C Box - Below Zero

They ran across the lawn toward the trees. Behind them, in the house, she heard several more pops from Leo’s gun, followed by a series of heavy booms. As they ran, Stenko pulled ahead and a few untethered bills fluttered out of the box he was carrying and settled into the grass behind him. Fifty yards ahead, Robert was running as well, his arms flapping wildly. He never looked back.

It didn’t occur to her at the time that the reason Stenko was outrunning her was because something was wrong with her. She’d been hurt. She stopped and looked down, saw the bright red blood coursing down her right leg into her shoe, and when she saw the wound pulsing blood, she suddenly felt the pain and pitched forward into the grass.

She couldn’t remember him carrying her through the trees all the way to the car, or Robert screaming at him because he didn’t get the account numbers.

THEY’D DRIVEN A FEW MILES like maniacs, Stenko yelling for Robert to pull over. When he finally did, Stenko said to Robert, “Take off your shirt.”

“No! It’s my favorite-”

Stenko bellowed, “TAKE OFF YOUR GODDAMNED SHIRT!” and Robert did, as fast as he could, and he watched in horror as Stenko cut it into strips.

Her head was slumped back against the seat, and she wasn’t sure she could raise it. Her blood had soaked into the back seat fabric until the fabric was black. The sharp hot pain of the gunshot had faded some into a place that was empty, numb, and cold. It didn’t make sense she was cold.

Stenko winced as if it hurt him to move her, to swing her legs toward him so he could work on the wound. He used the strips of Robert’s shirt to tightly bind the wound. Robert watched from the front seat, making a face.

Stenko said to her, “There, I think I’ve got the bleeding stopped.” He looked into her eyes and cupped his warm hand on the side of her face. “You’ll make it now, I think. The bullet hit an artery but no bones or organs. As long as we stop the bleeding you should be okay. But we’ve got to get you to a hospital. You aren’t hit anywhere else, are you?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“The way Robert was blasting away, I’m surprised we all aren’t dead.”

Robert said, “It wasn’t me who hit her. I never even saw her.”

Stenko said, “Shut the hell up, Robert. Of course it was you. Bullets were flying everywhere. Did you ever think about maybe, you know, aiming?”

“Hey, I’m not the gangster in the family.” Then, “Well, it wasn’t on purpose.” Petulant.

Stenko ignored his son and looked up at her, tears in his eyes. Said, “I’m so sorry, April. I’m so sorry you’re hurt. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. I never saw it coming. I’d never seen Leo with a gun in his life. Leo is scared of guns, just like Robert used to be.”

“YOU KNOW THEY’LL BE AFTER US,” Stenko said to Robert after climbing back into the front seat and slamming the door shut. “They’ll want their share of the money. And who knows how they’ll be if their brother’s dead? He was a loose cannon, but he was their brother. They’ll want revenge.”

Robert hit the gas and the car fishtailed gravel and a plume of dust. “I know,” he said. “That’s why I didn’t want to stop.”

“We had to. She was gonna bleed out.”

A long pause. She pretended to sleep.

“What are we going to do with her, Dad?”

“We’re gonna get her some help.”

“How? For Christ’s sake, look around you. There’s nothing but trees and rocks for miles. And don’t you think they’ll be looking for us at all the local hospitals, or clinics, or whatever?”

“April needs a real doctor,” Stenko said. “There might be infection in that leg-or hemorrhaging.”

“We can’t run the risk-”

“The hell we can’t.”

“Dad-”

“Shut up, Robert. I’d do the same for you.”

“Look,” Robert said, lowering his voice, “we could drop her off at a ranch or something. With some nice old couple. They’d call an ambulance and get her into the emergency ward.”

“I’m not leaving her like that,” Stenko said. “She’d been left places all her life. I told her I’d take care of her.”

“This is insane!” Robert yelled. “You’re insane! What is she to you? This is your son talking. Your real son!”

“I’m not leaving her.”

SHE STARED at her bandaged leg as they screamed down the old highway. He was right: the bleeding seemed to have stopped. Maybe, she thought, because she didn’t have any more blood to lose. She was cold.

Robert yelling, “Why did he threaten me at the window like that? It was like he was begging me to shoot him. And Jesus, I was pulling the trigger before I knew what was happening. I mean, it wasn’t my plan. I didn’t have a plan…”

Stenko saying, “He’s crazy, that Natty. Like you, he doesn’t think things through. He just reacts. When he saw you outside the window, he probably thought we were trying to ambush them.”

“Like we’d do that, ” Robert scoffed.

“Hard to tell you aren’t when you just start shooting everything up.”

“I was protecting you!”

“You were protecting yourself. You didn’t even know where I was. The problem with you, Robert, is you don’t hold yourself accountable for anything you do. It’s always someone else’s fault.”

Robert screamed, “You made me what I am. You made me what I am, Dad.”

“Calm down.”

ROBERT HAD BOTH of his hands on the steering wheel, squeezing it so tightly that his knuckles were white. She noticed that every time he shouted, he jerked the car one way or other.

“I wish I had more time with Leo,” Stenko said, uncrumpling the napkin and looking at the series of numbers. The black ink had soaked into the paper and obscured the accounts. “I don’t know where all these accounts are located or what Leo might have done to make sure only he could get to them. We still need Leo’s help if we’re going to get all the money for your cause.”

“I think he might have been hit, too,” Robert said.

Stenko groaned.

Said Robert, “How much cash did you get?”

“I don’t know. A few hundred thousand, maybe more. I didn’t take time to count it, Robert.” Stenko sounded weary, beaten.

“Count it now.”

“Robert…”

“Count it now!”

“Don’t grab at it, for Christ’s sake. Just concentrate on your driving. Robert!”

And she felt the car careen off the pavement and into a ditch, heard the furious scratches of brush from the undercarriage, saw the rolls of yellow dust blossom in clouds from both sides of the car. She closed her eyes as the car turned and hit something big and solid, felt the vehicle leave the ground, hit on its side in an explosion of dirt and shattered glass, begin to roll…

Bear Lodge Mountains

JOE SAW THE HELICOPTER WINK IN THE SUNLIGHT ON THE right side of Devils Tower as it bore down on the ranch in the foothills of the Bear Lodge Mountains. The mountains themselves had an entirely different look than Joe’s Bighorns or the Sierra Madres he’d been in recently. Rather than vertical and severe with dirty glaciers sleeping the summer away in fissures, the Bear Lodges looked sedentary and relaxed, sleeping old dogs covered with a carpet of blue/black pine. The aircraft was miles away, a flyspeck on a massive blue screen, still far enough that the sound of rotors couldn’t be heard. He knew Coon and Portenson were inside because he’d heard the chatter on the radio. Apparently, the preliminary investigation into the shooting had gone well enough to release them to the ranch call. Crook County sheriff’s deputies were also en route. Joe guessed that all of them would converge at once on the location of the distress call.