F Wilson: Deep as the Marrow

John nodded. “Is she all right?”

“She was this morning. Let’s go.”

John got directly behind the Mulliners as they miraculously found a path through the surrounding brush. He felt someone grab his arm.

“Better let us go first. Doc,” said Canney’s voice directly behind him.

John didn’t look back. He shook off his hand and kept going. Katie… he was almost to her and dammit he was going to be first to her.

Uphill, and then into a larger clearing where lightning strobes revealed a rambling, ramshackle house that looked as if it had been designed by a schizophrenic. The bigger Mulliner—by now John had gathered that his name was Luke—picked up his pace and headed directly for a rectangle of light pouring from an open doorway.

Inside, Luke darted to his left and cried, “Lester!”

John ducked in behind him and froze in shock at the sight of an old man with a scoliotic spine lying on the floor, gasping, his shirt covered with blood.

“Katie?” John said, barely able to get the word out as he whirled in a circle, searching the shadows of this filthy little room, praying to see her face looking back at him. “Where’s Katie?”

“Poppy took her,” Lester said. “And he went out after her.”

“Who?” Decker said.

“Guy with a patch over his eye.”

“Snake!” Decker said.

Canney nodded. “Got to be.”

“Shot me,” Lester was saying. “Then he went after Poppy! Go find her!”

“You need doctorin‘, Lester,” Luke said. “I’ll get someone to stay—”

“Git!” Lester said. “This looks a lot worse’n it is. You gotta help Poppy. That guy went outta here with murder in his one good eye. Gonna kill her sure!”

John didn’t wait to hear more. In a panic he dashed out into the storm and began shouting, “Katie! Katieeeee!” He heard someone come up behind him and give him a rough shove in his back. He turned as saw Canney glaring at him.

“Knock that off!” Rage flared. No one was going to tell him not to look for his daughter. John grabbed the front of Canney’s shirt, “She’s out here!” he shouted. “We’ve got to find her!”

“But we’re not the only ones looking for her,” Canney said, pushing John’s hands away. “If she answers you, Snake might be closer. Think about it.”

John realized Canney was right. “But what—?”

Just then, one of the Mulliners came out of the house carrying a shotgun. He started yelling.

“Poppy! It’s your Uncle Luke! Stay where you are. We’re coming to find you. Let us know when one of us gets near you. We’ll protect you.” He turned to Canney and began pointing to different spots in the bushy undergrowth that rimmed the rear of the clearing.

“Everybody fan out and move into the brush. Keep calling her name.” The two Mulliners moved off. John saw the three feds look at each other; then Decker shrugged.

“Unless someone can come up with a better idea,” he said, “I suggest we follow their lead.”

He turned to John. “Maybe you’d better stay here and—”

“Like hell,” John said. Without giving anyone a chance to stop him, he began moving off in one of the directions Luke had indicated.

The branches of the underbrush clawed at his clothes and his skin, raked at his eyes, but he kept pushing through, calling out, praying for a reply.

“Poppy, it’s me! Katie’s father! I’m here with your uncles.” Over and over. “Poppy, it’s me…” As he came to the base of a small rise, lightning flashed. He looked up and gasped. Someone was standing on its crest, someone huge, and he was holding something in his arms.

Something child sized… and limp.

Oh, God! he thought. Is this Snake? I should have a gun!

Then he heard a voice shouting to him: “Are you Katie’s daddy?” That wasn’t Snake’s voice.

“Yes… y-yes, I am.” The figure started crashing down the rise toward John.

God, he was big. “I think she’s hurt.”

“Oh, no!” John staggered forward, arms outstretched. Please, God, not now, not when she’s so close to going home! “Give her to me!” As the big man laid her gently in his arms, John crushed her to him.

Katie? And then he knew it was Katie oh yes it was Katie his Katie—Oh, Katie, it’s been so long!—and she was soaked and she was cold but he could feel her heart beating and he wanted to drop to his knees and bury his face against the dripping rat tails of her sodden hair and sob out his uncounted joy and relief at having her back again, but he had to get her out of here, get her inside where it was dry and he could see her in the light and—

“I found her in a gully,” the giant said. “I think she fell and hit her head.” Aw, no, not her head! Not again!

John turned and began carrying her toward the lights of the house.

“Where’s Poppy?” the giant asked from behind him.

“She’s hiding out here,” John said, still moving away. “A man with one eye is trying to hurt her. Her uncles and some other men are here to help her.”

“I’ll help her too,” the giant said. “I can find her. I’ll save her from the one-eyed man.”

John glanced back. As lightning flashed he saw the giant’s face and a diagnosis popped immediately into his mind: Fragile-X syndrome.

“You do that,” he told him. “And… thanks for finding Katie.” But the giant was already crashing away through the brush in the opposite direction.

“Hang on, Katie,” John said as he edged closer and closer to the house. “Daddy’s got you now and he’s never letting you go.” Finally he was clear of the brush. He broke into a run and carried Katie toward the light of an open doorway.

“So you found her,” Lester said as John ducked through the opening and dropped gasping to his knees.

John could only nod as he gently laid Katie on the dry floor and checked her head. He found a bloody, one-inch gash in her scalp—on the side opposite her old fracture, thank God—with a goose-egg hematoma swelling beneath it. Quickly he lifted her eyelids and watched her pupils constrict. Good! Her breathing was shallow but regular. She could have been asleep. Except for the blood. Had she fallen and hit her head? Or had she suffered a seizure out there? Either way she’d suffered a significant concussion. He needed to get her to a hospital.

He glanced over at Lester. The old man was propped against an inside wall holding a dirty cloth against his bloody left flank. He looked pale but alert.

“Are you all right?”

“About as well as a man can be with a hole in his side, I guess. But I don’t think the slug did much more’n puncture my love handle and one of my ass cheeks.” Lester winced and took a swig from a big ceramic jug. “Hurts like hell, but this eases the pain. You want some? Take the chill off.” John shook his head. He knew he should check out the old man too, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave Katie’s side. Not yet.

At a noise behind him he turned toward the door, hoping to see either Decker or Canney, or even one of the Mulliners. But it was someone else. John didn’t get a good look at him—didn’t give himself a chance. He saw the black eye patch and the next thing he knew he was charging across the room, arms outstretched, fingers curved into claws, an animal-like growl building in his throat. Six days of pent-up rage, fear, terror, frustration had finally found a target.

Snake!

He rammed his shoulder into the man’s midsection and knocked him down. Then he was on him, pummeling him with his fists, battering at his face, wanting to rip the skin off him, pound him into the dirt, and keep pounding at him until Snake was flattened, until he was little more than a thin smear of bloody jelly.

But his attack lasted only seconds, and his red fantasy was shattered by the deafening explosion of a pistol only inches away and a tearing, concussive blow to his right shoulder that spun him completely around and left him lying on his back, writhing with the pain from his shattered shoulder, and Snake standing over him, his one eye blazing, his teeth bared, his dark hair plastered over the sutured lacerations that crisscrossed his shaven scalp, and his pistol pointed between John’s eyes.