THE BARSTOW FREEWAY
Nick had taught him about bullet wounds a long time ago. Yanking bullets out was movie bullshit. You’d do more damage pulling it out than leaving it alone. Nick told him a story he’d heard in lockup, about three stickup artists in L.A. One caught a bullet in the shoulder and was bleeding bad, like heading-for-death bad. They didn’t want to take him to a hospital with a gunshot wound in him, so what they did was set a badass pit bull on the man’s shoulder. The dog chewed the bullet wound to hamburger and they took him to the hospital as the victim of a dog attack. Moral of the story, Nick said, was don’t get shot.
If it didn’t kill you straightaway, and you didn’t bleed out, the worst thing about a bullet in you was the things it carried with it. A bullet, hot from the barrel, was cleaned by the fire that launched it, but when it hits you, it gathers up bits of your clothes, your skin, and sucks them inside you, along for the ride. If the bullet or the bleeding didn’t kill you, it was those little bits of jeans and skin that you had to worry about. They led to infection. But the girl had cleaned the wound well. All he could do was watch for the purple to spread, and worry about what to do about it when it did.
Nate checked the sweatpants the girl had bought him as he limped across the truck stop lot. No blood spots. There was pain and he limped pretty bad, but that couldn’t be helped. At least the bullet had missed the bone.
In the truck stop he bought a pint of whiskey and a stack of beach towels. He found Polly waiting for him at the car. They laid the towels over the bloody car seats. Nate broke the seal on the bottle and had a long drink. It burned clean inside him. Like a bullet from the barrel. He chased it with bottled water. He realized he was parched. He drained it dry. When it was empty he crunched the plastic bottle in his hand. The crunch of it shook him. It coughed up gunshot replays in his head.
He’d had Magic in his hands when Magic got hold of the pistol. The flash and bang from the barrel turned the world psychedelic. Darklights blossomed in Nate’s eyes. High whines in his ears. Nate got his hand on the barrel. Ignored the hot metal burning his hands. He twisted the barrel. He felt Magic’s finger bones snap in the trigger guard. He pulled the gun out of Magic’s twisted fingers. He reared back. He got a fastball grip on the pistol. He dented the iron cross on the side of Magic’s skull. He did it again. The man’s eyes went null. Nate put the barrel in between Magic’s slack lips. He saw a condor in a clear blue sky. He pulled the trigger. Magic laid a fan of slop on the rug behind him.
The corpse summoned a moment of clarity for Nate. How dumb it had all been. How close he’d come to losing it all, dooming Polly. The corpse solved nothing. Polly was still in danger. So was Nate. Crazy Craig had a dozen killers just like Magic. Aryan Steel had killers anywhere he could think to run. He’d risked everything for the ghost of his brother.
He lay back on the dead man’s legs. He looked up at the ceiling, tried to catch his breath. The world went soft at the edges, like Magic’s choke had finally started working. Nate felt something warm, wet on his leg. That’s how he realized he’d been shot.
“Are you okay?”
The girl’s words brought him back. He nodded. He leaned forward to key the ignition. A wave of pain came over him, knocking him back into the car seat.
“Goddamn,” he said. He wrestled with the pain until he got a hold of it, held it down.
Polly moved the bear so it looked like he was climbing his seat. The bear cocked his head so it looked at Nate. Placed a paw on his forehead, checking for a temperature. The bear looked back to Polly and nodded. She caught Nate looking at her. She looked at him like he might reach out and smack her.
“I know he’s not real,” she said. “You know I know, right?”
“I do now,” he said.
He held out his fist to the bear. The bear reached out with his paw and gave him a fist bump. He thought he might have got a smile out of Polly but he didn’t. Nate sank back into his seat. The whiskey took hold of him. He knew if he drank much more he might have a hard time making it back to the motel. He needed sleep. Needed to have nothing at all for as many hours as life could give him.
“Think I’m good to go back,” Nate said. “You ready?”
“The motel?” Her face made Nate think of rabbits when the owls screech.
“One more night,” he said. “Then we’re moving on.”
“Yeah,” Polly said. The way she said it made him look at her. But her face was pressed against the window and he couldn’t see whatever it was that made him look.