The Pines

“Okay, I’m coming. Take it easy.” She leaned her head to him. “What is it? Where do you hurt?”

His voice hissed in her ear. “My boy’s slow.” His eyes watered. “You unnerstand? You take care a my Joey first.” He croaked the words, his chest heaving in strange fluid wobbles. “He don’ unnerstand.” Breath came in liquid gulps.

“Doris!”

“Let’s get moving here!” Doris trotted over with the kit. “What’ve you got?”

“Flailed chest.” Athena crouched over the dashboard. “Little bit harder and he’d be pinned on the steering column. We’ve got to get to him—now.”

Doris grabbed the crowbar. “How’s the kid, Jack?”

“Head injuries—broken arm, lacerations,” he announced, fixing a splint. His glasses kept slipping down his nose because of the way he was sweating.

Still crouching, Athena bound the old man’s arms across his chest. As the sun pounded on her back, she felt flooded with sweat, cramping, and the heat seemed to boil away her strength. “How’re we going to get this old guy out of here? Oh.”

“That’s got it.” With a loud ripping, Doris pried the door open and snapped the hinges, letting it fall in the road. “Larry, come over here and watch this. Jack, where’s the board?”

Sweat got in their eyes, a stinging blur, as they strapped the old man to the board, lifting him out the side. Jack wheeled over the rattling litter, and the troopers lent a hand. While windshield glass fell from their clothes to tinkle and crunch on the ground, the older man and the younger steadily pleaded that the other be looked after first.

“Christ, these two are going to break my heart,” Doris muttered, running alongside the litter. “Fred? You guys hanging around to wait for the coroner’s wagon?” They slid the stretcher into the rig.

“Yeah, Doris. Catch ya later.”

As they pulled out, Athena grabbed the radio, letting the hospital know what to expect. Doris set Larry to bandaging Joey’s head, while Jack checked out the old man.

Still pale, Larry moved slowly, clumsily. Blood seeped through the bandages faster than he could wrap them, and Joey just stared doe-eyed at his father, so white and still.

Every time he bleated for his “Daddy,” Athena squirmed in the driver’s seat. She couldn’t understand why it should bother her so much. She knew little enough about fathers. Few men had hung around while she was growing up, certainly no paternal ones. The family history held that her mother had been raped. What ever the case, after her mother’s breakdowns and suicide attempts began, Athena had been carted from Alabama to her grandmother’s house in New York. “Fathers yet,” she muttered to herself. “I may be starting to crack up myself.” She tried not to listen to the boy.

“How’re you making out, Larry?”

“Okay.” Joey’s eyes seemed to float in murky liquid as Larry wrapped the bandages around and around his head, the red flower blooming through the white gauze. “You get a lot of retards out here, don’t you?”

Joey’s face quivered.

“Shut up, you idiot,” hissed Athena.

Doris helped Jack with the old man. “Inbreeding—woods are full of them,” she told him dispassionately. “There used to be a whole sort of village for defectives around here.” She glanced up. “I’m not shitting you. The state built a colony for them out in the woods. Make it a little tighter. That’s it. You’re doing fine.”

The woods are full of them. Athena’s grip on the wheel tightened. It was what she’d always maintained: there was nothing wrong with her son, he was just a normal piney. The very word still froze her. Piney. Siren wailing, the ambulance joined the stream of traffic on the highway, and she swerved the rig in and out, expertly passing cars on both sides.

Frightened by the blaring siren, Joey wept. With a casual gesture, Doris reached to brush glass chips out of his hair. “There’s another roll of bandages in there,” she said. Then Joey screamed as vomit erupted from the old man, splashing across Doris’s leg. “He’s choking! Help me get him on his side!”

Larry stared.

“Come on, damn it!”

Jack leaped to assist her while she stuck two fingers down the old man’s throat, clearing the air passage. “Shit! He’s coding. Jack, mouth-to-mouth, move it!”

Jack looked at the vomit smearing the old man’s mouth. “Oh Christ.” He grimaced, then went to work.

“I want to go home. Daddy? What’s the matter, Daddy?”

Larry just kept wrapping bandages until Joey’s head looked huge. The ambulance slammed to a halt.

“Receiving,” Athena announced, and they all scrambled to unload.

Confused and panicked, Joey was wheeled through the emergency ward toward X-ray. He kept calling for his father, while men in white wheeled the old man in the opposite direction.

Alone, Larry sat on a bench. The sound of slow typing drizzled from somewhere down the corridor.

“How you feeling now? You still look a little green.” Doris slapped him on the shoulder. “We’ve just got to hang around until somebody signs for them.” She jerked a thumb at Athena, arguing at the admitting desk.

Larry nodded weakly. “It’s just it was a chick, you know? If it was a guy, I coulda stood it.”

“What? Oh, the dead one.” Doris looked at him closely, then sat. “Try not to think about it. Most of the calls we get are stuff like, oh, bleeders with minor cuts—there’s lots of hemophiliacs out here—allergic reactions to insect bites, that kind of thing.”

He smiled weakly.

“That’s better.” She punched him lightly on the arm. “You’ll survive.”

“The water fountain ain’t working.” Jack approached, rubbing his hand across his mouth. “Christ, I hate mouth-to-mouth. You hear anything about the old guy?”

A plume of dust stretched behind the battered panel truck as it bounced and grunted over the sand. The exhaust snorted smoke, and Wes fought the steering wheel. “You know, there’s niggers workin’ the construction over ta Batsto,” he said with shocked grievance in his voice.

“Yeah, I heard, I heard.”

“Sure is hard to believe.” Both men shook their heads.

Al hurled a jar against a tree.

“I thought you was gonna save that ta put booze in?”

His side of the truck lacked a door, and Al had to grip the frame to keep from being thrown out. “Shit.” With each bump, his head felt as though it would burst. He needed a drink. “Knew I shoulda brung more.” He shut his eyes for a minute, tried to pretend they were already back at Munro’s Furnace, at his place, dipping into the whiskey barrel. He could almost feel it in his parched mouth.

Their gear and guns lay hidden in back under a sticky tarp and some chicken wire. They’d gotten twenty cents a pound for the venison at the Chamong Diner. Al had wanted fifty cents, and in the parking lot he’d roared and blustered, but nobody got the better of old man Sims. The meat was bad, and Sims knew it, which—while it would not prevent his serving it—disinclined him toward paying top dollar.

The truck shuddered and bucked, while Al returned to his favorite topic. “You know what that is?”

“I am acquainted wi’ it.”

“No, you ain’t. But, hell, once they get the taste a it, they don’t want nothin’ else.” His mien grew serious. “We can’t let that happen. No, sir, none a that.”

A shack appeared on the right, then a hundred yards farther, two more, obviously abandoned. The roof of the Monroe place became visible over the pines. “Damn shame ’bout the way that nigger bitch pushed ole Lonny outta his own house,” Wes muttered as they passed. “Damn shame.”

Al nodded in solemn agreement.

“Somebody oughtta take that gimp out inna woods an shoot ’er,” continued Wes. “Her an at retard kid a hers.” The truck thundered across a pine-log bridge, the water of Hobbs Creek still and muddy around the pilings. “What’s ’at over there?” He pointed into the brush and stamped on the brake.

“What’s the matter with you?” Al yelled, holding his forehead. “What the fuck you stopping for? You made me bang my fuckin’ head!”