Then I looked at him. Nobody was going to be able to feel any pulse. He had a grooved head. Diagonal. From one temple across to the opposite eyebrow. A groove as wide as the fire extinguisher and maybe an inch deep. The eye bulged with a blank astonishment greater than any astonishment in the living world.
The faintness came over me and faded away slowly. I stood three stories tall and I would sway in the slightest breeze. Toy fellow made of broomstraws and flour paste. My left arm hung there, and I looked down and saw the blood dropping busily from my fingertips.
Things to do, McGee. Got to take care. Got to tidy ship. Grab the buckets and brooms, men. Clean sweep fore and aft. So start moving, because you don’t know how much time you have, and it might not be enough. I fingered Hazzard’s pockets and found the cuff key and managed to turn it with numb fingers and get my right wrist free. The metal had rubbed it raw.
I could not make myself hurry. I felt thoughtful. It was a kind of faraway game. Amusing and not very important. I might be able to do what might keep me from falling off the edge for good, and I might not. Interesting.
On my slow way to the head I ripped my shirt off. I turned my left side toward the mirror. The entrance hole was three inches below the top of the shoulder and on the outside of the upper arm, but deep enough so that I couldn’t tell if it had done bone damage. The slug had tumbled apparently, and torn one hell of a hole on the way out. I lifted my left arm with my right hand, braced the left palm against the wall and locked the elbow. I took my time putting the gauze pads on the wounds, winding it very neatly, tearing the surgical tape with my teeth.
“Nice,” I heard myself say in a voice that seemed to come from the next room. “Very neat.”
So I went floating blissfully to the galley. Shock. Loss of blood. Replace fluids. Use stimulants. There was a quart jar of orange juice in the icebox. I found an unopened fifth of Wild Turkey in the liquor locker. I put them on the booth table and eased into the seat and wondered what a good name would be. An Orange Turkey? A Wild Screwdriver? The white mist began moving in from the edges and I realized nobody was going to come along and serve me. I picked my left arm up by the wrist and put the arm on the table. It wiggled its fingers when I sent the message down the nerves. I drank a third of the quart of juice. I took four long swallows of the bourbon. Second third of the juice. Another deep drag on the liquor. Polish off the juice. Then enough bourbon to just begin to tickle the gag reflex.
Come on, white mist. Take another shot. Here is McGee.
But it had edged so far back I couldn’t see it anymore out of the corners of my eyes. I got up without thinking of my arm. It slid off the table and flapped me on the leg. And I thought about Janine, and she had a slug in her skull, and the bump, bump, bump would be over. I picked up my left arm and turned it and looked at my watch. How had it gotten to be three in the afternoon?
Go find out. You have to find out sometime. So go take a look at her.
The throat was still knocking away like a good little engine. I tugged at her and got her off Freddy and straightened her out on the bed. I did not want to move her too much. But I did not want to take the chance of her waking up all of a sudden and finding herself right there side by side with what had been Freddy.
I got an old tarp and put it on the floor beside the bed, on his side, reached beyond him and got hold of the bloody sheet and yanked it out from under her, and tugged on it until it rolled him off and he fell onto the tarp with a lanky thudding, face-down. I left the sheet on him and flipped the ends and side of the tarp over him. I turned on the bright reading light and fingered her crusted hair apart and found where the bullet had grooved her skull in an area an inch and a half long and the same distance above her left ear. There didn’t seem to be anything you could pull together or sew together. It had punched out a strip of scalp meat, hair and all, and had clotted over and stopped bleeding. I soaked gauze in antiseptic and patted the wound very delicately, then tied the pad in place with more gauze.
Then, in a moment of pure genius, I got a piece of sheeting and made a sling for myself, so my arm would stop swinging around and flapping at me. It was much better. I didn’t want her to wake up and look in that tarp. I found the fire extinguisher in the corner where it had rolled. I wiped it off and put it back in the clips. I sat on the floor and put both feet against the tarp and shoved Freddy half under the bunk where he was less noticeable.
I went above decks. We were riding well at anchor. Sea calm. Skies clear. I went below and stripped and cleaned myself up. I wasn’t bleeding through the gauze. Good sign. I put a robe on. The empty sleeve flapping was less troublesome than the empty arm.
I made two giant peanut butter sandwiches and yonked them down and washed them the rest of the way with a quart of cold milk. What every healthy American kid needs after being shot.
At four thirty, after some mental practice, I warmed up the set and got through to Miami Marine and put through a credit card call to Meyer aboard his boat. She told him she had a call for him from the motor vessel, the Busted Flush.
“Travis? Say, I see you must have talked her into it without too much trouble, huh? Over.”
“It was spur of the moment, Meyer. Crazy wild kids taking off on a magic adventure. Over.”
“Are you maybe a little smashed, old friend? Listen, I can’t talk about the other thing, not with half this transmission open for anybody who wants to listen. Tell her things are going well. How about the next time you call me, make it from shore and I can tell you the news. Over.”
“Will do. I don’t know how long we’ll cruise around. Maybe I can keep her out a couple of weeks. Over.”
“It will be great for her, Travis. And it won’t hurt you. Have some fun. Catch fish. Sing a little.”
As soon as I signed off, the reaction began. Somehow you do what you have to do, and somehow the machinery accepts the abuse. But when you’ve forced your way through it, all the gears and wheels start to chitter and grind and wobble around on the pinions. I felt icy cold. I knew it was all sour. She would never come out of it. Something would be bleeding in her head and that would be the end of it. Or somebody had seen him coming aboard, or seen him taking the houseboat out. My arm would start to rot. The hook would pull out of loose sand and we’d drift aground.
I went back below and looked at her and went into the master stateroom and slipped out of the robe and into the giant bed and wished I wasn’t too old to cry myself to sleep…
I heard her saying my name for a long time before
I let it wake me up. She sat on the edge of the bed, facing me. She wore a short beach robe and she had fashioned a turban affair out of a pale blue towel. It was night. The light was behind her.
“Trav? Trav?”
“Mmm. How’s your head, Janine?”
“I’m all right. I’m perfectly all right. Trav, how badly are you hurt?” She had bared my shoulder and she was looking at the bandage.
“It’s just a scratch.”
“Please. How bad is it?”
“I don’t think it’s too bad.”
“I want to look at it.”
“Let me wake up. I didn’t mean to sleep so long.”
“Get waked up, then. I’ll be right back.”
She came back with a towel, a first-aid kit and a basin of hot water. I rolled onto my right side. She went to the other side of the bed, spread the towel and equipment out, and snipped the bandage off.
I heard her insuck of breath, and said, “That bad?”
“I… I think it looks worse than it is. I’ll try not to hurt you.”