Up Jumps the Devil

white truck with lots of chrome.

Reese’s truck.

It had straddled the ditch at a cockeyed angle that made my heart stand still. I swung my car in nose to nose with it and hit the shoulder running, almost tripping over one of those yellow road signs that was broken off at the ground. Reese’s fancy chrome front bumper was crumpled and the right headlight was shattered. Despite the big wheels, the truck was far enough down in the ditch that the cab was almost level with the roadbed and both doors were open.

Reese was slumped inside the cab, still in his seat belt, head back and his eyes closed. He was covered in blood.

I pushed in beside the trooper. “What happened? Is he all right?”

“Judge Knott?”

The trooper was Ollie Harrold, someone familiar to me from traffic court. “Ma’am, you shouldn’t—”

“He’s my nephew. Is he alive?”

I touched Reese’s face and a fresh trickle of blood ran down from a cut on his chin. “Reese?”

“Deborah?” Reese’s eyes opened a crack. “Oh shit,” he groaned. “Just what I need.”

“What happened, honey?”

He closed his eyes and his face got that mulish look.

The exterior of the truck wasn’t badly damaged, but the interior looked as if it’d been vandalized. The radio and CD player could have been hit with a hammer, and the padded dash and soft vinyl upholstery were slashed to tatters. Blood and mud were everywhere.

I looked at the trooper. “Who did this?”

“That’s what I’m trying to ascertain, ma’am. I just got here myself, but he don’t want to tell me.”

“Reese Knott,” I said sternly. “You better say what happened here and I mean it.”

“Oh shit,” he groaned again. When he touched his face, his hand came away with more blood. “I’m gonna have to get a goddamn tetanus shot, ain’t I?”

“Reese!”

“Look, I didn’t know it was going to end up like this, okay? But this buck come jumping out of the woods and fell down right in front of me.” His eyes fell on his smashed CD. “Oh Jesus, look at that! Cost me almost four hundred dollars to get it installed.”

“Forget about the damn player. What about the deer? Did you hit it?”

“No. Some hunter must’ve shot him, and he got that far before he went down. I thought jumping the ditch must have finished him off. He had an eight-point rack, Deb’rah. The one A.K. took doesn’t have but six.”

“And?”

“Well, I couldn’t hear nobody coming after him. Deer can run miles sometimes from where they get shot. Everybody knows that. And why should I leave him there for the buzzards to pick? So I got out my tarp and wrapped it around him and stuck him up here in the cab.”

“Why not in back?”

“It’s full of light fixtures I just picked up from our wholesaler in Makely.” His eyes met mine and he gave a shamefaced shrug. “Besides, I was afraid the guy that shot him might come along and spot the antlers.”

He closed his eyes again and I gave him a poke.

“I swear to God I thought he was dead, okay? But I hadn’t hardly turned on this road when he rared up under that tarp and started tearing hell out of things. Out of me, too. You ever think about how sharp them damn hooves are?” He touched a torn and bloody spot on his upper thigh where the jeans were ripped “Oh, God, I bet I have to get stitches. I hate getting stitches. He just wouldn’t be still, kept kicking and raring, antlers flying—it’s a pure wonder he didn’t poke my eyes out with them antlers. God knows he poked me everywhere else. I tried to turn him out, but I couldn’t reach around him to open the door ’cause he was trying to come through the window on my side. Next thing I know, the truck does a one-eighty into that signpost and I’m sitting here in the ditch before I finally get the damn door open.”

“Oh, Reese, you idiot.”

“Look at my head liner,” he moaned. “Look at these seats! I’ll have to get the whole inside—you know what it’s gonna cost? And I bet my damn insurance—”

Trooper Harrold had trouble keeping a straight face when I turned to him.

“I observed him driving erratically,” he told me as formally as if we were back in court. “Before I could put on my blue light though, he landed in the ditch and I saw a buck go bounding up the ditch bank. I thought at first he’d swerved to miss it and—”

He was interrupted by the sound of sirens and more flashing emergency lights.

Dwight Bryant pulled his departmental cruiser up behind Reese’s truck and a rescue ambulance stopped a few feet away.

A tall, strongly built woman slid out from behind the wheel. A stethoscope dangled from her neck and she carried a cervical collar. “Want to give me some room here?” she said, motioning us away from the cab of the truck. “Is this the victim?”

“Victim?”

“Somebody called in and said a man out here in a white truck’s been shot. He the one?”