'You're hit?'
'Caught me in the back, low, to the right. Came out the side of my leg here.' He touched his right thigh gently. 'Bone turned the slug, I guess. It was Angel shot me. bitch is good. I was well on the run, ahead of you two, going into the woods along the creek. Thought I had it made.'
I squatted down beside him, wiped cold sweat off his forehead with my fingers, rubbed it on my pants. 'It'll be all right, Leonard.'
'Damn right it will,' he said. 'I been worse. . . . Shit, man, you're hit too.'
'High in the side, came out the front here,' I said. 'I'm scared to look, but—'
'You been worse,' Leonard said.
'Right.'
'Trudy,' Leonard said, 'you've had yourself quite a time playing revolutionary, haven't you?'
'I believe what I believe,' she said. 'None of this changes anything.'
'This,' Leonard said, 'isn't over. But I got to hand it to you, had it been me and Soldier had brought out that hammer, I'd have sang like a parakeet.'
A freezing rain came slanting through the trees from the north and hit the clearing, then the oak and us.
'We stay here, we'll freeze,' I said.
'Can't we go through the woods?' Trudy said. 'It's got to stop somewhere.'
'It stops, all right,' I said. 'Several miles later. As cold and close to dark as it is, I don't think me and Leonard could make it with these wounds.'
'Trudy maybe could make it,' Leonard said. 'Get some help.'
'I don't know the woods,' Trudy said. 'I'd be going in circles before I was out of sight of this tree.'
'Doubt we'd survive till you got back anyway,' I said. 'If Soldier and Angel didn't find us, we'd most likely freeze or bleed to death. We can go wide to the main road, or back to the house. Chance Soldier and Angel being gone right now. Get Leonard's car and haul out.'
'It's got to be that for me,' Leonard said. 'I go too far in any direction, maybe even back to the house, and I'll be growing grass over me come spring.'
'We might wait them out,' Trudy said.
'We'd be icicles first,' Leonard said. 'And besides, I got
a rifle in the trunk of the car, a target pistol in the house. They could be some insurance.'
'Then it's settled,' I said.
'Hap, break me off a limb,' Leonard said. 'Got to have a crutch.'
I had to go easy, but I walked until I came to a sweetgum at the edge of the clearing, got hold of a two-inch limb and pulled on it. I felt as if my guts were being wrenched out, but I kept at it until I heard it crack, then I swung on it until I got it so I could twist it off. It had a couple of whispy limbs on it, and I managed to break those off underfoot. It wasn't going to make a comfortable crutch, but by hooking it in the crook of his arm, it might do. It had a kind of point on the end too, where I had twisted it off, and I thought that would be good, something he could push into the ground.
Trudy helped me get Leonard up. He got the stick positioned and tried it and it worked well enough.
'Don't wait on me,' he said. 'One of us has got to get back to the house and the car, get some help.'
'It's all or nothing,' Trudy said.
Chapter 28
We eased forward, wide of the creek, broke through the woods and out into the clearing where the house was visible through the ever-thickening slants of icy rain. To make matters worse, the wind had picked up and was driving the rain against us as if it were frozen needles. I felt feverish, and as if something important had broken inside me. Everything was a little surreal. I was still losing blood.
We huddled together, me and Trudy on either side of Leonard, helping him along. He looked like something for a pine box and six feet of dirt.
I thought about Soldier and Angel, realized that if they had come back by the creek, they could already be at the house, waiting. But if we could get to car and get it started . . . That was thinking too far ahead.
Keep walking. One foot in front of the other and this fever is the heat of the sun and it's mid-July and the fish are biting and the grass is going brown and the trees are wilting like overworked washerwomen. Yes sir, it's not cold, it's hot, it's hot, gimmea left. Left. Adaleft, left, left, adaleft, left, had a good home but I left, left. Hell, maybe I shouldn't have fought the draft. I had the march down. Then I realized I was talking out loud, and I shut up and zeroed in on the dog pens and made for them, tried not to think about Soldier or Angel or that they might be waiting for us to come into range so they could spray the place with our brains. It would be quicker and better than dying slowly in the woods from the wet cold.
Next thing I knew we were at the dog pens, and I understood why we had gotten as much of a head start on them as we had, saw what all that shooting we heard was about. Leonard's dogs. In his fury, Soldier had killed them all.
'That motherfucker,' Leonard said. 'I ever get the chance, half the chance, he's a dead cocksucker. Dead.'
Paco lay where we had left him. He was face down, on his knees, his head bent under him, as if folded. That had been some kick. His false teeth lay over in the mud near Soldier's open umbrella, mashed porkpie and the
