The Secret Wisdom of the Earth

by Christopher Scotton

  “What the hell you doin, boy?”

  I gathered, stood, and ran at him again.

  He was a matador now, and I was a bull, charging on fury, pain, and hatred. He slipped me, still casually holding the rifle, and seized my collar with his free hand. He held me at arm’s length while I launched windmills. “You best settle down, tiger, or I’m gonna womp ya.”

  “You killed Buzzy and tried to kill Pops.”

  “What the hell you talkin bout? Where’s your grandaddy?”

  “You’re the one that shot him.”

  “Boy, I ain’t even shot a coon tonight.” He looked to the porch where Pops was lying, squinted in the marginal light, then dropped me to the ground and ran to him. I picked myself up and followed.

  “Where’s he shot?”

  “In the chest.”

  He knelt, opened Pops’ shirt, took his pulse. “When this all happen?”

  “Two days ago up at Glaston Lake. Someone also shot Buzzy Fink.” I knelt next to him.

  “Shot the Fink boy?” He looked at me in disbelief.

  I nodded.

  “Where’s he at?”

  “Still up there.”

  “We gotta get him to Glassville.”

  I stood, unsure and immobile.

  “Come on, boy!” He shouted and picked up the front end of the stretcher. I took up the back. “I seen his truck by the felled tree.”

  We jogged down the Jukes Hollow Road, jostling Pops when our steps got out of sync. We passed Moby and Ahab and climbed over the fallen tree to the truck. He opened the gate on the bed and I slid the travois into it, pushing from the end until the front poles banged the back of the cab. “I’m going to ride with Pops,” I said. He nodded and climbed into the front seat, pulling the ignition key from the mass. He backed up, inching the vehicle around until we were turned, and headed down the road, ash limbs slapping the truck sides like baseball cards on bike spokes.

  We carried Pops through the automatic door at Glassville General. “Got a man been lung shot!” Gov Budget shouted. “We got a man needs help!”

  The admitting nurse bolted around the counter; a young doctor pushed through the silver metal trauma room doors, stethoscope draped around his neck. Two more nurses appeared with a gurney. We set the travois onto the white specked linoleum and untied him.

  “Let’s get em up and into the back,” the doctor said. They squatted, each took a piece of Pops. “On my count—one… two… three.” They lifted him together onto the gurney and slid the bedroll off him. A red-haired nurse placed an oxygen mask over his mouth and forced air into him by squeezing a rubber ball on a mask. Another took his blood pressure. “Eighty-three over forty an fallin,” she said. The doctor examined the wound for a moment, then said, “Okay, let’s go!”

  They whisked him through the silver double doors to the back room. I followed.

  “You best wait out here,” the blood pressure nurse said to me. “If you’re kin, check in with Nurse Karpo.” She disappeared down the hall.

  Nurse Karpo was occupied with paperwork, so I waited for a moment, then opened the doors slightly and slipped into the corridor that held the trauma rooms. The place was quiet except for voices three rooms down. I followed the sounds to an old man slabbed and gray on a table, stripped to the waist, an oxygen mask covering his face. A team of doctors and nurses hovered; a doctor, up to his wrists in a gaping chest incision, shouted orders to everybody. Plastic bags, one with blood, one clear, hung from a stand.

  It took me several seconds to realize the man on the table was Pops. A nurse called blood pressure every fifteen seconds, while two others attended the doctors.

  “Seventy-five over forty an fallin.”

  “We’ve got a bad pneumo in the left lung, maybe a simple in the right. Gotta get a tube in there.”

  The second doctor probed deeper into the wound. “Plus, this infection’s gone systemic. Jerry, retract the lung a bit more. And get those bone pieces out of there.”

  “Seventy over thirty-eight; still fallin.”

  “Damn… let’s get this tube in there.” A nurse passed him a scalpel. He made an incision in Pops’ side and snaked a tube into him. “Come on, where are you?” he said to the tube end as if querying lost keys. “Judith, how much O negative do we have?”

  “Just eight more units, Dr. Taber.”

  “Well, get it up here and call Johnson City,” he replied curtly.

  “Sixty-eight over thirty-five, fallin.”

  Suddenly the heart monitor went into hysterics. “He’s fibbin,” a nurse said urgently.

  “Shit.”

  I couldn’t contain myself any longer. “What’s wrong? You gotta do something,” I yelled. Everyone at the table looked over to me, surprised I was in the room.

  “Judith,” Dr. Taber said quickly, and one of the nurses rushed over.

  “You can’t be in here, young man. Come with me.”

  “What’s wrong? I want to know what’s going on!”

  Another nurse whisked over a cart and gave Dr. Taber two defibrillator paddles.

  “Two-twenty,” he said, then placed one paddle above Pops’ heart and the other at his side.

  “Clear.”

  Pops’ body tensed as two hundred and twenty volts surged through him; bits of dirt fell from his boots to the trauma room floor. The nurse pushed me out of the room, took my hand, and closed the door.

  “Three hundred… clear.”

  I heard the clumpf of another shock.

  “They’re doin the best they can on your daddy. Come on over to Nurse Karpo.” To Nurse Karpo she said, “Jobeth, can you see to this young man?”

  “He’s my grandfather,” I corrected in a whisper.

  “What, honey?”

  “He’s my grandfather.”

  “Well, they’re doin the best they can with your grandaddy.” She directed me through the doors to the waiting room.

  I gave Nurse Karpo all the details of family and the journey.

  “Let’s take you back and get you all checked out.”

  “Just a second.” I turned to the waiting room, where Gov Budget was hanging back by the entrance, cooning hat in his hands, black hair plastered to his head. I went to him.

  Gone was the menace I had seen at Hivey’s. He looked at me with sunken eyes, unburdened by any great curiosity and ringed in gray and dark-blue shadows that logged his hard living like tree rings.

  “Thank you for helping me bring him here.”

  He nodded. “It’s what neighbors do.”

  “I’m sorry I ran at you like that. When I saw your rifle, I thought maybe it was you shooting at us.”

  “Don’t worry bout it. I mighta thought the same.” We were silent for a while, trying to find some common conversation.

  “Well… thanks, Mr. Budget.”

  He nodded and looked straight ahead at the picture on the wall of an English garden with two lines of boxwood leading to a teeming fountain.

  Chapter 38

  RECOVERY

  I need to see my son. Where do you have my son?” I could hear her frantic voice through the admitting station window. I was in exam room one, bandages on scrapes and an IV in my arm.

  “Calm down, ma’am. What’s your son’s name?

  “Gillooly… Kevin Gillooly.”

  “Oh yes, right this way.”

  Mom burst through the open door with Audy Rae close behind. She pulled me up into an encompassing hug, careful not to pull out the drip needle from the glucose bag pumping fluids into me.

  “I love you so much.” It was the first time she had said those words since Josh. The joy I felt finally hearing them made me almost float out of the bed.

  “They won’t tell me how Pops is. Can you find out?”

  “I’ll go get Dr. Killen,” Audy Rae said and left.

  Mom looked at me with worn-out eyes that were still focused on a place in the near past.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I said.

  I
don’t know if I meant Pops, all of us, or just me.

  It didn’t matter.

  Audy Rae walked in with the doctor. He managed a grim smile, nodded to us. “Annie, we should probably go out in the hall to discuss this.”

  Audy Rae put her hand on my shoulder. “Dr. Killen, Kevin carried Dr. Peebles twenty-five miles through the mountains to save him. I think he’s earned the right to hear what you have to say.”

  Dr. Killen looked at me. “Heard the story. That was a brave thing you did.”

  I nodded.

  He looked at Mom. “Your father lost half his left lung and will probably lose the rest. I think we can save the right, but he’s got advanced blood poisoning and his liver and kidneys are shutting down. We’re giving him a transfusion now, but it’s gonna be touch and go all night.”

  “What are his chances?” Mom asked.

  “I can’t really say. It depends on his kidneys and—”

  “Just give me a number.” She closed her eyes and brought fingers to her temple as if just saying the words caused her head to hurt.

  The doctor paused, regarded her for a moment. “Fifty-fifty.”

  She took a half step back, as if the news was attached to a strong headwind. She put her hand on the table to steady herself.

  “It’s going be okay.”

  I don’t know if I meant Pops, all of us, or just her.

  It didn’t matter.

  The crackle of Sheriff Binner’s walkie-talkie woke me from a sleep so sound that for a moment I had forgotten where I was, what had happened. After a few seconds it all came to me with the clarity of new glasses. “Is he…?”

  The sheriff spun, quicker than I imagined he could, and smiled. “He ain’t out the woods, but looks like he’s gonna make it.”

  I closed my eyes, said a silent thank-you.

  “How about Buzzy? We’ve got to go find him.”

  “We’ll find him. That’s why I’m here. I wanna know everthin that’s happened. Jus start from the beginnin. From when you left your grandaddy’s house.”

  I recounted the hike up to the mountaintop mine, the intruder that first night, our idyllic days at the lake, the man spying from the rock, the booby-trapped field, the shooting, and the journey back.

  He made notes in a palm-size book. When I finished he flipped it closed, put it back in his front shirt pocket, and regarded me as if sizing up a new recruit. “That was quite a feat, son. Scarin off that lion an carryin your grandaddy back twenty-hump miles.”

  He looked at me for a moment, as if trying to summon a more accurate assessment. His hands were on his knees; his chin rose to me. “Quite a feat indeed.”

  “Can I come with you to help find Buzzy? I think I know where he is.”

  “Help would be much appreciated if you feel up to it and it’s okay with your momma. The state boys were scouring the lake last night but couldn’t find nuthin. I’m gonna call em right now to meet us up there. You an me can drive the back way.”

  Audy Rae, Mom, and I stopped by Pops’ room to check on him. The color had returned to his face and he was shaved and freshly washed—a ventilator moved his chest up and down, shoulder trussed in a bulky bandage. Several tubes snaked into his arm from hanging drip bags. A nurse came in for a blood pressure check. “When’s he going to wake up?” I asked.

  “Not for a while, honey. We’ve got him induced to help clear out the infection.”

  Audy Rae put her arm around my shoulder and kissed it. Mom just watched Pops, the back of her hand pressed hard to her lips.

  Sheriff Binner poked his head into the room. “We best get on the road. We’re meetin the state boys at noon.”

  “Roy, we’re on our way. Call Lexington an have them put a bird on standby.”

  “Thought you said it was a recovery, not a rescue?”

  “We don’t know what we’re gonna find up there. Jus get a bird ready for me.”

  “Ten-four.”

  Sheriff Binner put the radio transmitter back into its cradle and adjusted the seat belt on his massive belly.

  “Your grandaddy an me go way back, you know. What you done is big.”

  “I was just trying to save him.”

  “Well, you certainly done that. But you also done a great service to the county. Folks here are starvin for heroes, an your grandaddy is one a the only ones we got—him an Cleo Fink.” He looked over at me. I nodded and looked out the window, unable to focus on anything but the feel of my heart rending over what awaited us on the Old Blue trail by the Blackball River.

  “Not many folks can say they faced down a mountain lion with jus a bowie knife.”

  “I made a spear out of it.”

  “It was a brave thing, regardless.”

  I looked back out the window, tried to put Buzzy out of my mind. “Pops said brave is when you have time to think and still act at risk to yourself. I was just trying to save him.”

  “I don’t care what you call it… took guts.”

  “I think what Mr. Paul did took guts.”

  “That sounds like somethin your Pops would say.”

  “Do you know who killed him?”

  “I do.” He looked over at me. “So do you.”

  I nodded, swallowed. “Did Tilroy confess?”

  He shook his head. “Cleo come to me. Tole everthin.”

  “Did you arrest Tilroy?”

  “Aint been out to the holler. That’s tommora’s bidness.”

  “Who do you think was shooting at us?”

  “In my line a work, you learn not to specalate.”

  “Buzzy thought they were shooting at him, not Pops.”

  “Murder is all about motive, Kevin, an I jus don’t see one for shootin Buzzy Fink. Your grandaddy? Now, that’s a different matter.”

  “You think it was the man that owns the mines, Mr. Boyd?”

  “Well, he wouldn’t a pulled the trigger, but he’s got men who would. We gotta get more data fore we go too far down that path.”

  We were speeding north on Highway 70 toward Lexington, lights flashing, no siren. Cars in the left lane shifted over as we came up to them, drivers checking seat belts and speedometers. After twenty miles we took a left onto Route 5, a narrow, cracked road that wound between a series of abandoned coal tipples. In a while, the sheriff slowed and pulled into a dirt track, which immediately went to an incline.

  The road narrowed and we cut through a stand of white oak and sweet gum that closed in and created bark walls up the first hill. We rolled down into a clear-cut valley, then up onto a ledge that twisted deep into the sea of timber. After ten miles of bumps and turns, we cut into Harker Mountain and wound around the base, then down into a shallow dell, then up to the high valley that held Glaston Lake. The sheriff slowed as we came to the end of the road, which widened to accommodate parking for three cars. A blue Ford pickup filled one of the spots. We parked next to it and exited the patrol car. The truck looked familiar, but I couldn’t place its owner.

  Sheriff Binner went to it, placed his hand on the hood, opened it, and felt the engine.

  “Cold.”

  “I think I recognize the truck,” I said.

  “I know I recognize it. It’s Sen Budget’s.”

  “You think he was the shooter?”

  “Don’t know. Did he have a motive?”

  “Maybe the mine guy was paying him.”

  “Or maybe he’s up here fishin.”

  A patrol car pulled up, followed by a state police van. Two men in tan uniforms exited the van and opened the rear door. They pulled out a collapsible aluminum stretcher and a brown backpack, red first aid cross on it. Two others climbed out of the patrol car.

  “Boys, come on over,” Sherriff Binner said. He waved everyone in. “This is Kevin Gillooly, Art Peebles’ grandson. He thinks the Fink boy is shot on the other side a Old Blue by Blackball. Let’s hike up an over, then fan out along the bank. Yell if you find him.”

  We started up in single file with the state police team in
the lead and Sheriff Binner at the rear. The path snaked around the end of Glaston Lake, where the shooter had camped, then joined up with the Old Blue trail.

  Through the trees I could see to the beach with the dugout canoe. Although it had been only two days, the idyll of Glaston Lake seemed like two lifetimes ago, the beauty of the place carried off by my thoughts of what we would find on the banks of the Blackball.

  As the path ascended, Sheriff Binner fell behind. I hung back with him for a while, but the urgency I felt to find Buzzy kept pushing me forward. I stopped and waited for him a third time.

  “You run on ahead, Kevin. I’ll make it quick as I can.”

  I double-timed up the switchbacks and caught the others as they were starting on the steep to the summit. We reached the top and the men pulled themselves up and over the ledge. One of the sheriff’s deputies reached a hand down; I grabbed it and he lifted me over the rimrock.

  We stood and rested at the top, peering down at Sheriff Binner, who was laboring up the slope.

  I moved to the flat where we had watched the meteor storm and looked down at Glaston Lake, its stillness sitting in ignorant silence to the tragedy that unfolded there. The state police paramedic with the backpack sidled up to me. “Heard you took on a cougar with a knife and lived to tell the tale.”

  “It was going to attack us. I just scared it away.”

  “Name’s Skill. Wayson Skill.” He put his hand out and I took it.

  “Are you related to Mr. Skill who runs the newspaper?”

  “He’s my uncle.”

  “He and my grandfather are friends.”

  “I know,” he said with a slight smile. “It ain’t a large town.”

  The other paramedic came over, then the deputies. “What did it feel like? Once you knew you’d beat it,” the one with the fold-up stretcher asked. His name was Kimpton Silkwater.

  “I didn’t beat it. It just went away after a while.” I told them the whole story from the time of the shots to rushing at Gov Budget with the knife. When I was finished, they looked at each other, then me.

  “You got balls, Kevin,” Wayson Skill said.