Two Medicine (47 page)

In his right hand was the
long hunting knife and he held it over my neck, hovering, looking
doubly dangerous because it was hard to see, except for a thin
gleam of reflection in the moonlight.
This
is it. This is how I die.
I smelled alcohol
and stale cigarettes like an ashtray along with the stink of sweat
coming from his body.

“
Tonight you are gonna
die.” Jake said in a whisper. “

He pressed the knife
against the left side of my neck, very hard and cold against my
skin.

“
Like you killed Alia?” I
said in a croak, wrestling for a second under the grip of the other
figures’ hands. I felt like these were my last words, and that it
was fitting that it should be about Alia, out here in the woods.
She and I would die together, at last, I thought. But I still
didn’t know why…

“
Why
did
you kill her?” I said with a groan as I struggled. Maybe he
would just tell me… “And why are you killing me?”

“
You don’t even know what
you did, do you?” he asked, pausing with the knife pressed into my
skin. “You should have taken the hint and left; the earrings
weren’t enough? What else did you need, her finger?”

I thought I heard the
sound of a car off in the distance by the road. If only there was a
way to get their attention, whoever they were. Jake pressed his
hand down on my face, covering my mouth and nose, preventing me
from breathing. How many ways did he plan to kill me?

“
What
did
I do?” I tried to ask, but it only came out a wet
muffle.

Yet Jake must have heard
me, because he pressed the knife against my neck a final time, and
said, “You should have asked Ronnie.”

He pressed the blade down
and dragged it across my neck; I could feel it slicing my skin. I
screamed under his hand, and thrashed in the mud. But suddenly I
heard a horrific crashing sound approaching through the trees, like
some great beast was approaching us. Instead of a bear’s roar, a
car motor revved and the sounds of branches cracking and snapping
and metal popping and bending all rushed into the clearing along
with bright headlights suddenly illuminated our group. I could see
Jake clearly now, a look of confusion flashing across his face as
he squinted into the light, rain streaking down his cheeks; and
then his hand was over his eyes, shielding them as he hopped up and
backed away. I felt blood pouring down my neck, mixed with rain and
the mud.

The others who were
holding me released me and stood up quickly. Someone shouted, “Who
the fuck are you?” at the truck, as if it was a creature with a
life and voice of its own. The truck suddenly jerked forward and
then ground to a halt not five feet from my head, and the door
swung open with a metallic pop of old metal. I rolled over to my
side, protecting my neck from the mud, and squinted in the glare
along with my attackers.

A figured jumped out from
the car with something big in his hand. As he stepped near the
headlights, I saw, with complete disbelief, that it was Larry, and
he was holding a long and heavy axe! He swung it wide in front of
him as his stomped towards the group without any hesitation. But
now I saw that it was a not an axe but a wooden boat oar, and
probably the one Alia and I had used in the canoe. One of the guys
was still holding the broken branch, and he suddenly flung it at
Larry’s face, but Larry swatted it away with the oar and then
suddenly rushed at the boy, with another wide swing.

“
Three Cuts!” I shouted
hysterically in a hoarse, incoherent rasp. I still couldn’t process
what I was seeing – Larry was swinging his axe-oar in the
attackers’ faces with all his might. He did actually look
intimidating and dangerous.

The skinny boy stepped
behind a small pine tree, trying to dodge the oar, but Larry
shouted angrily and swung it with a surprising quickness. The oar
smacked against the trunk, breaking the small tree in half and
knocking the boy off his balance. He stumbled back in the
brush.

Another of the gang rushed
Larry and punched him in the face, but Larry took the punch on his
jaw without the slightest effect, and then he quickly jammed the
oar’s handle into the boy’s stomach. The boy fell in a crunch,
coughing and gasping for breath. The others then all stepped back,
leaving Jake standing over me, still gripping his knife.

“
Who the fuck are you?”
Jake asked again.

“
I’m from Two Med, and you
better beat it.” Larry said in a rush – out of breath and gasping
for air himself. He looked down at me and then back at Jake. He
readied the oar for another swing as his chest heaved with short
breaths.

Larry slowly advanced
towards Jake, stepping over me as Jake backed away. Jake made a
halfhearted jab at Larry’s gut with the knife, but Larry smacked
his arm away with a fast swing of the oar, the wooden handle
hitting Jake’s arm. Jake cursed and he cradled his arm.

The skinny kid that had
been behind the tree stepped out and quickly swung a large branch
into Larry back. Larry grunted and swung the oar at the boy’s side,
flipping the oar sideways in his hands as he did, so that the wide
head of the oar smacked the boy’s shoulder and caused him to
stumble back into the darkness. Jake watched this standing by a
tree, and then cursed Larry and turned and began to sprint back
through the woods in the general direction of the car.

Thirty-
Eight

Larry looked around him
for a moment, his breathing slowing down. He looked down at me, and
then came over to me and knelt down with one knee on the ground,
planting the oar handle in the mud and leaning on it as he looked
me over. His face showed sorrow mixed with a worried concern as he
looked over my check, nose and then my neck.

“
Jesus Christ, Will,” he
muttered, “what did they do to you?”

“
How the hell did you know
I was out here?” I asked; my voice sounded weak and
strange.

“
Shhhh. Better not talk,”
he said.

He dropped the oar and
knelt down, and helped me slowly to sit up. He looked my neck over
and told me to hold my hand over the bleeding cut. He stood up
heavily and slowly and trotted off toward the truck. I saw him
reach into the back and haul out a large tackle box. He trotted
back, his belly bouncing up and down in the headlights; and then he
opened the tackle box beside me, pulling out the sliding trays. He
poured some water over my neck and face, which stung horribly and
drenched my t-shirt in bloody streams, and then he wrapped my neck
in a gauzy bandage.

“
This’ll have to do until
we get to the hospital,” he said. He helped me stand up, and I
swayed on my feet.

“
Probably got a
concussion,” he said, looking analytically into my eyes. Then he
patted me on the back lightly and turned me towards the truck.
“You’ll be all right though, boy – you’re tough.”

I didn’t feel tough… I
thought I might die as he set me in the passenger seat, my neck was
still bleeding through the bandage. Larry jerked his truck into
reverse and backed out of the woods the way he had driven in –
through the small trees and brush and mess. Branches and leaves
covered the hood of the truck. As we backed out into the road, I
looked back and saw that Jake’s car was gone,
thankfully.

We drove for a while in
the dark, the truck loudly bumping along in the night, past trees,
road signs, occasional shacks and sheds, and we were soon into
Browning, to the only hospital anywhere around.

The emergency department
of the hospital received me and took me back to a room, laying me
on a bed and pulling off my t-shirt and jeans. In muddy, soaked
underwear, I laid back and let them clean my wounds. I heard Larry
tell them that we worked in Two Medicine and that I had foolishly
fallen down a steep ravine on a night hike.

I was given an IV and they
put some kind of pain killer in it, which caused me to experience a
wonderful calm and weightlessness – like I was floating slightly
above my body. The doctor shot a local anesthetic into my skin on
my neck, and then sewed up the cut. He did the same on my punctured
cheek. I figured I must have looked terrible, and I didn’t want to
see the wounds.

As I lay there being
worked on, I couldn’t figure how Larry had come out of the night
and saved me. When the doctor finally finished and the nurses were
cleaning up and filling out some paperwork, I looked over
sluggishly through a drug haze at Larry, who was sitting in the
corner of the room near my bed, arms folded and brooding over my
pile of bloody clothes by his feet.

“
Larry,” I said, hoarsely.
“You need to tell me – what were you doing out there? I was nowhere
near Two Med. How the hell did you find me?”

He didn’t look up at me,
but kept staring at the bloody clothes. “I saw the car stopped on
the side of the road, still running, and I figured someone needed
help.” He shrugged nonchalantly like it was an everyday thing and
perfectly reasonable. “I saw the path next to the car, leading off
into the woods and then I saw some people beating a person on the
ground.”

I couldn’t make sense of
it, even in my narcotic haze it didn’t make any sense.

“
So you decided to just
plow through the woods in your truck?”

“
I heard you scream,” he
said. “I thought they were killing you.”

“
But why were you even out
on the road tonight? Where were you going?” It hurt to move my jaw,
but I was compelled to keep asking.

“
What are you?” he asked,
sounding irritated, “Sherlock Holmes? Just be glad I
did.”

“
But…” I sluggishly
protested as my mouth now feeling numb from the local
anesthetic.

“
Just drop it, for now,”
he interrupted. “I’ll explain it all on the ride back.” He got up
and walking out towards the lobby.

The nurses gave
me some pills for the pain, antibiotics, and some
topical ointment, and also some discharge paperwork warning about
the signs of a concussion. I signed myself out and found Larry in
the lobby. He helped me walk out towards his car, and got me
situated in the seat.

We drove off into the dark, again, this time
pointing back towards Two Med.

Larry switched off the
radio after a while, looking over at me for a second.

“You ok?” he
asked.

My head was leaning
against the window and I was feeling hazy and nauseous – a side
effect of the pain killers I figured. The pain had returned
somewhat, but I was ok, and told him so.

“Thank you for saving my
life, Larry,” I said in a muffled croak. My cheek rested on the
window. The coolness of the glass felt calming on my skin, which
was burning hot around the wounds.

Larry reached up with a
large Mason jar in his hands and took a swig of something
brown.

“Don’t thank me,” he said.
“Thank Ronnie.”

“Ronnie?” I turned my head
slowly from the window and looked at Larry. “Thank him
why?”

Larry nodded. “He told me
that you were out at the lodge, and that you were maybe gonna be in
trouble with some locals.” Larry ran a hand over his stubbly head.
“He said some Reds were after you because you went to the
powwow.”

I thought about what Jake
had said before he tried to cut my throat. “Why would Ronnie tell
you?” I asked hoarsely. “What did he expect
you
to do?”

Larry shrugged. He took
another swig and settled back against the rear window. I could now
smell the sugary smell of whiskey coming from the jar – and from
him. I looked at Larry’s face and he looked exhausted.

He rubbed his nose and
held the steering wheel with one hand, the other wrapped around the
Mason jar. “I told Ronnie that that story about the powwow was
horseshit,” he said. “But Ronnie was so damned adamant… I had never
seen him worry about anything.” Another swig, the jar was almost
empty.

“I looked that young man
straight in the eye and told him to tell me straight off what the
hell was going on; and he told me that the Reds were out to get you
because they thought you killed that girl you brought around –
Alia.” He looked at me for a moment, seeming to gauge my
reaction.

“I figured that was
horseshit too,” he resumed, looking back out onto the road. “But
Ronnie was so damned adamant… I knew something was up.”

Larry finished the jar and
dropped in into the floor board, where it rolled back under his
seat. “You’re no killer.” he said, quietly, strangely.

“Are
you
ok?” I asked after a
moment.

He burped and took a deep
breath. “We here.” He pulled off the road and drove down the dirt
road and into Two Med’s parking lot.

We parked by the store and
all the lights were off inside. It must have been one or two in the
morning, I figured. Larry’s old truck didn’t have a clock. Larry
walked me across the lawn and up the back stairs to the kitchen and
tried to flick on the lights, but the power was out. I squinted in
the dark as he rooted around in one of the kitchen drawers and
brought out a candle, lighting it with one of the big wooden
matches used to light the fireplace. As my eyes adjusted to the
flame’s light, he carefully sat me down at the table.