Blood Highway

by Gina Wohlsdorf

  “Think I do. Wish I didn’t. What else hurts?”

  “Leg.”

  “But you walked here?”

  “Kinda.”

  “You might’ve cracked a bone. We’ll have to put off the marathon. How’s your head?”

  “Fantastic.”

  “Then you need to stay awake. I’d put you in the ’Vette and floor it, but I don’t want to move you any more.”

  There was an athletic bag on the ground, overflowing with medical supplies. Leaning against the hydrogen peroxide was a pack of Parliaments.

  “Bum a cigarette?” I said.

  “You’re kidding.”

  I reached for them. My wrist was as fat as a tire.

  Blaine returned the hand to my lap. “We’ll quit together—how ’bout that? I made it eight weeks on the gum once.”

  “Why are you here?”

  I don’t know what I expected, exactly—“I was due for a vacation,” “I’ve always wanted to see Death Valley,” “I found an extra sock in the laundry and thought I’d come ask if it was yours.” I looked up at him, nothing but curious.

  He wiped blood from under my nose, his own nose flared, irritated. “In my driveway, when they hit us, I told you to run. You didn’t. You went and got in their fucking van.”

  “No big deal,” I said, figuring he’d get all mushy.

  “It is a big deal,” he said. He wasn’t yelling, since I was about five inches away from him, but he bit into his consonants like jugular veins. “It was the dumbest thing you could’ve done. It might’ve been the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever seen anybody do. And I’m a cop, Rainy.” His chin dipped as if the implications of this should be totally clear to me. “As in, I once arrested a guy trying to break into his ex-wife’s house by sliding down the chimney. As in, last year, I’m taking a statement on a burglary, and one of the things stolen is a tub of potato salad from the fridge—perp’s a messy eater; he leaves a trail of it all the way back to his place. As in, a few months ago, I got called on a report of a couple kids having sex in a tree. They said, ‘Why not? Why not in a tree?’”

  “Was there a tree house in the tree?”

  “What? No.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Look here.” Blaine put two fingers under his eyes, bloodshot from endless highways and no sleep. “Look and listen, because this is important. You getting in their van? That took the cake. That’s my new blue-ribbon winner. And you’re coming back to Minneapolis, and so long as the bureau doesn’t slap me with an obstruction charge, you’re staying at my house until you learn some common fucking sense. As in, you don’t get into a van when a police officer is specifically telling you not to.”

  I was still mulling the logistics of sex in a tree. I didn’t see this as much of a debate. “Sam would’ve shot you if I hadn’t.”

  Blaine shrugged violently. It moved me, and I hissed, and he said, “Sorry, sorry,” his mad-itude shifting, exposing what was veiled behind it. “I’m no big loss, Rainy. I wake up, I go to work, I come home, I go to bed. Who cares if I’m not there to do that? Some nights, I go out and I don’t go to bed alone, but I leave before first light. What’s that make me? I’m a piece of shit. I’m a lost cause. I’m nothing. Putting yourself in harm’s way for me, it’s the stupidest thing you could do if you wracked your brain a hundred years. You can’t do it again, not ever. I’m not worth it.”

  Oh. So that’s how that sounds.

  “Don’t cry,” he said, wiping the tears with his thumbs. “You’re dehydrated, try not to cry.” As if I were enjoying this particular cry. As if I wouldn’t prefer informing him, in a well constructed set of bullet points that left no room for doubt, that he was worth it. But Blaine would never believe me. I understood, because I was sitting here clinging to him after he’d driven how many days breaking how many laws, and I’d asked him why. And now that he’d answered, I wanted to ask again, and ask and ask again, until he admitted he didn’t do it for me at all, that he only wanted Sam’s buried millions.

  We were such messes. Such pathetic messes.

  “Did Sam . . .” Blaine shaped the question in his mind. His obvious revulsion was too eloquent for words.

  I shook my head. “Why’s he like this?”

  Blaine freed an arm from around me, placing items in the first-aid bag. “Same reason most of them are like this. Upbringing.”

  “Did you see the girls at the cabin?” I cut off any condolences that weren’t mine to receive. “You’re going to tell me it wasn’t my fault if I tell you it was my fault, but it was my fault. Johnny said stop them, I stopped them. Sam shot them, I kept them there to be shot. He wasn’t bad yet. ’Til then, he was nice.”

  “He’s fooled a lot of people. More than you know.”

  “That’s not it,” I said. “Sam didn’t fool me, it wasn’t fake.” Blaine packed bottles and containers, wrappings and rolls of bandage, arranging them carefully. I grabbed the crew neck of his T-shirt with my bad hand. Threads popped, and so did my finger. He abandoned the bag, went at my grip, but this time I held fast. “What were their names? What were the girls’ names?”

  “Ellie, I think.”

  “Other one.”

  “Rebecca,” he said, gently pressing my knuckle joint, holding the bones in. “Becca for short.”

  “Ellie and Becca, Ellie and Becca, Ellie and Becca.”

  “Calm down. Try and calm down.” Blaine’s collar tore. A flap of it in my fist. “Hey, I’m gonna splint this. Means you’ve gotta open your hand.”

  I cried up at him, miserably, “Why are you here?”

  “I told you—”

  “You were lying,” I said. “I know when you’re lying. Why are you here? Tell the truth.”

  He opened his mouth. I filled with horror at what might come out of it.

  “And if you say you love me, I’m gonna punch you in your fucking dick, I swear to God.”

  Blaine’s laugh came high and thin. He glanced around the stable, as if for assistance. Landing on the med bag, he reached in.

  “I like you,” he said, and held up his cigs. “You’re my brand.”

  My hand fell open. All of me, basically, fell open. I wasn’t sure if he’d convinced me or I’d worn myself out, but I no longer cared. Blaine took two tongue-depressor sticks and sandwiched my finger between them, had me hold while he tore tape. He scoffed and shook his head as he worked. I wanted to say he could quit it, that I didn’t need him to bland down for me, that I’d take him complicated.

  I more wanted to tell him . . . I don’t know. Things you can only show someone.

  “There they are,” he said.

  A hem and a haw. A motor, its noise careening free around the desert, nothing to interrupt or dilute it. Nothing to hide how it was alone, and not in the best condition.

  “What the hell, guys,” Blaine said. “If there was ever a time to use your sirens.”

  I built a great argument about how this was an individual policeman or FBI agent who drove extra-fast to get here, outpacing his peers. They were right behind him. I’d hear them any minute. If I’d outspeeded Sam to such a reckless degree, he’d have had to be checking every route from the point where he lost me, happening to be close-by when my whereabouts hit the airwaves. No luck could be that bad.

  I convinced myself effectively enough that I was able to say, “Sam has a police scanner.”

  Blaine stiffened. Lines of argument formed in his head, too, and he followed them to conclusions that were at odds with a single car.

  “No,” I said.

  He extricated himself using a set of movements slick enough to cause me no pain. He ran for the barn doors. I grabbed after him, causing myself a ton of pain, blathering that it couldn’t be. Blaine turned around, and I read him.

  “No,” I said. “No, no, no.”

  He hurried, picked me up.

  “No, no.” The Corvette was faster, for sure, but on open road. If we met Sam at a ramp, he’d T-bone us again. Blaine put
me in the corner stall closest to the entrance.

  “No,” I said, my new favorite word. “No.”

  “Rainy, listen.” I thought he was going to give a speech, but then it dawned on me he meant the motor, listen to the motor. It was much louder. He fluttered the blanket, covering me. “Stay here. Stay still. I’m good for something, okay? This is a piece of cake.”

  I wanted to tell him to hand me over, but I was too big a coward. His steps rushed from the front of the stable to the back, and back to the front. I was trying to put together a fat helping of bravery. I fabricated a scenario for five minutes from now. Sam dead, Blaine standing over him. Blaine shaking Johnny Blue’s hand, because Blaine knew without knowing how he knew that Johnny wasn’t bad.

  I had to tell him Johnny wasn’t bad.

  “Blaine?”

  The motor got louder and louder. It finally quit. Heavy hinges screeched. A weight met the dirt in two impacts, pum-pum.

  “Here, kitty kitty.”

  I spontaneously grew new hairs, just so they could stand up.

  “Rainy’s not around, Sam,” Blaine said, as if addressing a telemarketer who’d called during supper. “Thanks for stopping by.”

  There was a hole in the blanket by my ear. I shifted so my eye found it. The stable’s front wall had gaps between the boards. Sam was standing five feet away from me, outside.

  “I think you’re fibbing, Officer Friendly.”

  Blaine squatted behind a divider. The two in front of that one were more drastically bent. He’d pushed them over. I didn’t like that, or that he was diagonal from my corner, at the most extreme opposite angle this space could manage, minimizing the likelihood I’d catch a ricochet. He unholstered his gun and unsafety’d it. “Get in your car and get out of here. My backup is ten minutes away.”

  “Try this,” Sam said. “If you give me my daughter, I’ll still kill you but I’ll leave you your scrotum. If you don’t, I’ll cut it off while you’re still alive and shove it down your throat.”

  “Wouldn’t fit.” Blaine checked his watch.

  “Unless you hid her in one of these other—No, you wouldn’t. You’d want her near you, pedophile that you are.”

  “Gotta call rubber and glue on that one, asshole.”

  Sam advanced, pivoted, and put arms and hands around the door. A blast filled the stable. A chip sheared off Blaine’s cover. Blaine was safely behind it, having moved with Sam as if they were partners in a dance. Now Sam spun back outside and Blaine shifted to get his sights on the door again. I shouldn’t have been surprised he excelled at this, but—I mean, how do you practice?

  Sam picked up the conversation like nothing had happened. “Why’s that? Have you heard whispers about me?”

  “No, Sam. I read your file.” Blaine said it with a strange, sad weightiness. “Your hospital records are in there, from when you were a kid. I know your dad was a mean drunk who beat you anytime he felt like it. I know he once held you facedown in the thresher because it was raining outside and he thought it might swamp the fields. He had your arm twisted behind your back; he broke it. You told the doc at the hospital your dad beat you for the weather, and you went home after and your dad broke the other arm because you snitched.”

  “Stop talking.”

  “There’s family interviews. They met with your sisters—”

  “I said stop talking, pig.”

  “And your sisters told about how he saved the worst for them. For late at night, when everybody was asleep. They told how your dad brought you along on your twelfth birthday, taught you the ropes.”

  Sam got two shots off. I barely saw it—he moved so fast. His aim was high and wide. New holes appeared in the stable’s ceiling.

  “I read your psych eval,” Blaine said. “I know you think that four million’s real. That Harmony hid it and she told Rainy where to find it and you’ll go get it. But the bureau’s about ninety percent sure Harmony burned it. Otherwise, it would’ve turned up by now. Secrets have a way of turning up, Sam.”

  Sam rocked back and forth. It made a light show out of the stripes of sun. Hypnotic refractions and the hunched, implacable shadow-thing that Blaine was poking like a bull in a chute.

  Blaine got on one knee. “And I know you’ve got Rainy mixed up with some really fucked fantasy where the two of you go make nice in Mexico. But I’m not allowing it, and neither is she. Your favorite thing about her is she’s part you, but guess what? You can take what you’re made of and make it anything you want. Rainy’s gonna fight you all the way. And I’ve got her back.”

  “Yes, you’ve got her back. You wish you were on her back.” Sam darting from foot to foot was vibrating our wall. “I’ve seen, too! I know, too!”

  “Yeah, I’ve got that all planned.” Blaine’s expression crinkled from the center outward, such severe distaste he could’ve been eating excrement. “I’ll put a towel down. Knocking the dust off can get messy. Gotta save my sheets. Might even save the mattress, depending how hard she wants—”

  An enormity filled the doors. Sam day-blind, charging in. He shot sloppy, anywhere, everywhere. His mouth was threaded with spit, an elongated caricature yelling ragged vowels. I didn’t know whether to giggle or go crazy. Here was Sam Pissed Off.

  Blaine reared, target-range perfect. He squeezed rounds with such efficiency the reverbs overlapped. Sam danced a bullet-boogie. His shirt threw bits of cloth. Blaine stood to follow Sam down as he fell and kept firing into him until the trigger clicked.

  Sam’s right shoulder was lower. His elbow hit the dirt before the rest of him did, and his arm twitched up with the reflex. I genuinely thought Blaine’s leap backward was a victory move. It was acrobatic, particularly the side spin in midair and the dramatic toss of his gun—but what ridiculous victory move ends with landing like he did? Prone, an arm trapped under his stomach, the other flung out.

  The barn went quiet. Nothing stirred but ringlets of smoke. Soon, Blaine would sit up, say everything was okay.

  He rolled, or he tried to. His arm was in the way. He coughed. Blood sprayed the dust beside him.

  I flailed at the blanket and dropped to a crawl, forgetting my wrist. It crumbled, so my elbows took over. I pushed with my feet, wormed to him. He’d gotten supine. He had a hand pressed to his neck. Red dribbled between his fingers. He was gurgling partial syllables; I could tell they meant something. His eyes were wide but lucid.

  I got up and went for the first-aid bag, my locomotion disturbingly imbalanced yet not importantly painful. The kit was heavy; I had to drag it back. “What do I use?” I asked him.

  Blaine grasped the bag by the bottom and dumped it. He selected a packet, handed it to me. I got my teeth around a corner and tore, caught a wad of white netting. Blaine took it, laying another packet in my lap. A river of blood fell from the wound before he mashed the gauze onto it, using his fingertip to stuff some inside. He tapped the bandage I was holding, showed me a wheeling motion.

  “Wind it around?”

  He nodded, grabbing his own wrist and digging his nails in, loosening them.

  “Tight but not too tight.”

  Blaine put a thumb up. He was weakening. He bounced his head to the ground limply while I got the bandage on. “Good?” I said. He nodded again. “You need to sit up. Come on, I’ll help you.” My groans of what a wonderful idea this wasn’t coaxed him awake. He pushed us both off the ground. I set him against the stall. “Blaine, get your fucking eyes open.” He obeyed. They about popped out of his sockets.

  “You know how hard it is to get one of these?” Sam said.

  I turned much too quickly. My rib cage revolted. I doubled over.

  His shirt hung in shreds. The vest underneath was black, bulky, misshapen—pooching out on his stomach as he rose on steady legs. Towering over me, he knocked on his chest. “You have to deal with some real scumbags to get one of these.”

  My vision enlarged. All my senses did. My nose started bleeding again, so I licked the blood off my lip, t
asting my own bright copper. Tasting what I was made of. I put my feet flat and pushed, stood up rickety.

  But I was fine. I knew what to do. It was awesome, in a way, to know it was one of the last things I’d ever do. “What if he’d aimed for your head?” I asked.

  Sam tore out of his shirt and undid Velcro. The vest slipped off sideways. “Pigs are trained to shoot center mass.” His sunburn was much worse, highlighted when he looked down, dark-pink chin on his colorless breastbone. “Pigs are trainable—did you know that? I trained one to herd when I was a kid.” He touched fish-white flesh, wrinkling his nose at large patches going different shades of bruise. He glared at the superficial damage, then at Blaine. Sam corkscrewed to pick up his gun.

  I stepped to my right and got between them, reaching for my back pocket. Awkward to unfold the photo one-handed, but I did it and held it up. “Your money’s here.”

  Sam’s feet were crossed. Untwisting to stand, he lost his balance, which gave me a moment of bleak pleasure. He approached me, pinched the photo from my hand. He approached me, searched the image.

  “Mom told me exactly where,” I said, as steadily as I could. “She buried it so you’d never find it without me. I’ll take you right to it. But only if we leave now and you leave Blaine alive.”

  Sam’s expression was an eerie melt of every human emotion sort of gooping together. I couldn’t watch. “Interesting,” he said, coming toward me. “An interesting proposition.” He sounded so rational, so calm, like he was narrating a documentary on PBS. “The problem is, I’m quite persuasive. I think if I blew Officer Friendly’s brains out, I’d be able to change your mind. I think I could make you beg for the privilege of giving me my money.”

  I had to look up, but not far. And I had to swallow some hesitation. But not much.

  “Are you sure?” I said. The space between us seemed to waver. It was the heat. It was convection. It was a mirror we both looked into, and through. “Are you sure, Sam?”

  Blaine kicked the divider. We ignored him.