Christopher Buehlman - Those Across the River

She was a black woman of thirty-five or so with a shaggy, tangled mane of hair that was just going grey. She wore men’s dungarees and an old-fashioned ladies’ coat that had flapped up to show the bare skin of her back and her narrow waist. There appeared to be no fat on her, but abundant muscle.

Saul had hit her squarely in the head, and her mouth was open and the blood under her could fill a sink. The doctor leaned over her and covered her back with her coat. Everyone kept his weapon on her just in case she grabbed the doctor’s wrist.

She did not.

She was dead.

“WE CAIN’T LEAVE Arthur,” Charley Wade said.

“What about her?”

“The hell with her,” Old Man Gordeau said. “If they want her buried, they can do it. They got all the damn shovels.”

Buster said, “We ain’t got time for buryin. We got to hunt or run. I say hunt, but we gonna vote.”

“What do you mean, vote?” Lawton said, still holding his head, which was bleeding less, although his drunken slur and difficulty focusing suggested he had a concussion.

I said, “Lester, can you find them?”

“Not in the dark, not without dogs. But maybe with the light.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Saul said. “Hunt.”

Old Man Gordeau said, “Hunt.”

“Run,” the doctor said.

“Run,” Charley said.

“This isn’t even worth a vote. We’re beat,” Lawton said, quivering his lip like a child about to cry.

Buster said, “I’ll take that as ‘run.’ Three each. Two left. Mr. Nichols?”

I put my hands on my hips and looked down at my feet for a long moment before I spoke.

“As soon as this is over, I’m putting my wife in the car and driving out of here for good. This is your town. I thought maybe it could be mine, too, if I fought with you, if I planted my feet and stayed. But it’s not. I won’t run out on you tonight. I’ll do what you say. There’s eight of us. Seven should vote so we don’t split down the middle. I abstain.”

“No,” Lawton said. “No, no, no, no, no.”

“Who’s left?”

“Lester.”

Buster looked at him.

Everybody looked at him.

He was about to say “run,” but when his daddy shifted his weight from one foot to the other, Lester looked down and the word “hunt” came out of his mouth so quietly I wasn’t sure what he said.

“No. Do what y’all want. I’m leavin.”

Then Lawton Butler turned from where he stood near Buster and walked slowly away.

“Hey!” Buster shouted at his back, but Lawton kept walking.

He had only gotten a few steps when Buster trotted up behind him and spun him around, trying to be gentle, but the man’s balance was bad and he fell into Lester Gordeau’s leg. He crabbed up to his feet and looked wide-eyed at Buster.

That was when he made the mistake of pulling his pistol out of his trousers. He probably only meant to back Buster away with it, but Old Man Gordeau, who wasn’t five feet away, didn’t wait to find that out and shot him in the chest with his deer rifle, just left of the sternum. When his heart stopped, Lawton Butler shrugged his shoulders and made a sound like a man about to throw up, then raised his pistol, shot Gordeau once in the stomach, and fell down dead.

The old man sat down hard with a groan and said “Jesus” through clenched teeth as his sons clutched at him and everyone else, even the doctor, stood fish-mouthed at what had just happened. Gordeau kept saying “Jesus” until he passed out and that was when the spell broke and Dr. McElroy came over to him, felt his neck and lifted his shirt.

“He’s not dead, but the way he’s bleeding, he’ll die.”

“Ain’t there no chance?” Lester said.

“Maybe in a hospital. Not out here.”

“I just changed my vote,” Lester said. “Let’s get out of here. Please.”

THERE WAS NO good way to carry Old Man Gordeau.

In the end, the Gordeau boys used the hand-axe Charley Wade had brought and cut down saplings to make the frame for a crude litter. Saul stripped the jacket from Arthur Noble and the pants from Lawton Butler with little hesitation (even when Lawton’s eyes opened and the dead man belched, causing Lester to jump back as if from a rattlesnake), and the brothers stretched these between the poles.

Charley Wade asked about the propriety of abandoning their friends, but nobody wanted to haul them, not even Charley, so they stayed. Handkerchiefs over their faces were the only funeral rites the two of them got; Dr. McElroy, covering Arthur, said “Poor Sadie” in lieu of a prayer.

Buster took Arthur’s gun, saw that it was empty, and tossed it into the trees. Lester, whose rifle was almost dry, took his daddy’s six bullets. Each man checked his remaining load. I looked in Lawton Butler’s pistol and found it empty. The bullet in Gordeau’s belly had been his last.

We looked where Charley had slung his gun as he fell, but it was too dark and the brush was too thick. The gun was gone.

For the first hour, Gordeau came in and out of consciousness as his boys carried him along, groaning when his litter bearers encountered a root or shifted his weight clumsily. Dr. McElroy’s improvised dressings had soaked through and there was nothing clean for which to swap them out. The old man only spoke once; he looked at Lester tight-lipped and said, “Boy,” but then seemed too tired to say the rest.

He died some time soon after that.

When it was clear that he was gone, the boys set the litter down, as they had already done several times to rest their arms, and Lester started to cry. Saul looked away from him.

“Quit that,” he said. “Daddy wouldn’t cry over you.”

“I guess not,” Lester said.

But then Saul cried, too, less for his father than for himself; for what had happened to him, what would likely happen to him yet.

Nobody suggested they leave Gordeau behind, though all of them wanted to. I could see in Charley Wade’s eyes that it was all he could do not to sprint for the river.

The boys picked Gordeau up and moved along.

I was the one who recognized the trail.

I spotted a fallen log with two gnarled branches reaching up like someone asking to be lifted, an image I had noted in our last excursion. We found the path back to the river just on the other side of that. This cheered us, and, even though it was getting near midnight and the river was an hour away, Buster thought it might be smart to rest.

“Sit a minute, and smoke if you got it. We still got a ways to go.”

I accepted a cigarette from the doctor.

Lester and Saul, who had worn themselves out carrying their father, sat against the same large tree and napped, each holding his rifle in his lap, their heads nearly touching. Buster asked Dr. McElroy to look at his pocket watch and tell him when it had been fifteen minutes. He and I kept our eyes on the still, cold woods around us. Charley Wade melted against the fallen log with the outstretched limbs. The doctor sat next to him and smoked.

Nobody saw it happen.

“Time,” the doctor said.

Buster roused each man separately, quietly.

A moment after Saul awakened, he started and stood up fast.

“What is it?” Lester said.

“My rifle. Lord, my rifle.”

Saul was holding a branch with rotten bark.

He had been sleeping with that on his lap.

His gun was gone.

ONLY CHARLEY WADE saw where the first shot came from.

He was halfway through the words “Look out!” when the BANG of Saul’s stolen rifle bounced in the woods. Chips of bark flew near Lester as he scrambled to his feet.

“Gimme that!” Saul said, reaching for Lester’s rifle, which he held out to his brother, but Saul’s fingers had just brushed the stock when the next shot from the woods rang out and Saul fell down, grabbing his jaw. Screaming womanishly. I had heard this noise before.