“My…leg…”
“You hear me, Boyd?”
“Jesus, Karl, I broke my fucking leg,” Boyd insisted, but in a low hiss, not a howl.
“No shit. Ain’t you the genius?”
“My fucking leg!”
Ruger pressed the barrel against Boyd’s forehead. “Shhhh. You’re getting loud again. Shhh, shhh now.”
“You gotta help me, Karl,” Boyd began, and then his eyes grew suddenly very wide. “Wait…Karl…don’t…!”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t do me, man. Don’t, okay? Don’t do me, please, man.”
Ruger actually managed to look hurt as he withdrew the gun. “Jeez, Boyd, what kind of guy do you think I am?” He released Boyd’s hair and even smoothed it with a caressing hand.
“Don’t do me, man….”
Ruger smiled. After a few seconds, he eased the hammer off cock and put his gun away. “Stop shitting your pants, you asshole. I’m not going to do anything to you unless you get loud again. I don’t go around killing everyone I meet, you know. I do have some scruples.”
Boyd didn’t dare make an answer to that. His terror of Ruger was even greater than the searing agony in his leg. With a sigh, Ruger stood and shrugged out of his pack, set it to one side, and then stood there, looking first at Boyd and then around at the rows of corn. A few yards away was the corner of a fence, and nailed to it was a tall wooden support for a scarecrow. The tattered guardian of the corn hung like a hobo Christ, arms outstretched and body slumped. The body was dressed in a cast-off old brown suit, frayed work gloves, and an old blue mechanic’s shirt. Instead of a burlap bag for a head, this scarecrow had been topped with a grinning jack-o’-lantern in an early nod to the coming Halloween season. Beyond the figure, the fence trailed away into shadows. Ruger pursed his lips in thought; then he turned back to Boyd.
“I think we’re near a farmhouse. See that fence? That looks like some kind of dividing line, maybe between this farm and the next. I’m going to follow it and see what I can see.”
“Jesus! You can’t just leave me here!” He hissed the words, his face screwed up with the unrelenting pain. Beads of sweat burst from every pore on his face.
“I sure as hell can’t carry you. You’re too goddamn big. Even if I could, I couldn’t lug you and both backpacks. No, m’man, I’ll get you set up here and then go get some kind of help.”
Boyd was almost weeping. “You’re going to run out on me, man. You’re gonna do me and take my share and bug the fuck out.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re gonna do me and just split—”
Ruger’s hand lashed out with appalling speed and slapped Boyd’s face hard to the left and then backhanded it to center position. He thrust a warning finger under Boyd’s nose, jabbing the air as he spoke. “Shut your fucking mouth, man. Shut it right now, or so help me God…” Ruger’s whispery voice trailed off, no reason to continue. Boyd shut up, but pain and fear crawled all over his face, twisting his lips and eyes and brows, wrinkling his features into a darkly comical mask. Ruger squatted down next to him, hooked a finger under his chin, and raised his face so that they were nose to nose, only inches apart. “Now you listen to me, Boyd. I said that I wasn’t going to hurt you, and I’m not going to. I got no reason to lie to you. If I wanted you dead, I’d cap you now and say-la-vee, but as it happens, I need your sorry ass. I can’t carry all that stuff myself, and even if I could, you have better connections for getting us out of the country than I do. I need you, Boyd, and that means you stay alive. You don’t have to believe me. In fact, I don’t give a rat’s ass either way, but there it is. I ain’t doing this out of brotherly love, so don’t think I’ve gone all soft on you. Keeping you alive will help keep me alive and out of the slam. Simple as that. No sentiment, no after-school special heartwarming stories, you dig? I need you, and you need me. Case closed. Now, I’m going to lug you over to the fence, right by that scarecrow. That way I’ll be able to find you again. I’ll set your leg best I can and you can snort all the girl you want to take the edge off the pain, and then I’m going on alone for a little while…but I will be back.” He jerked Boyd’s head on the point of his finger. “Do you have all that? Are we clear?”
Boyd searched Ruger’s eyes for the lie, for the cruel joke, but he found nothing more than the unemotional determination of a predator looking out for its own hide. He believed him. “Okay…okay, man.”
Ruger smiled that slithery smile of his.
“That’s my man. That’s my main man!” He winked and then reached for the buckle of Boyd’s pack. “Let’s lighten the load a little first.” That done, he stood and moved around behind Boyd, crouched, and caught him under the armpits. Before he lifted, he leaned so close that his lips brushed Boyd’s ear as he spoke. “I’m going to lift you out of that hole. If you dare scream, man, I’ll rip your throat out. Do you think I’m joking?”
“N…no…” Boyd whispered.
“Good. It’s gonna hurt like a motherfucker. Just take it, man. Just take it and screw that pain like you’d screw a little tight-snatch bitch. You hear me? Just screw the hell out of it.”
“Okay….”
“Okay. Here we go, buddy-boy.”
He hoisted Boyd up out of the hole.
Boyd didn’t scream. He almost did…Christ knows he wanted to, but instead he bit into his lip so hard that blood burst from it and ran hot and salty down his chin. The world took a sick and dizzying stagger and there was a dull roaring in Boyd’s ears as if he were standing too near to a raging waterfall. Nausea punched him in the pit of the stomach and slapped tears from his eyes. Ruger wasn’t gentle about it. He lifted the big, heavy Boyd as best he could, arms wrapped like iron bands around his thick chest, and dragged him to the fence. He squatted and lowered Boyd to the ground and more or less shoved him up against the rough wooden slats of the fence. He even tried to position him so that he had a modicum of comfort. The whole process, as Boyd saw it, took about a thousand years.
“Jesus Christ, man, how much do you friggin’ weigh?” Ruger said, sucking in great gulps of air. He walked around in a small circle, arching his back and stretching his arms over his head. Finally he walked away and returned lugging both backpacks. He crossed his ankles and lowered himself slowly to the ground, sitting Indian fashion in front of Boyd.
“G…gimme a cigarette,” Boyd wheezed, licking the blood from his lips. “Christ, I need a cigarette.”
Ruger slapped his pockets until he found his pack of Pall Malls, kissed one out of the pack, lighted it, and handed it to Boyd, who sucked it greedily. Boyd’s face was the color of sour milk and it glistened with greasy sweat.
“Ruger, my leg…”
“Yeah, yeah, your leg. Wait a minute. Here, toot some of this. Better than Novocain.” He held up one of the bulky Ziploc bags and a rolled-up ten-dollar bill. Boyd took the tube and bent toward the proffered coke; his inhalation was long and deep. “Ride ’em, cowboy!” said Ruger in real appreciation as Boyd took a second snort, and then a third.
“Oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man…” Boyd sighed, closing his eyes and leaning back against the fence.
Ruger beamed at him like a country doctor watching a kid swallow a spoonful of tonic and honey. “The breakfast of champions, m’man.”
“Oh man, that feels so much better.”
“Think so? Good, ’cause now I gotta set your leg.”
Boyd half shrugged. “With enough of this shit, you could cut the fucker right off.”
Grinning, Ruger fished in his pocket for a knife, found it, and flicked it open, a bone-handled Buck with a three-inch locking blade that was always sharp and well oiled. The keen edge sliced almost arrogantly through the tough black fabric of Boyd’s double-knits, gliding silently from cuff to midthigh. Ruger cut the pant-leg off and then tore the cloth into long strips, which he then set aside. Using his lighter he inspected the break. Both shinbones had broken a few inches below the knee, and they had broken in an ugly way. There were small mounds where the ends of the broken bones tented the skin, and the whole area was livid and swollen.