Past Crimes (4 page)

Granddad had told me that the cabin we were looking for was only fifteen minutes from the town of Gold Bar. I guess he was thinking about regular streets, because the rest of the drive took at least half an hour. It got even slower the farther we went, winding our way up into the hills. The roads changed from paving to gravel to hard-packed dirt. Granddad kept glancing at the directions he’d written down on a notepad, checking the odometer on the Cordoba’s dashboard to know when to turn.

He was mad. Maybe at how long it was taking us to get there. At least a little at me. He’d told me on the hour’s drive from Seattle that he was going to talk to a man about some guns. Not the sort you could buy in any shop, he’d said. I thought it was awesome. I asked a lot of questions. Granddad eventually told me to shut it.

So I read my X-Men comic books.
Tried
to read them. They had been building up to this big fight with Sabretooth for like a year, and I wanted to read it so much I’d brought the new issue along, and I never read stuff in the car. But now I couldn’t think about it. I wondered who sold guns way out here in the woods.

Finally the road widened into a clearing, and we pulled up to the cabin.

It was a dump. It looked as if a gigantic crooked woodpile had been quickly covered with tree sap and olive paint all mixed together. Its roof, if it had a roof, was hidden under layers of fallen leaves and millions of pine needles.

A guy was standing in the doorway, watching us. He was a grown-up, but short, and his face had baby fat. His brown hair stuck up in tufts. The face of a taller woman appeared
over his shoulder, peering at us through thick glasses. She was stout, dressed in brown overalls with a flannel shirt underneath. The man idly wiped some black grease off his fingers onto his purple Huskies sweatshirt.

“That’s Hazeldine. And Becky,” Granddad said, opening his door. “I’ll talk with them for a few minutes, and then he and I will head out.”

Granddad stepped from the car and zipped up his green parka. I stayed put, and after a moment he leaned in to look at me. “I should be back here before long,” he said.

I kept my eyes on the floor of the car. “Can’t I come?”

“I’ve answered that question enough times today.” He swept an arm wide, toward the line of giant pine and scrub brush. “You do what kids are supposed to do for once. Play in the damned woods.”

“There’s no trails here.” We’d brought my Giant mountain bike. Thinking that maybe I’d use it on an actual mountain, or at least something more than steep city streets.

Granddad’s jaw tightened. “So leave it on the back of the car and use your feet.”

I didn’t want to play in the damned woods. Granddad read my expression and shook his head angrily. “There’s no effing TV inside, and if there is, you’re not going in there anyway. Take some air. And take your coat.” He shut the door and walked toward the cabin.

I unlocked my bike from its rack on the back bumper and wheeled it into the forest. I left my coat in the car.

The constant shade had let moss spread over every surface, carpeting the dirt and making baseball-size clumps on the boulders. Gold Bar was at the western side of the Cascades. The first big foothills of the mountain range weren’t far away. I could feel them more than I could really see them. It was gloomy.

There was no way to ride my bike more than a few yards
without having to carry it over a boulder or a fallen tree. I left it lying on the ground and spent half an hour hunting for rocks and throwing them at tree branches, seeing how far back I could get and still knock off a chunk of bark.

The branches on the pine trees were too high and too far apart to climb. I clambered up onto the tallest boulder to see if I could see anything, but the forest was thick. Just more trees, everywhere I looked. I tried two more boulders before I gave up and sat down on top of the last rock. I wished I had my coat. The damp moss made my jeans wet, and I tore up clumps of it and made a pile while listening to crows squabble over their territories.

A car horn sounded. The Cordoba’s horn, I was pretty sure, returning to the cabin. But the cabin was in the other direction. Or was it? I was a little lost.

It sounded again, and I realized that the car was moving. I scrambled down from the boulder and ran toward it, so fast I nearly forgot my bike and had to double back to find it. I half pushed, half dragged it to the edge of the clearing, behind the cabin.

The Cordoba was stopped there. The driver’s door was open.

I froze, just staring at the car.

Granddad’s green parka had fallen half out of the open door. The parka was stained with something dark, and the fabric was split open. There were a few loose feathers scattered across the bucket seats and the floor. Like flower petals. White on the floor, turning pink where they touched the seats.

Because the driver’s seat of the Cordoba was drenched with blood. It started halfway down the ivory leather upholstery, as pink smears that thickened to purple in the vertical seams. I’d never seen so much blood.

“Fuck!” Granddad. From the front of the cabin. I came out of my daze and ran.

He was seated crookedly on the second step down, leaning with one hand on the railing. His light blue T-shirt was purple at the bottom, and his pants were even wetter than mine. His face was sweaty and pale.

“Hold still, goddamn it,” said the woman, Becky. She was pressing a wadded dish towel hard against Granddad’s lower back with one hand and fumbling in a cardboard box with the other.

I ran over. “What happened?”

She adjusted her hand on Granddad’s spine, and he hissed through clenched teeth.

“Where’s Haze?” Becky said.

“He ran off into the trees,” said Granddad.

“You sure?”

“He’ll be all right. No one’s chasing after him. I made damn well sure of that. Son of a whore, that hurts.”

“What happened?” I asked again.

Becky took another folded towel out of the cardboard box and put it on top of the soaked one on Granddad’s back. “I can’t just tape this up,” she said to him. “You’re cut too deep. You need an ER.”

The muscles in Granddad’s forearm shook where he clutched the railing. “Not out here, I don’t. I’ve a man in the city who can do for me. Patch it.”

“That’s not—” Becky began, and then sighed. “Screw it. Be an idiot. Kid, come here.” I took a couple of steps closer. “Come here. Go into the house, get the paper and pen on the table. And the big bottle of water. Get.”

I got. I was back in ten seconds, poised like a reporter with the pen. Becky took the bottle of water from me and unscrewed it with the same fingers. She took the towel off Granddad’s wound and poured the water over it. A pink wash dribbled down the cabin steps.

Becky was looking so closely at the wound she might have been smelling it. She braced her elbow against her thigh
and put pressure on it again. Sweat dripped from Granddad’s chin. He was muttering something in Irish.

“Write this down,” Becky said to me. “Sterile dressing. Not gauze. Get a bunch of it in the three-inch squares, or as big as they come. Two rolls of athletic tape. Saline wash. Some Neosporin. That comes in a tube, like toothpaste. And a box of Midol. You know what that is?”

“I’m not on my fucking time of the month, woman. Get codeine,” Granddad said. The words seemed to come with effort.

Becky grunted. “It has to be something your boy can buy off the shelves.”

Something
I
can buy? Where was I going to go?

“I can’t drive,” I said.

“Neither can I,” Becky said. “Not anymore.” She tapped her thick glasses, and it was then that I noticed a milky film over her eyes. “You’ll have to take your bike. Just keep going down the hill, turn right when you hit the asphalt. There’s a grocery store and drugstore about two miles on.”

“Wallet,” said Granddad. It was in his back pocket. The brown wool of his pants had turned black with blood.

“Go on,” Becky said, and I reached into Granddad’s pocket with three fingers and grabbed the leather corner of the wallet like I was grabbing a mouse by the tail. I stuffed it into my jeans.

“Fast as you can, now,” said Becky. “Understand?”

As I pedaled madly down the dirt road, I glanced back. Granddad and Becky hadn’t moved. Could I trust her with him?

Somehow the bike didn’t crash as it pounded down the long hill. I gripped the handlebars so hard that I mashed the plastic ridges flat. The wheels bounced over every rut and rock. My teeth chattered, and I bit my tongue more than once.

When I came to the paved road, I turned right like Becky had told me and pumped the pedals as fast as if Sabretooth himself were chasing me, fangs snapping.

The drugstore was a Price ’n Save. My legs shook as I got off the bike. I’d left my Kryptonite lock back on the Cordoba’s bike rack. No way I could risk someone stealing the bike. I wheeled it into the store.

I looked frantically over the rows until I found the one with the sign over it reading
FIRST AID.
Neosporin, okay. I cleared the shelf of dressing pads. Pain reliever was on the same row, and I found extra-strength Midol and some Advil like Granddad kept at home. Maybe he could take both. I grabbed some rolls of elastic bandage, too. It was hard to balance everything and hold the bike, and I put it all down and ran to the entrance to get a basket.

When I came back, a salesclerk in a light blue vest was standing over my bike. “You can’t bring that in here,” he said.

“Sorry,” I said. I tossed the pile of items into the basket and picked up the bike like I was ready to leave.

He didn’t move. “You gotta take that out.”

“Okay.” I nodded, checking Becky’s list. “Can you tell me where the saline wash is?”

“It’s by the contact-lens stuff. Aisle 3.” The salesclerk looked up from the bike to me. He wasn’t an adult, not really. Maybe not even out of high school. He had clusters of zits across his forehead and cheeks, which he’d spread cover-up makeup on. Gross.

“You all right?” he said.

I tried to slow my breathing. “Uh-huh. Yeah. I’ll take this outside.” I spotted a box labeled
SOLIBOND PLASTER
—
FOR DEEP CUTS
and scooped three of them into the basket.

“Somebody get hurt?”

“What? Oh. No. Nobody’s hurt.” I looked down at the pile in my basket. “It’s a school project. We’re doing first aid.
With a real fireman.” I hoped that was right. Did firemen know first aid? Or was that only the guys in the ambulances?

“Oh, all right.” He smiled broadly. “Here, you’ll want some of these, too. And these.” He took packets of antiseptic wipes and a whole box of plastic gloves off the shelves and put them in the basket without asking.

He followed me to Aisle 3 while I picked up the saline, and I nodded along with his suggestions.

“Thanks a lot,” I said. “Do you have anything else?” I took Granddad’s thick wallet out of my front pocket. The clerk’s eyes got wide.

“You know,” he said. “This is silly. We have some pro-quality first-aid kits in the back. Just like the medics use. That’s what you want, not all this junk. It’s a guaranteed A-plus.”

“It won’t cost too much?” I said.

He grinned. His teeth were crooked, the front two shoved back by the sides. “Tell you what. You give me fifty bucks and I’ll call it good. My employee discount.”

I smiled and nodded. We walked to the rear of the store, me still wheeling the bike, and he opened the door to the pharmacy. It was a quiet weekday afternoon. Nobody was in line to pick up a prescription.

“Hang loose,” he said. “I’ll go find one of the best ones.” He shot me a thumbs-up, and I returned it. Before the door closed behind him, I stuck the bike tire in the gap.

I was through the door the second he was out of sight. To my left was a wall of drugs. The filled prescriptions were on the upper shelves, in plastic bins. Cabinets took up the rest of the wall. A key was left in the cabinet door, for convenience maybe. I opened it.

Rows of generic-looking plastic cylinders filled one side, slim rubber-banded stacks of foil-packet pills on the other. Everything had stick-on labels in small, plain type. I didn’t
recognize any of the names. Nothing said
PAIN RELIEF OR ANESTHETIC OR THIS WILL KEEP YOUR GRANDDAD FROM DYING.
I was tempted to just start grabbing things, but I couldn’t hide much in my jeans or socks.

The salesdork couldn’t be much longer. I could hear him moving around in the back.

I was about to give up when I saw a small brown plastic bottle with a label that said
PERCOCET OH10MG
. I knew Percocet. A painkiller. Some sixth-graders at school had gotten busted for having it in their lockers, pills stolen from their parents. I’d thought they were stupid, keeping it where any janitor might look.

The bottle was half full of white oval tablets. And there were two more bottles. I took them all and tucked them under my belt, in the elastic of my underwear.

I was collecting my change from the cashier when the salesdork came running up, holding a huge tackle box. “Hey,” he said.

“Sorry, my mom’s calling. I gotta go.” I was on my bike before the automatic door slid closed behind me. Then I was across the parking lot and on the road and pointed east. Standing in the saddle, pumping hard to make the bike fly, the pills in their bottles rattling to keep time.