  The little man still hadn’t said anything while his friend kept saying fuck.

  “You killed him, Gus,” I said again.

  “I’ve got two left,” the old man said.

  At first I thought he was talking about bullets, but I then realized he meant the men. Gus’s face was tired, hard.

  Gus pointed his pistol at the weasel’s face. “Where is David?” he asked. “You’ll tell me or I’ll shoot you. Then I’ll point the gun at your buddy. Where is David?”

  “He’s up the canyon,” the man said.

  “Alive?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where up the canyon?” I asked, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the dead man, his face flattened in his own blood.

  “There’s a trail just after the creek that leads to a hole in a big rock. I think somebody blasted out a place to keep supplies or something. He’s in there.”

  “He’d better be,” Gus said. “If my nephew comes back here alone, I’m going to shoot you. Do you understand?”

  “That’s where he is.”

  I looked at Gus. He blew out a breath, then leaned against the wall. He was sick. />
  “Go,” he said.

  “How far away is the trail?”

  “A mile maybe. But he’s probably dead. Jesus, man, don’t shoot me.”

  “Was he dead when you left him?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “He’d better not be dead,” Gus said.

  “Where are the keys to that truck?” I asked the weasel.

  “In the ignition.”

  I ran out to the dually, climbed in and drove up the canyon, looking for the creek. I saw it, stopped, and walked back and forth looking for the trail. When I finally saw it, it was clear to see and I wondered if all of this was making me blind. I couldn’t believe that Gus had shot that man. Then I couldn’t believe that I had put myself in a place where I could have shot him. I didn’t know what was going to happen. How were we going to explain the death of a bound man?

  I followed the trail across the frozen creek and, about a hundred yards in, saw the depression in the big rock. It opened like a cave, but was obviously the result of blasting. It got dark pretty quickly, but it wasn’t pitch. I didn’t have a light and so I moved slowly, letting my eyes adjust as I went.

  My foot hit something. Not a rock. It was a body. I didn’t think, I just grabbed the legs and dragged the body to the opening and the light. It was David and he was beaten badly. His eyes were closed, his mouth pulp, but he was breathing. He was breathing. I untied his hands and feet. I talked to him, but I couldn’t tell if he could hear me. His arm was badly broken, bending off at a bizarre angle once untied and I tried to straighten it over his chest. He was bruised and bloody everywhere and I just knew he was bleeding inside. I started to cry. I didn’t know whether to leave him and get help or try to carry him to the truck. I couldn’t leave him, I decided. I simply couldn’t. If he was going to die, he wasn’t going to die alone. I dragged him as gently as I could back along the trail and across the ice to the truck. I struggled with his limp body and got him into the bed.

  I drove back to the cabin and found Gus nearly asleep as he leaned against the wall. The men were still tied and Gus still held the pistol, but he looked bad.