Popeye snarled his leg. Tangled in the rattle wire, Popeye’s demeanor totally changed. Spooked, he bolted for the open door.
Broker watched the bird accelerate across the yard in bounds so powerful, they looked like special effects. Zero to forty in three seconds, J.T. had told him. Trailing tin cans, Popeye tore around a tree line and vanished.
Back in the barn, Amy was already stooped over Earl. “Get me a knife. Something to cut the coat with.”
“First I want to talk to my buddy Earl, here,” Broker said.
“Christ’s sake, man,” Earl grimaced in pain, hunching away.
“Broker,” Amy ordered, “I have to see this arm. If it’s compound and has bone sticking out we could sever an artery moving him.”
“Move him?” Broker feigned laughter. “Fuck him, leave him where he’s at.” He tugged Amy to her feet, took a firm grip on her arm, walked her outside.
She pulled away, furious. “That guy. .”
Broker cut her off. “He’s not critical. He’s got a broken arm. So I’m going to mess with him a little. He’s the boyfriend, and he just tried to brain me with a bat and he brought some help.”
Amy’s eyes flashed, she licked her lips. “I saw the other one run.” More eager than cautious, she asked, “Are there more of them?”
She was back in her element; she liked the action and she liked being in it with him. Broker got the powerful impression the ruckus cleared the decks between them.
“Why’d the other one take off?” she asked.
And the answer to that, Broker didn’t know. He shrugged and said, “Because he came to break a leg and got a full, frontal view of a charging male ostrich.”
“Why break your leg?”
Broker grinned. “To chase me away from Jolene.”
Amy grinned with him.
Earl moaned in the barn, “Jesus Christ, will somebody call nine-one-one?”
“Hey, Earl, look out for the rats, there’s these big barn rats in there. I think they got rabies,” Broker yelled, then he turned back to Amy. “Okay, J.T. keeps a first-aid kit on the mud porch. Do
“You know what you’re doing?”
“Sure, Earl and I are both doing the same thing: trying to scare each other off. He blew his shot. I won’t.”
“Okay,” she squinted at him. “But no more rough stuff. That’s a bad arm.”
Broker held up his hands, palms out-an innocent. “Amy, I never touched the guy.”
She evaluated the look in his eyes. “You would have let that bird kill him,” she said evenly.
“Nah,” Broker grinned. “Not kill him, maybe kick him a few more times, though.”
She turned and jogged to the house. Broker went back in the barn, searched for a moment, and found the bat. To announce himself he swung the bat viscously against the tractor fender. Every time the bat landed, Earl cringed on the floor.
He extended the bat and poked Earl in the ribs. Earl moaned and gritted his teeth.
Broker shook his head. “For some reason, Jolene doesn’t want you hurt too bad, so it can end right here. If we can understand each other.”
“I need to go to a hospital,” Earl said between clenched teeth.
“Listen carefully,” Broker said. “I copied your hard drive. Jolene assures me there’s enough on there to interest the feds. Credit unions are federal, Earl. You with me so far?”
“Okay, okay.”
“Jolene’s lawyer guarantees you’ll get every cent she owes you-if you back off. You can be friends, but she gets a chance to live her life. That’s the deal.”
Earl’s left cheek and eye were starting to puff black and blue. Shock turned his skin sticky gray. With a face full of blood and dirt, he didn’t look so pretty anymore. “What about all this?” he said.
Broker smiled. “This was just testosterone gone awry.”
“I mean, what are you going to tell them at the hospital?”
Broker shrugged. “I’m watching my buddy’s farm for him, I know you, you wanted to see the birds, you came out and there was an accident.”
Earl sighed in resignation. “Friends with Jolene.”
“But no manipulation. No games,” Broker said.
“Okay,” Earl said. His eyes stayed fixed on the door. Amy came jogging back in with J.T.’s first-aid kit, a knife, and a bedsheet. He asked, “Who’s the chick?”
“Friend of mine. Lucky for you, she’s a nurse.”
Amy quickly cut open Earl’s jacket sleeve and assessed the lacerated shoulder. “Looks worse than it is, superficial muscle damage.” She applied gauze pads to the bleeding and felt around. “The left humerus is snapped, at least once, but it hasn’t poked through the skin. He probably has some cracked ribs.”
Amy decided to immobilize the arm against his chest with the sheet. Broker helped her sit Earl up and tie the makeshift restraint. Then she gave him some Tylenol. Once the arm was secured they hauled him to his feet and walked him to the Jeep.
As they got in, Amy scanned the empty fields and pastures.
“What about the bird?”
“Maybe they come home when they get hungry,” Broker said.
Chapter Thirty-seven
After a solitary dinner in an overcrowded restaurant, Allen got away from people and drove toward his town house, deep in one of Timberry’s meandering cul-de-sacs.
His efficient two-bedroom row house was somebody’s idea of a New England design, clad in white clapboard and black trim. He had a garage, a basement, a deck, and a view. His association kept the outside tidy. He took care of the inside.
Untidy reminded him of his ex-wife, Sharon, who had remarried and moved to California. Like Annette Benning in
They had trudged dutifully together until the end of his residency at the Mayo Clinic.
At the clinic, residents were required to make rounds in starched white coats, suits, and a tie every day. The dress code bolstered Allen’s innate fastidiousness, and the more pressed and creased he was at the clinic the more aware he became of Sharon’s slovenly habits at home.
Thank God they never had kids.
But then, how could they? Buried alive in the heavy pleats of Sharon’s lovemaking, Allen had imagined his spermatozoa suffocated. She had possessed a certain sluggish beauty, if you enjoyed watching heavy whipping cream pour from a spout.
They’d been high school sweethearts. He had been deceived by the household Sharon grew up in, by its snug, scrubbed security. Only when it was too late, after he’d married her, did he realize that the order in that house was the work of Sharon’s mother, but none of the mother’s precision had rubbed off on the daughter. And this didn’t truly manifest until they had moved out of student housing into a town house in Rochester. One of his Mayo colleagues came over after a round of handball and spilled a beer on the scuffed kitchen linoleum. Immediately, he offered to clean it up. “I’ll get it,” he said to Sharon, “just show me where you keep the mop.”
“I don’t think we have one,” Sharon had said, in effect.
Allen aimed the garage-door clicker, opened the door, drove in, shut off his car, and closed the door behind him.
Thank you, Minnesota, for no-fault divorce.
