Southwest of Darrington, near Squire Creek, Luke stood in his grandfather’s dilapidated barn tapping his boot with impatience. The air was thick with the smell of farm animals, rotting hay, and cow manure.
“Come on, old man, for once can’t you just do this without throwing a shoe?” Luke stood looking at his father. “If you ever give me half a chance, I’ll make things right.”
“That’ll be the day,” Abe said, pacing in front of the barn’s filthy cabinets. “Lord help me but I don’t understand why she ain’t at the clinic in town.” He tore open one grimy door after another looking for his emergency medical supplies.
“I told you she ain’t got no insurance. We know what that’s like.” Luke kicked a hump of fresh straw, exposing last year’s mildewing rot beneath. “If you’d a had insurance when the place caught fire, we wouldn’t be standing in this shit-hole.” Stop. I cain’t blame him. His only fault was believing my bullshit and letting me stay home alone that night.
“You got no right talking to me like that. You’s the one left our cabin to get burned to the ground. Why? Cuz you was sneaking this tramp in behind my back.” Abe thrust his chin toward Lina. “Then had some kind a accident which you never did explain. ‘Stead a staying and taking care of your family’s home like a man, you spooked like a filly! Now here you are trottin’ that same trouble back into our home. She ain’t nothing but the devil, just like her mama.”
Feeling the heat flush his cheeks with anger, Luke replied, “I don’t care what people say Holly was like before… You’d never understand cuz everything to you’s a sin.” I know Holly would a been different with me. What we had was special.
Reclining in the middle of the barn on the front loader of a Farmall tractor, Lina toyed with the torn lace at her collar. The top of her dress had been cut away to expose her bloody shoulder. Next to her auburn hair, her pale skin appeared translucent under the white hooded shade of the barn light. Abe scowled at her guile.
“She ought a be looked after by her own, not by mine,” Abe said.
“You know that gold digger Faye only looks out for herself,” Luke said, tapping the toe of his boot against the front of the lower cabinets. “She’d pull the gold off a dead man’s teeth, if she thought she’d get away with it.”
“Show some respect for your elders, boy!”
“Why you gettin' so bent? You always saying you wanna see more of me.” Luke looked at his father with a smug grin.
Abe rolled his eyes and turned to face Chad. “Nothing good’s comin’ of these two. Least I expected more out a you. And don’t give me no lip it’s cuz your folks dumped you out. That’s stale water. Nearly two years I been looking out for you, and this how ya repay me?”
“Sorry, Mr. Tollman,” Chad said, looking down as he leaned against the tractor near Lina.
“Never mind. Far as I’m concerned, y’all might as well spike some timber,” Abe said, gripping the edge of the cabinet doors.
“How many times I gotta tell you? It was an accident,” Luke said.
“’Til it’s the truth!” Abe replied, raising his voice. With a huff, Abe turned to the cabinets and pulled out a small gray tackle-box with crude red letters ‘VET’ painted on one end. Carrying the box to a grease-smudged workbench, he opened it and retrieved a bottle of alcohol, sterile surgical thread, and a large curved needle that glinted in the barn light.
Approaching Lina, Abe looked down at the split skin where the bullet grazed the soft upper curve of her deltoid. “I ought not do this, but I guess I’ve had mutts pull through worse.”