Critical Injuries

by Joan Barfoot

  Breathe carefully, breathe slowly and count.

  A nurse hustles in. Everyone who works here is always in a hurry. Lucky them. “Good, you’re on your own. We want you to rest, so I’m going to give you something to help you sleep, all right?” As if a woman who can neither feel nor move has a choice.

  At least in this circumstance another needle causes no pain. Does that count as looking, in some Alix-approved way, on the bright side?

  How strange it would be to believe in something, anything, the way Alix does. What kind of blind leap would it require? Because of her work, Isla knows a good deal about theories of belief, but that’s really only to do with methods of persuasion, not faith. Faith is peculiar. Faith is beyond her.

  How about hope, then?

  How about sleep? Her vision is blurring, a strange but appealing, cozy, warm blanket of peace descending over every skittering thought in her head. Maybe like Jamie during those terrible years. Except he grew thin and wild, he shook and trembled with his violent desire to be tranquil. Isla, perceiving remotely how easing and enfolding and protecting this feels, and how a person might never want to emerge, thinks that Jamie must, after all, have been brave and even quite strong to crawl out. She must remember to ask him about that. She thinks, “Oh, this is nice, no wonder he loved it so much,” and slips quietly, darkly, under again.

  Winging It

  Roddy can’t believe he cried. In front of people. Men. He hasn’t cried since they told him about his mother, and then okay, he did, but in his own room, alone. Partly for her, or what he remembered of her; but mainly for the too-lateness of everything: her finding him, him finding her, them explaining and saying things. Her being, then, permanently all the way up, finally happy. What was no longer possible.

  When he was little, he supposes he cried sometimes. He must have with her, little kids do. Then a few times with his grandmother, but that was more when he did something like fall off his bike, like the time he busted his arm flying over a curb. Not when it was just hurt feelings, and never in front of another guy, like a vice-principal, or even, maybe especially, Mike. Not his dad, either. It would have made his dad awkward if he had to do something, or say something, about Roddy in tears.

  Now he’s fallen all to shit in front of two cops and a lawyer. Like he’s a baby. When shit, what he is, is an armed robber, think of that!

  “I’m an armed robber,” he thinks, imagining that will make him swell and grow tall in his chair; but armed robber is a way bigger thing than he ever set out to be. Another thing he didn’t think of before: the words. They are serious and large, and he isn’t either serious or large.

  Mike was large, and he sure sounded serious in the planning, but then, so did Roddy, and neither of them meant it to be as serious as it’s turned out. Roddy here. That woman. And Mike — where is he? “Your friend,” says the bigger cop as if he’s listening to the inside of Roddy’s head, “your buddy in crime, he’s just down the hall, in case you’re interested. Also if you’re interested, he’s saying he had nothing to do with all this, it was your idea, your fuck-up. What do you think about that?”

  What Roddy thinks is “No.” Then, “Can that be true?”

  Mike’s been his friend forever. They even got teased about it one time last year. “Faggots,” said a guy whose dad was a soldier who’d just retired and moved to town off a military base. The new guy’d grown up on military bases. Maybe that made him stupid. Hardly anybody ever messed with them, especially with Mike due to his size, but Roddy, too, because he could go in low and hard and mean when he had to. Mike started getting major big, not only tall but bulking up, too, when he was about fourteen, and Roddy already knew, for want of size, to be fast, so — they’re a team. Mike whipped around and decked the guy, a clean right-hand punch. When the guy got up, Roddy head-butted his gut. Roddy and Mike touched fists in the air. Because they’re not faggots, they’re buddies, like the cop said except not with that edge the way the cop said it.

  They look after each other. They know some stuff.

  They both got suspended. Two weeks that time. “You have to learn to ignore some people,” Roddy’s grandmother pleaded. “Just don’t react. Walk away.” But she didn’t know what she was talking about. If he just walked away, he’d be fucked. Mike said his parents went on about maybe not letting him and Roddy hang out any more. Like, Mike said, they could decide who anybody hung out with.

  When they were young, everybody in their families used to say it was nice they were friends and a good thing they had each other to hang out with. Nobody minded, everybody figured they were safe and taken care of if they were together, and didn’t worry when they took off exploring, prowled country roads, picked up beer bottles to turn in for money, or even found dead birds to bring home and poke at, take apart, and then bury. Could Mike really be just down the hall now, telling other cops he’s totally innocent and it was all Roddy’s idea, nothing to do with him? That part was in the script, that it was nothing to do with him, but he was supposed to say the guy was a stranger with a tattoo on one arm, a mole on the back of his hand. Roddy’s name wasn’t going to come up at all, no reason it would.

  “They’ll check me out,” Mike said, and Roddy nodded. They watched TV, they saw movies, they knew that much. “But there’s no way to connect me. They can suspect me, I guess, for a while, but they won’t get anywhere.”

  Roddy would be long gone, the money under his bed, the gun back in its rack in his basement. “What about that we’re friends, though?” Roddy wondered. “If they check you out, won’t they do me, too?”

  “So what? They won’t look very hard. They come to your door and you’re all yawning, just getting up.” The script called for Roddy, hearing the news, to ask worried questions about his friend Mike: was he okay, was he hurt, did anything bad happen to him? “Nothing to it. Just what you’d say if it was true anyway.” This was also part of their rehearsals, Mike playing cops, Roddy expressing concern for his pal.

  Wasted, all wasted. They’re really winging it now.

  They’ve had those punch-ups together, they’ve swum and biked and smoked up together, gone to movies and dances and for that matter shoplifted together. CDs, mainly. Nature books, for Roddy’s pictures of tiny, beautiful creatures. They hang out with other people too, sometimes, but always at the root of it, it’s the two of them, and maybe it started just because Mike and his mother were the first on the doorstep when Roddy and his dad came to town, but that doesn’t matter. Those moments just happen. Good and bad moments, Roddy is beginning to see.

  So if Mike ratted him out, that’d be pretty incredible.

  If Mike ratted him out, it’d mean Roddy couldn’t trust anyone. He’d have to look at everything in some different way.

  He probably has to do that anyway.

  When he and his dad moved to town, and Mike and his mother came to the door, how come Mike wanted to be friends? How was it he didn’t already have friends? Roddy knows why he took to Mike, but how come it worked the other way, too?

  “So what do you think about that?” the cop who isn’t so big is asking. “Your buddy saying the whole thing was you, and he’s as surprised as everyone else. You know what he says? He says he’s real upset because you took advantage of him having that job. That you knew there was money because he mentioned it, just talking to you like a friend would. And also, by the way, that he took the gun away from you. Which also, by the way, the husband of the woman you shot can confirm.”

  Mike did take the gun, Roddy has a recollection of Mike lifting it out of his hands. But it wasn’t the way the cop makes it sound, like they wrestled for it, like Mike was doing some brave thing. The woman you shot.

  Imagine if armed robber isn’t all he is, imagine if there’s worse words for him.

  There were her eyes. There was blood.

  There was that guy in the doorway. He must
be the husband, who saw Mike take the gun away.

  Even with the rough, red and black striped blanket they’ve brought him, he shivers.

  What the cop says Mike’s been saying, it’s what somebody desperate to get clear likely would say: that Roddy took advantage, that Mike was surprised as anyone else.

  They didn’t rehearse for getting caught, that’s the trouble. Getting caught didn’t seem possible. But it would make an awful kind of sense if Mike laid the whole thing on him. Because Roddy’s already fucked, and Mike can still save himself.

  He shrugs. “Whatever,” he says.

  The younger cop turns red and slams his fist on the table between them. Roddy and his lawyer both jump. He imagines good-cop, bad-cop, everybody knows that routine, but can somebody make his own face go red on purpose? “You little punk, what do you mean, whatever? This is deeper shit than you’ve ever imagined, so don’t give me whatever, you little asshole.”

  “Hey, hold on,” says Roddy’s lawyer. “You can’t talk to him that way.”

  “The fuck I can’t. Listen,” and he leans forward over the table, with his skin all tight and a vein in his neck popping, which it doesn’t seem possible he could make happen if he wasn’t truly angry, “you know how much money you were going to be getting? Three hundred and forty-two bucks. Guess that’s a lot of popcorn and dope for a punk like you, but for three hundred and forty-two bucks, which you didn’t even get, you shot somebody. How about that?”

  Mike had figured there’d be a couple of thousand, maybe more. What happened?

  “Guess you didn’t know Doreen called in and told the day clerk to take everything in the box so far to the bank. So all you would’ve got was the take from part of a day. Different from last year, right? Different from what your buddy told you when the two of you were setting this up?”

  Roddy stares into his lap. He has nothing to say.

  Of course the cop calls her Doreen. Everybody knows everybody in this town. That’s probably the biggest reason he and Mike wanted to leave: so they could have lives without everyone knowing. Even the good stuff’s hard to take. Having some woman stop him in a store and say something like “Your grandmother tells me you’re doing very well in school,” that’s the kind of thing makes him and Mike crazy. Or having some guy from her church go past on the street and say “Quite the haircut you got there, young fellow.” Like it’s anybody’s business if Roddy wants stubble with his scalp shining through. It’s a cool look. Sleek. Sort of dangerous. Anyplace else, people might notice, but nobody’d say anything because they wouldn’t know him. They wouldn’t know his dad or his grandmother, either. He’d be free. Mike, too. Mike says people keep their eyes on them more than they used to in stores, like they know the two of them have a little distraction routine when they shoplift, but aren’t doing anything about it, just watching.

  Anyway, they don’t take anything huge or expensive, never clothes or other kinds of stuff that get bought for them anyway. It’s just little things they’ve ever stolen, well, that and money a couple of times from purses a couple of the rich girls left lying around at school. Not much money, no big deal, although he guesses it would have been if they’d been caught. Which they weren’t, although the vice-principal called them separately to the office to ask questions, and phoned their homes to say there might be a problem. For himself, Roddy said to his grandmother and his dad, “I don’t know why they’d think it was us. Mr. Dougherty’s a jerk anyway, and he doesn’t like us, and the girls who lost the money are rich and we’re not, so maybe he figures we’d be easy to blame.”

  Nobody likes rich people. Nobody cares what happens to them. Mike said, “It’s not like they’d miss it,” meaning the rich girls, and also the stores. Even Doreen, if it hadn’t all got fucked up, she wouldn’t have lost anything. “She’s got insurance,” Mike said. “They just pay her back. It’s nothing to them.”

  All small stuff. A little excitement, kind of a game, nothing really bad, nothing to take very seriously, even though people like Roddy’s dad and his grandmother would have taken it seriously, if they’d known. If they’d got caught, his grandmother would have been really embarrassed.

  Oh Jesus, he keeps forgetting. Here he sits, and he still can’t keep a grip on knowing what’s happened.

  “Right, then,” says the younger cop, checking the tape recorder, looking hard at Roddy, a real down-to-business expression. “It’s your turn to start talking. From about noon. Everything you did. Step by step. If you made a ham sandwich for yourself, we want to hear about it. Down to did you use mustard and was the bread whole wheat or white. Understand? Every goddamn move you made.”

  Have they charged him? There’s some kind of difference between getting arrested and being charged, but he’s not exactly clear what it is, and he can’t remember what-all’s exactly been said. That’s what his dad got the lawyer for, he supposes, to know that kind of thing; except when Roddy looks at him, searching for some kind of clue, the guy just nods. He’s serious-looking, middle-aged, thin, not a very good haircut. He doesn’t look successful, is what Roddy means.

  He also doesn’t look glad to have Roddy as a client. He doesn’t look sympathetic. He doesn’t look as if he likes Roddy, or as if he cares much what happens to him.

  Shit, if that’s his own lawyer, what about everyone else? He’ll never be able to go anyplace in this town ever again. People will whisper, they’ll stare, they’ll be like the cop who called him a punk. Some of them’ll be scared. Armed robber.

  He’s lost track again. Like he’ll ever be wandering around town any more. It’s his grandmother who’ll have to do that, and his dad.

  And Mike?

  Okay, he can go step-by-step through his day. When he gets to about suppertime, eating fast, leaving the table, going up to his room, something will start coming to him, somehow he’ll get himself from his room to that field without any detour to Goldie’s. Because what can they prove?

  Oh. Probably everything. Never mind Mike, there was the guy in the doorway. The husband.

  Maybe the woman, too. Oh God, he hopes so.

  He looks around wildly, sees only men and grey walls and bright light. No way out, no way in the world. All three men go tense. He can feel their muscles filling up more space in the room.

  Think. Think.

  Well, he guesses, fuck it.

  Mainly, fuck it. Never mind whatever Mike’s saying, there’s no really good reason to drag anybody else into the shit, Roddy can be that much of a good person. He would like to be something not bad, anyway; something that, even if it’s just to himself, says he’s not totally bad.

  It’s like he’s two people, or three, being here. One’s watching this, like from up in a corner or off to the side, and the other one’s sitting on this hard metal chair, right in the middle of it.

  The lucky one is following the plan, asleep in his room, everything warm, well, and safe.

  “Start talking,” the older cop says.

  “You don’t have to,” the lawyer says, although he nodded before and seems to want Roddy to. It’s late. He probably wants to go home.

  Anyway there’s no way out now. Not talking wouldn’t help that. So he begins. He thinks his words make sense, one following another, on and on through the day, every move. He’s listening to be careful he’s not screwing up, but it doesn’t feel like he’s actually speaking, himself. His own voice buzzes slightly in his ears. This is weirder than dope. Mainly dope makes him sleepy, but he’s wide awake now, just split into speaker and listener. Plus the one who got free. Really strange.

  Maybe he’s insane.

  Maybe he should have thrown himself off a bridge.

  Too late now.

  He tells even what he and his dad and grandmother had for supper, which was pork chops and mashed potatoes and peas. Now and then one of the cops interrupts to ask th
ings like “And what time was that?” or “When you dropped the shotgun out your bedroom window, how could you be sure nobody would see you?” or “Describe where that bush is that you went behind to put the gun down your pant-leg.” Mainly they just let him go on.

  He has to be careful once he gets himself to Goldie’s storeroom. He can’t, for instance, say a word about whistling the first notes to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, has to make Mike look pleased to see him at first, assuming he’s just dropping in, and then shocked by the gun. He has to make it sound as if Mike could really be scared of him. “I don’t know what he thought. But he looked like he figured I’d shoot him.”

  “Would you have?”

  Roddy feels himself shrug again. “I don’t know.”

  “He was willing to hand over the money?”

  “I don’t know. It didn’t get that far. I just know he looked real upset.”

  That’s the best he thinks he can do for Mike. He wonders what Mike’s doing for him. But then, what can he do? If he wanted to, he couldn’t save Roddy.

  He’d just like to know how bad Mike wants to.

  “Then what happened?”

  He sees Mike’s eyes widen, at the same time hears the first small doorway movement. He’s whirling again. He’s hearing the buzzer and seeing the woman’s face, flattened by shock into no expression at all. He sees the blue suit, the wrinkles across the lap. She’s turning and his hands, not part of his body, removed from his brain, are bringing the gun up. His betraying finger is tightening. “I didn’t mean it,” he cries. “It was an accident.”