THE SUN WAS low on the horizon when I got back to the farmhouse. By then I no longer expected to find Steve. I didn’t know if he was holed up somewhere, brooding, off on a new search or living out some nightmare in his head. I went into the kitchen to get Chevy’s food and spotted the blinking light on the battered old answering machine that sat in the corner. I’d rescued it from the dump, given it a little tweaking, and it was all I needed. I hardly ever got messages, but now my pulse leaped. Why hadn’t I checked it earlier?
When I pressed the Replay button, I heard only silence at first. Then breathing. Then: “Rick? Rick?” and some whispers. One word sounded like “help.”
I turned up the volume and replayed it. “Help.” Very weak and shaky, not like Steve’s booming voice at all.
I replayed it still louder. Between all the hisses and crackles of the old machine, I heard the words “help” and “tool.”
Tool? I stared at the machine. Maybe he’d said O’Toole. I could make no more sense of the message, with all the hisses and crackles, but my heart pounded. Steve was in trouble. He’d asked for help. How long ago? Today? Yesterday?
I had only one clue, but it would have to do. After tossing some food into Chevy’s bowl, I grabbed my keys and headed out. For the second day in a row, I drove the backcountry road toward my grandparents’ place. This time I was not going to take I don’t know for an answer!
There’s not much to see along that road. Mostly empty scrub that used to be pastures, now taken over by poplar and cedar. A couple of boarded-up houses no one has lived in for years. The original farmers are dead, their kids all moved to the city. Faded For Sale signs hang crooked out front, but no one’s buying. I didn’t see a single vehicle as I drove along. The setting sun glared across the fields, and the shadows were sharp. Something deep in the gully caught the light. A tricky turn was coming up, but I slowed enough to take a quick look down the steep drop. A stream ran through the thick brush, and in the midde of the brush, wedged upside down against a tall willow, was a truck.
I slammed on my brakes. Within seconds I was racing down the hill, following the deep ruts made by tires in the tall grass. Up close, I saw the truck was a maroon F-150. Steve’s truck! Its wheels were in the air, and its cab was crushed. I prayed he’d jumped out before and was walking home across the fields, because it didn’t look like there could be anyone alive inside. But when I rounded the truck, I saw him. He’d crawled halfway out the broken window and lay bleeding all over a patch of lilies.
His eyes were shut, and he was as white as a ghost. I screamed at him. Not even a twitch. My hands shook so hard I could hardly feel his pulse. He was alive!
I grabbed a blanket from his truck and covered him. I had to call 9-1-1, and fast. But I wasn’t one for high-tech stuff, so I had no cell phone. I couldn’t see his. Cursing, I scrambled back up the hill. I tried to remember where the nearest house was. My grandfather’s. I jumped in my truck and took off in a storm of gravel. At the farmhouse, a 1996 Corolla covered in mud and rust sat in the yard. Before I even got to the front door, an old woman appeared at the screen door and blocked my way. She had only a couple of teeth left, in a face like one of last year’s potatoes.
“Be on your way,” she said. “We got nothing to say to you.”
“Steve’s been in an accident! I need to call 9-1-1!”
She nodded up the road. “MacLeod’s place is just over the hill.”
All those years of hurt and anger rushed in. I wanted to strangle her. “There’s no time! He’s hurt bad!”
“We don’t want trouble.”
It was a weird thing to say, but I was in no mood to argue. “Grandma—”
“Don’t you call me that!”
Sharp tears stung my eyes. I was about to shove her when a shadow appeared behind her. “Let him call, Maeve,” my grandfather said. “You go out and tend to the hens. I’ll show him the phone.”
My grandmother didn’t move until my grandfather reached around her to let me in. She shrank back like I had a disease and turned her back. “Then you be gone!” she snapped as she stomped down the hall.
I calmed down a bit when I’d got through to 9-1-1 and explained where Steve was. The lady assured me the ambulance was on its way. When I hung up, my grandfather was at my side with a pile of blankets and towels in his arms.
“I’d go with you, son, but…” He glanced through the kitchen window, where my grandmother could be seen taking a pitchfork to the muck in the chicken coop. It wouldn’t do to cross her.
I took the blankets. “Thanks, Granddad.”
He shuffled after me to the door. “I hope he’s all right.”
I thanked him again and took off.
As I approached the scene, I saw a truck parked on the side of the road. Darkness was falling, but I could make out The Tool Guys on the side. When I peered down into the gully, I saw Tommy moving behind the crushed truck. I couldn’t see Steve, but it looked like Tommy was bent over him, beating him.
I raced down the hill, shouting. Tommy looked up and stepped back. When I rounded the truck, Steve was splayed on his back in the grass. Blood trickled from his mouth. Tommy’s hands were covered with blood.
“What are you doing!” I screamed.
Tommy gestured at Steve. “He’s hurt bad. I saw his truck on my way home, came down—”
“You were killing him!”
“I was doing CPR!” Tommy retorted. “He stopped breathing and—”
“Bullshit!” I was so frightened and angry I could hardly think. “I saw you hitting him.”
“Yeah! CPR! And if we don’t continue—”
“Not like this, it isn’t.” I waved my fist to show him what I’d seen.
Tommy’s face turned dark. He started toward me. I backed up. “The cops and paramedics are on their way,” I said.
“What do you think, Cedric? That I’m a murderer?”
I strained my ears for the sound of a siren. I wanted to find out the truth, but I was no match for Tommy. “I don’t know. I just know what I saw.”
“Which you can tell the cops or not.”
I glanced behind him at Steve. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. Had Tommy already killed him? Rage crashed through me. “And you killed our father too, didn’t you? That’s what Steve figured out. Why did you do it? Because he got my mother pregnant? Or was it just a stupid, drunken fight?”
“It was an accident.”
“If it was, why did you leave him there? Why did you let him die?”
Tommy came closer. His face was like a thundercloud. “I told you, let it go, Cedric.”
“Not after this!” I waved at Steve. “After thirty-four years of hell, you dare to take him away from me too?”
He gripped my shoulder in a vise and clenched his fist. I was taller than him, but he had a good fifty pounds on me. I stared at his fist, gnarled and scarred. “Go ahead! Hit me!”
His eyes flickered. He loosened his grip and shoved me back. Finally, in the distance, a siren wailed.
“I’m not what you think, Cedric,” he said, and he turned to walk up the hill.