Sweetgirl (8 page)

“Shut up and take off your shoes,” he said. “That water is long boiled and I'm through with your distractions.”

He put his gloves back on and went to the stove, then picked up the pot and set it on the floor. I sat there and watched it steam while he pushed open the shanty door and grabbed a few handfuls of snow. He dropped the snow in the pot and then looked at me.

“Get on the floor,” he said. “And don't debate me on this.”

“What are you going to do?”

“You're a smart girl,” he said. “I think you can deduce the basics of the process.”

“Why'd you boil it, then put the snow in?”

“I boiled it to sterilize it. The snow's to bring the temperature down a bit. You don't treat frostbite with boiling water.”

Portis took the papoose off the woodstove and walked over to set it on the cot.

“This is nice and toasty now,” he said.

He took Jenna from my arms, put her down in the carrier, and then pushed the cot up against the wall. He nudged my shoulder and told me it was time.

I eased myself onto the floor and sat with my legs stretched out in front of me. I turned away while Portis unlaced my boots, then jerked when he went to remove the first one. It hurt like hell and I tried to wriggle free, but he grabbed my knee and held it to the ground while he pulled the boot clear off.

I clenched my teeth and grunted. There was sweat beading on my face already and I felt a flutter of nausea rise. He tugged the second boot off and when he peeled the socks away I pounded the floor with my fists.

“I know,” he said.

“Do you!”

“I can imagine. Let's just rest now for a second.”

I breathed out, looked down, and saw my toes were so purple-tinted and swollen, they looked like some damn eggplants. I let a whimper go and closed my eyes.

“It's like a picture in a medical book,” I said.

“Bad as it may seem,” he said. “This is still a before version of that picture. There's something worse comes after this.”

“Is it frostbite?”

“Yeah,” he said. “This qualifies.”

“Am I going to lose my toes?”

“No,” he said. “Not if we get them in this water.”

“How hot is that water?” I said.

“What's it matter if your toes already burn?”

“Just tell me.”

“I don't know,” he said. “Hot. But we'll let it sit for another minute.”

“How bad is it going to hurt?”

“I expect it'll hurt pretty bad,” he said.

Portis took a drink of the whiskey and then offered me the bottle. I refused, but not because I'm a martyr, or some anti-liquor crusader. I would have drunk the hell out of some wine coolers or peppermint schnapps, anything to dull the pain or distract me, but whiskey makes me puking sick and I wasn't ready to introduce that specter to the situation.

Portis reached out to help me stand, then slid the pot in front of me.

“When you step in,” he said. “Don't thrash around and go ass over elbows. If this water dumps, we got to start all over and do it a second time.”

“I'm going to try not to scream,” I said.

“It don't matter if you do or you don't. Just don't wiggle.”

“I don't want to wake Jenna. She'll be frightened.”

“Okay,” Portis said. “But you scream out if you need to. Jenna will be fine.”

“Goddamn it,” I said.

“I know.”

“I don't want to do this.”

“You'll do it just like Jenna did her diaper. You'll get through what you need to get through.”

“I can't believe I didn't have on better socks.”

“I can't believe you didn't say nothing.”

“I didn't want to slow us down.”

“That was a stupid thing to think.”

“I don't want you taking the sock from Jenna.”

“I got some spare wool socks right over there in a crate,” Portis said. “We'll get you and Jenna both squared away.”

“All right,” I said.

“Before we get started,” he said. “I thought I'd share something with you.”

“Share something?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You see, this whole situation reminds me of something that happened once down in old
Mex-ee-co
.”

I looked down at Portis but he had already lunged at my right ankle and lifted it without warning. I almost fell backward but he took me by the front of my shirt as he plunged my foot into the pot. The air froze in my lungs and I lurched forward as he pushed my left foot in beside the right. I grabbed his shoulder and screamed.

Portis held both my ankles sturdy. He grunted and cursed the burning himself, but did not so much as flinch. I tried to move but I might as well have been roped to concrete blocks. I couldn't quite believe how badly it hurt.

Portis was saying something about Mexico. I could barely hear him, but I focused on the sound of his voice and tried to listen through the pain and my own cries.

“I was a young man then,” he said. “Full of wanderlust. I had drifted deep into the heart of the country, the real Mexico, which ain't what it looks like on the postcards.”

Portis was breathing hard through his nose. I knew that water was burning him something terrible. I was sure some had leaked inside his gloves and pooled there, but he kept his grip steady and went right on talking.

“It ain't no Jimmy Buffett song down there,” he said. “I can tell you that much right now. There's no fishbowl margaritas or Señor Frog T-shirts. This was the real Mexico, a place of dust and brown water. There was heat and violence and snakes and coyotes. It is a hard place full of hard people and I was on the trail of Montezuma's gold.”

There were tears streaming down my face and I was shaking from my middle, from some deep and usually still place that had been dug up in the pain. Maybe it was the same place Jenna had cried from just a little while before, and the thought of her strength helped me as I closed my eyes and told myself to focus on Portis's fool story.

“I was traveling with another gringo,” he said. “Name of Henderson. He was an expat, a paramilitary type who'd done dirty work for Reagan in the Sandinistas. Somewhere along the line he read some Carlos Castaneda and discovered peyote. He met a village girl, became a pacifist, and eventually renounced the United States as imperialist aggressors.

“Henderson had been searching treasure for near a decade, but mostly what he did was smoke peyote. I smoked some with him, somehow got separated, and woke up several days later on top of a dirt mountain. I was naked and deep fried to a crisp.

“Who knows how I got up there on that crested plane? Who knows why I was unclothed? I was looking for gold, and Mexico is a land of many mysteries. But there I was. Passed out for hours, maybe days.

“Now, that was a burn, Percy James. Put your little toes here to shame. I'm here to tell you, I had welts and yellow pus all over me. I looked like the damn elephant man. I twitched and I shook. I had an erection that could not be reasoned with.”

I sputtered out something that was both a laugh and a cry and he kept on.

“I walked for half a day, barefoot on burning sand. I was cherry red and sailing at full mast. Lord God, was I a sight. Finally, I arrived at a village and was taken in by a kind family, who I believe to this day I owe my life.

“They provided me a bedroll and a spot in their thatched hut. And when I had a peek at myself in a shard of reflective glass I busted out crying. I about died, is what happened.

“I was later told by a doctor that I had suffered a stroke. This doctor's counsel was given at a roadhouse, and while he later confessed to being unlicensed and I never received a proper examination, his reasoning has always struck me as sound.

“Anyway, the village family prayed over my body and treated me with a strange green liquid, served in a wooden bowl. I drank the mixture and vomited profusely, but when I woke my erection
had finally been resolved and I no longer twitched. The village elders assembled, and while they were glad I was on the mend they asked that I leave in the morning. Apparently there was some talk that I was with the devil.
Con el Diablo
. This was six months before I returned home and met your mother.”

I opened my eyes and looked down at Portis, who looked up at me and smiled.

“Margaritaville,” he said.

My knees had gone to sand and I slumped forward and hugged him. I sobbed as the burn turned back to a throb and echoed out.

Afterward, Portis wrapped my feet in a blanket and lifted me onto the cot.

“It still hurt,” I said. “But I appreciated the story.”

“That's all right,” he said. “I didn't even have to make much of that one up.”

“I could have done without the erection detail.”

“That was no detail,” he said. “Trust me. That right there was the feature presentation.”

“I take it you didn't find gold?”

“The gold remains buried.”

“What happened to Henderson?”

“He disappeared into a puff of peyote smoke. I never saw him again, and there are days I wonder if he ever existed at all.”

I arched my toes gently and made myself a promise that I would save up some cash for a proper pair of boots and get myself
some good wool socks. I promised I would never play so fast and loose with their fate.

Meanwhile, Jenna was still asleep in the papoose and I liked lying there beside her, in the warm and the quiet.

“My sister always says babies are tougher than they look,” I said. “That they're tougher then we are.”

“This one is,” said Portis. “I can't say about other babies, but we got us a trooper here. I like this Jenna. I'll admit to it.”

“She's so quiet, though. Maybe too quiet. Like she's sick or something. Like she's too tired to cry.”

“She was hollering pretty good there a bit ago,” he said. “When you changed out her diaper.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess she was.”

“She's eating and she don't seem to have a fever,” Portis said. “She's alert. When you get worried about a baby is when their eyes go glassy.”

“I thought you didn't know much about babies.”

“I don't,” he said. “I know about glassy eyes.”

I put my hand to her forehead and she did not feel hot or clammy. There was still color in her cheeks and she slept with her lips parted and her head turned. Her chest rose with breath and her tiny hands were relaxed into half fists at her side. She was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen.

“She's so beautiful,” I said.

“She's a bright light shining,” Portis said.

“She must be so tired.”

“That makes three of us.”

“I don't feel too badly,” I said.

“You need to rest before we go for the truck.”

“I can walk.”

“You think you can,” he said. “But right now you need to rest. Even if it's only for a bit, to let this storm pass. Then we'll walk out.”

“I don't like just sitting here,” I said. “It makes me nervous.”

“There's no place safer in these hills,” he said. “There's nobody even knows about this shanty. I don't even bother with the padlock.”

I heard Portis shift on his bucket. I heard the flick of his lighter and his deep draw on a cigarette.

“How is your sister?” he said.

“She's great,” I said.

“And the baby boy?”

“Perfect.”

“I'd like to meet the little sailor one day. Bring him up here to the hills and take him fishing.”

“He'd love it,” I said.

“We need to do it while he's young,” he said. “Before he becomes corrupted by the Pacific Northwest and their generally sissified ways.”

“You don't know a thing about Portland,” I said.

“And for good reason,” Portis said.

“I feel like I've been hit by a truck,” I said.

“I might take a rest myself,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “But we can't let ourselves sleep too long.”

“I don't ever do,” he said. “My demons won't allow it.”

“Portis,” I said. “Will you do me one favor and let me see your leg? You might be frostbit yourself.”

“My leg is fine,” he said.

“Then bring it here.”

He labored to get off the bucket and walked over. He extended his leg and I could see that the cut was deep but that the skin was not otherwise discolored and that Portis was probably right—just a bad gash.

“Will you wrap it at least?”

“Consider it done,” he said, and plopped down on the floor with a blanket.

Portis blew the flame from the lamp and we all lay there in the dark. The shanty was rippling with dry stove heat and I watched the orange ember of Portis's cigarette burn. I watched the smoke trail off into the black.

I held Jenna's little hand and listened as Portis began to sing quietly to himself. His voice was gravelly and low and he sang something about shame and the moon. Something about blaming it on midnight. I closed my eyes and fell asleep to the sound of his voice and the firewood crackling.

Shelton returned home and watched the storm through the bay window while he worked the nitrous tank. He was going to town to see about Little Hector, but not until the morning barrage let up a little.

In the meantime, he was glad for Kayla's ability to sleep through a crash. You heard stories on the news about people sleeping for three straight days when they came off, but you didn't think it was possible until you saw it firsthand. Well, he had seen it now. Kayla was lying there like a dead person, hour after hour. It was amazing, Shelton thought, what the human body was capable of.

He remembered Krebs then. He'd dispatched him last night, but it occurred to him now he hadn't seen anybody else out on the trails. He called Krebs and could tell by the sound of his voice that he'd just woken up.

“Shit,” Shelton said. “You didn't even go out, did you?”

“Man, I'm sorry,” said Krebs. “I sat down here on the couch and must have fell out.”

“Goddamnit,” Shelton said. “I was out there looking all night.”

“Did you find her?”

“No, I didn't find her. Why would I be calling you if I found her?”

“I don't know,” Krebs said. “Maybe to tell me to stop looking.”

“You weren't looking in the first place!”

“It's an academic point,” Krebs said. “I admit.”

“You got to get out there,” Shelton said.

“I'll do it,” Krebs said. “Just as soon as this storm settles down. I'm going to call Arrow and see if he wants in. Maybe Clemens too.”

“I can see Clemens,” Shelton said. “But what do you want with that crazy fucker Arrow?”

“I owe him for this other thing,” Krebs said. “I figure this is a good way to square us. He'll appreciate me cutting him in.”

“Well, that five thousand is a lump sum. It don't go to every one of you, individually.”

“I know,” Krebs said.

“You'll have to figure that out amongst yourselves. In terms of the split.”

“We'll handle the technicalities,” Krebs said. “You heading back out?”

“I'm going to wait this storm out myself,” Shelton said. “Then maybe head into town in the truck.”

“You got a lead?”

“Too early to tell,” Shelton said, and cut his phone off.

Shelton thought it wise to keep Krebs ill informed. He might be in cahoots with the Mexicans for all Shelton knew, and even if he wasn't it was a better deployment of his resources to keep him in the hills. Krebs wouldn't do him a damn bit of good in town, and if they did find Jenna with Hector, as Shelton suspected they would, why would he want Krebs riding his coattails for the reward money that didn't actually exist?

He looked over at Kayla on the floor and she was so lovely and still. He got down on his knees beside her and ran his fingers through her hair and then rested his head next to hers on the carpet.

The Talking Heads were still on the stereo, which came as a surprise to Shelton. How had he not noticed it before? He'd been sitting in the house for twenty minutes, probably heard the song five times, and was just now realizing it was there? Shelton supposed it was the nitrous and the general stresses of the situation. His mind was elsewhere, literally.

And what was there to do about it now, with him so comfortable on the floor and the stereo so far away? Shelton closed his eyes and vaguely understood that he was about to fall asleep.