Robert Bennett - The Company Man

“Fucking Newty pansies,” gasped the man. “Fucking little bastard.” He ripped the knife from his arm, groaning, and slender trickles of crimson began weaving out of his cuff and down his wrist and around his knuckles. “You’re all pansies,” he said, and threw the knife away. “All of you. Fucking lavenders is what you are.” When he turned to get his wrench he saw Samantha crawling away.

“No you don’t,” said the man. “No. No you don’t.” He stepped forward and gripped her by the ankle and dragged her to him. Her skirt slid up as she moved, revealing her legs and waist. The big man laughed and reached out to her and she screamed. He slapped her once, then again. His enormous hands grasped the sides of her head and pulled her close, his gin-breath filling her nose and mouth and filthy fingers smearing her cheeks.

“Ain’t you the cutest thing,” he said.

She tried to turn away, tried to resist the surge of vomit rumbling in her throat.

“Ain’t you just the cutest thing,” he said again.

“Stop,” said a voice.

The big guard dropped her and looked down the alley. There was a man standing there, gun held in both hands with its barrel expertly trained on their attacker. The man was streaked in mud from head to toe and his clothes were ragged and his eyes wild and furious. He was breathing hard and every movement he made screamed of murder.

“Get down on the ground,” said the man.

“Donald?” said Samantha breathlessly.

“Get down,” said Garvey again. “Get down on the fucking ground.”

“Little bastard,” said the big guard, taking a step toward Garvey. “You’re all little bastards. Not real men. Not at all.”

“Stop right where you are, goddamn you,” Garvey said.

“Little man,” he said, and reached for the wrench.

The gun went off. The flash was quick and muted but the crack was deafening in the tight alley. The man’s leg opened up and turned to shreds and he howled and tumbled to the ground, grasping his inside thigh. Garvey stood over him, eyes wide, watching the stream of smoke gently unraveling from the gun barrel. Blood pumping erratically through the guard’s knuckles. His eyes moved to Hayes, who lay moaning on the ground. After a second he walked to Samantha and knelt before her.

“Are you all right?” Garvey asked. He spoke faintly, as if he was not sure where he was.

“How did you…”

“I followed you. When I went to pick you up. I saw you leave.” He looked away as though he had forgotten something, and then turned back to her and said, “I lost my hat.”

“What?”

“My hat. I lost it. In the tunnels.”

“Donald, are you hurt?”

“What? No.” He thought again. “I shot a man, Sam,” he said, almost as though he were remembering something from long ago. “I shot him.”

“I know.”

Garvey looked at the man lying on the ground. “It’s a wound,” he said. “It’s only a wound.” Then he moved over to the man and took off his own shirt and wrapped it around the man’s thigh and cinched it tight. The man screamed in agony and Hayes moaned again and sat up.

“What going on?” he mumbled.

“Stay down, Hayes, you’ve been hurt,” said Garvey.

Hayes blinked through the ribbon of blood running down his right cheek and said, “Jesus fucking Christ, Garvey, did you shoot him?”

“Shut up.”

“Fucking looks like it to me.”

“Shut up.”

Samantha walked to the wounded man, legs trembling. She looked at the wound and felt her breath catch. “Oh, no,” she said, kneeling.

“Oh no what?” asked Garvey.

She knelt and began pulling back his makeshift bandages. They were already soaked a deep, dark red, so dark you could not tell what their original colors had been.

“What are you doing?” Garvey asked.

“No, Donald, no…” she whispered. “You… you hit an artery. There in his leg.” She shut her eyes grimly and began rewrapping his bandage.

“So? So what? Tie it tight and we can-”

“Donald, it’s… it’s very unlikely he’s going to survive this,” she said quietly.

Garvey stared at her, then down at the wound. “What? No.”

“Yes. He’s probably going to bleed out. Unless we get a doctor right now. And even if we do, it’s very doubtful.”

“God,” said Garvey. He began wrapping more makeshift bandages around the man’s leg. “We can just put on more, can’t we?”

“We’d need to sew the artery shut, Donald,” Samantha said, eerily calm. “And I don’t think that anyone will be able to do that in time. In fact, I’ve never seen it done in time.”

“He’s fine,” said Garvey. “It’s just a wound, for God’s sake. I just shot him in the fucking leg.”

Hayes pulled himself up, spat blood to the side, and looked at the wounded man. “She’s right, Garvey,” he said. “That man’s dead, he just doesn’t know it yet.”

The unioner moaned and tried to swipe at Hayes. He missed and his fingers dragged along the ground. Hayes ignored it and reached forward and grasped Garvey’s hand.

“Garvey,” he said. “You killed him.”

“Shut up.”

“You did, Garv.”

“Shut up.”

“You’ve killed him. You killed a unioner, Garvey.”

Garvey leaned into the wound a moment longer, then slowly relaxed. He looked at Hayes as though the words had struck him dumb.

“What?” he said softly.

“You killed a unioner,” Hayes said. “You need to run, Garvey. Get up and run. You can’t be found like this. You don’t know what they’ll do to you.”

“What?” he said again.

“You need to run, Garvey.”

“Donald,” said Samantha. “Please, Donald, come on, come and leave him.”

“Listen to her, Garvey,” Hayes said. “There’s no saving him. We have to go.”

Garvey sat back and looked at the man. The guard’s breath was shallow and ragged now. Then Garvey’s face tightened and his eyes went dead and he said, “Get me something else. Some other bandage.”

“Jesus, Garvey, we’ve got to move.” Hayes struggled to his feet and grabbed hold of Samantha’s arm.

“Get me something or get away.”

“Donald, if they catch you here with him that’ll be the end of it,” Samantha said. “The end of everything.”

Garvey looked at her. “I shot a man, Sam,” he said. “I’ll… I’ll call for help and try and get him to a hospital.” Then he shook his head. “Go. Get out of here. I won’t have you caught with me.”

“Donald, please.”

Garvey bound the man’s wound tighter. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I know you didn’t, but-”

“I didn’t do anything wrong. And that’s all that matters. I have to stay, Sam. I shot a man. I shot him. Someone has to do something.”

“Donald, please, come with us. We can leave. We can just… we can leave all this behind us.”

“No,” he said softly. “Don’t you understand? No. I can’t.” He looked at her a moment longer and then turned back to the body lying on the cement.

Samantha felt herself moving toward the mouth of the alley. She looked back and saw Garvey on his knees, streaked in filth and blood and still tending to the man’s leg. The man was ashen and pale now. Lips sluggish and white. His final moments watched over by the filthy, doomed creature beside him, who did not know him and never would, tending to the man’s injury as though there were no one else in the world but the two of them. Then Hayes pulled her forward and they were gone.

Garvey used anything he could to bandage the wound. His shirt and strips from his pants and a nearby newspaper, all wadded up. Still the blood seeped through. The man’s crotch was a mass of dark red and Garvey’s arms were smeared and crackling up to the elbows. Occasionally he would stop and listen to the man’s chest, as his pulse was now too weak to feel. Each time he’d hear the organs within slacken and fade a little more. Once when he lifted his head away he saw he had left a pattern upon the man’s shirt in mud and gore and sweat. His own molten face impressed there, mute and panicked. Then he turned and shouted for help once more.