Ghost Medicine (11 page)

It was lucky that my dad had stayed up so late cooking that turkey, because I knew he wouldn't wake if I made myself some coffee before I left. While it was brewing, I stuffed the inside pockets of my coat with candy bars and cookies, a couple pieces of bread. I sighed as I pulled my pants up, tried to stick out my belly, but I couldn't get it out far enough to snug up the waist on my pants much at all.

I poured a cup of coffee, black. I blew on it and sucked in a small sip. It tasted like turkey broth. I almost spit it out. I poured the rest of my cup back into the pot and left it for my dad. I quietly cursed that stupid bird for ruining my appetite for just about everything. I hoped he suffered while he was lying there in that mud. I hoped he could feel himself being cooked.

My rifle was still resting beside the door. I dumped the box of bullets into my coat pocket. I wished I could've taken my dad's deer rifle, but that was impossible now. I'd be okay, I thought.

I walked out into the dark rain.

The air smelled good, cool and clean. I kept my head angled down, watching my feet push up little swells of water as I stepped, silently measuring the amount of time it would take until water began dropping down in front of me from the brim of my hat.

The “bridge” wasn't really a bridge at all. It was really just a big concrete pipe that had been placed in the creek running from behind our property. Before my father put it there, we would have to drive through the creek bed to get to or away from my house, and sometimes that would mean getting blocked in or out during the winter and having to cross by wading, which was never fun when the creek ran fast, muddy, and cold. As I walked there, I watched my breath form clouds out of my mouth, occasionally ducking my mouth into the upturned collar of my denim coat to warm my face.

Tommy and Gabe were sitting in the truck, waiting. I was glad they were early because it told me they wanted to be there, too. They both got out at the same time, Tommy moving mechanically from behind the wheel. His leg had stiffened up quite a bit after the rattlesnake bite, more so in the mornings, but Tom rarely complained. And any time he got close to griping about it, Gabriel and I reminded him that we had let him keep the fifteen dollars the day he got bit. Tom willingly pretended he didn't remember, although he could remember almost getting shot by Gabe.

“Damn, Stotts, that's all you brought?” Tommy asked, pointing a thumb at my rifle, then spit a splash of tobacco onto the rain-puddled ground. “You could've at least brought your rake!”

“I couldn't get my dad's deer gun,” I apologized.

“Well, if you shoot her, you better kill her, ‘cause I don't want to be there if she gets pissed at you.”

“I don't think she was too happy about the rake anyway.”

“Do you think it's a female?” Gabe asked.

“She could be pregnant,” I said.

“Why's that?”

“Jeez, Gabey. Don't you know why females get pregnant?” Tommy said, and we all laughed.

Then Gabe punched Tom's arm. “Shut up.”

“She's obviously thinking she's settling in,” I said. “I don't want her to clean us out. Or start looking at Reno. Or me.”

“So why doesn't your dad just go out and bag her?” Gabe asked.

“Fish and Game's not doing anything, but he wants to give them time to deal with it because it's the law.” I know my friends thought my dad, so boring and teacherlike, never took risks and always followed rules. My nose was running and I wiped the sleeve of my coat across it. “I think we should follow the creek up. Tommy, you can go on one side and me and Gabey'll go on the other since he doesn't have a gun.”

“Yeah, and he probably tastes better, too. He kind of smelled like bacon this morning when he came and woke me up,” Tommy lied, grinning, trying to scare Gabriel.

Bacon. Meat. I could feel my stomach rising in my throat, the pepper and vinegar taste of vomit burning in the back of my nose.

“Shut up,” Gabe said. Then he smelled his hands.

“Anyway, I think she's got a place where she's staying in that dark stand of pines right in back of our corral, so that's where we really want to be careful.”

Tommy pulled his pistol from his coat pocket and cocked it to chamber a round. I loaded my rifle's single-shot breech.

“Okay, then, let's go.” Tommy held out a fist, sideways. Gabe and I hammered down on it with ours.

And Tommy walked right across the creek, sloshing water up to the knees of his jeans. When he got to the other side we all began following the creek up behind our house.

I told Tom and Gabe about my dad making me gut that turkey. Gabe groaned and said it sounded “sick,” but Tommy just held his fingers over his mouth and gave me a dirty look because I was talking too loud. I didn't say anything after that, but I did give him a dirty look back, and we made our way deeper into the darkness of the quiet woods.

I felt different that morning, like something had been emptied out of me. But it wasn't an emptiness from not eating, it was something more. As I lifted my soggy feet over the slick rocks and brush on the forest floor, I thought about how Rose told me I'd be giving things up; and I believed that what she said was beginning to make sense.

I played at being grown-up when I was a kid, but it was something I could always snap right out of. I guess all boys want to be grown-up when they're little. So as we walked along, I glanced over at Tommy and back at Gabe from time to time and tried to picture them from my earliest memories, just to see if they looked different, too, in some way from the boys I knew. And Gabe said, “What?” when he caught me looking at him, but I just turned my head away and said, “Nothing.” Tom wiped his sleeve across his nose.

And if I closed my eyes, I could almost see Luz and me sitting beside each other in that truckload of hay.

My friends and I went out there to kill something, and I couldn't help myself considering the weight of that, feeling a bit excited, looking back at Gabriel, seeing him bite at his lip, while Tommy just slogged along through the mud and moss across the creek from us, as quiet as if he weren't even there.

I gotta pee,” Gabriel whispered, and turned toward a tree.

I looked across the creek and saw Tom's silhouette moving stiffly from black trunk to black trunk; like a ghost, or like the way, sometimes, you can see a big owl flying at night, blacker than the sky itself and not even making the slightest noise.

We were trying to be as quiet as we could now. We had moved past my house, beyond where I had seen the cat vanish those two times.

Tom didn't notice we had stopped. He kept following the edge of the creek, sometimes ducking under branches or broken saplings, then out of my sight and into the dark. It was still raining, but most of it was getting held up in the treetops, so I was only feeling an occasional drop or two. When I closed my eyes, the sound of the erratic dripping was like a slow fire.

“Are you done yet? Tommy's way up ahead.”

Gabe didn't say anything. He was still turned away from me, hands down. I heard something move in the trees near where Gabe had been peeing.

“I heard that,” I whispered.

“Do you think that's it?” Gabe said, almost inaudibly, as he fumbled with his fly.

“Shhh.” I raised my rifle, pointing it past Gabriel's ear.

“What am I gonna do, Troy?”

“Get behind me, but don't make noise.”

“Aw hell! I peed on my leg.”

We stood there for what seemed like twenty minutes, Gabe behind me, both of us breathing with our mouths open, just listening to what we could—the creek, rain, birds now and then. The sun was starting to gray the sky.

Something moved.

I saw the cat. She was only about ten feet away, just looking at us with that dispassionate stare, unafraid.

“Do you see her?”

“Oh my God,” Gabe whispered, his mouth about an inch from my ear. “Troy. Let her go.”

It was like an optical illusion. She was right there, enormous, plainly visible. But her coloring and markings made her almost transparent among the tree trunks and dirt and decay on the forest floor.

“I'm going to shoot her,” I said, so low I almost couldn't hear it myself.

“Don't!” Gabe hissed. “Please, Troy. Let her just go away. Please.”

“I can't, Gabey.”

I lined the sight of my rifle. I pointed at the side of her shoulder. There was a bit of a branch in the way; I couldn't tell if it was a tree or part of her. I aimed right into her eye.

“We can't just stand here till she goes away. I'm going to kill her.”

I don't mind saying that I was scared. I watched my sight shaking on, then off target. I breathed in deep, exhaled, tried to loosen my shoulders, my grip on the trigger.

On target.

As I fired, Gabriel pushed the gun away. I could hear the bullet striking tree limbs, cutting so far away, so fast.

“What the hell, Gabey!”

I pulled the bolt back, the shell arced noiselessly, glinting a dull brass streak over my shoulder. I could see the pink of the cat's tongue in her open mouth, jerking back and forth with her panting like some kind of bouncing toy. Her amber eyes, brassy like the bullet shell, were fixed right on Gabriel as he crouched down by my side and whimpered, “Don't, Troy. Please!”

I jammed my hand down into my pocket and fumbled for another bullet. Without taking my eyes from the lion, I slid the bullet into its seat and bolted the rifle again.

“Damn you, Gabey. You touch me again and I'm gonna shoot
you
.”

I heard him breathing; staccato, like he was crying.

I raised the rifle again. The cat was hunching down, lowering herself under a fallen black and rain-slick sapling, still watching Gabriel, coming toward us. Her head came out from beneath the small tree. I fired.

“Got her!”

Right in the eye; I was sure of it.

She howled quickly, a sound that I could only have imagined before. I could smell her, now just paces away. She leapt straight up into the air and flipped over backwards, hind legs tucked up to her belly like an acrobat. She landed with a soft thud, back on her feet.

I pulled the bolt back quickly, the spent shell ejecting and bouncing off Gabriel's raised arm. I reached down into my coat pocket and nervously tried to push another bullet into the breech, but it went in crooked. I couldn't get it in the gun.

“Troy!” Gabe spun around and bolted off, through the trees toward the creek. I could hear him running, crashing, splashing away.

The cat was standing on all fours. It shook its head several times, slinging blood, like she was shaking off a bad dream.

She was coming at me.

I pulled the crooked bullet out of the breech to try to straighten its seating. I dropped it, felt it hit my boot and bounce away. I grabbed another from my pocket, brought it up to the open rifle.

She was hardly bleeding, stepping slowly through the damp underbrush as though nothing were wrong. Did I miss? She shook her head back and forth like she was saying, “No. You shouldn't have done that.”

Getting closer.

I got it loaded. I raised my rifle and fired before I even had my eye on the notch of the sight.

I missed badly. I thought about running, but decided to hit her with my rifle if I had to. I didn't think I'd get another chance to load, and my hands were shaking too much anyway.

Then that roar. That familiar roar of Tommy's .40 caliber, pulling shots off, and in between the explosions, the sound of the shells ejecting, whizzing past me, hitting trees.
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

The cat collapsed, deflated.

“You okay, Stotts?”

I exhaled. That was all I could do.

“You are insane, man. Just insane.” Tom put his hand on my shoulder. “Gabey! Gabey! We got it! Gabey!”

Gabe was across the creek.

I realized I had dropped my rifle. I picked it up. I could hear Gabriel slogging back across the water, breathing hard.

I sat down right where I was. I felt the wet of the ground soak through my pants.

“Thanks, Tom. I owe you five dollars.”

“I'll take it.”

Tom dangled a fist in front of me. Numbly, I punched his knuckles.

Gabe looked white and sick. He dropped an open hand to help me to my feet. I didn't look at him.

“Troy. You're sitting in piss.”

“Thanks, Gabey. Thanks.” I dropped my head down between my knees and just sat like that, not saying anything, for what must have been at least five minutes.

Gabriel started to cry.

“I'm sorry, Troy.”

“Stotts? What happened?”

I kept my head down. “Nothing. You didn't do anything, Gabey.”

I put my hand up for him, but Tommy pulled me up. Gabe had his face buried in his arm and was leaning into a tree, shuddering as he cried quietly.

“What's wrong with him?” Tommy said.

“Nothing.”

I should have known better than to ask Tom Buller to bring him along that day. I knew how Gabriel was, how he was so scared of everything, a rabbit in a world of wolves. He was always falling apart under the least pressure; like he almost did the day Tommy was bitten by the snake, but I had known that boy since he was a baby and I loved him almost as much as I loved his sister.

I put my arm on Gabriel's shoulder and lowered my face right next to his ear. I whispered, “It's okay, Gabey. It's okay. I didn't mean to—”

“Troy!” He was crying hard and had to wait a bit before he could say anything. “I'm sorry I made you mad at me. I didn't want you to do it.” He had to breathe a few times before he could go on. “I just wanted her to go away. It's not her fault.”

“I know, Gabey. I know.”

“Jeez, you guys!” Tommy said, and I heard him spit. “That thing was about two seconds away from having you, Stotts.”

I felt so bad for Gabe. I guess I almost started to cry a bit then, too, looking at that beautiful animal lying there in the dirt, wanting Gabriel to be bigger than he was. I heard Tommy stepping over the sapling and then I took Gabriel away from that tree, with my arm tight on his shoulder and we turned around and saw what Tommy and I had done.

The lion was slumped down, lying on her side, head curled under her shoulder.

I heard Tommy click the hammer down on his pistol.

“Well, boys, let's have a closer look at that kill.”

The lion was huge, thick, and heavy. I was the first to touch her, amazed at the texture and depth of her fur. Her eyes were like yellowed glass, fixed open. I had hit her in the eye socket, but it seemed like such a trivial wound, like the bullet had just smoothly passed beneath her eyelid. Blood ran down the side of her muzzle like tears. We grabbed her feet to roll her over straight. The feet were as big around as my opened hands. I pushed her pads in to reveal her black, sharp claws.

You could tell she was moving good when Tommy shot her. None of the bullet holes matched up in a straight line from one side to the other, as each bullet found its way in and out of her. She gave off very little blood from these wounds.

We were all sad. I could feel it. Looking at that cat, I couldn't help but wonder what she had been thinking, where that thinking part of her was at that moment. And I pictured my mother, the last time I saw her, eyes open and quiet, the same as the cat's, with an expression that looked like she'd run headfirst into something she thought she could break and then just didn't care about anymore.

Gabe's face was streaked with his tears and he wiped at his nose with the slick sleeve of his jacket.

And she was so beautiful and impressive, lying so still there in the wetness of the forest.

“I'm sorry, cat,” I said. “We had to do it.”

Then I heard Gabe crying again, swallowing hard. I looked at Tommy and knew he was upset, too. He just didn't have that gleam in his eyes, and when he saw me watching him, he turned away and spit at the ground. With all the reckless ease that Tom Buller absorbed the bad things that happened to him, he could still get so pained when he saw an animal or one of his friends suffering, and that was one of the things I liked most about him. Neither one of us was going to give Gabey a hard time about the crying. I didn't need to say that to Tom Buller, and he didn't need to say it to me, either.

Tom crouched down beside me, kneeling at the cat. We both touched her side. Tommy put a finger to one of the bullet holes, dipping it past his fingernail into the blood. He made a line with the blood above his nose, right in the middle of his forehead, and then he tasted the blood from his finger.

He swallowed and straightened the look on his face. “Okay, pine cone, what kind of medicine is this one?”

I breathed out, watching a sort of fog form between me and the lion, mixing with the fading heat from her body. I knew. I remembered.

“Ghost medicine.” I swallowed, a lump in my throat.

I took the middle two fingers of my right hand and wiped at the blood on the lion's face. Then I made two lines down over my own right eye, starting above the eyebrow, ending at my cheek.

“I'm sorry, cat.”

Ghost medicine. I could feel it, too.

Then Tommy said, “What's it do?”

“You know how you can look right at ‘em and not see ‘em? The cats, I mean. How they move so quiet? They're like ghosts.”

The rain was crackling its fire sound through the trees. A wind blew through the tops, saying, “Ssshhhhhhhh.”

“It makes you like that. Like a ghost. So people can look right at you, but not see you if you don't want them to.”

I put my fingers in the blood again and marked across my other eye. I closed my eyes. And then I tasted the blood, too.

“And it does something else, too.” When I took my hand from my mouth I could taste how that blood was still living. “It makes the other ghosts leave you alone. It's everything you could ever want.”

“Damn, Stotts,” Tommy said, and looked at the red smear on his fingertip. “You joining the tribe, Gabey?”

Gabe didn't say anything. He was breathing hard, still kind of crying. He dropped to one knee beside us. He put a thumb to one of the side wounds, like he was being fingerprinted for arrest, and, expressionless, smeared a slash of blood across his cheek.

“There's no way I'm tasting it,” he said, and wiped his thumb on his pants. “You guys are sick.”

“I got her with that first shot. See it? I knew I did. She would've died.”

“Yeah. Of old age. Or maybe she would've choked to death trying to swallow your skinny carcass in one bite,” Tommy said. “Anyway, we could get in lots of trouble for this. It's against the law, you know. So maybe we should just get the hell out of here.”

I couldn't do that now.

“Let's go back to the truck and get a shovel so we can bury her,” I said.

And we all three, painted and worn, made our way back along the creek to that little bridge. And along the way we talked about Tommy's difficult horse, that Goat Woman and her twenty-four-pound cat and the horses we'd be getting from her soon, and Gabriel's older sister. And then Tommy grinning and pretending that he couldn't see me and Gabe anymore because we had disappeared.

And as we walked through the woods, wet past our knees, Tommy waved his hands in the air, smiling and acting like he was trying to feel where his invisible friends had gone.