A bad road accident in the southern part of the county demanded Jim Green’s attention. Clyde backed his unit out onto Boundary and headed south across the tracks toward Dhont territory. Less than half a mile south he came across Hal Karst’s unit pulled onto a little farm road that separated one Dhont field from another. Hal had left his spotlight shining at an angle across the soybean field to the right of the dirt road. Beans were a low-to-the-ground crop, and a runaway horse would be more likely to go into a bean field than a cornfield, where the ripening tassels would be above its head.
Clyde parked his unit on the turnout of the dirt road, behind Hal Karst’s, then reached in the open window of Hal’s car, grabbed the handle on the spotlight, and swung the light slowly back and forth across the bean field. As the beam came round nearly parallel to the dirt road, two closely spaced red sparks suddenly jumped out of the darkness, so far off in the distance that he could barely resolve them. They blinked out, then on again. Either the Dhonts’ bean field had been invaded by a large and exceptionally calm buck, or else this was the horse. It was near the fence, and it didn’t seem to be going anywhere. Maybe Hal had succeeded in tying it to a fence post. Clyde aimed the spotlight directly down the center of the road, expecting to pick out the burly form of Hal walking back toward his unit, sweaty and out of breath from chasing the horse around the field. But that was not exactly what he saw. He did see Hal Karst, only a stone’s throw away—clearly recognizable by the light-tan color of his sheriff’s uniform. But Hal was not walking up the road. He was lying down in the dirt and he was not moving.
The nature of police work in Forks County was such that when a deputy saw a colleague down on the ground and not moving, he did not immediately think about death and violence, as a big-city policeman would. It seemed much more likely that Deputy Karst might have tripped and fallen on his face. But though he was moving around weakly, he made no real effort to get up.
Clyde lunged in through the window of Hal Karst’s unit, grabbed the mike from his dashboard radio, and said in a tight voice, “Hal is down. Hal is down. Send an ambulance.” Then he dropped the mike onto the seat and took off running.
Hal Karst was thrashing weakly from side to side. He had fallen first on his face but had rolled over several times since then and was now coated with dust from the road. He had crossed his arms over his body and was clutching his ribs and gasping for air. “What’s wrong, Hal?” Clyde said, but whatever was wrong with Hal seemed to concern his heart and lungs and rendered him incapable of speech.
Clyde yanked the big black cop flashlight from his belt and shone it over Hal’s face and body, looking for a clue. He was startled to see blood smeared on the hands and uniform shirt, and for a moment his heart jumped as he thought that perhaps the bad guys were still out there and had done something to Hal. Controlling the panicky urge to shine the light around him in a search for perpetrators, Clyde took stock of Hal’s situation as calmly as he could. He did not see any wounds, and the blood was thinly smeared around, not coursing out the way it would if Hal had been knifed or shot.
Hal’s motions were getting steadily weaker. Clyde shone the light on his face, which had gone all pale. Hal’s lips were violet. His eyelids were drooping. Clyde dropped the flashlight, put one hand under Hal’s neck and lifted it up so that his chin tilted back. He reached a couple of fingers down into Hal’s mouth and made sure he hadn’t swallowed his tongue. Then he clamped Hal’s nose shut, bent down, pressed his lips over Hal’s, and forced air into his lungs.
Clyde spent a long time there giving Hal Karst mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. After a minute or two he reached down with his free hand and groped his way around Hal’s chest until he could find a pulse. It felt weak and fluttery, as though the heart of a hummingbird were beating in there, and so Clyde started alternating CPR with the mouth-to-mouth, ramming the heel of his hand into Hal’s sternum very hard so that the rib cage bulged with each thrust.
The amount of blood did not increase, and Clyde finally figured out that it was just a red herring. This wasn’t Hal’s blood, it was the horse’s. Hal had got it smeared on him when he had been getting the horse calmed down.