John Sandford - Mad River

Ten minutes later, despite her chatter, he went to sleep. She sat with him, watching his breathing, like a new mother with her first baby; and she kept one eye on the television, where she saw Duke’s temper tantrum. From that, she took away one thing: if Duke’s men caught them, they’d be killed.

She tried to wake Jimmy, gently rocking his shoulder, to tell him about it. He barely responded, cracking his eyes open, and then he was gone again.

She didn’t know what Becky Welsh would do, so she thought about what a nurse would do, and on the basis of more than twenty years’ sitting in front of TVs, she decided to look at the wound.

Jimmy was wearing nothing but his undershorts, and was asleep on his back, which made it easier to do. He was still wearing the big first-aid bandage, which was white on the outside, but as soon as you looked deeper, she could see that it had soaked up quite a bit of blood.

When she decided to look at the wound, she first went to the old man’s linen closet and found his cleanest sheet. Pretty sure that wasn’t good enough, she hand-washed it with a lot of dish soap, then tossed it in the clothes dryer and went and watched more TV while it dried.

And when it was dry, she made a new bandage pad by folding over the biggest part of it, and made ties by ripping off the ends. All, she thought, pretty professional.

Jimmy was deep in sleep. She tried to gently wake him, but this time he didn’t open his eyes. Just as well, she thought. She used a pair of scissors to cut off the ties on the first-aid bandage, and then carefully peeled it off. The wound looked like a really bad, overcooked personal pizza, the kind with too much tomato sauce and islands of runny yellow cheese; the surface at the center was damp with blood, but it dried out toward the edges. The edge of the wound, where the leg was trying to heal itself, looked a bit like pizza crust, as well.

She didn’t know it, but the deputy that McCall had shot had been using police hollow points on a.40-caliber handgun, and the bullet had done its work. The entrance wound was no bigger than Becky’s little finger, but the exit wound was half the size of a dollar bill.

She still had some small bandages from the first aid kit, and she smeared some antiseptic ointment on one of them and brushed it across the top of the wound. Jimmy made a low throat sound, not quite a moan, and she stopped, and then started again. She was almost done, working from the middle to an outside edge, when she pushed too hard. The scab at the edge of the wound broke open, and a thumb-sized curl of yellow pus squirted out, almost like shaving cream from a can.

And it smelled, something of the stink of an animal dead on a hot summer highway.

She said, aloud, “Oh, no,” and ran to the bathroom and got some toilet paper and came back and mopped it up, but then, feeling that the corruption should be removed, pushed on the wound, and more pus came out, and finally, some purple blood.

She looked at the wound for a moment, then went into the kitchen and got a fork from the silverware drawer, brought it back, smeared it with antiseptic, and used one of the tangs to pick and press another edge of the wound. And when it cracked, more pus bled out. She was ready for it this time, and the smell, and she worked methodically around the wound, picking at the parts that looked yellow or swollen. When she was done, she’d taken out enough pus to fill a small jelly jar.

A lot of pus.

When all she got was blood, she went back to work with the antiseptic, wiping the wound again, then binding it with the clean sheets. She threw all the dirty bandages and toilet paper in the trash, and came back and looked at Jimmy.

He was still sleeping, but the sleep looked easier, somehow.

A half hour later she was clicking through the relevant TV channels and found a helicopter shot; the shot was following a truck as it climbed a hill toward a farmhouse, part of the search. She was shocked when the camera pulled back a bit, to include the farmhouse in the shot, and she saw the line of distinctive blue silos they’d passed at a farmhouse down the road, a mile or so away. From left to right, there was a short one, then two very tall ones, then another short one, and one that was middle-sized.

The cops were on the other side of the silos, but were coming their way.

She said, “Jimmy. Jimmy, you gotta wake up.”

Jimmy opened his eyes and groaned and said, “Man, I hurt.”

“You’re better, though. You passed out for a while, and I cleaned up your leg. Cleaned it out. I think you’re healing up now.”

“Jesus, it hurts,” he said. “How many pills we got left?”

She crawled across the living room floor to the pill bottles, looked at the OxyContin bottle, and said, “Three.”

“Gimme two.”

“I think one would be better.”

“Need two,” he said. “Gotta find someplace. .” His tongue flicked out, skittering over his dry lips. “. . find someplace to get more.”

She gave him two with a glass of water and said, “Jimmy, they’re searching everywhere, and there was a helicopter, and, shit, Jimmy, they’re right next door. They’re gonna find us. We gotta go.”

He looked at her for a moment, and she thought he didn’t understand, then he said, simply, “Okay.”

She took all the food and some blankets and a water jug out to the old man’s truck, which was an old red Dodge. She put the passenger seat down as far as it would go, then helped Jimmy pull on a pair of the old man’s pants, and helped him out the door. The stairs down through the mudroom were the worst part, but once he was outside, he hopped along fairly well.

“You’re looking a lot better, honey,” Becky said.

“Hurt like a motherfucker, though,” Jimmy said. His face was so pale it was nearly green.

She had to help him into the truck, and when he was inside, asked, “Should I take anything else?”

He thought for a minute, then said, “Move the other truck into the barn and lock it up. Maybe, if they come up here, they’ll decide he ain’t home, and they won’t come looking for this truck.”

She nodded and ran to the Townes’ black truck and drove it to the barn, hopped out, pulled open the barn door, and drove the truck inside. She closed the door, and ran back to the old man’s truck.

“What do you think?” she asked. “Go for it? Head south? Hide?”

“Hide until tonight. Find a place, then we get the fuck out of here. You bring the money?”

“Yeah, I got all the money.”

She turned the truck around and they rattled back down the hill. Off to the northwest, she could see a helicopter circling over the countryside. Hoped it wouldn’t come after them. .

She drove away from the farmhouse with the silos, staying on the smallest roads and the narrowest tracks. Every time she hit a bump, Jimmy groaned, and she said, “Sorry,” and he said, “Keep going.”

They’d gone maybe three miles when, as they were crossing the crest of a hill, Becky saw the remnants of an old farm on the hillside, the house burned to its foundations, and the outbuildings caved in. The driveway was covered with grass.

But the thing was, the woodlot was still standing on the north side of the house. She said, “I think I found a place.”

Jimmy, who’d been slumping in the seat, pushed himself up and asked, “Where?”

“Go back through here, and hide in the back of the woods. Unless you go back and look, you’d never see us.”

“Only got to last a few hours,” Jimmy said. “Let’s do it. I can’t take much more of this fuckin’ road, until the pills kick in better.”

She turned into the driveway, threaded past the remnants of the ruined buildings, down an alleylike depression that led to the woodlot, and then found an even deeper hole in the woodlot itself. She drove carefully into it, and there, couldn’t see out. She worried about getting stuck, but what was done, was done. She killed the engine and said, “I think we’re okay.”