Percival Everett - Wounded

“It’s better if you wait around here in case someone calls,” I said. I looked at Morgan as she finished the bandage. I imagined her sitting around the house all day with the two of them, awkward silences and hard words, fear and nervousness.

Gus looked at me and said, “I’m going to bed. You go to bed, too. You can’t be good at searching if you can’t see.”

I nodded.

Gus left the room.

“Gus is right. I am going to bed,” I said to Sylvia and Howard.

“I’ve put Sylvia in the back room and Howard in the study,” Morgan said. She gave me a nod of support.

“Make yourselves at home,” I told them.

“I’ll be right up,” Morgan said.

That night Morgan and I lay in bed and we could hear the arguing whispers of Sylvia and Howard. I wondered what that car ride from Denver had been like for them. I knew how scared and upset I was, but I could not imagine their fear and confusion. Morgan stroked my forehead.

I didn’t believe I could sleep, but I did. I awoke before sunrise and found Morgan still awake, still touching my brow.

“Didn’t you sleep?” I asked.

“No. I wanted to be sure you slept.”

“I’m scared,” I said.

“I know, sweetie.”

But she couldn’t know all that I was scared of. I was afraid of what I might have to do. I sat up and looked out the window.

“I’ll make some coffee.”

“Thanks.”

We dressed and walked down the stairs to find Gus in the kitchen with Sylvia. Coffee was already made and waiting.

“Did you get any rest?” Morgan asked Sylvia.

Sylvia shook her head. “I didn’t try.”

I looked at Sylvia’s face. I had always liked her and really could never see her married to Howard. “I’m going to find him,” I said. “I promise.” The promise felt fat and thick in my throat and I knew I shouldn’t have said it, but I was more promising myself than her. I was convincing myself that I would find David, but I still blamed myself for his being missing.

As we rolled away from the house in the truck, light just finding the sky, Gus commented on how bad he felt for Sylvia and Howard. Then he apologized for the coyote biting Howard.

“I probably have been a little lax on the training.”

I waved him off. “Emily’s fine,” I said. “She did what she’s programmed to do when she’s scared. Howard was scared, so she got scared.”

In town, the deputy Hanks was just getting out of his rig as we drove by the station house. I rolled down my window and called to him.

“Any news?” I asked.

He looked cold, maybe nervous. “Bucky was planning to call you this morning,” he said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“McCormack is cutting off the search,” he said, flatly, then looked as if he shouldn’t have spoken.

“Why is that?” I felt hollow.

“I guess he doesn’t think we can find him. Mr. Hunt, we covered damn near the whole desert. We didn’t even find a track.”

I didn’t say anything. Gus was looking away out his window.

“What’s the sheriff say?” I asked. “I mean, does he agree with McCormack?”

“I guess. Listen, he’ll tell you himself. He told McCormack about that guy getting lost in the woods and McCormack listened. Just talk to Bucky.”

I nodded and watched the lanky deputy walk away.

“Mouse Canyon?” Gus asked.

“Mouse Canyon.”

Mouse Canyon was on the northern edge of the reservation. A narrow, rugged canyon, it was dry enough that no one cared to go there. Part of it had burned ten years ago and no one had gone to put out the fire. The new growth was thick and low. There was a small creek that managed to flow year round, but supported few fish, probably because of ranching, but no one remembered there ever being fish there. The road was deeply rutted, but not terrible, perhaps because of the lack of traffic and perhaps because the county didn’t attempt to maintain it. I had seen the line shack that Elvis described long ago and knew that it was well up near the end of the road. I wondered how anyone could get a BMW up there. A quarter-mile up the road that question was answered.

“Why are you stopping?” Gus asked.

I pointed.

“What?”

Look harder. I got out of the truck and Gus followed me. The BMW was dressed in a green car tarp and covered with branches, fairly well hidden. I looked at the road. “Look here. Dually tracks.”

“It would seem they’re at home,” Gus said.

We climbed back into the truck.

“Are you sure you’re up to this?” I asked the old man. In fact, I believed he was more up to it than I was.

“Just drive.”

I recalled that the cabin was well up the canyon, so I stopped about a mile in. I turned to Gus and said, “I want you to stay here.”

“Why?”

“If I’m not back in an hour, go get the sheriff.”

I climbed out of the truck and reached in for my rifle. I studied Gus’s face and waited for his argument, but none came. “You okay?”

He nodded.

“Let me have that roll of duct tape from the jockey box.”

He handed me the tape.

“Thanks.”

“An hour,” he said.

“Then you go for help.”

I walked away up the road and didn’t glance back at him. The sky was cloudless and blue. I unzipped my jacket, then felt for shells in my pocket. My heart was racing, but all this seemed correct. Sometimes things were just simple, I thought. The people you expected to do the bad thing did the bad thing. I believed the rednecks had done something to David and I was going to find out. Maybe I should have called the sheriff, but I didn’t know whom I could trust.

Not quite a mile from my truck I heard the thumping of a motor, a generator. I approached through the brush and saw the cabin. It didn’t look as run down as I’d remembered. A black dually pickup was parked in front next to a defunct propane tank. Smoke came from the metal pipe chimney and was carried away from me with the wind. Then I became concerned that being upwind they could smell me. I realized I was thinking too much. I ducked down as I spotted the flash of a head in the window. I asked myself what I was doing there. The scene felt surreal. It wasn’t so much that I was scared, but I didn’t feel like I was standing on anything. I moved to the rear of the house and listened, but all I could hear was the generator. I kept low and made my way around the side to the front corner. I stood erect and was startled by a man. It was the larger of the two men with whom I had fought. He was holding a toothbrush in his hand. He started to back away.

“I wouldn’t run,” I said, leveling the barrel of my rifle at him. “I just wouldn’t run.”

“What—”

“I wouldn’t talk either,” I said. I shook my head. “No sounds. Throw down the toothbrush.” He did. “Now turn around and remember that there’s a rifle aimed at your back.”

I followed him into the cabin.

“That was quick,” a man said to him. “What’s wrong with you?”

I stepped inside.

“What the fuck?” This was another man I had never seen. The shirtless man moved toward a counter near him and I fired a round through the metal roof. He stopped, stood straight. He had red hair and a red beard and a left sleeve of tattoos. His right arm was bare.

“Sit around the table,” I said. “All of you. Now.”

“Nigger, you done fucked up now,” the wiry man whom I had punched said. “You done fucked up bad.”

They sat in the wooden chairs and I walked around the room. On the far wall was large Nazi flag. There was a pistol on the counter, a.357. I flipped open the chamber and let the shells fall onto the floor, then I tossed the gun through the window, breaking the glass. I took the roll of tape from my pocket. I nudged the back of the smallest man’s head with the tip of the barrel. “Okay, weasel, tape up your friends. Start with the redhead.”