Ghost Medicine

  Once we had gotten past the charred strip of land where the fire had burned almost to the lake, I felt better. The trees were green here and somehow made the afternoon air cooler. Gabe and Tommy were well behind me; Arrow had gone back to walking. The horses had moved a lot in the past two days and I felt sorry for them, even though that stubborn-headed Arrow was more used to working than Gabe’s buckskin.

  I stopped in the middle of the road, sweating hard. My hair was plastered down to my neck and the side of my head. The waistband of my boxers was soaked dark with sweat, white salt at the edges where the heat had evaporated it.

  Then I saw Reno up ahead, standing in the road and looking back at me.

  His ears shot up when I whistled at him, and he gave that chuckle of his and started trotting to me. I could swear he was smiling, looking at me with those soft and forgiving eyes, still wearing the red bandana Tommy had given me yesterday morning tied around his saddle horn.

  My horse got right up to me and pressed his nose into my chest, smelling me, and then even trying to lick the salty sweat from my skin, which tickled and made me laugh.

  “I know I can’t be smelling too good right now, bud.” And I patted his shoulder and hugged him around his neck, feeling his slick warm hide against my body. “And you’re not smelling so good, either, pal.”

  Gabriel and Tom had caught up to me.

  “Thanks for ditching me,” Tommy said to my horse.

  “They gotta be somewhere right around here,” Gabe said.

  “We’ll get that guy now,” I said, and then called out, “Luz! Luz!”

  We all grew up the day that Tom Buller, Gabriel Benavidez, and I left our clothes on the shore and went swimming off those tall rocks in the lake. Me, Tommy, Gabe, and Luz. But we didn’t ask for it, even though it’s a common thing to want to be grown-up when you’re a kid. And maybe I knew better than my friends that it wasn’t something that would happen in your sleep, like a dream, but it was event after event, piling up, bricking a wall between me now and that boy I had been, sitting on my mother’s lap, looking out that churchlike window, past the dog-eared fence. And each brick, once laid in place, would never be moved: the good-byes, death, secrets, falling in love, loving your friends more than yourself.

  It seemed like a year since I took off on that race the morning before; and now here we all were, riding along that dirt road heading west, wearing nothing but our boxers, the bluffs rising up ahead of us so I knew the road would cut south soon, along past Rose’s property and ultimately to the paved highway and off Benavidez land entirely.

  “You want your horse back?” Tommy asked

  Gabe. “You ride him till we catch up to our clothes, then I’ll take him home ‘cause I don’t know if Arrow’s got it in him anyway,” Gabriel said. “But I kind of like this big mean horse of yours.”

  “You two planning on just leaving me out here then?” Tom asked.

  “I’d walk him in,” I said. “You could take Reno and go get Carl. And if I do, you better bring me something to eat.”

  “How ‘bout some beer?” Tommy asked.

  “No thanks.”

  Gabe said, “How ‘bout some turkey?”

  I just gave him a mean look and pulled my hat down low across my eyebrows.

  “Look at that,” I said to Tommy, pointing down at the dirt of the road. A thick, curving snake track cut across the road from our left to right, disappearing into some mustard weed.

  “That’s a big one,” Tommsy said. “He’s probably just laying in that shade right there watching us.”

  “I don’t think they can see too good.”

  “They don’t need to see if you just set on ‘em,” Gabe said.

  We were at the place we called the end of the road. Not that the road ended, although years ago it had; but here it took a sharp turn left, to the south, and would ultimately connect to that easement road to Rose’s place and then, farther on, to the main highway.

  “You can see the tire tracks where CB and Ramiro hauled that hay out for the horses yesterday,” Tommy said.

  “I noticed that.”

  “Hey!” Gabe said. “There’s her horse!”

  About two hundred yards ahead, where the trees opened up on a big flat meadow, I saw both horses, Doats and that leopard Appaloosa of Chase’s, riderless, grazing in the grass off the side of the road. Our clothes were slung over the front of Chase’s saddle, and some had fallen into the dirt. I nudged Reno into a run.

  EIGHTEEN

  Luz!”

  And then I heard her scream, but the scream was cut off and I could tell she was in trouble.

  “Haw, Reno!”

  I saw my pants on the back of Chase Rutledge’s horse as I rode past, my shirt with the number seven still pinned to it lying in the dirt. I saw Chase Rutledge in that meadow, where he had chased Luz Benavidez.

  And I saw Luz, facedown in the grass with her knees curled up under her. Chase had her hair twisted in his left hand and was pinning it to the ground as she tried to claw at his arm with both hands.

  He was trying to rape her. It makes me sick to say it even now.

  His pants were pulled open, down around his knees, and he was on top of her, biting at the back of her neck, reaching around to the front of her waist with his right hand, trying to unbuckle her jeans, tugging at her shirt.

  I leapt down from Reno and smashed my right foot up into the side of Chase’s sweating red face, sending him rolling over, still pulling Luz’s hair with him. Luz broke free, gasping and crying, and moved behind me.

  Chase shook his head and squinted up at me. He looked ridiculous sitting there in the meadow grass, naked down to his knees. A deep cut had opened up under his left eye and thick blood ran down his face.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I said, my fist held back slightly, ready to hit him again.

  Chase struggled to get his footing, hastily trying to pull up his pants as he did, but I took a swing at him before he could straighten himself. He ducked under my right fist and came back with an uppercut just below my sternum, doubling me forward onto my knees.

  He was going to hit me again, too, but just then I heard a gunshot and Chase fell down right in front of me.

  I couldn’t breathe. I was still reeling from his counterpunch. I looked back toward the road. Luz was standing there with her back to me, shaking, next to Tommy. Gabey stood in front of them, holding the .40 caliber that had been inside Arrow’s saddlebag.

  Gabe just stood there, pointing the gun straight down at the ground beside his foot. Tommy, barefoot, half limped, half skipped through the grass to me. Luz followed him. She knelt and put her arm around me, resting her face on my bare shoulder. I could feel her tears, warm and slick on my skin.

  “Are you hurt bad?” Tommy asked me. He turned away and I heard him start laughing wildly. “Gabey!” he said. “You shot him right in his big white butt!”

  Then I realized I heard Chase moaning in the grass in front of me.

  “Clean across the ass cheek!” Tommy said, still laughing, “You gotta see this! Man, I don’t know if you’re the worst shot or the best shot ever.”

  Chase whimpered.

  Tom spit on him. “Shut up, punk! He hardly even nicked you.”

  I still couldn’t breathe. Gabriel stepped up beside Tommy, looking down.

  “Well, I tried to get him on the other cheek,” he said.

  “You shot me! I’m gonna kill you,” Chase cried at Gabe. “I’m gonna kill you!”

  Tom just spit on him again. “You’re not going to do nothing. Except have to face your daddy with a bullet hole in your ass for what you tried to do to this boy’s sister.”

  I felt Luz’s hair, her face on my shoulder. She was still shaking a little. I put my lips to her ear, smelling her hair, whispering, “It’s okay now. I love you, Luz. It’s okay.”

  She kissed the side of my neck and held me tighter. And I thought how strange things were, me standing there in my boxers
, holding her close, her body against my skin. I combed her hair with my hand.

  “Oh my God, Troy, if you hadn’t found me, he would have…”

  “It was Gabe who saw the tracks and turned us around. Otherwise …” But I didn’t want to think about the otherwise. “But you’re okay. Did he hurt you?”

  “No. Just knocked me around a little. He got mad ‘cause I laughed at him when he fell off his horse and I got down to pick up your shirt and then he was after me.”

  I kissed her again. I didn’t care if Tommy and Gabe were watching or not. Then I walked over to Gabe and held out my hand.

  “Give me that gun,” I said.

  “You don’t want to do that,” Tom said.

  “Give it!”

  Gabe handed the gun to me, its hammer cocked back, ready to shoot.

  I stood over Chase, who was facedown in the grass, that dirty baseball cap flipped over above his head, the cut left side where I had kicked him turned up, his pants still half-down, bleeding all over himself. The wound was nothing more than a big ugly gash across the left side of Chase’s butt, about three inches long, and tearing through the skin.

  “Pull your pants up and roll over,” I said.

  He tried to pull his pants over that graze wound and I could tell he was in agony. I grabbed the top of his pants tight in my left hand and jerked them up to his waist, smearing blood onto my hand and up his pale back as I did. A bloom of blood began oozing through the seat of his jeans.

  “Turn over,” I said.

  Chase turned over and attempted to zip and button his pants. I stepped my right foot down on his chest and he moaned, then I bent forward and pressed the muzzle of Tommy’s gun right up into his nose. He started breathing hard. Snot bubbled from the other nostril.

  “Troy, don’t!” Gabe said.

  “Ease up, Stottsy.”

  “I wonder what you and your dad will say about this?” I said. I put the gun right over his head and fired a round into the ground. A casing ejected onto Chase’s belly.

  Chase whimpered.

  “You don’t deserve to be shot in the head,” I said, and then I pressed the gun with force right up between his legs. I know that hurt him. He gulped hard, and stopped breathing.

  “Cool it, Stotts!” There was an edge in Tommy’s voice.

  “Tell them you took that money out of Carl’s truck.”

  Chase didn’t say anything. I moved the gun and shot down into the dirt right between his legs. The smell of urine rose up from him and a big circle of wetness expanded from his groin. Then I jammed the barrel back up into his balls.

  “I took that money,” Chase half whispered.

  I pushed the gun up hard again, then I jerked it back and shot twice more into the ground at his crotch. Chase screamed. The slide on the gun locked back. There were no more bullets. Chase began crying.

  Tommy breathed heavily, relieved, and I handed him the gun.

  “I’m glad you thought I might really do it,” I said, turning my back on Chase.

  “I would’ve if she was my girl.”

  “Good thing it ran out, Tom. ‘Cause I don’t know what I was thinking. Let’s go get our clothes.”

  We went and picked up our clothes in the road, leaving the whimpering Chase lying in the meadow. I shook off the shirt with the number seven on it and pulled it on. It felt hot and itchy.

  I took my pants from Chase’s saddle and pulled them on. Luz stood away, not saying anything, not watching us.

  I brushed off my feet and slipped them back into my shoes. “Sorry about your boots, Tom.”

  Tommy was still barefoot.

  “At least I got my pants back.”

  He opened up his can of tobacco, knowing well enough not to offer any to me in front of Luz, and put it with his gun back in Arrow’s bag.

  Tom said, “I guess we should go back and see if he’s dead yet.”

  “You stay here,” I said to Luz.

  Chase Rutledge was on his knees when we got back to him, cupping a hand tightly over his left back pocket, damp with blood. His left eye was closed from the knot underneath where I had kicked him.

  “You don’t look so good, Chase,” Tommy said.

  He turned his head, exaggeratedly, so he could see the three of us with his right eye. “I’m coming for you first, Benavidez. You’ll be seeing me.”

  Tommy spit a brown blob at Chase, and Chase twisted to get out of its way. “I guess if you can’t get his sister, you’ll settle for scrawny little Gabe.”

  “You just remember if you ever come after any one of us that you’re damn lucky to be alive right now,” I said.

  “Let’s take his pants and make him ride home without ‘em,” Gabe said.

  “I can’t ride! I can’t even walk!” Chase cried.

  “Leave ‘em his pants,” Tommy said. “I wouldn’t want to touch ‘em, all soaked with piss and blood.”

  “You’re on your own, Chase. You’ll make it back. And if you don’t, I’ll just tell your daddy to look for the buzzards,” I said. “And when you do get back, I guess you’re gonna have to come up with a story about how you got shot in the ass but there’s no bullet holes in your pants or underwear. That should be a good one. So have a real comfortable ride home. I’d recommend going sidesaddle.”

  “You can’t just leave me here!” Chase cried out as we walked through the meadow.

  “Besides not stealing your horse and leaving your pants on, that’s probably about the nicest thing we’ll ever do for you, Rutledge,” Tommy said.

  I heard him back there, crying like a little kid when we got the horses together and mounted up. And then I said, “I’m gonna stay back with Tommy if Arrow gives out on him. Even if it takes us all night to get back home.”

  “Well, I’m not leaving, either,” Gabe said. “Hell, you know I’m just going to end up getting in trouble anyway.”

  Luz didn’t have to say anything. I knew she’d stay with me

  We walked the horses slowly east down that dirt road, our shadows stretching longer in front of us. I was sure that Chase wouldn’t be in any kind of hurry to catch up to us, and found myself feeling kind of ashamed because things could have turned out much worse for him, and then where would we be? But then I was also angry still because if we hadn’t turned back this way, I’d hate to imagine what Chase would have done to Luz.

  And then I wondered, too, where Gabriel was aiming.

  “Gabey, what would you’ve done if you’d’ve killed him?”

  “Stole his horse for Tommy to ride,” he said. “I was trying to miss, I just wanted to scare him so he wouldn’t hit you again.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Were you really trying to miss?” Tommy asked.

  “No.”

  It was an awkward ride back. I could tell we all wanted to say something, but none of us let the words come. And with each step, I found myself wanting more and more to go back and kill Chase Rutledge.

  Every once in a while, I stole a look over at Luz, but she didn’t say anything; never acknowledged the looks each of us timidly gave her.

  We were almost back to the fire pit when Tommy said, “Well, if no one else is going to say it, I guess I will. What’re we going to do about this when we get back?”

  “It’s trouble. He’s probably going to arrest us,” I said.

  “Then he’ll have to arrest Chase, too,” Luz said.

  It took us a while to register that she had finally talked.

  “I’ve already been through that with Clayton,” I said. “You watch, nothing’ll happen to Chase again, but me and Gabe and Tommy are gonna get taken in.”

  “We should call the county sheriff,” Gabe said.

  “Like your dad did when Clayton broke my nose? Maybe we should just shut up and see what Chase does,” I said.

  “It’s not going to be good, either way,” Tom said. “You know it’s not going to be good. But whatever happens, we’re in this together.”

  We stopped off
to get Tommy’s boots. It was dark by the time we made it back to the Foreman’s house.

  “Can I just stay here tonight?” I asked Tom. “I’ll call my dad.”

  “Sure, Stotts. We’ll go out for the truck with CB in the morning.”

  “I’m scared to go home,” Gabe said.

  “You can stay here, too,” Tom said.

  “He’s gonna need to come home or it will just make him madder,” Luz said.

  Gabe sighed. He was real scared, but not about his father. I could tell.

  “I’ll put Reno and Arrow up, Tom.”

  I walked the horses back around to the stalls. They were happy to be back, to smell the alfalfa in the feeders, to be free of those saddles. Luz came with me. I put my hat on top of Reno’s saddle on the hitching post and brushed the hay off my arms when the horses were in. She didn’t say anything, just leaned against the hitch and watched me work there in the dark. I still had that number seven on my chest. I could hear Tommy and Gabe talking to Carl inside the house. I wondered what they were saying.

  “I’m glad this ‘49ers weekend is over,” I said. “It seemed like forever.”

  “I was scared, Troy.”

  “So was I. We just have to make sure things work out right. That means we’ll have to tell what happened, ‘cause no one should get in trouble over this except for him. I’ll tell ‘em I shot him.”

  “You can’t lie, Troy.”

  “I didn’t think I could shoot someone, either, but if that gun didn’t run out I would’ve. I know it.”

  Luz turned to me and we embraced. I put my hand in her hair and she grabbed my head. We fell onto the grass below the hitching post and I lay on top of her, holding her. She said, “I wish we could run away.”

  “We can. If we were alone now, I’d …”

  I heard the screen door open and I got up, then pulled Luz up by both hands. I put my hat back on. We looked at each other and I smiled at her with my straight mouth. I held her hand as we walked around to the front of the Foreman’s house.