I could pull them down around his knees. I took off his tennis shoes and used his shoestrings to tie his ankles. I rolled his socks up tight, lifted his head, and forced them in his mouth, just in case he might want to talk. I'd heard all of him I ever wanted to hear.
Leonard was trying to sit up. I closed the knife and put it in my pocket and helped him to a sitting position so he could lean against the front door.
'You should have killed him,' Leonard said.
'I know.'
'It's going to complicate things.'
'I know.'
'Same ol'Hap.'
I made a concentrated effort to rise, and had to use the edge of the couch for support, but I made it. Falling down only twice, I got to the place where the phone ought to have been, saw that it had been pulled out of the wall and tossed on the floor near the kitchen table. Soldier or Angel in their haste had made an effort to disable it, way they had the cars. I grunted and cussed on over there, took hold of it, held my heart in my mouth while I examined it. The little connection at the end of the wire was cracked from being ripped out of the wall and the phone had been thrown down hard enough to knock the back off and let the guts out, but the guts themselves appeared to be in tact. Looked to me they had been in too big a hurry to do the job right. I hoped.
I shoved the phone's insides back into place and crawled over to the wall connection and snapped the clip into place and tried to hold my mouth just right while I punched O. The operator came on the line after three rings and I had her connect me to the sheriff's office. I told them what I thought they ought to know and hung up. The phone was slick with the blood from my cut hand.
I crawled back to the door and sat up next to Leonard.
'We better come up with some story,' Leonard said.
I thought awhile. I put my mouth to his ear so Soldier couldn't hear.
'That's for shit,' he said.
'Got one better?'
He shook his head. 'Hap, you know I told you I been worse?'
'Yeah.'
'I lied.'
'Me too,' I said. 'We gonna make it?”
“I am,' I said.
Leonard tried to laugh, but it hurt too much. He opened his hand. I took it and held it.
Chapter 30
I remember coming awake on the way to the hospital in the ambulance, and there being a man from the sheriff’s office there. He was determined to have some kind of statement. I think I gave him one. After that, things got hazy, then things got white and there was this light and people bending over me, then I was out again. When I awoke it was to sunlight shining through a hospital window.
A nurse came in and spoke to me and gave me some water and sat me up in bed so I could see out the window better, and later on she came back with an orderly and a wheelchair and they got me in that and pushed me over by the window for an even better look.
I sat and looked out on the hospital lawn. The bad, wet weather was gone and the sun was out and the trees on the big lawn were moving gently in the wind. It was probably a cold wind, but certainly nothing like the way things had been. I wanted to take that as some sort of sign of good things to come, but it wasn't long after that the doctor came in and he had a big man with him in a long black coat and another big man dressed up in hat and boots and the standard issue that the sheriff's office gives out.
The doctor was a little man with a bland face and thinning blond hair. He stood with his hands in front of him, left palm over right. He made me think of a preacher, way he stood there. He was very polite. He said, 'Mr. Collins, I'm Dr. Dumas. You know, you been out three days.'
'Three days?'
'That's right. And I got to tell you, you're a lucky man.'
'I don't feel so lucky,' I said.
The man from the sheriff's office took off his cowboy hat and showed me a vein-riddled bald head. He went over to the corner and leaned there. The big man in the long coat took the single chair and pulled it around so that he was straddling it. Both he and the sheriff's man had their eyes on me.
'You're lucky nonetheless. Fraction of an inch here, a fraction there, it could have made quite a difference. One bullet went in your back, just above your buttocks, about here, but it caught the fatty part and turned and came out on the right side in front of your hipbone. One in your shoulder tore some muscles, but punched on through. There was a slug lodged just under your skin, right below your sternum, slightly to the right. You weren't too bad to patch up.'
'What about Leonard?' I said.
'Medical science has something to do with Mr. Pine's survival, but his constitution may be more amazing even than yours. But he won't be up and around as soon as you are. He's got some nasty internal injuries* and his leg, well, I don't know. He'll keep it, but he may not walk well on it.'
'My compliments to you, Dr. Dumas.'
