Matt made it two miles before he staggered and fell. Ethan came up behind him and found the older man lying faceup, blood soaking his right side. He must have been shot. Ethan knelt beside Matt, unsure what to do. He thought of checking the wound, but he was afraid he’d do more harm than good. Matt’s breath was ragged but steady.
Five minutes later an old white pickup drove by. It got about fifty feet past them, then slowed, stopped, and backed up. When it was adjacent to their position, the driver’s door opened.
Ethan couldn’t see who it was until he came around the corner. Cowboy boots. Blue jeans. Long, lean legs. A six-gun in an old-fashioned holster tied around the right thigh. A white buttoned shirt tucked in. And resting above a weathered aged face was a Stetson.
“Thought you was Mexican at first. Kept going,” the man said.
“Can you help us?” Ethan asked.
“Was he part of all that clamor I heard? Has he been shot?”
“Yes, I— We—” What was he going to say? He couldn’t tell the truth. It was too extraordinary. No one would believe it.
“I don’t want no trouble,” the man said. “I’ll call for a police car when I get home. Shouldn’t be more than ten minutes before help arrives.”
“Please, no police.”
The man shook his head. “Ain’t eager to parlay with criminals. You just rest there and I’ll—”
“But we’re not criminals.” Ethan got to his feet, which made the man back up and place a hand on the six-gun he wore on his hip. “Listen, sir. We’re upstanding folk. I’m a high school teacher, and we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I swear.”
“What’d you teach?”
“Math.”
The old-timer nodded. “And what about this fella? He a teacher, too, I suppose?”
What had Matt done? Ethan couldn’t remember. For some reason all he could remember was that he’d been a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, so that’s what he told him.
The man’s eyes widened a little. “This man here flew evacs?”
Ethan nodded. “That’s what he told me.”
As if it were a secret password, this knowledge completely changed the man’s demeanor. Within moments, they’d hoisted Matt into the back of the pickup and were driving down the road. They drove for twenty minutes, then turned onto a dirt road and were soon driving into a barn beside a low-slung block house with south-facing windows. The man didn’t say a word until they pulled to a stop.
“Help me get him up on that yonder table,” he said.
They carried Matt to a stainless steel table on one side of the barn and laid him on it. The man ripped open Matt’s shirt and inspected the wound.
“Looks like a through and through. Bullet might have nipped something on the way, though. Can’t be sure.” He glanced at Ethan. “I can patch him up, but I can’t guarantee he’ll live. You ought to see a doctor after this.”
Ethan nodded and suddenly felt light-headed. He stared at the old-timer, then felt the world close in on him.
When Ethan opened his eyes, he was sitting in an easy chair inside a living room that smelled of potatoes and bacon. An old-fashioned television was showing a black-and-white episode of The Andy Griffith Show. The walls were paneled and held dozens of pictures of the same person. A young man, smiling, full of life.
“You were out longer than I was,” came Matt’s voice from the old plaid couch next to him. He was sitting up, a glass of ice water in his hand. He held it out. “Here, you’re dehydrated. This is the desert. Remember?”
Ethan took the glass and drank, slowly at first, then finished the second half of the glass in one large gulp. He gasped at the coldness.
An older woman, probably the wife of the old-timer, came into the room with a fresh glass. She wore jeans and a denim shirt tucked in like her husband’s. She also had a pistol on her hip, like her husband. Her gray hair was tied into a ponytail. She was thin as a branch but looked tough enough to chew barbed wire.
“Glad to see you up and around. Here, you need a refill.”
Ethan accepted the glass and gave her the empty one. He drank half of the new one, then set it on the table.
“Drink up,” she ordered. “Didn’t they tell you this is a desert?”
Ethan grinned. “So I’d heard.”
The old-timer came into the room. He’d rolled up his sleeves and removed his hat, revealing close-cropped silver hair. He sat down in the easy chair opposite Ethan and began rolling a cigarette.
“How’d I get in here?” Ethan asked.
“I carried you,” the old man said.
Ethan stared at the sinew and muscle on the man’s forearms as he rolled his cigarette. He might be old, but he was in better shape than anyone Ethan knew.
“My name is Ethan McCloud,” he offered. “And my friend here is Matt Fryer.” He glanced at Matt as he said it and noticed a slight shrug, so he continued. “We really appreciate you picking us up.”
“Wasn’t sure if we were going to use names,” the man said. “Names can be remembered. Reported if necessary.”
Ethan nodded. “Like I said, we’re good folk.”
The man and woman exchanged glances. Ethan noted an almost imperceptible nod from her.
“You were definitely in a tight spot,” the man said. “I’m Harry Brown. This is Charlene, my wife. She’s getting dinner ready.” He glanced up. “I know you brought your appetite.” He finished rolling the cigarette, then placed it in his breast pocket.
“The kid here said you were a helicopter pilot in Vietnam,” Harry said, addressing Matt.
Ethan could think only of Shanny, his mind crystalizing an image of her lying next to him, her hair splayed against the white pillowcase in the hotel next to the Thing. He closed his eyes to keep the image fixed in place.
Charlene’s voice shattered the mental picture.
“Not before dinner, Harry.” To Ethan and Matt she said, “Think the two of you can make it to the table?”
Ethan looked at Matt, who nodded. “Not the first time I’ve been shot. Last time I managed to walk for three days, with the help of this one’s dad,” he said, nodded toward Ethan.
Harry got up and offered his hand to Matt. “Seems like helping you when you get shot is their family business.”
Matt laughed once, then winced as he was pulled to his feet. His midsection was wrapped tightly with bandages. He wore a new shirt, buttoned halfway.
They sat down to a hearty dinner of corn, chicken-fried steak, potatoes, and salad. Ethan didn’t think he’d have much of an appetite. He still felt a little sick and was hungover with loss. But his traitorous body insisted he clean his plate and get a second helping of salad.
There wasn’t much talk around the Brown dinner table. A few comments about the weather and Harry reporting to his wife that a fence was down somewhere was about it. What Ethan did notice was that there was another place setting and a chair drawn up, but no one was there.
After dinner, Matt and Harry went out on the front porch where Harry smoked the cigarette he’d rolled. Ethan volunteered to help Charlene with the dishes, but she wouldn’t have any of it. So he stood and watched her, remembering his mother doing the same thing, especially after large family dinners.
She was about halfway through when she spoke. “Harry said he found you all on the side of the road.” She never looked at him, but he could see her face in the reflection of the window over the sink.
“We were in a bad place,” Ethan finally said, pushing desperately at the images of Shanny that were attempting to clog his mind. Instead, he inventoried the room again.
“Did you lose somebody?” she asked gently.
It took Ethan a good thirty seconds to control his emotions enough to respond. “Does it really show?”
“I’m an expert at loss, honey. I know all the signs. The tightening of the mouth. Blinking of the eyes. Ultrafocus because any faraway looks might bring back memories. Yeah, it shows.”
Ethan thought about her words for a moment, then it clicked. All the pictures on the wall in the living room had been of the same young man. The empty chair at the table and the place setting had been for him. Probably their son, maybe lost in Vietnam? And all the furniture, even the television show were throwbacks from the 1960s. The stove had to be from the fifties, if not older. He’d never heard of Gaffers and Sattler, and he’d certainly never seen a yellow stove. The house was more of a diorama than it was a home.
He glanced up and saw her staring at him in the reflection of the window.
“What was his name?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Harry Junior. We called him June… June Bug when he was little. He liked it better than Junior, even though it sounds like a girl’s name.”
“June,” Ethan said, giving life to the word. “He was in Vietnam?”
“Three tours. Wounded four times. He never came back from his third tour.”
“I’m sorry. How did he die?”
“Oh, he didn’t die. He was captured. Prisoner of war.”
Ethan stared, then averted his eyes. Dear God, they were waiting for the impossible. They thought their son was still alive. That’s why they kept everything the same. It was to keep the memory alive. To keep their hope alive. He took in the wallpaper with Danish windmills and the old yellow stove with the old-fashioned clock embedded in it and knew they were paying in ways that they’d never anticipated. Instead of eternal hope, they were prolonging their misery.
“It’s okay if you think we’re crazy. Everyone else does,” she said evenly.
“I never said that,” he said.
“It was in your face. Trust me, we’re used to it.” She wiped the last of the plates and put it in the rack along with the four others. “What about you? Who did you lose?”
Everything. Everyone. “My father,” he began slowly. “He died a week ago.”
“Was he killed? Is that what you were doing? Trying to get back at his killers?”
“No, I mean yes, or—”
“We heard the ruckus over by the monument on the CB. Lots of gunfire. Rumor has it a helicopter crashed.”
He stared at her. She knew more than he’d anticipated. How much could he tell her? Tell her too much and she’s dead, a voice said to him. Like Shanny. He gulped, but a moan escaped as he lowered his head into his hands. He breathed evenly, afraid to take deep breaths. He needed to hold it in. He needed to show some damned steel. Finally he was able to look up.
She stood, left arm crossed over her chest, right hand on her right cheek, regarding him.
“My girlfriend,” he said, the word evaporating as he said it. “Lost her… She died today.”
Her face lost its tightness and fell into a look of sympathy. “Oh, Ethan. And all this time you’ve been holding it in?” She pulled a chair next to him and put a hand on his arm.
“I’m not a kid,” he said, as controlled as he could. “I’m a man, and I need to act like one.”
“Is that what you think, that men don’t cry?” She glanced at the back door and lowered her voice. “My Harry cries every night. He pretends to go out for a cigarette, but he hardly smokes them. I find them in the ashtray, hardly even lit. No, he goes out there every night to cry for a son we’ll never see grow up. To cry for grandchildren we’ll never have. It’s both selfish and self-serving, but it’s not unmanly. God, don’t ever say that.”
Ethan breathed in and out, trying to get through the moment.
“What was her name?” Charlene asked.
The words came out like a wisp of memory. “Shannon, but I called her Shanny.”
“You loved her, of course.”
“Oh, yes. I loved her,” he said.
“Those men who killed her, you going after them?”
Until that moment, Ethan hadn’t even thought about it. He’d been so worried about Matt, and then so concerned about controlling his own emotions that the idea of retribution hadn’t even crossed his mind. But now that she’d brought it up, it became a focus.
“I am,” he said, with uncharacteristic confidence.
“Do you know where they are?”
“No, but I know how to find them.” It was called Google, and all he had to do was break all the rules in the box. But instead of waiting for them with awe or fear, he’d wait for them with weapons. Then his shoulders sagged. Who was he kidding? They didn’t have any transportation, nor did they have any access to real information. They were stranded in as close to the middle of nowhere as they could be.
“What’s wrong? What is it?”
“We lost everything. All I have left is my laptop and a debit card.”
“What about family?”
“I can’t contact them. It would put them in danger.”
She straightened. “Oh my. What have you gotten yourself into?” Then she held up a hand. “Never mind. Don’t tell me. We don’t want to know.”
The door opened, and Harry and Matt came inside. Matt was pale and sweaty. He needed help walking.
“Not feeling so well. I think I need to lie down.”
“You really should see a doctor,” Harry said.
Matt shook his head. “Can’t. They’d have to report a gunshot wound, and we’d all be in danger.”
Harry and Charlene exchanged glances but didn’t push.
“I’ve made beds for the both of you,” Charlene said. “Hope you don’t mind bunk beds.”
“As long as this one is on top,” Matt said, pointing to Ethan.
“Let me show you to your room,” Charlene said. “Might as well get a good night’s rest before you figure out what you’re going to do next.”
As they moved through the house, Ethan saw that the pictures of June Brown continued up the stairway, capturing him in every age of his life before the war. They were more like exhibits than photographs, and it made him uncomfortable to look at them.
Then he realized he didn’t have a single picture of Shanny. What he’d seen as morbid now made him envious. To have pictures of her as he knew her would have been something he would have cherished. Even if it meant creating his own hellish diorama.
Ethan went to sleep flipping mental pictures of her smiling and laughing, doing anything but dying.