Ghost Medicine

by Andrew Smith

  “It’s gonna hurt, Troy. I gotta pull ‘em tight.”

  He opened the Dawson knife and held it in his mouth. Then he pulled the first belt tight. I threw my head back and bit my bottom lip so I wouldn’t scream. Tom took a drink, then handed the bottle back to me.

  “You both could probly stop drinking that stuff now. You don’t want to end up worse off.”

  Gabe punched a hole in the belt with the knife so it would stay tight, then he did the same thing below my knee.

  “I don’t know how good that is, or if it’s even good at all, ‘cause I don’t even know if we’ll be able to get you up on a horse.”

  “If you have to, just leave me here. But leave the rest of the whiskey. Tommy needs help worse than me.”

  “Shut up. No one’s leaving you. You both need doctors.” He opened the saddlebag again. “Just shut up.” Then he hammered his fist down on top of the bag.

  He looked at me for an instant, but I couldn’t really tell what it was I saw in his eyes.

  “It’s okay, Gabey.”

  He pulled out his T-shirt, still wet from his being thrown in the pond the night before, and cut the bottom half of it off.

  He took a deep breath. “This one’s dirty. Probly smells bad, too.”

  “It’ll keep me awake.”

  “I’m gonna put this under your wrist, then you grab your own shirt like this.” Gabe clenched his fist over his heart, showing Tom how he wanted him to steady his arm. “Then I’ll slip the other end over your neck. It’s gonna hurt, but it’ll feel better if you don’t move that arm.”

  “Okay.”

  After Gabe put the sling on Tom, he cut the shirt behind Tommy’s neck, then tightened it with a knot to hold his arm level. I was amazed seeing Gabriel move like he was, without being afraid, without confusion. He was someone else now.

  I felt sick again, my head swimming like it had been pulled from my body; my legs somewhere else, too.

  “I’m gonna bring the horses over.”

  “We’ll wait here,” I said, straight-mouthed and drained.

  Reno had a guiltless look on his face like horses always do, even after they’ve done something terrible. Gabriel looked determined, like he was ready to go, even though I really didn’t believe I’d get up on a horse. But I wasn’t going to argue with him, either.

  “I’m going to ride Reno,” Gabe said. “We’ll try to get you on Dusty first.” Dusty was almost two hands shorter than Reno, so it made sense to me, even if he might as well be a giraffe as far as I was concerned at that moment.

  Gabe held his left hand out to Tommy. “Are you ready to try? ‘Cause I’m gonna need your help.”

  Tommy took a gulp of whiskey and passed the last of it to me. He grabbed on to Gabe’s hand and it took him two tries and a couple painful grunts to get up onto his feet. He wobbled a little and Gabe caught him by the arm.

  “Just let me stand here for a while.”

  “Tell me when,” Gabe said and he stood there, holding on to Tom.

  Tom nodded and I drained the last of the bottle. I didn’t think I’d feel my leg now, but I was wrong about that. Tommy grabbed me under my armpit and Gabe pulled on my left arm. I got my left foot under me and pushed. Then I felt pain like a hot sword cutting through my leg right into my spine. I screamed and they just kept pulling me up. I saw darkness closing in around my vision and they pulled and pulled and then I was up on my left leg, dizzy. I would have fallen forward, but Gabe hugged me around my chest as Tommy wavered and paled beside me.

  “You’ll have to get up on his right, then sit sideways and try to swing your good leg over the top.”

  “If I kick him and he bolts, you might as well shoot me.”

  “I’ll hold him. You’ll do it. You have to.”

  The sun was gone. It would be dark soon. Tom and Gabe held me up so, dangling between them, I could get my left foot into the right stirrup and push myself up to sit on Dusty. I almost fell over backwards, but Gabe caught me by the pants as he held the reins to steady his horse. With Gabe pushing my left foot up and Tommy holding Dusty, I managed to get seated in the saddle, already wondering if I’d be able to get off.

  Tommy hugged Dusty’s neck and leaned into him.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know if …”

  The ban dage Gabe had tied onto his shoulder was already seeping blood.

  “Get up on your horse, Tom,” Gabe said coldly. “We got to go now.”

  Tommy shook his head like he was trying to wake up, and Gabe put his arm around him. “Come on, Tom.”

  “It hurts.” I saw tears on Tommy’s face. It was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. I looked away.

  “I bet it does. I bet it does.” Gabe walked Tommy over to Arrow and lifted his foot up into the stirrup. “I’ll push you up. Come on.”

  Tom clenched his jaw and boosted himself as Gabe pushed him up by his seat. When he was in the saddle, I saw his shoulders heave a little. He was crying silently, his head down, face hidden under the brim of his hat, squeezing his eyes with his left hand. He nudged Arrow and they started off, following the path we had taken up here just days ago, ahead of us, toward home. Dusty followed, while Reno gave a nervous chuckle, wondering why I was leaving; and finally Gabe got up on Reno and caught up to us.

  “I’m not going to make it,” Tommy said. “I need to stop. I need to stop now.”

  “I’ll carry you in. One way or another. You can’t stop, Tom,” Gabe said.

  Tom kept his head down. It was getting dark, darker still under those tall trees covering the lower slopes coming down into the foothills.

  “I want you both to know when we get back, we’re gonna have to tell ‘em what happened,” Gabe said.

  “What did happen?” Tom said.

  “I fired my rifle by accident when Reno stumbled on me,” I said. “That’s what happened, Gabe. It was an accident.”

  “Why do we have to lie, Troy?” Gabe said.

  “ ‘Cause if we say what happened, then we’ll have to tell about what Chase tried to do to Luz.” I winced, squeezed shut my eyes. “We don’t need to say that, do we?”

  “Well, what about Chase and Jack then?”

  “We never saw ‘em.”

  “I never,” Tom said quietly. His head was down, chin turned away from the side where he’d been shot.

  I ached. I felt so bad for Tommy, wondering how he would make it back, wondering what my father would say when he saw us. Gabe was silent for a while, then said, “Then I never saw ‘em neither.”

  And Gabriel Benavidez grew that day in sizes and directions that I wouldn’t have believed if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

  When we got through the fence to the apple orchard, I was wondering if Tommy was still alive; he hadn’t said anything at all for the longest time. Gabriel rode on ahead to the house to get my father and call for help, while Tom and I took our horses at a slow walk toward the barn.

  I was trembling and I couldn’t control it. My leg felt like it was dragging along the ground beneath the trampling horses, and I was more scared than I’d ever been in my life, not from what I’d seen happen up on the mountain, but from what I was watching happen before me as we made our way through the dark orchard. I wanted to scream at Tommy and wake him up, make him look at me so I could see his eyes, but he just kept his head down as his hunched shoulders shook and heaved.

  And I told him, Tommy, you’re crying. And he wiped at his face and said softly that he was sorry and he was real cold, and I said, I’m sorry, too. I was so sorry. Because I’d never seen Tom Buller like that and I was scared I’d never see him like himself, either, smiling that coyote grin and being so wild. So I tried to joke that after he got back from the doctor’s if he could bring me something to eat and something to pee in because I didn’t think I’d ever be able to get down off that horse. But he didn’t say anything, didn’t move. He just kept his head down and let the horse go along with mine toward the barn.


  I bet I’m gonna walk like you, now. Maybe I should get a tattoo of a horse.

  He jerk-nodded his head. I couldn’t tell if he was sobbing, trying not to laugh, or just agreeing.

  I remember seeing all the lights coming on around my house. I saw Tommy’s back, soaked with blood, blackening in the thickest spots where it was drying. I knew he was almost dead when I saw that, and I could hardly swallow. I remember hearing the footsteps, quickening out to see where we were, the soft, small footfalls of Gabriel, almost floating, and the heavier, panicked ones of my father.

  I swear I’m gonna get that tattoo. After this. You take me there, bud.

  Things happen for a reason. It’s all put in motion before we’re set down on this world. It’s cruel and unfair and I don’t bother asking why more than once, because I never got an answer yet. Tom Buller knew that about me, but I never knew what Tom Buller believed in, even though I wanted to ask him about it plenty of times.

  And I swear I saw Rose and my mother and the same little boy Tommy saw in his house, and now I knew who he was, standing out in the faintness of the dark, looking at our pitiful and pain-wracked bodies atop those tired, frothing horses, their nostrils flaring at the smells of feed and home. And I thought I was saying to those ghosts I was home now, and, please, could they help me; could they help me stop hurting, could they help Tommy come back and make everything else go away, because I could let them go now, but they’d have to let go of me first, and I was ready for that. And I could hear the horses breathing that same thrum thrum thrum of the blood pulsing through my ears, the river churning, the hooves scraping along the ground. And in that orchard of ghosts I saw dozens of other people standing behind them, most of them bent and ugly, frightening; and I thought the horses can’t see them and I don’t know if Tommy’s even got his eyes open. And I thought, as a dark cat moved from tree to tree, following us, Those are just trees, right?

  And I’m gonna get it right here under my heart. And then we’re gonna catch that horse we set free, Tom

  I know I don’t know anything about love that I can rightly express in words. I know I loved Luz and I wanted her, and wanted to see her so bad then and it was a terrible thing to reckon with as my head swam in the flowing pain of my body. And I know I loved Gabriel and I loved Tommy and it was a desperate and awful thing for me to look at him, slumped over and bloody, and me wanting so bad to take his hurt away and see him grin that coyote grin and those squinting, gleaming black eyes; instead, to see that life fading from him with each shallow, stuttered breath, the brim of his hat moving so slightly up, then down, up, then down. And I said, Tommy, Tommy, and the hat brim just dipped and rose, up then down, slowly and slower, I know you can hear me and I can see the house, Tom, and I can hear ‘em coming for us, bud. Up and down, the front of his hat wearily pointed at the horse’s neck. Up and then down. Fading.

  Tommy Buller was dying and there was nothing I could do about it.

  And I think I said to him, Tommy, you got that charm you made from the snake rattle and the bullet? You’re not dying, Tommy. You’re not dying. And I thought, Snake medicine is change. It must feel so good to break out of the old skin and come out whole and new and fresh again and feel everything for the first time all over. You’re not dying, Tommy.

  And then, looking at him as those tired horses dragged us through the old orchard, I thought I could see through him, could see stars and trees and shadows where he was and I knew he was fading away, but like all those ghosts, I just kept trying to tell myself, It’s the whiskey, I hit my head too hard, it’s my leg, it’s the whiskey, it’s the whiskey. And Tommy was crying and so I said, Man, we drank too much whiskey back there so now suck it up, Tom, it’s almost over, how you doing?

  I saw Reno in the light of the barn and I thought, What’s he doing there? Like I was in a dream, but I knew I wasn’t. And then I looked down and saw the buckskin I was riding, the tree branches cinched with my friends’ belts around a leg I couldn’t believe was ever part of me.

  We made it, Tom.

  My father ran toward us, carrying a telephone in his hand. I thought, I need to say a lot of things to you that I never said since that night, since I left; and I keep postponing them or letting the chance get away; next time, next time. But things always happen for a reason, and I swear that’s the one thing I do know.

  And that’s all I remember about that ride down from the mountain with Tom Buller.

  My dad’s coming. We made it.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Tom Buller died that night.

  I don’t think we ever got over what happened to us on that mountain. I still think about it every day; and probly every few minutes, I see myself looking out at the sunlight glinting off the leaves on the other side of the river and Chase Rutledge raising that gun, the crack! of the firing, the flash of sparks and white smoke like a circus cannon, and then Tommy spinning and twisting down to the ground.

  Boys like Tommy Buller should never die, even if it seems like they always do somehow. He never came back from that mountain, not even in my dreams, and such a big part of me died with him that I felt like I was hollowed out for the longest time.

  I can still feel the emptiness now, a constant ache; a feeling that I can’t catch my breath because I’ve been held under ice water for so long I can’t loosen up to take the smallest swallow of air.

  And maybe Luz was right about me not telling my friends how I really feel, sometimes. But sometimes the words just want to stay put.

  She came to see me when I was in the hospital. I was so busted up the doctors needed to put metal pins and a bar inside my leg. It felt so good to see that door open and watch her peek her face in and smile. I raised my head up from the bed and she just floated in and brushed my hair back and kissed me on the mouth and then again on my forehead.

  “Troy.”

  “I’m wearing a dress.”

  She slid a chair beside my bed and put her hand on mine.

  “Luz, will you kiss me again?”

  She smiled. “Are you hooked up to a heart monitor?”

  “No. Just something to pee in.”

  She pressed her face down next to me on the pillow and kissed me again.

  “I’d slide over for you, but I can’t move.”

  She looked down at the shining metal rods that passed right through the wrappings on my leg and into the bones.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “It feels better right now.”

  She held her hand up over my leg. I swear I could feel something coming out of her skin.

  “You can touch it. Everyone else here does, and I don’t even know ‘em.”

  She touched my leg, just so lightly: the weight of a snowflake. She rested her hand on my chest.

  “I came and sat with you last week. You were sleeping, though.”

  “You should’ve woke me up.”

  The angel is sleeping in the woods.

  “I held your hand. I kissed your face. You looked so beautiful sleeping, Troy. I think I stayed here for two hours and then they came and told me I had to go. And then I cried.”

  “I been here for more than a week?”

  “A week yesterday.”

  “I never had a dream. All that time.”

  “You were really sick.”

  “I guess.” I put my hand over hers and pressed it to me. “And Gabey?”

  “He’s here. I made him wait outside in the hall.”

  I smiled. “I bet you made ‘im.”

  “Troy. I want you to know this,” she said, and I looked, un-blinking, into her clear eyes. I would believe anything she would ever tell me, even if it were impossible. “There will never be anyone else. Not for me.”

  I whispered. “I love you, Luz.”

  “Tommy loved you, too, Troy. He was good. He was a good boy.”

  “I know.” I could hardly say it. I looked away.

  And she kissed me again and said, “I better go get him.”

  And I was scar
ed to see him again; afraid that we could never go back to being those boys who had talked so loud around that fire; that those boys had somehow disappeared. And when he came in, shuffling his feet on the cold, slick floor, he just filed up to the side of my bed like a mourner at a wake, looking at me like I was so fragile, and I know I was looking at him the same way. And neither of us would put into words the thing that was so horrible and thick between us. It was as if there was some stinking carcass, bleeding, just hanging down from the ceiling; and we were all too caught up in just being nice and pretending not to see it.

  Gabe didn’t say anything for the longest time, and then he looked down at the bars and screws jutting from my leg and said, “Damn. Frankenstotts.”

  “Yeah. They hurt.” I breathed. “I can’t stand it here, Gabey.” I looked at the window. “They might let my dad take me home tomorrow. But I’m gonna miss school for a while when it starts.”

  I looked him in the eyes, those eyes cool and pale like his sister’s. I needed to tell him something, but I couldn’t. I needed to get up out of that bed and shake him, make him tell me to shut up, or punch me, but I knew it wouldn’t happen.

  I cried when they left. And then I slept.

  They found those boys’ bodies a few days later. It was a horrible thing, from what I’d heard. They found Jack Crutchfield’s first, floating in the lake. Then they found Chase Rutledge’s, snagged in some trees by the flats above the bridge where the water had gotten lower.

  It was driving me crazy. For the months that I spent at home, supposedly recovering, doing nothing but schoolwork, Luz visited often; I knew she had to sneak out of the house to do it because Mr. Benavidez was trying to hold on to her so tight, even though she was slipping away from him. But every time I tried to call her brother he wasn’t home, or he would make up some obvious excuse to get off the phone. She told me that her father didn’t want them coming to see me; that he said that I needed this time to be with my father and heal, but it was more than that, and I believed Mr. Benavidez was afraid that if Gabe and Luz came near me bad things would happen to them, like they did to me and Tom. He didn’t come right out and say it, I knew he never would. But just thinking about Gabey, and wondering—was he mad at me or just scared?—was making me crazy.