Craig Davidson - Cataract City

Warmth prickled my skin, bringing the pain roaring back down my arm. It was sharper now, an edge of glass raked across raw bone.

“What’s the matter?”

“This arm … something must be in it.”

“If something’s in there, Owe, we ought to get it out.”

Gingerly, I unzipped my parka. The right side of my shirt was dark and heavy red. Duncan helped me peel it off. My right sleeve was stuck to my wrist with a gummy collar of blood. Duncan used the Leatherman to cut the sleeve near my shoulder. He slit it down my biceps and wrist, and the material fell off my arm like a shed snakeskin.

“It’s deep,” Duncan said, “but clean. Not wide … but yeah, deep .”

“See anything inside?”

“Just a sec … uh.”

“What?”

“Just a glint. I can get it.”

“How?”

Duncan unfolded the Leatherman, brought the prongs of the needlenose pliers together: snick-snick . “Meatball medicine.” He cut a length of canvas rigging off the skidoo and tied it around my arm. With the tourniquet in place he held the pliers over the flame.

“Not too long,” I said. “I don’t want to be cauterized.”

Duncan plunged the pliers into the snow. The hot metal hissed. “Just sterilizing them, man.” He angled the wound into the firelight, debating. “How about I get hold of it and just, uh, wiggle a little?”

“Sounds magical.”

He worked the tip of the pliers into the slit. My arm jerked involuntarily, but Duncan gripped my wrist to keep me steady, nosing the pliers deeper. The coagulated blood at the edges of the cut gave way; fresh blood dripped into the snow. Then the pliers brushed against something hard, too shallow to be bone.

Dunk closed the pliers’ jaws around whatever it was and squeezed them together — then came a sharp click as the pliers slipped off a metallic edge and snapped shut.

“Fffffffffffffffffff—!”

“Sorry,” Dunk said. “Got to get a good grip.” He handed me a thumb-width piece of kindling. “Bite.”

I jammed the stick between my teeth and bit down so hard that my jaw trembled. Duncan wiped away the blood and probed again. The pliers gritted against whatever was embedded in my flesh, a metal-on-metal rasp. The pain was monstrous. My entire skeletal system lit up like a Christmas tree. The stick went snap between my jaws. I spat out the splinters and said, “Just go. Just keep … keep oh oh god keep going.”

Steadying his free hand on my wrist, Dunk pulled carefully. “Got it.”

He held it up to the firelight: a shard of metal in the shape of a diamond — one of the interlocking diamonds that made up a skidoo tread. He dropped it into the fire. The stink of fried blood rose off the coals.

The bleeding slowed to a trickle. Duncan found the med kit, slathered some gauze with Polysporin and told me to poke it as far into the wound as I could bear. He stuck a Band-Aid over the gauze, then wrapped surgical tape around my elbow to keep everything in place.

“Good enough?”

I said, “Yeah, good. Thanks.”

He settled back against the skidoo. His exhales were syrupy and bubbly, as if he was forcing each breath through an inch of pancake batter. I hoped it was just the busted nose, which would make breathing hard. He’d probably swallowed a lot of blood, too. I stared skywards, flakes of snow scrolling above the flames.

I drifted into a half sleep, snapping awake to spot mouselike shapes racing round the edge of the fire’s light, too fast to track. A thicker dark fell around us, airless and isolating. We fed the flames and pulled our collars tight and got used to the phantom movements beyond the fire. I told myself they were nothing but the play of starlight on wind-sculpted snow.

Before dawn those movements coalesced into permanence — a group of shapes all roughly the same size and moving with the same low-slung lope. Thirty yards from the fire, circling clockwise.

“Dunk … hey, Dunk.”

Duncan cracked one eye, followed my pointing finger. Sight wasn’t needed — you could smell them: like wet dogs, only more primal.

I said, “Coyotes.”

One of them let loose a high mocking gibber. This was answered by a series of excited yips.

I rooted a flare out of the satchel and tore the igniting strip. An umbrella of red light draped us both, flecks of molten phosphorus spitting in elegant arcs. We saw them clearly: a pack of coyotes ringing the fire, hackles raised, fur running down their spines on a band-saw edge.

I tossed the flare to scatter the pack. It sailed end over end to land on a patch of black ice behind them.

“Jesus,” Duncan said.

Three timberwolves stood illuminated in the fan of flare-light. Bone-white, almost indistinguishable from the snow. Only their black snouts gave them away. They stood in a casual threesome — the largest wolf standing, the other two hunched on either side. Their legs were shockingly long, strangely thin: a herbivore’s legs, almost, carrying their torsos high off the ground. The biggest wolf opened its mouth — its jaws enormous — and licked its chops.

The coyotes scattered, baying plaintively. I picked up the shotgun. Duncan laid Bruiser’s pistol across his lap. Was there enough wood to last through to daylight? The flare guttered, guttered. The wolves stayed in place, watching.

Dawn took forever to come.

A light snow had fallen overnight. The temperature rose slightly as the sun crawled above the horizon. It remained sub-zero, though, and neither of us was properly outfitted. I wore uninsulated police-issue brogans, the leather cracked along the soles. Amazingly, my knee didn’t hurt that much. Sure, I could feel the pins and screws — fine needles like icy worms knitted with the flesh and bone — but the physical sensation wasn’t that painful. It felt good , almost: a dull throb that drew attention away from sharper pain in other parts of my body.

I’d chosen wool pants — a stroke of luck — but my shirt was now missing its sleeve and there was a rip in my parka where the metal diamond had pierced. Duncan had on warm boots, jeans with a rip in the knee, a heavy sweater and coat. He’d also found a flimsy pair of Magic Gloves in his coat pocket — I pictured his mom stuffing them in there, one of those protective things mothers do.

We set off at daybreak. Blood from Duncan’s broken nose was crusted like rust in the seams of his face. I’d patched my parka with a strip of tape from the medical kit. Duncan hacked the upholstery off the skidoo’s seat with the Leatherman, rolled up the padded material and stuffed it into the satchel.

Drinkwater’s bootprints were faint traces in the snow.

“Follow them?” said Duncan.

“What makes you think he knows where he’s going?”

Duncan shrugged.

“Maybe he’s got a phone.” I said. “He could call someone. A bunch of guys. What if he’s looking for us?”

“Doubt it.”

I held my arms out. “What better place? We’re miles from anywhere. Put us down, one shot in the back of the head. Boom. Easy. The coyotes will eat most of us, the birds will take what’s left. By spring thaw there’ll be nothing to know us by.”

“So what’s your idea?”

I puffed breath into my cupped palms. “Follow his tracks, not him. We’re not after Drinkwater anymore, okay? Let’s just get out of this.”

Before setting off I cut four sheets out of the silver Mylar emergency blanket. I flipped a hot ember out of the fire into each sheet and crimped them into balls, placing two in my coat pockets and giving two to Duncan.

We followed Drinkwater’s bootprints, our hands sunk into our warm pockets, walking directly into the sun as it bathed the snow in a reddish glare. I took the lead, feet sinking deeper into where Drinkwater’s had been. Duncan followed, breathing heavily.