Born To Die

CHAPTER 4

Trace O’Halleran was pissed.

In fact, he was pissed as hell as he drove ten miles over the speed limit from Evergreen Elementary School, where he’d picked up his kid; now they were on their way to the clinic for X-rays as Eli had been hurt on the playground.

Someone hadn’t been watching his boy, and once Trace was assured that Eli was all right, that someone had some serious explaining to do!

“Hang in there, buddy,” he said to his son, who was seated beside him in his battered old pickup.

Eli nodded and sniffed, either fighting tears or a nasty cold that had been hanging on for about a week.

Squinting through the windshield as the first flakes of snow swirled to the ground, Trace followed the steady stream of traffic that drove down the hillside known as Boxer Bluff to the section of town spread upon the banks of the Grizzly River.

Eli, all of seven, cradled his left arm, which was already in a splint and a sling compliments of an overworked school nurse, whose advice was, “He needs to see a doctor. I’ve already called the clinic on A Street, so you shouldn’t have to wait, like you might at Pinewood Community or St. Bartholomew’s. Have the arm x-rayed. I don’t think it’s broken, but there could be a hairline fracture. The clinic has a lab. While you’re there, you might have the doctor check his ears and throat. I ran his temp, and he’s got a bit of a fever — a hundred and one.”

Trace hadn’t argued against driving to the hospital. Once, he’d sat in the emergency room at St. Bart’s for five hours before anyone could look at his mangled hand, the result of his wedding ring getting caught on a cog of his combine machine when he’d been harvesting wheat. The combination harvester and thresher had nearly torn his arm off before he’d been able to shut it down. Even after saving his arm, he’d almost had to have his ring finger amputated. In the end his finger had been saved, but the nerve damage had been severe enough that he’d lost any feeling in that finger. He’d decided then and there he’d never wear the wedding band again. It hadn’t really mattered, anyway. Leanna, Eli’s mother, had already had one foot out the door.

No, Trace didn’t want his kid to sit on the uncomfortable plastic chairs of the waiting room at St. Bartholomew Hospital, if he could avoid it. They’d start with the clinic, the same damned low-slung building that had been servicing patients for nearly seventy years. Of course, over its life span, the building housing the clinic had been remodeled several times.

Trace’s own father had taken him to the place nearly thirty years earlier, after he’d been bucked off Rocky, the spirited bay gelding that his father had taken in trade for three head of cattle. Rocky had once been a rodeo bronc, and when Trace, at nine, had tried to ride him, some of the gelding’s old fire had resurfaced and he’d sent Trace flying. The result was a concussion and old Doc Mallory’s advice after a quick examination. “For the love of Mike, boy, use the brain God gave you and stay off wild horses!”

Now Trace glanced over at his son, who, cradling his injured arm, was staring out the window.

Eli’s small jaw was set; his eyes were red from the tears he wasn’t about to shed. His breath fogged against the passenger window, which was already smudged with nose prints from their dog, Sarge, a mottled stray who’d shown up half starved the year before. Part Australian shepherd, part who knew what, the dog had become part of their little family. Today, when Trace received the call from the principal of the school and took off for his truck, Sarge had galloped after him, then had stood at the gate, disappointed, when Trace told the dog, “Next time.” Despite the cold, and the fact that the shepherd could get into the warmth of the barn, Sarge would probably be waiting at the gate when they got home.

As if he felt his father’s gaze upon him, Eli muttered, “I hate Cory Deter! He’s a jerk.”

“Cory do this to you?”

Eli lifted a little shoulder.

“Come on, bud. You can tell me.”

Doodling in the foggy glass with the index finger of his good hand, Eli coughed, winced, then said, “He pushed me. We was on the jungle gym, way up top, and he just hauled off and pushed me.”

“And you fell.”

“Yeah.”

“Where were the teachers?”

“Under the covered area.” He slid a glance over his shoulder. “Miss Wallis wasn’t there.”

“I didn’t ask about her,” Trace said with more bite than he’d meant. He flipped on the wipers.

“I know.” Again the shrug.

Trace felt like an idiot. What had he been thinking, going out with his kid’s teacher last year? It had been a mistake, and he’d known it from the second she invited him to dinner. He’d told himself that it was because of Eli, that she wanted to discuss his son and the trouble Eli was having in school, but Trace had known better, sensed it.

And yet he’d gone out with her four times. Well, five, if he included that last night of their final argument after trying to rekindle something that had never really sparked.

He’d only ended up disappointing everyone involved, himself included.

He sighed. Jocelyn Wallis had thought she could be the woman to heal the scar left by Eli’s mother walking out on them. She hadn’t believed Trace when he’d told her he wasn’t interested in a relationship, that he was okay raising his kid alone.

She wasn’t the only one. Eli couldn’t seem to forget the few times that his father had been with his teacher.

Yep, he’d made a royal mess of things.

Now his son said, “She wasn’t at school today.”

“Miss Wallis? Doesn’t matter. Someone was. Someone had playground duty.”

“Mr. Beene was on duty ’cuz Miss Wallis wasn’t there. He’s a substitute.”

“I need to talk to him.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Eli assured him. “It was that stupid butt Cory Deter!”

“I know you’re mad, but no name calling, okay?”

“But he is.” Eli swiped at his nose with the sleeve of his jacket and set his jaw again. “He’s a stupid butt.”

“C’mon, Eli. It’s not nice to talk about someone like—”

“He pushed me!”

“And that was wrong,” Trace agreed equably.

“Yeah, it was!” Eli glared at him, offended his father didn’t seem to grasp the gravity of Cory Deter’s actions.

“Okay, so maybe he is a stupid butt.”

Eli relaxed a bit.

“Just keep it between us, okay?” Trace pointed a finger at Eli, then swung it back toward himself, repeating the motion several times. “Our secret.”

“Everybody already knows he’s a butt.”

“Okay, whatever. You don’t have to say it again.”

“But Becky Tremont and her friend Tonia, they laughed at me.” Eli’s face was suddenly flushed with color. Embarrassment. Even at seven, what girls thought mattered.

“Don’t worry about them,” Trace said. “Hang in, okay? We’re almost there.” They reached the bottom of the hill just as the railroad crossing signs flashed and the alarms clanged, and Trace gritted his teeth as a train with graffiti-decorated boxcars and empty flatbeds sped past. Traffic backed up behind the crossing bars.

Come on, come on, he thought, frustrated with anything that slowed them down. He was worried about his son, wondered how badly he was hurt. “We’re almost there,” he said again and patted a hand on Eli’s small shoulder.

Eventually the train passed, and they, along with a snake of other vehicles, were allowed to pass. One more stoplight and they’d be at the clinic.