The Method

by Ralston, Duncan

  Linda helped him to his feet, and they followed along the edge of the pond, pushing aside low branches and sidestepping marshy areas.

  Nearing where the woods had been cleared to build the cabin and had since grown over, Linda stopped. “What if this is where the dogs came from?”

  “I need water,” Frank said. “A phone. If that place has either, I don’t care if they’re breeding those motherfuckers.”

  She nodded and continued. At the edge of the trees, she surveyed the area. Beyond a patch of dead leaves surrounding the cabin was an open field of scrub grass and stones. A two-rut road led from there into dense woods.

  No vehicles in sight. Better yet, no sign of any dogs.

  “Okay.” She drew his arm over her shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  They walked side by side to the back porch, Linda carrying much of Frank’s weight as he hobbled along beside her. Crickets chirped somewhere in the bone-dry field. Brittle grass swished at their feet.

  On the porch, they navigated broken boards and loose nails to reach the door. Frank leaned against the splintered railing, taking the weight off his bad leg while Linda peered in through a window coated with grime, soot, dust, or a combination of all three. Flies buzzed inside so loudly Frank thought there must be hundreds of them.

  “Well?”

  “Well, I don’t think anyone’s been in here in decades,” she said. “There’s a phone, but I doubt it works. I didn’t see any cables, did you?”

  Frank shook his head.

  “There’s a sewing machine. Maybe there’s some thread we can use to sew you up.”

  “Small miracles,” he said despondently.

  Linda tried the handle, and the door creaked open on a gasp of dust that swirled in the sunlight. Frank thought of the cigarillos he’d left in his room. He would have killed for one of them right now.

  “Check for traps,” he said.

  Linda spooked, withdrawing her foot. She looked back with a scowl.

  “Trip wires. Stuff like that. I mean, you can never be too cautious.”

  Linda shook her head and stepped in quickly to spite him. She turned and threw her hands out. “No traps. See?”

  Frank lingered a moment, still nervous.

  She pouted. “You want help?”

  Linda felt bad teasing him when he’d done such an admirable job following her without much complaining on their way here. But she’d found in her time living with Frank that he tended to work better with a little push.

  “I can do it,” he said, grunting as he pushed off from the railing. The board split under his weight, and he stumbled forward, pain shooting up his leg as he lurched through the doorway to where Linda caught him, his head nestled against her breasts.

  She patted him on the back. Frank couldn’t tell if she was genuinely sympathetic or patronizing him, but it felt nice. “It really does hurt, you know.”

  “It looks like it hurts. We’ll get you fixed up.” She gave him a brisk stroke between his shoulders. “Come on. Sit down over here.”

  She helped him to a metal-frame desk chair, its blood red vinyl cushion burst open like a zit, dirty, yellow foam scattered around it on dusty, plastic tiles. She swatted dust and buzzing flies from the seat and eased him onto it.

  He sighed, glad to finally be able to rest both legs.

  The whole place smelled like stale beer, mustiness, and copper. Maybe fifteen feet at its widest, the floor of the small hunting cabin was littered with newsprint, pine needles, and crushed beer cans, flies darting in and out of their open tabs. Cupboards lined the wall to his immediate left, with a few dusty food tins and boxes visible on doorless shelves. Below the cupboards was a counter lined with old newspapers and a sink with a hand pump.

  Chains hung from the ceiling at the center of the room with fat hooks fastened at the ends. Frank guessed they must be for stringing up deer and gutting them. More flies alighted on the old bloodstains below.

  Against the opposite wall stood an old push-pedal sewing machine. Beside it was a black iron stove with a white enamel oven door, the stovepipe broken and bent a foot below the roof. Water dripped from the remaining pipe segment left in the ceiling, clanging on the copper kettle that was perched on the stovetop.

  Linda didn’t like the look of those hooks hung from the ceiling and gave them a wide berth on her way to the sewing machine in search of needle and thread. The drawers reeked of animal urine, their bottoms littered with turds. She found a scattering of various needles and a few spools of thread in various colors in the last drawer and brought them back to Frank.

  He’d been staring vacantly at the single painting beside the stove, a plain-looking watercolor of a pot of flowers that didn’t seem to belong in a place like this.

  “Here we go.” Linda knelt down in front of him. “I’m gonna have to take off your sock.”

  Frank nodded and looked away, as if not seeing it might lessen the pain. Linda gingerly peeled the blood-encrusted sock away from his flesh, rolled it off his foot, and tossed it aside. Inspecting the wound, she saw it was actually two separate gashes, one deeper and wider than the other. Fortunately, the two hadn’t connected at the front or the back of his leg.

  “Do you have your lighter?”

  “I think so . . .”

  Frank dug into a pocket and handed it to her. Linda struck the wheel multiple times before it caught, and she held one of the thicker needles she’d found over the flickering yellow flame until it glowed red, scorching her fingers. She winced and blew on the needle to cool it, then looped a strand of forest-green thread through the eye. Once she’d doubled it, she fixed Frank with a sympathetic look.

  “I’m not gonna lie and say this won’t sting.”

  Frank nodded, already steeling himself against the pain. “Are you sure we should do this? I mean, it could be infected. That trap was pretty rusty.”

  “It’s still bleeding though. If I don’t sew it up and we don’t get you to a hospital soon, you’ll lose too much blood. Pass out. I don’t think it hit your femoral artery—”

  “I’m guessing that would be bad.”

  “That would be extremely bad. But it has torn the muscle.” Linda tried to look at the wound with clinical detachment, but it nearly made her vomit when she saw how the skin and muscle had peeled back to reveal naked bone. She swallowed hard. “Nothing looks broken, thank God. Can you rotate it?”

  Frank tried. The enormity of the pain caused stars to flash in front of his eyes, and he couldn’t tell if it actually worked until Linda said, “Good. Tendons are fine. If only we had some rubbing alcohol or something to clean the wound.”

  “I’ve got my flask.” He groaned against a wave of pain. “Left cargo pocket.”

  “Never in my life have I been gladder for your addictive personality.” Linda grinned as she reached into his pocket.

  “That’s not it,” he said.

  She raised an eyebrow. “You’re gonna try that one again, are you?”

  “Hey. Laughter’s all I got.”

  She gave him a wry look and removed the flask, unscrewed the top, and sniffed it. “You don’t drink vodka.”

  “Less of a smell,” he explained.

  “We all have our priorities, I guess.” She raised his foot and held the flask over the wound. “Ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and tipped the flask.

  Vodka splashed over Frank’s calf, the wound burning so badly he expected to see the flesh bubble. The searing liquid and blood dripped pink on the grayed tiles. Gritting his teeth and balling his hands into fists, he still nearly blacked out.

  “You alive?”

  “For now,” he grunted.

  “Okay.” She let out a tortured breath through her nose. “Now the real fun starts.”

  Linda rested his foot on her thigh and hesitated with the needle poised over the raw flesh surrounding his wound.

  “I can do it if it’s too much for you,” he said.
/>   Linda swallowed hard. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Sure you will.” He pasted a smile on his sickly, pale face. “There’s got to be at least a part of you that’s wanted to torture me for a good while now. You’ve got this.”

  Linda smiled back, thankful for the levity and the vote of confidence. She poked the needle into him, surprised at how much the flesh stretched before it finally tore through. To his credit, Frank merely grunted, squeezing high on the thigh of his uninjured leg as if to balance out the pain.

  The second jab went smoother, since Linda knew how much pressure was required, and she drew the thread all the way through to the knot she’d tied at the end, pulling the wound shut.

  “You have really hairy legs,” she said, jabbing the needle in and pulling it out the other side.

  “I know. It’s what kept me from my dream of swimming in the Olympics.”

  “You could’ve just used Nair.” She pulled the flesh together.

  “You know, I never thought of that. I guess it’s too late for that now.” He watched her face as she worked. “What about you? How does someone grow up on the ocean and never learn to swim?”

  “I can swim.”

  Frank grinned. “Yeah? What would you call that stroke you do? The ‘eggbeater’?”

  “It’s a dog paddle.”

  “A three-legged dog,” he said.

  Linda remembered the injured dog whimpering in the trap, and instead of sympathy, she felt cold fear. Frank tried to cover the gaffe with a weak chuckle.

  Fingers quivering, she dug the needle in and pulled it through, closing it in a crooked, puckered smile. She bit the end of the thread, tasting Frank’s coppery, salty blood, and tied it taut.

  “One down, one to go,” she said, attempting a brave tone.

  “I think I’m gonna need some of that vodka.”

  She passed him the flask and he swigged. “Want some?”

  “I’m good,” she said, threading the needle.

  He downed the rest and screwed on the cap. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

  Linda rotated his leg and poked the needle through, careful not to puncture the exposed tendon. She pulled it through the other side, drawing the skin together.

  “MOFFATS!”

  The voice startled her, and her next stitch split his skin open to the wound.

  “Ah!”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Was that Neville?”

  “I think so.”

  “Frank! Linda!” Teri called, singsong. “Where are you two?”

  “We’re in here!” Linda shouted. She turned to Frank. “You okay for a second?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Hold this.” She handed him the needle and set his foot down gently before crossing the cabin to the front windows.

  “LiinnnnDA!”

  She saw the couple crossing the open field, hand in hand. Neville wore ankle-length slacks and an open-collared, short-sleeved shirt that rustled in the same breeze fluttering the hem of Teri’s short sundress. Neville had to keep a hand on his fedora to stop it from flying off his head. Both of them wore overly large sunglasses. Together, they looked like a fashion ad.

  “In here!” Linda called out again.

  The Lumleys turned quizzical looks on each other as if they might have only heard her faintly.

  Linda rubbed dirt off one of the panes with her sleeve and waved at them, but she realized the sun would be in their eyes, so she yelled out, “We’re in here!”

  A gunshot drowned out her cry.

  She saw the bullet explode out of Neville’s chest a moment later, and he dropped to his knees with a stunned expression, pulling Teri down with him until she tore her hand free of his grasp.

  Linda dropped down below the window, heart racing.

  “Was that Neville?” he asked, thinking the crazy son of a bitch had brought along the rifle Linda had seen him with the other day.

  “They shot him.” Linda said, barely able to believe what she’d just seen with her own eyes, despite the image of it sunblasted onto her retinas.

  “Shot him? Who? Jesus, is he . . .?”

  She nodded.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  Out in the field, Teri screamed.

  Frank began to push himself up from the chair.

  “Stay down. If they see you . . .”

  “What’s going on out there? What the fuck is happening?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He limped over, hunched down so he wouldn’t be seen through the window.

  If she hadn’t just been dealing with Frank’s injury, Linda thought she might have lost her mind with fear in that moment. “They shot him in the chest. It just fucking exploded. But Teri . . . she’s still out there.”

  “Fuck . . .” He shook his head. “We’ve gotta help her.”

  “How? We’d be fish in a barrel.”

  “Well, we can’t just let them kill her too.” He scrutinized her. “We have to do something.”

  Linda shook her head. When she closed her eyes, she saw Neville drop to his knees again and again like an instant replay, so she forced herself to look Frank in the eye. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know.”

  A high, single-note whistle pierced the sudden silence.

  Teri’s terrified whimpers stopped abruptly.

  Linda and Frank peered over the windowsill and out through the dingy glass.

  Neville lay where he’d fallen, face down in the grass about twenty feet from the cabin. His hat had caught in the wind and rolled toward the house. Teri sat on her Ugg boots beside him, the hem of her dress riding high on her thighs, her whole body quivering as she wept.

  A man emerged from the trees, then another, both dressed in bulky camo and both carrying rifles.

  “What the living fuck?” Frank muttered.

  The men took their time crossing the field as if they couldn’t care less whether or not someone happened to see what they’d done. Teri staggered to her feet, raising her hands to protect herself as the men drew nearer.

  “We ain’t gonna hurt you, pretty lady,” the heavyset man to her left said, just barely audible from the cabin. His face was all beard aside from his nose and small forehead, between which the same rainbow-tinted sunglasses Trevor had worn reflected a glint of sunlight in Frank and Linda’s eyes. “What in Jesus’s holy name you two doin’ out here dressed like that?” He sounded exasperated, as if shooting Neville had spoiled an otherwise good day. “Holy hell, lady, don’t ya’ll know it’s huntin’ season? Ya’ll should be wearin’ one of them orange vests or some shit, that’s why your man got shot right there.”

  “Don’t cuss, Jackson.” The second guy wore camo face paint on his face and walked favoring his left side, loping like a man with an old injury. He held the stock of his rifle in his last remaining arm. “There now, angel, he’s still breathin’.” His voice was soft and soothing. “He ain’t dead.”

  Teri said something, but neither Linda nor Frank could hear it through the window.

  “It was an accident, princess. You got us all wrong. It’s like what Jackson said, if you’d-a been wearing vests like you s’posed to, your man wouldn’t-a gotten himself shot now, would he?”

  “He’s lying,” Frank said.

  Linda agreed with a solemn nod. If they’d been in the middle of the woods, it might have been accidental. But Neville and Teri had been out in middle of a wide-open field. No hunter who’d spent that much money on camo and weaponry would have ever mistaken them for deer.

  They’d been aiming for him.

  “Go on back and get Keith and the four-wheelers,” the one-armed man said to the guy with the beard.

  “Nuh-uh, how come I gotta get him?”

  “‘Cause I said, that’s why. You wanna carry this fella on your back be my guest, but I ain’t takin’ turns.”

  The bearded guy turned in a huff. The one-armed man watched him lumber off toward the woods a moment before approaching Teri. She raised
her hands, begging him to spare her in a voice too quiet for Frank or Linda to hear.

  “He’s gonna kill her,” Frank said.

  “If she’s lucky.”

  His eyes widened at the implication.

  “It’s like my friend said, princess, we ain’t gonna hurt you.” The man flashed a dark grin. “What kind of hosts would we be if we done that?”

  An engine fired up in the woods. The one-armed hunter cocked his ear toward the sound, smiling wide.

  Teri threw herself over Neville’s body to protect him from further harm.

  “He’s dead, princess.”

  She shook her head, throwing weak punches at the man’s leg. The hunter stepped back from her fists with a toothy grin.

  “Well, I don’t s’pose there’s much point puttin’ up the pretense if you ain’t gonna play along!”

  He faked a lunge and Teri scrambled backward.

  “Please, please just let me go, I didn’t see anything, I swear!”

  The man grabbed her by the hair, his rifle swinging on its shoulder strap. She screamed and pulled away, but he dragged her forward.

  “What are we gonna do?” Frank asked.

  “I don’t know,” Linda said, although she realized he was probably talking to himself.

  The ATV roared out of the trees then, the guy the one-armed man had called Jackson standing on the pedals. He revved the machine, tearing up dirt and grass on his way to the murder scene.

  “We have to do something.”

  “They’ve got rifles, Frank. We do anything, they’ll kill us too.”

  Frank sank against the wall. “I can’t sit here and watch it. They’re gonna kill her.”

  He was right. But Linda couldn’t take her eyes off them. Someone had to bear witness, despite the horror of it.

  The one-armed man pulled a knife from his belt. Behind him, Jackson stopped the ATV and jumped off.

  “Where the heck is Keith?”

  “He’s back there with the dogs. They been actin’ real cagey since what you done to Biscuit.”

  “Puttin’ Biscuit down was a kindness. She wuddn’t no good to nobody with her leg all jacked up like that.”

  Jackson shrugged. “Still. Pro’ly figure if you’d-a done that to their momma, you’d do it to them too.”

  “Good. Let the little mutt’s know their place. Now what are we gon’ do with this li’l doggy?” The one-armed man still had Teri held by the hair. She hung from his clenched fingers, docile, arms limp.