‘He’s dead, Verge,’ Carolina said blankly.
‘What?’ I asked, taken aback. ‘Well, I guess he was getting up there in years. How long ago did he pass?’
‘Two nights ago. They’re all dead.’
‘What do you mean, “all”?’
‘All the Thompsons. The mamá, papá and the girls. My papá went round to put up some chicken wire in their garden and found them in their beds, blood drippin’ on the floor from their ears and mouths. That’s why I couldn’t go to papá about you. After he found them, he . . . he locked himself in the bedroom,’ she said, avoiding my gaze, ‘. . . with a bottle. He’s not come out since.’
I couldn’t imagine Carolina’s father hidden away like that, drinking. I said, cautiously, ‘I didn’t realise it was that bad.’
‘How long has el Señor Pastor kept you inside?’
‘Uh, since he closed the church,’ I said. ‘Not that he let me out much before. I imagined, I don’t know . . . that the world would just go on without me.’
‘Look Verge, I know everyone around here says it’s hell in France, but it’s hell here too. The dead just keep pilin’ up. And now . . . this unholy thing is hunting you.’
A shiver ran through me. I said, ‘You’re taking a risk, just coming outside with me. You didn’t have to.’
‘Yes, I did, Verge. Otherwise, what kind of a . . . neighbour would I be?’ She clapped her hands together and grabbed her end of the stretcher. ‘Now, enough chit-chat. Back to work.’
I rubbed my hands on my pants, bent down and heaved the body up. I stumbled after Carolina as she slogged down the muddy street. Soon we were crossing the main square and I squinted with my good eye at the rickety old tower of the gambling hall. It loomed like a featherless raven on its perch. Was it from that twisted iron railing I’d pushed the succubus to her death? I roused myself: it had just been a story. I hadn’t pushed anyone to her death, and what’s more I didn’t have to squint. That was one of the Muladona’s tricks, confusing my life with that of the Texas Ranger in its story. I bit my tongue hard and the pain brought me back to reality.
We reached the schoolhouse. With my last ounce of energy I stumbled up the steps and we laid the hobo on the front porch. Row upon row of pale-faced, shivering people were hacking and sneezing, slouched over the wooden boards. Miss Dawson, our old schoolteacher, came out from the entranceway and blocked our path. At least, I thought it was Miss Dawson. The thin, bird-like woman was all done up in a surgical mask and a heavy butcher’s apron covered in blood.
‘You kids can’t go any further without masks,’ she scolded. Then she pounced on us, tying gauze masks across our noses and mouths.
Carolina said respectfully, ‘Ma’am, this man needs urgent medical attention.’
Miss Dawson peered at us through eyes whose bloodshot veins were magnified by her oval spectacles. ‘How high is the patient’s fever? If it’s under 100, he’ll have to wait. Tell him to take plenty of liquids and isolate himself from the rest of his family.’
‘He doesn’t have the flu,’ said Carolina, pointing to the gauze pads and medical tape crisscrossing his chest. ‘He’s been . . . uh, he’s been trampled by a mule. He’s lost a lot of blood.’
Miss Dawson looked at the hobo over the rims of her glasses. ‘That’s different, then,’ she said. ‘We’re only seeing flu patients today. Take him back home and Doctor Evans will get to him in due course.’
‘In due course?’ Carolina asked, incredulous. ‘He’s barely breathin’. This man needs urgent medical attention.’
‘Now, Miss Sotomayor,’ Miss Dawson said, ‘don’t get fresh with me. It’s bad enough that they’ve turned my school into a sick house, without having to deal with unruly children. You’ll do as I say.’
Miss Dawson looked down at the list in her hands and said to no one in particular, ‘Number eleven?’
The piles of patients spread about the porch uttered groans and gasps but no intelligible response. ‘No one, no one?’ Miss Dawson inquired in a shrill voice. ‘How about 12? Remember the numbers I gave you when you registered? Speak up, now.’
I got angry—real angry. I’d just escaped from my prison-home and that hellish creature. I’d made a super-human effort with Carolina to drag the dying man for medical attention. Now, once again, I was being dismissed by a stupid adult. And they weren’t deciding bedtimes or mealtimes or homework. They were deciding about life and death. I wasn’t going to take it anymore.
‘Are you a patriot?’ I asked Miss Dawson softly, my voice coming out in a harsh whisper.
She looked up from her list. ‘Oh, Mr Strömberg, I didn’t realise it was you. This is no place for you; you’ll catch your death! Now go back home.’
‘I repeat, are you a patriot?’
‘Yes of course I am,’ she said, without even looking at me. ‘I’m doing my duty here on the home front, while our boys are fighting overseas.’
‘Then you’ll look up from your goddam list and attend to this man immediately!’ I shouted. I was surprised at the strength of my own voice, and it made Miss Dawson jump.
‘How dare you cuss at me like that! Why, your father. . . .’
‘My father’s not goddam here, so I can think for my goddam self for a change. This man,’ I said, pointing to the ashen-faced hobo, ‘is a decorated war hero. He’s not some number on a list. He name is Corporal Riquelme, honourably discharged from the American Expeditionary Forces. And if you’re half the patriot you say you are, you’ll put down that goddam list and attend to him immediately!’
‘Why . . . I . . . I . . . don’t . . .’ Miss Dawson vacillated.
‘That’s what I thought,’ I said. ‘Let’s take him inside, Carolina,’ and we picked up the stretcher, pushing past Miss Dawson, leaving her stammering amongst her patients.
‘Geez, Verge,’ Carolina whispered, ‘what’s gotten into you?’
As we entered the schoolhouse we saw children’s finger paintings still hanging from the walls, dried and curled up like last year’s leaves. A dusty photograph of President Wilson hung from a nail. Running along the edge of the blackboard was a poster of the alphabet in cursive. On the slate board was the last, incomplete sentence in block letters written before the school had been closed, ‘Johnny is very —’
I found myself finishing the sentence out loud: ‘Johnny is very scared.’
Miss Dawson’s huge oak desk had been pushed into the middle of the room to form a makeshift operating table. It was covered with a white sheet and brilliant alcohol lamps shone on it from every side. It was unmistakably old Doctor Evans who had his back to us. He bent over a body that twitched on the table. Tufts of bloody cotton and gauze were strewn over the floor. Then the body stopped moving and the doctor sighed. He stood a few seconds in silence, holding one of its wrists. Hearing our breathing behind him, he said, ‘Miss Dawson, we lost another one. Help me wrap him up and put him out back with the others. Then wash down the floor with plenty of alcohol.’
He turned around, ‘What. . . ? Who are you?’
‘It’s Verge Strömberg, and Carolina Sotomayor,’ I said. ‘We have a wounded man for you. He’s hurt real badly.’
The doctor stretched his back and asked, ‘Wounded . . . by what?’
‘By a mule,’ I said. ‘I’m kind of responsible for him. Please see him. He’s our . . . handyman.’
‘Fine,’ Doc Evans said wearily. ‘Lay him here on the floor.’
We put down the hobo as gently as we could. The doctor pulled off his bloody rubber gloves and scrubbed his hands with a nail brush in a basin of water. The bags under his pale blue eyes protruded over his surgical mask. As he bent down to the hobo, his knees cracked. ‘Let’s take a look.’
He fiddled with the dressings Carolina had put on. ‘That’s a fine job you did here. Oh, yes, he’s in bad shape.’ He took the man’s wrist between his fingers and said, ‘Barely a pulse.’
‘Please help him,’ I implored. ‘He’s a war hero.’
‘Thank you, thank you so much,’ I began to say, but the doctor cut me off, ‘What the. . . ? You say a mule did this?’
‘Uh, yeah.’
‘You saw it happen?’
‘No,’ I lied. ‘I just heard trampling noises in the street . . . whinnying and screaming, lots of screaming. When I came out, I saw him lying there all broken up. Carolina here, she patched him up and stopped the bleeding.’
Carolina nodded duplicitously.
‘Well,’ said the doctor, ‘this is very strange. That mule not only trampled him but bit him to hell and back. The thing must have been out of its mind. Maybe my eyes are playin’ tricks on me, ’cause I been on my feet for more than forty-eight hours straight . . . but it looks almost as if. . . . Oh, God . . . the teeth cauterised the wounds as they cut. That’s not possible. They’d have to be red-hot to do this sort of damage.’
He looked at me and pulled down his surgical mask. His grey skin sagged from his worried face. ‘I’ve seen so much death these last few days that I’ve stopped askin’ why God lets this happen. In fact, it’s made me doubt—I’m glad your father’s not here to hear this—if there really is a God. But as sure as I’m standin’ before you, this is the Devil’s work. For all I know this man sold his soul and got the worst end of the stick.’ Pressing the pads back in place he said, ‘I want no part in this. I got a whole bunch o’ Godfearin’ folk out there who need my help.’
‘Oh, please!’ I implored. ‘You must help him, you must! He’s a good man, I promise. He was trying to save my life.’
‘Is that the truth?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Is that as much as you’re willin’ to tell me?’
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I can’t tell you any more, ’cause . . . ’cause it’s too dangerous.’
He considered me for a moment with his tired eyes, then he shook his head. ‘Well, God or no God I got a Hippocratic oath I ain’t never broke. I don’t have time for an explanation, nor do I want one. Come here and give me a hand.’
‘What do we do?’ I asked earnestly.
‘We’re gonna perform a transfusion. We’re probably too late, but it’s worth a shot. Now, Carolina, you go over to that cabinet there and bring me back a rubber tube and two needles.’
Carolina rooted around in the medical supplies, then brought the items over to the doctor.
Doc Evans said, ‘Now I’m gonna hold this end here, while you connect the other one, Verge.’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Are you going to stick it in here?’ pointing to my arm.
‘Kind of you to offer, son. But I’d barely take a pint out of a mite like you, before you’d pass out.”
‘Then who’s the donor?’
He nodded towards the corpse and said, ‘It’s Sheriff Wilkinson.’
‘What?’ I gasped, ‘The Sheriff’s dead? You can’t be serious.’ Then, trying to get a grip on reality, I asked, ‘If he had the flu, surely a transfusion can’t be safe.’
‘Blood’s blood,’ the doctor replied phlegmatically. ‘Your friend’s lost so much, we need to fill him with a whole body of it. What we’re about to do ain’t safe . . . it might even be sacrilegious. But it’s the best we can do, so get goin’.’
I took one end of the rubber tube and went over to the corpse. The sheriff’s face, crisscrossed with battle scars, was turned towards me and his eyes were open. They had some sharpness left in them. His huge knobby hands still looked like they were strong enough to throttle a coyote. It seemed as if he was defying anyone who said he was dead.
I shuddered as I saw the tin star pinned on his chest, and I had a flashback to my life as a Ranger and that pink-eyed girl. I had a horrible feeling that the Sheriff had been the boy in the story that the Muladona had just told me, because Sheriff Wilkinson always did squint. Had he hunted for the fugitive in the mountain? Was it all true?
Carolina came up beside me and said, ‘It’s okay, Verge, you gotta do this.’
‘In the arm,’ the doctor urged. ‘But first, put on the rubber gloves beside you. Now, grab his hand and make a fist. Then, when you see the blue vein pop up atop the other side of his elbow, push the tip into the length of the vein. It’s like threadin’ a needle. Don’t pierce it straight through.’
Carolina took the corpse’s hand and squeezed it in a fist. ‘Oh, geez, Verge, he’s still warm!’ The vein bulged up. Just as I was steeling up the courage to puncture it, I saw the arm twitch. Carolina let out a piercing scream. ‘Madre de Dios!’ she called out. ‘He’s alive, he’s alive! He just grabbed my hand.’
‘No,’ Doc Evans said authoritatively, ‘he’s dead, that’s for sure. His body just don’t know it yet. Now stick the needle in, while your friend’s still alive. It’s his only hope.’
I poked the needle carefully into the vein. It looked like a blue bloated leech. Only a few drops of blood pattered into the tube. ‘It’s not working,’ I called out.
‘Of course it’s not,’ Doc Evans said. ‘His heart’s quit beatin’. You gotta pump it, just like pumpin’ water from a well.’
‘No, no, no,’ I cried out, ‘that’s not right.’
‘You got to,’ he said. ‘Take your hands, one over the other. Put ’em down in the middle of his chest, just above his sternum, and press.’
Carolina nodded at me to go on, and I placed my hands on the Sheriff’s chest. She was right: he was still warm, hot with fever. He’d been breathing just a few minutes before. Now I was hovering over him like some ghoul. I closed my eyes and I pressed down as hard as I could. Breath escaped through the corpse’s mouth, smelling like fresh fried eggs and potatoes. I felt my stomach turn.
I opened my eyes to see that the corpse’s head had shifted. Now the eyes were staring straight into mine: this time, he wasn’t defiant. He was imploring me to stop.
‘Good. Do it again,’ the doctor urged.
Without taking my eyes off the corpse’s, I pumped its chest, and his breath escaped again, in a long sigh. I saw blood spurt out of the needle Doc Evans held in his hand.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘All the air’s out of the line. Just wait until I stick this into your friend. Okay . . . now pump,’
I did it.
‘Good. Now do it again. . . . And again.’
I pressed every time the doctor urged me to, for several minutes, until my arms ached. My eyes started to glaze over and I felt my surroundings slip away from me. This was no longer a story, a trick from the Devil’s mule. I was walking a fine line between the world of the living and the dead.
The next thing I remember was feeling warm hands on mine. Carolina’s voice was saying, ‘It’s okay, Verge. It’s over. You can stop pumping now.’ I looked around me as if returning from a dream. The Sheriff, white in the face, was now unmistakably dead, more like a mannequin than a man. Carolina led me to where the hobo lay on our makeshift stretcher. Doc Evans was holding his wrist and counting out seconds with his pocket watch.
‘He’s still alive . . . just barely. He’s a fighter, that’s for sure. You did a fine job. Now, we just have to wait and see. The shock may be too much for his system, or the blood’s bad or any number of things. I’ll keep him here and watch for signs of improvement.’
‘Okay, okay,’ I mumbled, barely able to take it all in. Carolina steered me to the door.
‘Whatever’s goin’ on,’ the doctor called after us in a tired voice, ‘you take care of yourself. I’ve known you your whole life, Verge Strömberg, and I know you’re a good boy. So don’t meddle in things that are beyond this world.’
‘I wish to God I didn’t need to,’ I said, ‘but it isn’t up to me.’
‘You feelin’ sick, son? Your illness? You don’t look so good.’
I said, ‘No, I don’t feel sick at all.’
>
I was hungry and tired. I was horrified by my role in draining the corpse. But I felt something was different in me, something I hadn’t felt for such a long time.
‘You may have been exposed to the influenza here today. Remember, it takes an average of three days from time of infection to death. If you feel any symptoms, you come see me straightaway. That goes for both you and Carolina.’
‘Yes, Sir,’ I said, as I found myself slumping onto Carolina’s shoulder.
‘One more thing. . . . On your way out, tell Miss Dawson to come in and help me toss this corpse on the pile in the back. We don’t wanna startle the patients any more than they already have been.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I stumbled back to my house, leaning on Carolina’s shoulder the whole way. I no longer had any will of my own. If Carolina hadn’t guided me over the wagon-wheel ruts I’d have just sat down in the mud and died of exposure. My mind was overwhelmed; the hobo’s fight with the Muladona, the Sheriff’s corpse I’d just bled dry to try to save him. It was all too awful to contemplate. And it had all probably been for nothing, because the Muladona was coming for me again, tonight.
We sat down on the sofa in my parlour. Carolina roused me: ‘What are you gonna do now, Verge?’
‘Huh?’
‘What are you gonna do now that I got the door open?’
‘Nothing,’ I replied.
‘What do you mean, “nothing”?’
‘I’m just going to stay here and wait for that damnable mule to find me. What else can I do?’
‘Can’t we find someone who can help you?’
‘Who? My father’s gone. The sheriff’s dead. Old Doc Evans is exhausted. Your father hates me.’
‘Then get on a horse and go somewhere the creature can never find you.’
For a moment the idea of going out into the vast outside world tempted me. Then it faded. ‘No,’ I said. ‘With each story, I feel the creature digging its hooves deeper into me. Its tales and my life are mixing together like two wisps of smoke. It doesn’t matter where I go; it’ll find me. I’d rather it happens here than on the open road.’
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