“I believe you.”
The hay shed wasn’t a shed in the North Carolina sense of the word. It was actually a large roof, larger than the roof on most houses, held up by telephone pole-looking logs about twenty feet high. The summer’s hay crop—or in drought years like this one, hay bought from Idaho farmers—was stacked in bales under the roof to keep dry, and a twelve-foot double-posted mesh fence surrounded the hay to keep out horses, porcupines, deer, moose, and elk, and anything else with a taste for grass.
The system worked fairly well except when someone forgot to close the gate properly, which is what happened the day Pete died. An elk—Molly—had gone through the fence and was eating her way around the stack, costing the ranch money it didn’t have to spare.
Pud stationed me just inside the open gate, which wasn’t any more a real gate than the shed was a real shed. It was a section of fence held in by push screws. Each side of the enclosure had a removable section so Hank could take bales from anywhere without having a long haul.
“Stand here and when she comes your way, turn her out the open hole,” Pud said.
“Turn her?”
“Only don’t get under her feet. Molly’s stomped three cow-dogs to death in her career.”
“How do I turn her without getting under her feet?”
“Wave your arms and holler.”
“She’s bigger than me.”
“She doesn’t know that.”
Pud walked off counterclockwise around the hay bales. From the northwest corner, Molly raised her head and chewed a mouthful of hay. She regarded me disdainfully—with good reason. She was wild, strong, and noble. I wasn’t. That animal knew I wasn’t bigger than her. She wasn’t stupid.
I looked across the white pasture to the river and wondered idly if I was fixing to get killed. The thought didn’t disturb me as much as I would have expected. Mostly, I considered the uniqueness in a modern society of being killed by a wild animal. I always wanted to go out in a unique way. I also thought about how lousy Shannon would feel. She would wonder if her desertion last night caused me to flaunt risks.
“Scat! Move it!” Pud’s voice came from around the corner of the stack.
Molly ignored him. Six-hundred-pound animals don’t respond to Scat.
A firecracker exploded at Molly’s feet. Pop. She jumped back and hit the fence, but didn’t move any closer to me. A string of firecrackers went off—Pop! Pop! PopPop! Molly walked ten feet or so down the aisle toward me, enough to clear the line of fire, then she stopped and went back to feeding.
Pud appeared on the far side of the elk. “Black Cats aren’t motivational enough,” he said.
By leaning toward the fence, I could see him working something out of his coat pocket. Pud is wiry and no taller than me. I’d always thought Maurey didn’t love me in the romantic way because I wasn’t tall, so it came as a shock when she took a boyfriend my size.
“Pud,” I said, “when we were kids, everyone thought you were retarded. Why was that?”
He stopped fiddling with whatever he’d been fiddling with and looked at me. “I’m dyslexic.”
His eyes have always been so soft and open, not angry like Dothan’s, that I used to suspect something other than a demented home life made him different.
He went on. “I couldn’t learn to read. My family and everyone treated me like a retard, so I believed them.”
“I remember how mean the kids were to you at school.”
“Maurey had me tested. All those years I thought I was stupider than everyone else, and then I found out I wasn’t.”
“Must have had an amazing effect on your self-image.”
“Like waking up and discovering you’re a different person.” He held up a round object. “You ready?”
“For what?”
“Cherry bomb.”
I glanced from him to Molly. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Her nose reacted first. The nostrils flared and her head jerked, then BLAM!—thirty times louder than a Black Cat. She leaped backward into the fence and bounced and came down running. I doubt if Molly even saw me before the collision. Her eyes were panicky wild, bugging pink whites and huge pupils. It happened way too fast for me to wave my hands and holler, or be smart and climb the fence. I think her inside shoulder hit me; whatever it was, I flew into the hay and she went out the fence gap.
Pud pulled me to my feet. “That was great,” he said. “I don’t know if I could have stood my ground like you did.”
After a few minutes, my lungs accepted air and my vision cleared somewhat. I almost convinced myself I’d been brave from choice; maybe I did stand my ground; maybe I had had time to jump. Bravery isn’t what you do so much as how you look back at what you did. I was so happy about surviving Molly, I tripped over barbwire under the snow and cut the living bejesus out of my hand.
So I walked into the living room with my fist above my head, clenching a hard-packed snowball. The blood trickled down my arm and off my elbow.
Maurey was still on the phone. She took one look at me and said, “I have to go, Lloyd, there’s another emergency.” She listened a few seconds and said, “I’ll call you back.”
After she hung up I said, “You didn’t have to stop on account of me.”
“I’m supposed to chat while you bleed on the floor?”
Maurey got up and led me into the kitchen, where she kept one of the most complete first-aid kits a nonprofessional ever owned. It filled an old army mule pannier. A lot of doctors must have dried out on the TM because Maurey was prepared for any emergency. She had me stand at the sink and run cold water over the cut. It was at the base of my thumb and hard to see, what with the flow of blood, but there seemed to be a penny-size skin flap over a deep, ragged hole.
“This’ll take stitches,” Maurey said.
“Should we call an ambulance?”
“I can handle it.”
She dug through the pannier and came up with a sealed Baggie containing a sponge and this frothy brown liquid. As she leaned over my hand, her hair fell across her line of vision and she brushed it back over her ear in my favorite Maurey gesture.
“Was that your sponsor on the phone?” I asked.
She nodded. “Lloyd. Have you had a tetanus shot lately?”
“Last year when a Vicksburg battery mount fell on my foot. Am I supposed to know Lloyd?”
“Yes, you dip.” The brown liquid was some kind of alcohol and it hurt like the dickens. I gritted my teeth as Maurey scrubbed and talked. “I’ve told you about Lloyd and Sharon Carbonneau at least twenty times. They own a sports paraphernalia shop in Denver.”
Even though the pain was tremendous, I resolved to follow the expected male code of toughness. “Sports paraphernalia?”
“Caps and coolers. You can make a killing off any piece of plastic with a Denver Broncos logo on the side.”
“‘Sponsor’ is an AA term, isn’t it?”
“Your sponsor is the person you turn to when you’re in trouble.”
“That makes you my sponsor.”
She gave one last squeeze of brown antiseptic. “Are you still in trouble, sugar booger?”
Was I in trouble, or was this despair the daily routine of going on? “Shannon’s moving out,” I said.
Holding my sterile hand palm up, Maurey led me back to the kitchen table. “I know.”
“She always tells you everything before me.”
Maurey found a preloaded syringe and broke off the seal. “Shannon’s worried. She thinks you’ll fall apart without her at home to fuss over.”
I stared at the syringe. Nobody had told me about a shot. “What did you advise?”