68
He could not speak but only stood there, hunched over her, careful of the tubes and wires and the incredible thinness of her under the bedding. His jaw was pressed to her wet neck, and she trembled with the quaking of his body. There was no sound in the room but the chirping of the machines and the soft patting of her hand on his back and her reedy voice saying It’s okay now, Daddy, it’s okay, it’s okay, Daddy.
She opened her eyes again, the pupils so large and black even in that light, and Sean, standing back from the bed, tried to hold her gaze, but he could not and he looked instead to the floor.
“Dudley,” she said, just audibly, and he looked up and she was smiling at him over their father’s shoulder. She said something more he didn’t hear and he stepped forward and she swallowed and said in her drugged whisper, “I knew you were alive.”
SHE SLEPT AGAIN AND they stood looking down on her. Grant reached to draw a strand of hair from her face, passed his knuckles softly over her cheek, her chin. Then he turned to his son: “I’ll call your mother now. Are you all right?”
When he was gone, Sean stepped closer to the bed. He took up her limp hand. He looked at her feet: the tented shape of the left foot under the bedding and the footless right in its enormous white wrappings, like a swaddled child. When he looked at her face again her eyes were open. Wet and glazed and looking at him.
“So tall,” she said.
She looked beyond him to the closed door, and before she could ask he told her that she wasn’t here, that she was still back home, in Wisconsin. “We wanted to see you before we called her,” he said.
“Is she all right?”
“Yes.”
She studied him. “Do I look as old as you?”
“You look just the same.”
“Bullshit.”
She saw the cast and puzzled at it. “What happened to your hand?”
“It got in a fight.”
“With who?”
“The wrong man.”
She stared at him. Then she looked beyond him again toward the door, and he turned to look but there was no one there.
“Are they still . . . ?” she said.
He nodded.
The machines beeped and hummed. He looked around at their mysterious faces. When he came back to her, some fresh wave of pain was in her eyes and she said, “Sean, I’m so sorry.”
He shook his head.
“I never should have left you,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t,” he said.
“I was supposed to take care of you—”
“No,” he said.
“And I left you there.”
Her lids faltered and the grip drained from her hand. “But you stayed,” she said. “You stayed, all this time.”
Next she knew, the world was in motion—walls and ceiling panels and lights all sliding by in a lurid hallucinatory blur. Then she saw her father beside the bed and the sight of him walking and the feel of his hand around hers told her it was not the world in motion but herself.
The small woman doctor walked ahead of him. Her brother walked on the other side of the bed and a man she didn’t recognize was pushing the bed. A bag of clear fluid swung from a chromium hook.
She squeezed her father’s hand and he looked down and his haggard face reset itself.
“Hey there, sleepyhead.”
“Where we going, Daddy?”
“Down to Denver, sweetheart, to see another doctor.”
“Will Mom be there?”
“Not right away but soon.”
He smiled and she said in sudden desperation, “I wanted to call you but they took my phone away and wouldn’t give it back!”
“It’s all right, sweetheart. We’re here now.”
“But I wanted to call you and they took my phone away. Why’d they take my phone away, Daddy?”
The woman doctor with the pretty face smiled and said, “It was the sheriff’s phone, honey, remember?”
They passed through the parting glass doors and into the harsh outdoor lights of the stone canopy. Beyond the canopy the mountains and the ski runs and the sky were all blue-gray in the coming dawn and she felt the cold air and saw the sky and began at once to weep.
“Billy,” she said.
“Shh,” said Grant.
“Daddy,” she said.
“Yes, Caitydid.”
She closed her eyes and Grant touched her face.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Hush,” he said.
“He found me, Daddy.”
“I know, baby.”
“He stabbed the Monkey.”
Grant and Sean looked at each other.
“He stabbed the Monkey,” she wept, “and I chopped off his foot.”
The EMTs took command of the gurney, buckling the legs and rolling it into the ambulance all in one motion. Grant shook the doctor’s hand a final time and thanked her and she told him again that Caitlin was going to be just fine, that she had never met a stronger young woman nor a braver one.
She stepped away and the sheriff came forward.
“I just got off the radio with my deputy,” he said. “They found him.”
“Alive?”
“No, sir, he’s as dead as they come. The dogs found him sitting under a tree with a bowie knife stuck in his neck. His own, from the looks of it.”
“Billy,” Grant said.
“That’s how it looks.” Kinney adjusted his belt. “Dogs also found a hole up there.”
“A hole.”
“A kind of pit. In the rocks. Deep. Looks like he was trying to put Billy down there when he got that knife stuck in his neck. Then he crawled away and died and Billy went back to the cabin. How it looks.”
“So he’s dead,” Grant said.
“Dead and gone to hell.”
The EMT had his hand on the ambulance door. The sheriff didn’t move.
“What else?” Grant said.
“Bodies. Down in that pit. At least two. We won’t know how many till morning.”
Grant nodded.
“I can take you up there, if you want,” said Kinney. “After you get Caitlin settled down in Denver. If you want to see that shack. That man. I figure it’s your right.”
Grant looked into the ambulance. He shook his head. “I’ve already seen it, Joe.”
He climbed in and sat beside his daughter and found her hand, and the EMT shut the door and the ambulance pulled away with the colored lights flashing but no siren, and when they passed through the parking lot Sean put the blue Chevy in gear and fell in behind them and he stayed behind them all the way down to the city.