Valley Floor

The sawbones squats, his satchel by his knees, his back to the cart and the mules and their feedbags. He runs his forefinger along the tourniquet above Roy’s knee, rubs the pus between his fingertips and thumb, sniffs the lot, and says he’s taking Roy’s leg.

“Like shit you are,” I say. “What’s he left with it gone?”

The sawbones pushes his specs up his disjointed nose and says that if he leaves the leg attached, Roy’ll be gone. Roy’s girl, just three, explores her mouth with her fingers. Her eyes big and gold as coins. She squats in the dirt in front of some thorny shrubs, a whelp in piss-stained trousers, the night growing fathomless above the hills behind her.

Girl’s new with us. I guess it was three years ago Roy and I passed through the settlement her mother lived at with Roy on the lookout for comfort. I hope he found it, ’cause now we’re hampered with the product of said comfort — Roy fetched the girl from the mother less than a week back. Don’t know why he accepted the child, since, one, he knew the child’s age from the letter, and two, he already had that crushed toe sending stripes up his foot.

The sawbones’ specs shine flat-lensed in the light from the firepit. I suspect they don’t so much alter his vision as give him a look. He bends over Roy, who’s laid flaccid under the cactus. Roy’s hair and skin and clothes are tacky with basin dust. The firelight blinks over his silhouette, pretties his discoloured leg and cracked lips. His cocky flip of curls thrown back from his ridged nose and cheeks and spread over the dirt. His eyes closed. Been passed out a while. I grab his good foot and jostle and release.

“Might go anyway,” I say.

The sawbones rocks on his haunches, eyeing the mule I promised him for the trip. One of a pair. Sorrel, sturdy — three hands short of draft — and recently acquired, though Roy and I have been hauling supplies through Arizona and the Southern Californian deserts good on seven years. That’s seven years of spiny fruit and sunburn while carting basics to men batshit enough to have settled this particular desolation. Brutes searching a vein of gold-quartz, coal, oil midst the saltbush and boulders. The work gives Roy and me a nice, healthful pay, but only because not many want the job. Heat’s hard on the mules and water takes up half the wagon.

The girl pulls her fingers from her mouth and wipes them across her shirt. Sawbones removes his specs, holds the lenses to the light, then plucks his hanky from his coat and polishes. His kerchief’s done up old-style — stitched around the trim with cream dashes — same era as the jacket, which has buttons top to bottom, but hangs wide open. Plush fabric, carpet-like, worn thin down the back. Like he’s spent his life sitting. He settles his specs back on that crooked nose and loops the wires around his ears.

Roy, flat-out, chest hardly lifting each breath. I put a hand on my lips and jaw. All the grit there, in the lines and loose skin — the valley sucks away fat. Roy and I, we seem to have aged twenty years though it’s only been those seven, and we were both young men when we acquired the route. He and I been partners too long now to know who owes who — though I suspect at this moment it’s him who owes me. We have a friendship. Which is why I said nothing when Roy kept the girl.

I recline against the wagon and set a knuckle to the forehead of the nearest mule, and the mule leans into it. Soft-nosed beast. “Take the leg then,” I say.

Sawbones opens his satchel and reaches out a pan, a leather roll, and a hard-cased cautery set. Kicks the logs and exposes the coals and balances the pan. Unsnaps the cautery case and sets the long-handled irons into the fire.

“Water,” he says.

I uncap a jug and fill the pan. The sawbones fiddles with the knot and unrolls the leather wrap. Tools inside flash blade to spine: tongs, scissors, various knives. He thumbs the clasp on a worn medical bag. Vials strapped to the underside of the lid. The interior’s full of glass flasks and spools of silk and gauze. He tips a vial of iodine into the pan, then opens a jar of alcohol. Wipes down each blade with a soaked bit of cotton and sets the equipment ready on top the leather sheath.

Sawbones removes and folds his coat and lays it on the bow of the wagon. He steps to Roy’s side and snips the torn pant leg. Twice the normal size below the knee, and two of the black toes sport open sores.

“Lift.” Sawbones waves at the foot. I lift. “Higher.” I lift the whole leg off the ground. He slides a sheet of oilskin under the thigh. “Down.” He and I loop rope around Roy’s wrists and good ankle, then tie the rope onto stakes and pound the stakes into the dirt. Sawbones pulls a big wad of cotton from the bag and wipes Roy’s thigh a good half-foot above the tourniquet.

“That high,” I say. “Christ almighty.”

“Sit on him.” Sawbones tests the tourniquet already in place. I take my spot kneeling on Roy’s shoulders, and the girl comes up beside me. Kid’s already kicked off and lost her shoes and stands barefoot in the cooling sand.

“Turn round,” I say, and when she won’t, I grab her. Press her face into my chest.

Thing is, Roy thought he’d be fetching a son. The mother played on that, had the kid’s hair cropped. Boy’s trousers and shirt. Course he didn’t see it. So little difference between sexes at the child’s age — the ability to piss off the back of a cart is about it. Which was how we discovered it was a girl — she wet herself. Roy should have left her when he realized. Tiny tot, good for nothing but cuteness, and what use is that? Wouldn’t even grow into use.

A half-week out of town with the child, Roy’s foot could no longer abide the wagon ride. We camped. He panted in the dirt and I helped him unwind his bandage. Hot red streaks up his calf. I tied the tourniquet.

Evening arrived. Roy went feverish, mumbling, tossing under the cactus. The girl, at least a quiet child, stared into the coral stain of clouds as the sun struck off. And then she stared at nothing. No, not nothing. I followed her look up the dust and barbs of the cactus trunk to thick white flowers, petals the size of fingers.

Morning, the flowers were gone, and the red poison ran as high as Roy’s knee. I saddled a mule and rode to the nearest settlement. Left the girl with water for Roy. By the time I returned to the wagon with the sawbones, Roy’s leg was pusing and hot to the touch from something internal. Pit ash blew over him and clung. The girl sat with her face against her knees in the twilight. The water looked untapped.

“Roy and I are partners,” I tell the sawbones. Why, I don’t know. I suppose I mean to remind myself. The sawbones straddles Roy so his back is to where I’m kneeling on Roy’s shoulders, the girl still in my chest. Her breath against the thread of my shirt.

“Fellows,” I say, although Roy hadn’t shown a degree of consideration after he received that letter and demanded we go out of our way and fetch the kid. The child would only slow us, but he was so fixated on it that when I objected, he jumped from the cart to walk off his anger and let the wheel lurch over his foot. Time we reached the mother, we knew the damage was bad. After we’d already taken the kid and discovered it was a girl, he said, “I owe you. I owe you, but if you leave me then you’ll owe me too, and you take her. You repay me by taking her.”

He made me look to his face and give my word. He’d an inward stare that said pain, and the whites of his eyes gone yellow. A child — and a girl at that. That’s what he broke himself going back for, what he refused to leave behind. That girl might be, I figure, the very first thing he doesn’t want to leave behind.

Roy’s head lolls between my legs, his wiry chin unclenched. Stubborn a-hole. The sawbones’ blades are dented, scrolled and likely inherited, but do look, at least, maintained. So there’s that for comfort. Roy — goddamn. That it took this. What was he thinking? Should have given in days ago.

I keep the girl’s face to my chest with one hand and clap my belt in Roy’s teeth with the other. The girl’s hair tufts between my fingers in a way that suggests if it grows, it might have his curl. The sawbones bends, and over his sloped shoulder is a pristine view of Roy’s leg.

Sawbones cuts a flap of skin with his straight knife and peels it from the flesh. Blade slices through the brackish muscle, and dark clotty blood seeps over the oilskin and sand. I lift my head and listen to the ripped croak of toads that resounds off the corroded hills and over the basin, over those berserk, captive men who search the dust for what the dead streams brought down. Sawbones sets the knife aside and reaches for his final blade. I adjust my grip under Roy’s chin. He’s been unconscious for the best part of two days, but you never know.

Sure enough the blade’s bite brings him around and I’m forced to use both hands on his jaw so he can’t spit out the belt. The girl’s head sneaks out of the crook of my body.

“Be calm, Roy,” I say. “Be calm.”

Roy’s eyes roll every which way, including backwards where they stop. His sight has met mine, I assume, then I realize he’s looking lower, into his girl’s gold gaze. There’s the wet rasp of sawed bone. Christ, I think, but don’t say. Why? For what? Then it doesn’t matter — his pupils flit further back and it’s only his eerie whites showing.

Sawbones takes a cautery from the fire and sizzles the cut. “Christ,” I say, aloud this time. “A bitta warning would have been nice.” I let go of Roy and his jaw goes slack. A chunk of belt falls from his teeth.

Sawbones returns the poker to the fire. He tongs a flask of iodine water from the steaming pan, lets it cool, and pours it over Roy’s stump. Washes yellow foam and bits of burnt skin. I stand and slap life back into my legs. Roy — I can’t decide whether or not it feels a relief to him. Sawbones trims the loose flesh, folds the flap of skin over the wound, and stitches. Packs the wound with cotton and wraps it with bleached silk. I pull the stakes from the dirt, untie Roy’s hands and ankle, and rub the rope burn at his wrists. Toss the pant leg over the dead limb. Roy’s chest moves shallow but steady.

Sawbones cleans his tools. “Want me to take the girl?” He towels his hands.

The night is, for an instant, uniformly silent. Then it fills again with the stuttered flit of bats and scuttle of billy owls.

“No,” I tell him. He packs his gear and loads a mule, and then crosses himself and presses two fingers to Roy’s brow. This action — this and the yellow seepage out the severed limb — well, it’s obvious the infection’s throughout. The girl’s returned her fingers to her mouth. Sawbones saddles the big bay mule and mounts. Straps his satchel over his shoulder with a sling and I see it’s the case that wore his coat thin. He takes the trail. The mule’s steps echo down from the hills long after I lose sight of him. Fainter, farther away, and then too far off to recall.

An hour passes, and Roy’s bandage is soaked reddish black. His breath — uneven. I’m wishing I’d done what the sawbones suggested and let him take the girl.

I dig a hole while we’re waiting for Roy to go. Not a wide one, but deep. Big enough for the leg now, and the rest of Roy when that’s needed. The soil is loose and sandy. Easy work. I drag the leg over. It already smells green — only thing in the valley that does. Although Sawbones didn’t say it, I know we won’t have to wait long. The girl helps me toss dirt back in. I use the shovel, she uses her hands.

The fire turns low, smoky. Streams into the blank beyond.

“Leaving us behind,” I say. And there is confounding vertigo in watching the soot trail into the cold black whorl.

The embers slip between red and white and crumble apart with heat.

Predawn or dawn, Roy passes. All his efforts go with him. I bury his body. Harness the mule, yoke it to the wagon, and hoist myself up front with the whip. Girl climbs into the bow beside me, piss-stained and pointless, and yet, even in her exhaustion, her features display Roy’s self-righteous hurt: Why had I fought him, he asks me. Why even the discussion?

Colour breaks into the sky above the cliffs. Roy’s left. I don’t owe him nothing. I owe him squat.

I lift the girl down. “Get.” She doesn’t get, but stands on the wagon tracks and watches when I flick the mule and quit the place.

Takes me half the day arguing with myself to lose my anger at Roy. Another chunk of time to face the fact the girl won’t last on her own. I pull the reins and halt the mule.

I turn back hoping, but the heat already wavers off the valley and I haven’t seen as much as a wasp in the desert scrub. Rocks strewn across the basin clamp unyielding on their own shadows. The solitary mule shudders from pulling the cart by itself in the sun, but my thoughts are of Roy’s girl and I hurry it with the whip.

When I get back to the camp, the sky’s such a torturous blue the beast kneels. I pour water over my handkerchief and wipe back the sweat on my forehead. Something’s been scratching at Roy’s grave, which isn’t a surprise in this land of scavengers. Whatever it was didn’t get deep. From the marks I can’t be sure it wasn’t the girl herself, or a bobcat or coyote — an animal that might be the reason I can’t locate her. The girl’s nowhere. Cactus, charred wood of the campfire. Beyond that, timeworn dirt carried down from the mountains on the backs of long-gone sheets of ice. Boulders pock-full of spineless crabs that came and went with nothing to show for it. I’m shaken by the brevity of it all.

“Girl,” I call. “Girl,” until I wonder why I’m here.

I pour the mule a bucket and let him dip his nose to it, and then I loop my finger in the handle of the water jug, thinking to set it at the base of the cactus in case she returns. I don’t. No point. I damp my kerchief and wipe my neck. What I left is gone, as I had known it would be when I vacated. Why? I ask myself, and know I’ll keep asking. What was the sentiment? More relevant, what was the hesitation that I had — for him, or her, or any of it, in the first place?