Ghost Medicine (25 page)

I dropped the hay right on top of my feet and fumbled with the latch on the gate. Gabe just stood there, pale, dumbstruck.

“Tommy! Tommy!” I called out.

I swung the gate open and left it there. Gabe held on to it and put his chin on the top rail.

“Oh God. He killed him.” Gabe's voice sounded soft and high, like a little boy's. He put his head on his arm and started to cry.

I dropped to my knees beside the little horse. Tom came into the stall behind me. The mare lowered her ears and turned around, as though to kick at me, but Tommy shooed her out and closed the gate behind her, trapping her in the outer part of the pen. He turned around, looked over at Gabe, and then down at me and the colt.

I rubbed the colt's ribs, cold and hard.

“I'm sorry, Gabey,” I said. “Poor little guy.”

Outside, the mare cried. It was a terrible sound, repetitive, panicked, lost, and defeated. I could tell she knew that the little one was dead, but, like all mothers, she wasn't going to stop trying to call him back.

Gabriel said nothing, face in his folded arm, covered with that dirty white Stetson.

Tommy spit. “It ain't right, Stotts. It just ain't right.”

I heard the clanking of the mare's nose pushing at the outer stall gate.

“I better get my dad out here.”

I walked numbly from the stall, stopping by Gabriel. I put my arm around his shoulder and pushed my face down under the brim of his hat.

“I'm sorry, man,” I whispered. “It'll be okay. We'll fix things.”

I heard him say, “We can't.”

I walked away. Gabe went inside the stall and knelt down beside the colt, wiping his nose along the back of his arm.

My dad insisted on calling Clayton Rutledge, even though each of us pleaded with him not to, and the deputy showed up later that morning just after the vet's truck had come and hauled off the dead foal.

Those arrows were barbed, and I couldn't bring myself to pull them out. The one in his belly had gone all the way through him, and I just pushed it clean through and pulled it out the other side. There was a sickening sucking sound and an awful smell as it passed from his body. I don't know why I wanted to keep that arrow, as if it would offer any testimony as to who shot it. My hands were sticky with blood. The arrow was entirely a foul black, feathers clotted with the colt's blood.

Tommy, Gabe, and I didn't need to say anything; we knew who'd killed the horse.

“We should leave,” Gabe said when the sheriff ‘s Bronco pulled up to the house.

From beside the barn, we could all see there were two people in that black-and-white. Chase Rutledge, wearing that permanent baseball cap, sat in the passenger seat up front. I looked at Tommy and Gabe. It was as though we were all looking at a ghost.

“I still want to go,” Tommy said.

“Hell,” Gabe said. “Let's leave.”

The horses were ready.

“Let's go then,” I said.

And we quietly got onto our horses and headed out past the barn toward our apple orchard. I never looked back, afraid that I'd see them all there watching us go.

“He's gonna be pissed,” Tommy said.

“The deputy or my dad?”

“All of ‘em, probly,” Gabe said, and wiped across his nose with the back of his hand.

And we rode through the apple orchard, all of us sitting higher than the treetops, sitting on those big, good horses. The tree branches were getting heavier with green fruit, bending them down like willows. In minutes we had passed through the cuts in our fence and were heading up into the cover of the taller trees on those steeply rising mountains with the two granite fingers pointing up into a cloudless and hot blue sky.

We rode up into those mountains, me and Reno in the lead, along the course of the rushing river, fuller, angrier, whiter than it had been in June.

Just past noon we made it to the spot where I'd set up camp that first night, near the waterfall and amid a stand of redwoods. We rested the horses and had a lunch of beef jerky and canned pudding.

Three arrows. I didn't want to say it, didn't need to. I knew they were thinking the same thing. Three arrows. Three of us. And me, wishing I didn't always see signs in things. I carried that blackened arrow up there with me, hopeful that it would offer us something, or, better, break what had fallen on top of us.

“This sure is a pretty spot,” Gabe said.

“I slept right here under this tree,” I said. “Slung my food bag up over there, ‘cause of bears.”

I pointed to a branch, perpendicular to its massive redwood trunk.

“If we stay here long, we better sling Gabey up there,” Tom said. “He's got chocolate pudding all over his face.”

“Shut up. I bet bears would eat tobacco if they could,” Gabe said. “There's a picture of one on your can.”

There was an edge in Gabriel's voice. He was still hurting, and Tom looked apologetically at us both.

I got up and went to the edge of the river, lying flat on my belly on the warm white granite rocks to put my face down and drink. I wiped my mouth dry with the front of my T-shirt.

“We could make it all the way up there by dark if you think the horses'll hold up,” I said.

Tom came over and took a drink, too, then pulled a can of tobacco from his back pocket.

“I think we should keep going,” Tom said. “We'll take it easy and if it gets dark before we get there, we can just set up camp for the night. Here.”

He tossed me the can of tobacco. I took some.

We both looked at Gabe, who was licking the inside of his pudding container.

“It's okay with me,” he said, standing up to join us at the river's edge.

We got back onto our horses and continued up the mountain, following the sound of the rushing water. Eventually we came to the meadow where I had fallen asleep and then fell from Reno, busting my head open on a rock. I swore I found that exact rock and pointed it out to Tom and Gabe.

“Yeah,” Tom said, “that rock does pretty much match the dent in the back of your head, Stotts.”

I spit.

“Why do you think he came this morning?” Gabe said. “Chase, I mean.”

“He probly wanted to see what we looked like. After finding Gunner,” I said. “Just to see our faces, I bet.”

“I woulda kind of liked to see his face,” Tommy said. “ ‘Cause I bet he's got a good black eye where you kicked him, Stotts.”

“I hope he had to sit on a pillow to get in his dad's Bronco,” Gabe said.

“Anyone who'd do that to a little horse,” I said. “I don't think he's done yet.”

“Neither do I,” said Tom.

I heard Gabriel sigh. Then he started to whistle.

He was scared.

There was still an hour or so of light left when we arrived at that clear cold pond up where the tree line ended, and there was still plenty of snow, turning pink with the dusk, left on the rocky peaks above, and those two pale fingers poking up, one looking a little more crooked, as though it could topple at any time.

The pond looked bigger, calmer. I could see the dark stand of trees around on the north side where I had found that cabin.

“It's over there,” I said. “Let's hope nobody's home.”

I looked at Gabe. He looked a little nervous, and shifted in his saddle.

“I could go check it out first,” I said. “I know the place pretty good.”

“I'm coming with you,” Tommy said.

“I'm not scared,” Gabe lied.

So we rode around the shore of the pond, me pointing out the place up on the peak where I had found the plane and telling my friends how easy it was to get the fish here. There was no sign that anyone had been up here, no evidence that even Luz or myself were here at one time. The cabin looked exactly as I had left it.

“Dang,” Tom said, “you wouldn't even notice it if you didn't know it was here. It's like part of the mountain.”

“Let's go in.”

We left the horses on the side of the cabin by that old steel trough and walked slowly to the open doorway. Everything was still there: the table by the window with the plate and the forks exactly where I had left them, the wooden Coke crate on the wall, the two books resting atop it, the plank bed where Luz had slept as I held her hand, the old stove, and even the coffee grounds from the coffee she had made were clumped and dry, like old tobacco, in its belly.

“This place is great!” Tom said.

“Let's bring our stuff in and get some wood for a fire,” I said.

When we were all settled into the cabin, my sleeping bag on that plank bed and the others spread on the floor, we got a fire going in the belly of the stove. It was dark, and we were all hungry and sat where we could to eat potato chips and the sandwiches Tom had made that morning.

“Man, I could live in a place like this,” Tom said.

“You do,” I said.

“Hey Stotts, you remember that turkey you had to butcher?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I brought another to butcher up here.” And Tommy went to his knapsack and pulled out a gleaming bottle of Wild Turkey whiskey.

“You're out of your mind, Tom.”

“Not yet, Stottsy. Not yet.”

“Count me out,” Gabe said. “I'm not getting drunk with you guys again.”

Tommy twisted away at the top of the bottle, then waved it under his nose, sniffing. The look on his face convinced me he had never tasted whiskey before, but I could smell it, too, across the cabin. Then Tommy looked at me with that wry coyote smile of his, squinting his eyes so they sparkled in the little light thrown out from the open stove, and he put that bottle to his mouth and tipped back his head. When he brought the bottle down he bent forward at the waist and blew out his mouth, shaking his head. Then he coughed like he had been punched in the stomach.

“That doesn't exactly look fun, Tom,” I said.

“You tell me,” and he stretched his arm out to me, head down, offering the bottle.

“One time,” I said. “That's it.”

I held my breath so I wouldn't smell the whiskey as I brought the bottle up to my mouth. It was like jumping from a bridge, you didn't want to stay at the edge thinking about things; so I just put the mouth of the bottle inside my lips and tipped back, filling my mouth full and willing myself to swallow that entire dose in one gulp. My stomach contracted and churned, and I had to fight the urge to throw up. I bent my head forward, shaking it as Tom had, feeling that burn like molten metal tracing its path down my throat toward my belly.

I couldn't talk. Tears were pooling in my eyes. I looked over at Gabe.

“No way,” he said.

I gave the bottle back to Tommy, who took a couple quick breaths like a swimmer about to go under, and then he took another long swig. This time it didn't appear to hit him so hard. He held the bottle back, admiring its label, as if to make sure it was the same stuff he had just drank a moment ago. He gave the bottle back to me.

“The second one's real smooth,” he said.