Ghost Medicine

by Andrew Smith

He winced as the arrowhead cut down on his wrist, making a popping sound before Gabe pulled it away to reveal a separation of the flesh and the bright red blood that ran across Tommy’s arm, dripping from both sides of it.

  “Tell me, too,” Tommy said.

  I sat down next to Gabriel and grabbed his right arm. Then I took my own and pressed our bloodied wrists together. And then I held my arm out for Tom and it stung as he pressed his own blood into mine, and then he made it final by matching his arm with Gabe’s.

  Tom sat and we finished that bottle.

  “There’s nothing I can tell you about horse medicine that you don’t already know. And especially you, Tommy. Horse is endurance; it is never giving up. It’s will over the physical, ‘cause a horse can run until he runs himself to death if he’s running for a good reason. And everything you ask a horse, the answer is yes. Horse is forgiving. And ‘cause every day is a new start to him, and he’ll forget every horrible mistake you’ve made even if you keep dragging the past along with you. People think horses are stupid because of that, but you know the horse is asking, ‘Who’s the stupid one?’ “

  Gabe rubbed the blood from his wrist between two fingers, then smelled it, and licked at it. “I don’t think they’re stupid.”

  “Better not. It’s in you now,” Tommy said.

  “I like the way you talk, Troy,” Gabe said. “No wonder she’s fallen for you.”

  “That black mare, or your sister?”

  Gabe didn’t answer. I said, “Let me have that arrow, bud.”

  Gabe handed it over and I launched it like a javelin into the pond. It was dark now, and as our eyes followed the course of the arrow into the blackness of night meeting water, we saw, beyond the opposite shore, set back within the tall trees of the forest, the orange glow of a campfire.

  We all saw it at the same time; we all tensed. Then Gabriel whispered, “Who do you think that is?”

  “Fishermen, maybe,” Tommy said.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But they’d be up closer to the water then.”

  I shook out my socks and pulled on my shoes.

  “What’re you gonna do, Stotts?”

  “I don’t think we should wait for morning to see who’s out there or what they want. There’s enough moonlight, so I say we sneak around and see who it is.”

  Gabe’s eyes in the moonlight were wide and unblinking. Tommy pulled on his boots.

  “I’ll be right back,” he whispered and then went off toward the cabin. I knew what he was getting. Gabe put on his socks.

  “I guess we got no choice.”

  “It’s probly nothing to worry about, but if it is, we want to know now.”

  Tommy was coming back from the cabin. I heard him stumble and fall, then laugh. He got up and spit. “Aw hell!”

  “Okay, Surefoot. Just don’t do that on the other side.”

  We started following the shore around to the south, toward that spot in the trees lit up by a fire. The moon was so bright it cast our shadows down, blacker than anything, on the ground before us. Tommy led the way, and I guessed that fire was about a mile away, so we didn’t have to worry too much about keeping quiet yet; but still we whispered when we talked. Neither Tom nor I could walk a decent straight line after that whiskey. I grabbed Gabe by the shoulder and leaned down on him. I could smell my own whiskey breath, hot and sour, as I talked.

  “Gabey, you’re in charge, okay?” I said. “Don’t let me and Tom do anything stupid.”

  “Too late for that,” Gabe said. “We’re going toward that fire. That’s pretty damn stupid right there.”

  Tom spun around on his heels. “And how are you gonna stop me from being stupid?” Then he fell over backward and his feet ended up straight at the sky, and Gabe and I laughed, struggling not to be loud.

  Then Gabe pounced on Tommy’s chest and pinned his arms down with his knees.

  “Let’s throw him in the water!”

  I scooped up both of Tom’s kicking feet while Gabe fought against his trying to turn him over and pin him. Gabe rolled around and got Tom under the armpits and we had him up off the ground. Three steps over to my right, and we tossed Tommy out into the icy pond.

  Tommy came right up, huffing and shaking the water from his hair.

  “Like that, that’s how,” Gabe said.

  Tommy sloshed his way out of the water and picked his hat up where it had fallen, then put it on his dripping head. He held out a fist and he and Gabe punched knuckles.

  “That was good, Gabey. That was good. But you’re gonna get wet.”

  And then Tommy just scooped up Gabe like he didn’t weigh anything at all and he easily threw him a good seven feet out into the water. And Tommy started laughing and I couldn’t help myself because it was so funny seeing Gabe flying like that. I threw off my hat and sat down and began taking off my shoes and socks.

  “What are you doing?” Tommy said.

  “Not giving you and Gabe a chance.”

  And then I jumped into the pond, too, clothes and all. It was so cold I couldn’t inhale at first, but it was what I needed to straighten out my head. As I wiped my eyes and started walking back to shore, I saw Gabe and Tommy throwing my shoes and socks in after me.

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “You deserve it, Stottsy, for putting this guy in charge. Now we’ll probly all get killed.”

  “Or pneumonia,” I said.

  I managed to get my shoes and socks back on, but not straight, and we all set out, dripping and shivering a little, but smiling at each other, in the direction of that mysterious camp-fire.

  When we got to the southern shore of the pond, we entered the woods. We were silent now, almost close enough by this time to hear, or be heard, by whoever was at that fire, which grew brighter as we approached.

  “Make sure and keep enough trees between us and that fire,” Tom whispered.

  We crept along behind Gabe, watching the ground so as not to trip and, at the same time, looking over toward the fire. Soon we could see the glowing shape of a little dome tent and the white-hot blast of a propane lantern. A shadow moved across the lantern.

  “There’s at least one there,” Gabe whispered.

  We followed him up closer, behind another redwood.

  “There’s two of ‘em,” I said.

  One of the two was big and thick, with a belly on him, overfed. The other emerged from the tent, thinner and tall. Then we saw the thin one put on that unmistakable baseball cap, moving with a stiff walk around the fire. It was Chase Rutledge and the bigger one was his friend, Jack Crutchfield.

  TWENTY-THREE

  When we got back to the cabin we all changed into dry clothes and began gathering up our belongings to leave. Even though none of us wanted to ride at night, we all agreed that the best way to avoid any more trouble would be to get out before the sun rose.

  Tommy pulled his gun out from the wad of his wet clothes and dried it off with his T-shirt. He ejected the magazine and wiped off each of the bullets, then reloaded it.

  “I want you guys to know it’s full this time,” he said.

  “Let’s not shoot anybody,” Gabe said.

  I chambered a bullet in my rifle.

  We got the horses loaded up and cleaned out the cabin. The stove was cold, which was good because I knew Jack and Chase would be here tomorrow and I wanted it to seem like we hadn’t been here. I was hoping they’d follow our tracks up to the plane; I knew we’d be back home by then. We walked the horses slowly, the full moon giving us plenty of light to ride confidently.

  “They came for me, didn’t they?” Gabe said, whispering.

  “They came for us,” I said, hearing that phone call in my head. We all knew who they wanted most.

  And Gabriel had that same look as when he panicked that morning we went out after the lion, and I didn’t like that. Maybe he’d bought in to all the doubt his father had in him, I don’t know, but there was always something about Gabriel that made me feel like I needed to protect him
.

  “Well, they’ll have to take us all on, then,” Tommy said. “So we might as well turn it around on ‘em, ‘cause we can’t just run away forever.”

  “Give me some tobacco,” I said. “I was thinking the same thing.”

  “Are we gonna kill ‘em?” Gabe asked, his eyes squinting, biting at the inside of his lip.

  Tom and I didn’t have an answer for that.

  We knew we couldn’t go back down the way we came. Chase and Jack were camped right at the end of the trail we’d followed to the cabin, and I knew their horses would hear ours if we tried to make it past them in the dark.

  So we took the horses right along the water’s edge and then cut off to the west, which brought us higher in elevation, but we had to steer well clear of that campsite as we tried to find a wide path back around to the river that would lead us down.

  “What day is it?” Gabe asked.

  “It’s gonna be Friday.”

  Gabe yawned and slumped forward in his saddle.

  “You’ll wake up when the shooting starts,” Tommy said. Then he turned to me. “The moon’s going down.”

  “I know.”

  It was getting harder to see the ground in front of us. I had no idea where we were; where we were going. I intended to cut around the woods where Chase and Jack were, then double back and look for the river to lead us back down. But now the moon was dropping below the ridge, and the trees around us were getting taller and denser, so all I could do was guess which direction I was leading my friends.

  A big owl sat up on a branch over us, calling out to another, somewhere in the dark woods. We rode in single file, me in the front, Tommy in the back; and as we went I could just see the ten or so feet in front of me. Where we were going and where we had come from were swallowed in black. The moon was gone. I could feel Reno’s hooves sinking into the soft bark-mulch ground and I turned us all south after I figured we had gone far enough. South, I judged, would mean downhill and with such soft ground it also meant the horses’ legs would be straining, so every so often I’d have to look back and make sure Tommy and Arrow were still with us.

  Gabe, exhausted, sleeping, started to fall from his saddle, but caught himself on the seat, tugging the reins across as he did. Dusty pulled hard to the left and started to rear up, which I’d never seen that horse do before. Gabe calmed him, but not before the buckskin had spun around and taken a couple steps back into Reno’s hindquarters, which made Reno flinch like he was getting ready to kick.

  The horses were nervous. Gabe was mad.

  “That’s it. I’m getting off here and taking a nap!” he said. “You can both go on if you want. I don’t care what you do.”

  “It’s okay, Gabey,” I said. “We could rest now. I think we went far enough.” I sighed. “ But I don’t know.”

  “I must be tired, too, ‘cause I didn’t even laugh at you, goof-ball,” Tom said.

  We hitched the horses and each of us sat with knees up and backs to tree trunks, hats over our heads. Tommy kept his gun next to his hip, and my .22 rested beside me. Gabe went right to sleep, and I looked out from beneath the brim of my hat while Tommy shifted uncomfortably. Maybe we had gone far enough, I thought. This would be okay, and we were all so tired. We formed a triangle of bent-up, tired riders under those tall trees; the sky showing no sign of any morning in the little patches visible beyond their tops.

  sleeping in the woods.

  See you at the bottom of the falls, then it’s Gabey’s turn.

  Blackness. Then little beads of light, like stars; the light shining on the row of morphine vials on the table by my mother’s bed.

  These will help her when the time comes.

  The doctor showed me how to break off the tips and squeeze out the contents under her tongue.

  This will help her die more easily. More comfortably. You’ll both know when the time comes.

  And my father, then, in the room on that terrible night. That long night. My mother staring straight up at the ceiling, unblinking, the breaths coming in gargled gasps, only once in a while. Exhales were raspy moans. And him breaking open that first vial.

  Don’t do that, Dad.

  She needs it now, Troy.

  You can’t help her die. She doesn’t need that.

  She’s not coming back.

  No!

  And I grabbed him from behind and pulled his arm away. When he spun around, I swatted the vial out of his hand. I pulled my hand back, a fist, to hit him again, in the face, and he picked me up with both hands, tight around the neck of my T-shirt and slammed me back against the wall. Pulling the shirt so tight it began to cut into my skin. I could feel myself passing out and then he slammed me into the wall again and dropped me there.

  I ran out of the room. Into the woods.

  And I found someone in the woods, a man, I think, but I couldn’t see his face because he just looked like a shadow, like I could see through him. Like a ghost. But I heard the voice from that mouthless form.

  I can tell you’ve been in a fight of some kind. You have bruises on your neck. Someone tried to hurt you?

  And Clayton Rutledge reached out his stubby hand to touch my neck, and I saw those fingers, the first one bitten off by a horse. I was looking at Ramiro and he touched me with that incomplete hand and the fingers were cool and smooth.

  Luz’s hand, reaching up inside my shirt, her smooth marble fingers on my chest, pinning that number seven to me, and then her hand trailing down, stroking my belly.

  Those fingers. Those granite fingers towering above me. Calling me like voices from a minaret, like someone on top was watching me.

  “Wake up, Stotts. Wake up. He’s gone.” Tommy was shaking my shoulder. “Gabey’s gone!”

  I put my hand up to my forehead, pushing back my hat. It was daytime, maybe even afternoon. I was lying on my side, in the dirt under the tree. I sat up.

  “What?”

  “Gabe took off on us!”

  I looked at Tommy; he was staring intently, desperately, right into my eyes. I looked at the horses; Dusty was gone; turned my sticky eyes to where Gabriel had sat down to rest after his near-fall. Gabriel was gone.

  I stood up, and spun around and kicked the trunk of the tree, hard enough to nearly break my foot.

  “Damn it!” I said. “I knew he was in a mood to do something stupid like that! How long were we asleep?”

  “A long time, I think,” Tommy said. “I think it’s afternoon. And at least he didn’t take our guns.”

  “He probly should’ve. Did you just wake up?”

  “I walked out a ways, following his track, to see if I could see him or hear him, but he’s gone. He’s way gone, Stotts. He’s heading back toward the river, but when he starts crossing some of those big rocks, we’re gonna lose ‘em.”

  “We better get on after him, then.”

  I heard a loud rumble of thunder off over the high peaks from where we had come.

  “That’s all we need,” I said.

  I drank from my canteen, then handed it up to Tommy, who was already on Arrow. I got up on Reno and we set off in the direction of the single set of hoofprints heading west, I thought, in the direction of the river that we had followed up here.

  We lost his trail when we came out of the woods and crossed a big, smooth, curving floor of granite. We both believed we were heading the way Gabriel would have gone, and we both kept hearing the phantom sound of swift rushing water, but as we plodded on we became less and less confident in our path.

  “Remind me not to drink whiskey anymore,” Tommy said, and spit.

  “Deal.”

  “I keep hearing that river,” I said.

  “I keep hearing horses behind us.”

  “So do I.”

  By late afternoon we came to the meadow where I had fallen from Reno in my sleep, so I felt better about our finding our way down, but there was still nothing to show us that Gabriel had ridden through. Of course, he very well could have, and maybe just a f
ew feet to our right or left, but in our whiskey-fogged state neither Tom nor I would have noticed anyway.

  “I gotta get down off this horse soon, Tom. I’m tired and sore and I need to pee. So when we get to those upper falls down there, let’s rest ‘em for a bit, okay? Then we’ll just follow that river down. He’ll be down there.”

  “I won’t argue about taking a break, Stotts.”

  “He’s probly at my house right now talking my dad into feeding him.”

  “I hope so.”

  I didn’t like the way Tommy said that.

  We both knew something was wrong. Something bad was going to happen.

  But this one—he’s always the happy one, isn’t he? You want to always have friends like that, so if you’re ever starving to death or freezing in the cold, you know he’s gonna just say, “It ain’t that bad.”

  I pulled a jacket out from my bag, and when Tommy saw me, he did the same. I could smell the rain coming, hear the occasional drumming of thunder behind us, and as we passed under the first stand of trees at the edge of the meadow the sky opened up, coughing thick, round, stinging drops of summer rain. Within a minute it had become as dark as twilight and we were both soaked to the skin. I kept my head down and watched the faucet-flow of water pour from my brim and run down Reno’s shoulders.

  “I never seen it rain so hard,” Tom half mumbled. The sky flashed white with lightning that seemed to strike just behind us, the clap of its thunder coming so sudden and loud it nearly created a wind that took away all air.

  The horses were slick and dark with the rain, fur spiked and steamy, but they moved forward, however reluctantly, knowing or hoping that at least Tom and I had some purpose in our direction. We stopped under the thick tall trees by that upper run of water. Here we were protected from most of the rainfall, but Tommy and I were already as wet as we’d be if we had climbed right out of that raging river.

  It was a relief to get down from the horses, to try to shake some of that miserable water out of my clothes, heavy and stuck to my skin like paint. I took off my jacket and wrung what seemed like a gallon from it. The falls, pouring through the crease of granite and down between huge boulders to the flatter place where I had camped, where the three of us had lunch on the way up, were howling with volume from all the water coming down on top of the mountain. A small tree, broken and twisted, floated past me, then lodged against a boulder above the falls before launching up and over like the broken arm of a catapult.