Ghost Medicine (9 page)

I stepped on the headless snake at the tail end and cut the rattle off. As I cut, the body still twisted and coiled and tried to crawl away from me. Gabriel was in shock, frozen, staring down at Tommy, afraid to move.

Sometimes I wanted to take hold of Gabriel and shake him so hard. I can't really blame him for having no confidence, because I know he understood his father believed Luz was so much better and smarter and that Gabriel could never be man enough to run that ranch. But at times I still angrily hoped that my friend could snap out of his runt-of-the-litter complex, at least when he was with Tom and me; especially when we needed him.

I still had the open Dawson in my hand, the rattle in my left.

Tom was lying on his left side, rocking, clutching his right knee, and moaning.

And I didn't know whether I should laugh or cry, or just kick him for being so reckless, but I heard myself saying out loud, “I can't get mad at Tom Buller for being Tom Buller.” Then I spit and wished I had some more of that tobacco.

“You'll be okay, bud. Here.” I knelt beside him and stuffed the rattle down into Tom's hip pocket.

Gabe still hadn't moved.

“I'm going to need some help, Gabe,” I said and he took the few careful steps over the log toward us.

“Sorry, Tommy, we're going to need to see how bad it got you. If it's bleeding and deep or just in the skin,” I said and then began cutting up the side seam of his jeans from the bottom. “Pull that boot off, Gabe.”

Gabriel pulled Tommy's boot away and I cut his pants up just past the knee.

“It burns so bad!” Tommy said. “Oh God, I'm going to puke.”

“What're we going to do?” Gabe asked, his voice cracking.

“Listen, it's going to be okay. Just do what I tell you, Gabe. You're not the one who's bit.”

“Man, it feels like your horse is standing on my leg. It hurts really, really bad, Troy.”

That's when I knew he was in bad shape. He used my first name. I saw the little pink holes where the rattler had bitten into Tom's leg, and it was striking to me how insignificant they seemed compared to the amount of pain Tom appeared to be in.

“Yeah, you're bit. But it's just under the skin so it's not too bad.”

“Yes it is, Stotts.”

“Are you going to have to suck the poison out?” Gabriel asked.

“No. That's not what you do.” I couldn't believe Gabriel had lived up here all his life and didn't know what to do for a rattlesnake bite. Everyone knew, I thought. But I did find myself remembering about what to do from reading it in a book.

“I'm going to get that chew, Tom,” I said, and winced as I put my fingers into his mouth and pulled out his wad of tobacco. “You don't want that in your mouth right now. Here.” I pressed the chewing tobacco down over the bite marks.

“My mouth tastes really bad, Stotts. What did you have on your hand?”

“Nothing. That's the poison. It'll do that to you. Come on.” And I grabbed his right arm away from his leg and put it around the back of my neck.

“Gabe, you got to help me walk him down to the shade by the horses,” I said. “We're going to sit him up against the tree. You keep him sitting up and keep him cool. Put water on his head and give him some to drink if he'll take it. I'm going to ride Reno out to the Foreman's house and call for help. Got it?”

“I can do that,” Gabriel said.

We got Tommy seated against the tree. He was yellow and sweaty and his mouth just hung open like there was something in it you couldn't see. I grabbed the three canteens we had with us and tossed them down on the ground by Gabriel.

“Don't tie it off, either,” I said. “I'll get help. They'll probly send a helicopter.”

And then I wiped back Tommy's hair from his clammy forehead. “You're going to be okay, bud. You're tougher than any twenty-four-pound house cat.”

“But will I ever dance again, Doc?”

“Don't worry, Tommy,” I said, “Christy McCracken's already got the tickets for the end-of-school dance.”

I heard Gabriel laugh nervously behind me. I wondered if he was picturing those two all over each other at the dance back in May.

“If I wasn't about to throw up all over myself, I'd slug you for that.”

I got up onto Reno's saddle.

“Stotts,” Tommy said to me, his open mouth slurring the words slightly, staring down at his knee, which was swelling now, “for once in your life, ride him hard and don't fall off.”

I held on to Reno, tight and low against his neck. I let him go. I had never ridden him this fast before, I had always struggled with holding him back because he was so big and strong for someone my size.

Do you like him? Because I know he likes you very much, and sometimes these things just happen with horses.

He's a great horse, Mr. Benavidez.

He's for you, Troy. Take him home.

What? Why?

I was only thirteen years old, and sitting on Reno was like being stopped at the top of a Ferris wheel. He was so big, and his front feet were dancing like he wanted to bolt from a starting gate. Mr. Benavidez was holding him steady and when he saw I had my tennis shoes in the stirrups and had pushed my black Stetson down across my eyebrows, tight, he let go.

He's mine?

I'm sure he is.

Thank you, Mr. Benavidez.

You are welcome, Troy.

I looked up at the mountains, their granite fingers. Sweat, salty, stinging, blurred my eyes. I looked up to that cross-shaped airplane, where it would be if I could see through those rocks.

He'll be okay, he'll be okay.

Reno pushed so hard and I stayed on him, holding the reins loose and steering him with my face and shoulders, pressed against his thick pumping neck. I felt like Tommy Buller, a real rider. I wished he could see us cutting across the south field toward his house.

I called for rescue at the Foreman's house. Carl hadn't come back yet, and, as usual, the doors had been left standing open. Then I phoned the Benavidez house, and Luz, worried, rode out to meet me on my way back to the south field. The helicopter was already landing by then.

Tommy spent four days in the hospital, and after he got out he never walked entirely straight again. Part of the danger of living where we did, up in the mountains, was that in an emergency you had to handle things yourself or wait for help and hope for the best. A lot of the kids we went to school with didn't like the fact that it was thirty miles to the nearest movie theater, but there were no such things as stoplights up here either, and Tom and I liked that just fine. So his knee never recovered entirely from the rattlesnake bite, but Tom Buller never complained about it, either.

We knew Tommy wasn't supposed to get on a horse so soon, but he just waited until Carl wasn't paying too much attention, which wasn't much of a wait, and rode out to meet us at the fire pit the day after he got home from the hospital.

“You should see what it did to my leg,” Tommy said. “It turned so black and puffy, I looked like something you'd find floating facedown after a flood. It's still so purple, I don't know if it will ever look right.”

“Let me see,” Gabriel said.

Tommy pulled his jeans' leg up slowly over the top of his boot past his knee. The wound looked horrible. The flesh was separated and brilliant red where the doctors had to cut the dead tissue away, stitched together with thick black fibers. It looked so painful, but Tommy just smiled and poked at the edges with his finger.

“Are you gonna be okay, Tom?” I asked.

“It feels like my knee's never going to work right again,” Tommy said, slightly bouncing as he pushed his pants back over his boot. “But you gotta see this.”

He lifted his shirt up past his bony ribs and pulled the waist of his jeans down as the smoke from our fire curled around his pale body like the hand of some giant ghost. Gabe and I saw the tattoo of the rattlesnake on his right hip. It was small and black, with diamonds on its back, looking like it was crawling along his belly toward his heart.

“Did it hurt?” I asked.

“Not as much as getting bit,” Tommy said, “but it hurt pretty good. It still hurts a little.”

“That's a good one,” Gabe said.

“You should've gotten one of a forty caliber, too,” I said.

“I would've, but the guy couldn't draw it.”

Tom was lying, grinning. We knew he had drawn it himself. He could draw anything.

“Oh shut up,” Gabriel said.

“When did you do it?” I asked.

“Last night. I went to Holmes.”

I leaned in to Tommy and looked closely at the inked figure on his skin. It was so black where the ink had gone in, it almost looked like velvet, but the flesh around the clean edge of the snake was pink and swollen. I held my finger just above the tattoo, and I could feel the heat from Tommy's side, and then I touched him.

“Ow!” Tommy yelped suddenly, and I nearly jumped out of my shoes.

Then Tom and Gabe started to laugh wildly, and I swatted Tom's hat from his head, feeling foolish for being startled so badly.

“Why'd you do that, anyway?”

“What? Scare you?” Tommy asked.

“No.” I pointed at his hip. “Why'd you get that?”

“I don't know,” Tommy said. “I guess it's kind of a warning to me. Maybe it's a warning to the other snakes out there. So it'll keep ‘em away.”

“Or maybe it will attract ‘em,” I said. Then I looked right at Tommy, could see him watching me, the small pulses of our fire reflecting in his eyes. “I was scared about the whole thing, Tom. You know?”

“I know,” Tommy said. “And thanks, Stotts.”

Tommy just smiled that bent-up confident grin he always wore, looking down in admiration at the black snake crawling across his belly and then he let his shirt fall back down to cover it.

You sure are one scrawny little cowboy, Tennis Shoes.”

“Everyone says that. I can't help it.”

“I guess as long as you're sitting in a saddle your pants'll stay up anyways.”

I went back to Rose's by myself a few days later. I brought her some tobacco and a little brown kitten I'd picked up in front of the market in Holmes. I told her it was named Tobacco. I had gotten Carl Buller to buy me a jug of that wine I saw outside her place. He thought it was for me. I didn't say anything. I watched Rose open it. We were sitting outside her front door on two folding chairs I had dragged out from inside the place. Reno was standing, drinking at the trough.

“Those bottles out there. It's not ‘cause I liked the stuff, particularly. Winery people gave it to me. Ha! Winery people. Looking at my land. Wanting to put grapevines on it. So I told ‘em not to come up here if they didn't bring some wine next time. So you know what they did? They delivered twenty cases.

And I never had any idea to sell to ‘em anyway. I told ‘em if you planted grapes here in this ground, they'd come out tastin' like cows and horses. Ha! You want some, boy?”

“I'm too young.”

“There's no laws on my land.”

“My name's Troy. Troy Stotts.”

“That's a strong name for a boy. And the other one, your brother—the one with black hair that wears them boots?”

“Tom. He's not my brother. He's still not walking right from that snake bite.”

“Snake? Ha! He got bit? Did he swell up?”

“Well, he turned colors. That's for sure.”

“Did I ever tell you about that twenty-four-pound cat I had?”

“Yes.”

“Well, every time I go into town, they never have no cats, so thank you, Troy Stotts, ‘cause this one'll be a good one.”

“Did you walk all the way to town?”

“I got a station wagon out there. But it's no good, really. I got a lawyer who takes care of my money and pays my land taxes for me, that's why I went. You got a girl?”

“Yes.” I thought about Luz. I had never said such a thing out loud, and wondered if the saying made it true.

“She pretty?”

“Yes. She's smart, too.”

“Then you better be careful. What's her name?”

“Luz.”

Rose smiled. She patted my knee softly with a wrinkled hand. “Don't mind the things you give up. We all do it.”

“What?”

“What you have to give up to go and make her yours. Don't mind it. But don't forget it, neither.”

I didn't know what she was talking about, so I just pretended like I did, kept my mouth closed, and nodded.

Rose patted my knee again and said, “You'll be okay, Tennis Shoes. I can tell that.”

“You said me and Tom could come back and get some horses.”

“I knew you liked ‘em. I could see it right away. Of course you can get yourselves horses. I said it, didn't I? I don't ride ‘em. I hardly even get ‘em any feed but once in a while.”

“We'll bring some hay next time.”

“Will you move some more wood in then?”

“I'll do it right now.”

“Thanks for the cat, boy. I don't think this one'll get that big, though.”

“You got a big black mare out there that looks pregnant. She's real pretty. And she looks mean, but I like that sometimes in a horse. As long as she's not crazy mean, you know? ‘Cause if she's not crazy mean then she'll be mine, and no one else's. You know that about horses?”

“Sounds like you want more than a couple horses for you boys.”

“I would.”

“Will you bring more tobacco?”

I never liked the sheriff ‘s son, Chase Rutledge. He was eighteen and had just graduated from school, so Tom, Gabe, and I had spent enough years dealing with his torments, name-calling, and otherwise just unlikable attitude. More than anything else, I think it was just a natural resentment Chase felt toward us and our friendship, something that he never had with the selfish and shallow punks who called themselves his friends. Growing up, he mostly left Tommy alone, though; most likely because Tom Buller had a reputation for being a real fighter, and Chase knew well enough about that.

So I kind of cringed when I rode Reno to Papa's store one night after work to buy some tobacco for Rose and saw Chase's best friend, Jack Crutchfield, standing alone on the deck outside the front door. And Jack, fat and mean, knew I was there but he didn't even look at me when I walked past him.

Inside I saw Chase, tall and dirty, the boy who rarely seemed to shower or put on anything clean. He was standing at the counter, arguing with George Hess, who refused to sell him whiskey.

Chase just stared at me, and I looked away, pulling my hat down straighter.

And when George handed me the tins of tobacco I'd asked for, I could almost feel the heat coming from Chase as he got madder.

“You'll sell that kid tobacco, but you won't sell me a bottle?” Chase whined, scratching the greasy hair under his baseball cap.

I cleared my throat, looked down, and waited for George to make my change.

“Tobacco's one thing,” George said, “but whiskey's out of the question, Chase. What would your dad say? And besides, I know this isn't for Troy. He doesn't chew. It's gotta be for Tommy or someone else. Isn't that right, Troy?”

I stuttered, “Uh, yeah.”

George handed me my change and, turning away from Chase, I wadded it up and stuffed it with the tobacco into my back pocket. As I opened the door, I could hear Chase pleading, “Come on, George.”

And George Hess said, “I told you no, Chase. Now just get on home.”

Chase Rutledge slammed his hand down on the counter and followed me out.

I could tell Chase was wanting to make some kind of a scene, so I quickly began untying Reno's lead from the post in front of the store.

“Stotts.”

“What, Chase?”

Jack stood, breathing hard through his nose, right behind the sheriff ‘s son.

Chase looked both ways across the dark street. There was nobody else around. I knew he was looking to see if Tommy was with me.

“Go in there and ask George to sell you a bottle of whiskey.”

I took a deep breath.

Jack grunted. “Ask him, Troy.”

“He won't sell it to me, Chase,” I said.

“I bet he will. He thinks you're a good boy.”

Chase moved closer. I could smell him. I held Reno's lead in my hand, feeling trapped.

“Do it, Stotts,” Chase said, close enough that I could feel the heat of his breath.

“Forget it, Chase.”

“Think you can stand up to me without Tommy Buller around?”

I looked right at him. “Yeah. I do.”

Then Chase Rutledge said, “You're a pussy, Troy.” And before I could do anything about it, he balled up a fist and punched me in the gut. I doubled over and fell onto my hands and knees, still holding Reno's lead and jerking my horse forward. I must have stayed down there for more than a minute, trying to get my breath back, because when I cleared my head and straightened up, Chase and Jack were gone.

I heard them laughing somewhere out in the dark.

I never said anything to Tom or Gabriel about that night. I wanted to forget about it. But I was nagged by the feeling that I had to get even.

Every morning always began the same way at my house: feeding Reno, cleaning his stall while keeping an eye out for the turkey, feeding the goats, throwing scratch to the hens and cleaning their nest boxes, gathering any eggs laid during the night, although they tended to lay most in the afternoons. I liked the routine well enough, and I always loved mornings at my home most of all, the color of the sky, and the smell of the air. My dad told me that he always resented having to do the chores when he was a boy, but when we moved back after my brother died, I just naturally started doing them even though at first I was too small. At first, I think my dad wanted to forget everything about boyhood in general, and my mom hurt so bad that she just needed to try to find some cure, somehow, for the ghost of her older boy, so even at four years old I knew enough to leave them alone, especially in the morning, and I'd wake and find myself outside, breathing that air, seeing the colors of the stretched and slanted sun, trying to find something to do that would become my routine. But the morning after I brought Rose the kitten was when things began to take a turn away from those routine days that just happen and then are forgotten.

I could smell the coffee waiting for me in the kitchen. I had grown to appreciate coffee in the mornings, ever since the day Luz came up to that cabin and we had shared some. I'd drink some coffee, do my morning chores, and, while I was out, Dad would get some breakfast for me.

I slipped my feet into my loose shoes, put on a clean T-shirt and my hat, and went outside.

I swear Reno could hear me getting dressed because every morning as I put on shoes he began his usual chorus of feed-me calls from out in the barn. That morning, on top of his bellowing, I could tell he was running around inside his enclosure.

I stepped down the three wooden steps, the middle one a bit wobbly, onto the cool ground. In the hay room, I flaked off some alfalfa for Reno and the goats. I grabbed two small orange buckets and scooped some scratch into one and some sweetened four-way grain into the other.

You know how sometimes you can be so caught up in the hypnosis of a routine that the whole world could be on fire in the corner of your eye and you wouldn't really notice it until a burning tree fell on your head? Well, that's kind of how things worked out that summer morning, because something was terribly wrong, right in front of me, but I might just as well have been blind.

So it wasn't until after I had dropped some hay onto the ground for the goats, put Reno's in his feeder and fended off his usual barrage of nose pushes and nudging until I gave up the grain, and tossed some scratch out onto the dusty ground in front of the hen house, while looking out for that mean tom turkey of mine, that I noticed the large trail of blood like some gruesome treasure path leading out to the edge of the enclosure to a thick little stand of pines where a narrow creek flowed most of the year. I remember thinking,
Oh. Blood.
And it looked ridiculous, too, like spilled paint or clown's makeup, but I knew it was blood, it couldn't have possibly been anything else.

I first looked at Reno, at his legs and belly; but he looked fine. I walked toward the blood, got about halfway across the pen, and then my eyes followed the trail out toward the trees. Right on the other side of the pipe fencing, still and motionless, was a mountain lion. She was staring at me, her mouth open, panting noiselessly. Her muzzle and face were wet with blood, but it looked black, not like the candy-colored red streaming across the ground in front of me. Just below the bottom rail of the pipe corral, half-in, half-out of our enclosure, was the carcass of one of our small black goats.

The lion just watched me, as if to say: “Well, what are you going to do about it?” I looked down, but there was nothing to throw at her. I took my hat off, but I wasn't about to throw that. It wouldn't have gone far enough, anyway. So I flailed my hat around and began yelling, “Get out of here!”

Reno startled a little and trotted over to my side as I continued waving and yelling.

The lion took up the little goat in her jaws, pulled it backwards a few feet out of the enclosure, then disappeared into the darkness of the trees. I could hear her dragging the carcass, stepping heavily, snapping small twigs. Then she was just gone.

I heard the
whack!-whack-whack
of the screen door back at the house, then the sound of my father tramping across my worn path, following my footprints to where I stood, Reno beside me, staring down at the crazy redness in the corral. I wasn't scared, but my heart was thumping heavily, and I could feel the surge of caffeine and adrenaline pushing small pindrops of sweat out of my temples.