by Lawton Paul
“Ma’am,” she says, “you don’t look too good. You’re white as a ghost and your clothes are… are uh. Oh, God. Is that blood? You hold on, Honey. You need to go to the hospital. Right now. I’m ‘unna call the rescue.” She disappears behind the door. That’s not going to help.
Angela reaches up and presses the pendant to her chest. She remembers the Salheimer’s story about Mrs. Kaufman commanding the nurse to move out of the way. Marlina did it so why can’t I. “Come out!” she says. But the lady remains inside.
Angela closes her eyes and yells: “COME OUT!” with all she’s got. The lady pops into the garage like Angela’s yanked her out with a thick rope. She’s still got the phone in her hand, and puts it up to her ear. “That’s right, 2456 River Rd.,” she says.
“Drop the phone,” commands Angela again in her garbled, speaker-phone voice. The lady drops the phone on the garage floor mid-sentence. It hits the concrete and plastic pieces break off, batteries spinning across the concrete.
“Drive us to Bo’s, now,” says Angela.
“Okay,” she says, reaching back into the house for the keys.
“It’s a mile or so down,” Angela says.
Dog and Angela get in the back of the truck. There’s a kid’s bike with pink tassels, but she slides it forward, lays down on the cold steel bed with the tail down. Dog right next to her. He needs the field as much as I do.
She stares up into the sky as the truck heads down the road. The dark canopy of oak leaves flash past. Holes open up and the stars are visible again for second, then blackness. Dog puts his head on her stomach. The blood from the bottom of the little boat, her blood, is sticking to her back, to the bed of the truck. Her hair is wet with it. The lady was afraid like she’d seen a ghost. I can’t let Bo see me like this.
The truck stops at the bottom of the alleyway. The lady doesn’t know where Bo’s place is. But this is perfect. No one would see her coming. Angela gets out of the truck, a big, red smear where she and Dog were sitting. “Clean the truck,” says Angela to the lady. She nods okay, still wide-eyed like Angela might just eat her. “There’s a little boat near your dock. Sink it.” She nods again. “Oh, one more thing. Don’t say anything about this.”
The lady leaves and Angela and Dog walk quietly up the hill. The Sahlheimer’s house is on the right. Parked in the driveway is a 1971 Ford Torino.
Angela heads for the cottage, each step a command carried out by the force held close to her chest, Dog limping alongside. No cars in Bo’s driveway and one light on upstairs. Where is everyone?
Inside the cottage she tries to tie the pendant onto a long piece of leather but her fingers won’t cooperate, so she just puts it in her shirt pocket. Then she reaches into a closet shelf, each movement like she’s manipulating a puppet from strings held above her, separate from her. She can see her hand reaching out, but it’s like someone else’s. There on loan. The damn thing barely under her control. The hand misses the box of .22 shells and several stray 12 gauge slugs hit the floor with a crash. She stops and listens, and satisfied no one is coming, finally gets ahold of the 22s.
She goes to the window and stares out towards Mrs. Kaufman’s house. Be there, you bastard. Nothing but black and gray, the tops of trees, the front edge of the house lit by the street lamp. She looks to Dog, his eyes fixed on the backyard, still as stone. And suddenly he jumps forward, nose touching the window. “You see the sheriff, Dog?” says Angela. His breathing gets fast and he limps to the door: come on. “Okay, Boy. Just one more stop, then we’ll go.”
Bo keeps the side door locked. Angela taps on her jeans pocket. The keys are there, but her fingers couldn’t get the right key, couldn’t hold a key anyway. She can’t knock because that’d tip off the sheriff.
The old target rifle hangs over the sink. She goes to the kitchen window to see if its open and staring back at her in reflection is an apparition: a gaunt, white-faced woman with matted, bloody hair. The face scares her and she puts her hand to her mouth, and the ghost moves her hand in sync with Angela’s. This can’t be, she thinks. She reaches down for Dog. She wants to lie down and rest. To dream again. And she goes down to her knees.
But Dog starts growling, pulling at her shirt, licking her face. Walt said Live. Dog puts his head under hers and pushes up. Okay, okay. She reaches up for the window without looking, gives it a push, and it slides open. Angela reaches into the kitchen and grabs the 1918 Remington. Her sausage fingers hold the rifle just fine.
She squats, and for a moment starts sinking down, the image of the ghost-faced woman creeping back in again, but pulls herself back. She dumps the box of 22 shells on the ground and painstakingly loads five rounds, her fingers barely under her control. That’s plenty to kill his ass, she thinks, and heads to Kaufman’s house. Yes, kill the bastard sheriff. Focus on the target.
She hears him before he comes into view: heavy breathing and the sound of the shovel blade grinding against rocks in the soil. She makes it to the edge of the chain link fence and can see his dark outline hunched over a shovel, several feet down in a hole. The mango totally dug up on the grass to the side.
She takes aim at his head and slowly eases through the open gate, his back to her. She stops about ten yards out. White bandage on his neck and arm. He’s digging like a madman, scraping through the dirt where the mango once was. Cursing under his breath.
“Looking for something?” Angela says, aware again of her strange voice. The sheriff jumps like he’s been shot already, caught off guard, falls back into the hole.
And then she sees it: the Winchester. Her Winchester. He reaches for it and she squeezes the trigger, hits him in the shoulder and his left arm hangs limp and he cries out in pain, rolls down deeper into the hole but there’s no cover. She pumps the rifle and the shell flies out the side and another round loads.
He looks up at her, red-faced and big, fearful eyes like the lady down the road. “Ain’t right fer you to be here with the living. Can’t do nuthin’ but die if yain’t got no blood.”
“Shut up!” she says. He turns in the hole, then his right arm comes up with a pistol. Dog barks but she’s sees it and sends a bullet through his right arm, and the gun falls out of his hand.
“I got three more. Where you want it?” He starts to blubber and mumble, all she gets is an “…I saved you…” mixed in with an occasional “bitch”. She fires again at his kneecap and he’s writhing in pain. She takes aim at his head, but can’t do it. And then the old target rifle starts to get light. She can’t feel it anymore.
Suddenly the leaves are all red, then blue, then red again. Dog starts growling behind her. Other people yelling, but she can’t understand them anymore because she’s starting to leave, and then her body goes light and she wonders if this is it, if this is the way it’s going to end. But she remembers.
Walt said Live.
And then she hears a voice. A weepy, old voice. “…Angie, baby. Put down the gun and come to me, Angela.”
Angela reaches for Mrs. Kaufman’s pendant at her chest and her body gets warm and tingly and suddenly there’s a pain in her leg and the volume is too high. Her eyes come into focus and the sheriff’s right hand man has a gun pointed at her. “Put down the rifle!” he yells. His movements are quick and shaky, like he can’t decide what to do next. Bo is still crying.
“Put away the gun and come to me,” Angela commands the deputy.
He holsters the gun and steps up to the edge of the hole, his eyes never leaving her face.
Angela puts down her rifle, stares down into the hole. The sheriff tucked into fetal position, blood and dirt smeared on his shirt, his jeans. One more thing to do.
“Tell the deputy who you killed!” commands Angela. The words hit him like a punch and he recoils, eyes closed. But he fights it anyway. “Tell him!” Angela commands.
“Marlina Kaufman.”
“Who else?”
“Walter Fleetwood.”
Angela steps back and takes a deep breath.
She clutches the pendant and the energy surges through her but this time there’s a disconnect. Maybe there’s nothing left for the power to flow through. She starts to fall back, but is carried away. “I got you now. You’re going to make it.”
It’s Greg, the medical examiner.
Saved
Five minutes earlier
Greg hits the brakes, slides the BMW to a stop right into the old chain link fence. He jumps out and starts running to Kaufman’s backyard. Bo called on their way home, said she heard shots.
“Angela?” he asked. But she didn’t know.
Shots meant maybe she was there, thinks Greg. Maybe the sheriff hadn’t killed her. This is hope, which he’d lost at the dusty intersection earlier.
Through the gray morning haze he sees a woman holding a gun, her back to him.
Angela?
But the woman’s hair is too dark, her skin too pale. Something’s wrong. Her clothes look black, maybe wet, and Angela usually wears jeans. The woman starts to fall right as he gets there and he catches her. She’s like a wet rag, and his arms are suddenly covered in a thick, brown, cherry cobbler. Her hair is matted with drying blood, her skin like candle wax. She looks like a cadaver pulled from the morgue and propped up into standing position, only to collapse under its own weight. He goes down to his knees, eases her onto the ground and brushes the sticky, brown hair out of her eyes.
It’s Angela.
He puts both hands on either side of her face, her lips blue. Please don’t go. Come back, Angie. He wants to cry or scream, but he fights to maintain control. I’m a doctor. But things don’t look too good: pale color and a bloody cut on her upper right thigh. Femoral artery. She’s bled out, but was standing a moment ago. That’s not possible.
She’s got a hint of a pulse and a little air is moving but she needs blood. “Angie, come back to me!” he says, wrapping his belt above the wound on her leg.
Her eyes open. She stares at him, then Bo comes and her eyes move to the old lady. “Angie, can you hear me?” says Bo, kneeling in the dirt. Her hand on Angie’s arm.
“She’s lost too much blood. She shouldn’t be alive.”
“Now do you believe?” says Bo. She grabs his arm and yells into his face over the sound of an ambulance pulling into the drive. “The power is holding her together. Now you’ve got to bring her back.”
“I’m taking her to the hospital.”
“No!” Bo grabs his arm as he starts to carry Angela to the ambulance. The paramedics are opening the back doors. “If you take her away from here she’ll die.”
“If she doesn’t get a transfusion she’ll die. Let go!” He pulls Angela away, her head rolling to one side, and starts running.
Greg puts Angela on the gurney. “She’s lost a lot of blood. She needs fluids,” he says to the medic. Bo is in the background yelling at the deputy who’s holding her back.
“We’ll take care of her,” the paramedic says, real calm and slow. Greg helps slide her into the truck and something falls out of Angela’s shirt pocket and rolls to the front. The medic doesn’t notice and Greg’s still in panic mode. “I am an ME. Can I ride along,” he says.
“Sure. But let us take it from here. Okay?” says the paramedic, a muscular man with PECK stitched onto his pocket.
Greg nods. The truck starts rolling and he elevates her legs and gets an IV going. Then the doctor from St. Vincents calls in over the intercom.
“Whatcha got, Pecker?”
“Female, mid-forties, massive blood loss, deep cut at the upper right thigh. Pale skin tone. No color in her lips. Must’ve hit an artery. Legs elevated, two large bore saline IVs.”
“Vitals?”
“Uh, 40 over… 40 over nothing. Faint pulse. Thready but regular.”
“Jesus, Peck. Is the patient dead?”
“I still got a faint pulse, Doc.”
“Okay, but I’m worried now about brain damage. Profusion after four minutes… How long ago was the injury?”
“Don’t know. Dried, coagulated blood everywhere. It’s a mess. Well over five, I’d say.”
“Well don’t risk your lives getting here, if you know what I mean.”
Greg speaks up: “Doctor, this is Greg Pendleton. I’m an ME at the coroner’s office. This woman needs a vascular surgeon and about six liters of type A. And I would greatly appreciate it if you all did your fucking jobs and gave her a chance.”
“Dr. Pendleton, John Carson, here. My apologies, I was not informed there was a ride along. All due respect, but you’re an ME. I do emergency medicine every day. Based on the data, the patient is gone. Even if by some miracle we could get her back, lack of oxygen to the brain is an issue. We’re going to do everything we can.”
Greg’s phone starts buzzing. It’s Larry, but Greg doesn’t answer.
Ten minutes later Greg is sitting in the trauma care waiting room. Angela’s in surgery. Dave comes running up with Larry and Carl. “The power is here,” Dave says, no shoes, arm in a sling, same ragged-out Chili Peppers t-shirt.
“How do you know?” Greg says quietly, still thinking about what the asshole doctor had said about Angela’s chances.
“I can feel it. It’s here, but she needs it right next to her body.”
Greg just shrugs.
“Listen,” Dave says. “I don’t care if you don’t believe, but she has a chance. Did you find something on her? It’s obviously smaller than we thought.”
“I don’t know,” says Greg, and takes a deep breath. “If she’s got it, it ain’t doing much good. She’s out of blood and doesn’t have much of a chance.”
“I ain’t believing that,” says Dave. They mill around for a few minutes staring at their shoes.
Suddenly Greg jumps up out of his chair. “Something was rolling around on the floor of the ambulance!” he says, and runs down the hall to the elevators, jabs the down button about ten times, then heads for the stairs, Dave, Larry and Carl following. They all make it to the ambulance bay and the paramedics are just about to leave. Greg stops them.
“Hey, did you find something rolling around on the floor of the truck?”
“You mean the funny metal thing?”
“Yeah.”
He points to a trash can next to the door and drives off. It’s full of dark brown gauze, spent needles, etc. Greg dumps the trash out onto the concrete and they start sifting through on their hands and knees.
An orderly walks past. “Careful, Dudes,” he says, “y’all into some serious bio-shit there.”
Then Greg sees the shiny thing. He wipes it on his shirt. It’s electric in his hands, warm and tingly. He can feel it flowing through him. “It’s Marlina’s pendant!” says Dave.
Suddenly everything slows down for Greg and he isn’t tired even though he’s running full out.
He gets back to the operating room and Angela has flat-lined. The doc is there. He looks at his watch, says, “Time of death—”
“No,” yells Greg. “She’s not gone yet.” He puts the pendant to her chest and whispers in her ear. “Come back, Angela.” He holds it there and everything is quiet.
“We’ll give you guys some time,” says the doc, motioning the nurses to follow him out.
“Angela, you gotta live. This damn thing’s supposed to work,” says Greg, keeping it right on her chest.
He waits there for a minute in total silence. Then two. And he starts to give up hope once again.
And then suddenly the EKG beeps. And then nothing. Then again. And slowly, but steadily her pulse starts to come back. The doc runs back in and checks the connection to the machine thinking something is wrong, but all the wires are just as the should be. So they watch her pulse climb into the 60s and hold.
End
One month later
It’s early morning and the fog still clings to the surface of the river. A kayaker in a red life jacket and helmet cruises by, perfectly quiet except for water dripping off the end of her paddle.
Angela comes to the doc
k every morning to sit with Dog and drink coffee. She’s not afraid to be quiet anymore, to just be still and let thoughts come. The bad ones don’t come nearly as much. Walt is gone and she is learning to live with that. Learning to carry it.
Greg said to make lists of the good things. So she runs through the people she cares about:
Johnny’s probably heading to Bo’s in that noisy, red VW Bo calls the “firebomb”. Greg, the reinstated ME, is back at the morgue attending to the recently departed. She imagines Dave working on his bog garden by the river. Carl dragging for shrimp. Bo wondering when she will come in and eat. Larry she worries about. He’s outside the corridor and she can’t protect him.
Later that day, Dave comes to lunch, same old raggy shorts, but wearing a clean white t-shirt, his arm no longer in a sling. “You look great,” he says to Angela. “You know, you really scared the shit out of us.” It’s the first time anyone’s mentioned the whole Angela-nearly-died thing. She’s glad it’s finally out. It’s time to move on.
“Scared everybody,” says Bo, setting down two big plates of fried red bass, grits and salad at the main dining room table.
“I’m better. Like you,” says Angela.
“This place does wonders,” he says.
“That and regular baths,” says Bo.
“Bo’s got me smellin’ like a damn townie. And look at this! I feel so dang formal,” says Dave, pointing to his new, super-white t-shirt.
“House rules,” says Bo over her shoulder, standing at the stove.
Dave leans in towards Angela and whispers, “So what are you gonna do now?”
“I don’t know. I feel like I’m waiting for something, but I don’t know what.”
“Well, if you get bored, come by el casa del shroomy and I’ll put you to work. Dr. Death stopped by yesterday and declared me ‘not dead’ and ready to reintegrate into society.”