Roy’s head lolls between my legs, his wiry chin unclenched. Stubborn a-hole. The sawbones’ blades are dented, scrolled and likely inherited, but do look, at least, maintained. So there’s that for comfort. Roy — goddamn. That it took this. What was he thinking? Should have given in days ago.
I keep the girl’s face to my chest with one hand and clap my belt in Roy’s teeth with the other. The girl’s hair tufts between my fingers in a way that suggests if it grows, it might have his curl. The sawbones bends, and over his sloped shoulder is a pristine view of Roy’s leg.
Sawbones cuts a flap of skin with his straight knife and peels it from the flesh. Blade slices through the brackish muscle, and dark clotty blood seeps over the oilskin and sand. I lift my head and listen to the ripped croak of toads that resounds off the corroded hills and over the basin, over those berserk, captive men who search the dust for what the dead streams brought down. Sawbones sets the knife aside and reaches for his final blade. I adjust my grip under Roy’s chin. He’s been unconscious for the best part of two days, but you never know.
Sure enough the blade’s bite brings him around and I’m forced to use both hands on his jaw so he can’t spit out the belt. The girl’s head sneaks out of the crook of my body.
“Be calm, Roy,” I say. “Be calm.”
Roy’s eyes roll every which way, including backwards where they stop. His sight has met mine, I assume, then I realize he’s looking lower, into his girl’s gold gaze. There’s the wet rasp of sawed bone. Christ, I think, but don’t say. Why? For what? Then it doesn’t matter — his pupils flit further back and it’s only his eerie whites showing.
Sawbones takes a cautery from the fire and sizzles the cut. “Christ,” I say, aloud this time. “A bitta warning would have been nice.” I let go of Roy and his jaw goes slack. A chunk of belt falls from his teeth.
Sawbones returns the poker to the fire. He tongs a flask of iodine water from the steaming pan, lets it cool, and pours it over Roy’s stump. Washes yellow foam and bits of burnt skin. I stand and slap life back into my legs. Roy — I can’t decide whether or not it feels a relief to him. Sawbones trims the loose flesh, folds the flap of skin over the wound, and stitches. Packs the wound with cotton and wraps it with bleached silk. I pull the stakes from the dirt, untie Roy’s hands and ankle, and rub the rope burn at his wrists. Toss the pant leg over the dead limb. Roy’s chest moves shallow but steady.
Sawbones cleans his tools. “Want me to take the girl?” He towels his hands.
The night is, for an instant, uniformly silent. Then it fills again with the stuttered flit of bats and scuttle of billy owls.
“No,” I tell him. He packs his gear and loads a mule, and then crosses himself and presses two fingers to Roy’s brow. This action — this and the yellow seepage out the severed limb — well, it’s obvious the infection’s throughout. The girl’s returned her fingers to her mouth. Sawbones saddles the big bay mule and mounts. Straps his satchel over his shoulder with a sling and I see it’s the case that wore his coat thin. He takes the trail. The mule’s steps echo down from the hills long after I lose sight of him. Fainter, farther away, and then too far off to recall.
An hour passes, and Roy’s bandage is soaked reddish black. His breath — uneven. I’m wishing I’d done what the sawbones suggested and let him take the girl.
I dig a hole while we’re waiting for Roy to go. Not a wide one, but deep. Big enough for the leg now, and the rest of Roy when that’s needed. The soil is loose and sandy. Easy work. I drag the leg over. It already smells green — only thing in the valley that does. Although Sawbones didn’t say it, I know we won’t have to wait long. The girl helps me toss dirt back in. I use the shovel, she uses her hands.
The fire turns low, smoky. Streams into the blank beyond.
“Leaving us behind,” I say. And there is confounding vertigo in watching the soot trail into the cold black whorl.
The embers slip between red and white and crumble apart with heat.
Predawn or dawn, Roy passes. All his efforts go with him. I bury his body. Harness the mule, yoke it to the wagon, and hoist myself up front with the whip. Girl climbs into the bow beside me, piss-stained and pointless, and yet, even in her exhaustion, her features display Roy’s self-righteous hurt: Why had I fought him, he asks me. Why even the discussion?
Colour breaks into the sky above the cliffs. Roy’s left. I don’t owe him nothing. I owe him squat.
I lift the girl down. “Get.” She doesn’t get, but stands on the wagon tracks and watches when I flick the mule and quit the place.
Takes me half the day arguing with myself to lose my anger at Roy. Another chunk of time to face the fact the girl won’t last on her own. I pull the reins and halt the mule.
I turn back hoping, but the heat already wavers off the valley and I haven’t seen as much as a wasp in the desert scrub. Rocks strewn across the basin clamp unyielding on their own shadows. The solitary mule shudders from pulling the cart by itself in the sun, but my thoughts are of Roy’s girl and I hurry it with the whip.
When I get back to the camp, the sky’s such a torturous blue the beast kneels. I pour water over my handkerchief and wipe back the sweat on my forehead. Something’s been scratching at Roy’s grave, which isn’t a surprise in this land of scavengers. Whatever it was didn’t get deep. From the marks I can’t be sure it wasn’t the girl herself, or a bobcat or coyote — an animal that might be the reason I can’t locate her. The girl’s nowhere. Cactus, charred wood of the campfire. Beyond that, timeworn dirt carried down from the mountains on the backs of long-gone sheets of ice. Boulders pock-full of spineless crabs that came and went with nothing to show for it. I’m shaken by the brevity of it all.
“Girl,” I call. “Girl,” until I wonder why I’m here.
I pour the mule a bucket and let him dip his nose to it, and then I loop my finger in the handle of the water jug, thinking to set it at the base of the cactus in case she returns. I don’t. No point. I damp my kerchief and wipe my neck. What I left is gone, as I had known it would be when I vacated. Why? I ask myself, and know I’ll keep asking. What was the sentiment? More relevant, what was the hesitation that I had — for him, or her, or any of it, in the first place?
WINTER ROAD
I’d barely clocked out of my shift bolting roof screens at Diavik Mine when Trista rang.
“Dad highsided the Husqvarna at the ice races and his back is messed,” she said. “Couple of pins and fused vertebrae. He’s okay, but he’s in a wheelchair for now and can’t manage himself. And Jack,” she raised her voice when I tried to interject, “you’re not going to believe this — Mom has dementia. Early-onset. Dad’s been hiding it.”
“Why would he do that?” I sat on my dorm bunk with the phone.
“Why does he do anything?” she said.
I couldn’t get my head around it. Fourteen hours of hydraulics and circulated air in the mine shaft — I wanted sleep. “Didn’t the neighbours notice?”
“Notice? Probably. But most of them have left. Lots of houses boarded up. And Dad was there to care for her. He hides shit from us, not them.” She sounded tired, and I wondered how long she’d been at the parents’ place. “You know Dad,” she went on. “He gets his first pension cheque last month and still thinks he can tear around like a teenager. Says he lost traction on the rear wheel over-steering into a turn, then the studs caught the ice and the torque flipped him headfirst over the handlebars. Bike came after him, ripped right through his parka. Good thing he held his hands up or he’d have stitches down his face not his forearms. Plus the damage to his back.”