“Just try and get up for me, Portis. Please.”
“Lighter is in my pocket,” he said.
I lit the cigarette and he took a few deep draws before I pulled it out and let him exhale. He coughed out the smoke and groaned from the pain. He drank some more whiskey and then called for the cigarette. I went to put it in his mouth but he reached out with his hand and smoked it himself.
“We didn’t end right,” he said. “Me and your mother. But we had some good times, didn’t we? The four of us.”
“We did,” I said.
“You remember that time we went bowling out to Victories? When Starr kept slipping and falling on her butt?”
“I remember.”
“You do?”
“I do.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“She wouldn’t put the shoes on,” I said. “She liked some boy and she was convinced he was going to come in and see her in the clown shoes so she bowled in her socks instead.”
Portis shook his head.
“She was boy crazy,” he said. “Hormones, like zow.”
He laughed, then gripped his belly and winced. I turned away when the bile came, but it clung to his beard when he coughed and stretched in a long line from the corner of his mouth. He swiped at it with his hands and I could feel the tears welling in my eyes.
“I think about them days sometimes,” he said. “The old days, or whatever. I think about you girls.”
“I think about it, too,” I said.
“We had some good times,” he said.
“We did,” I said. “We had the best times.”
“I ain’t going to make it,” he said.
“You’ve got to try.”
“I’m going to die right here where I sit,” he said.
“No, you are not,” I said.
“Please don’t argue with me,” he said.
“I’m not going to let you die, Portis. That’s not what’s going to happen.”
“I wouldn’t bother with that rifle,” he said. “Travel light and be smart. We bought you a little time but you got to stay off the road now. Get back in them woods.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.
“Whiskey,” he said.
I put the bottle to his lips and he took another gulp.
“There’s an element of relief to it,” he said. “There truly is.”
“Just get up, Portis. Please.”
“I’m not getting up. I can’t.”
“We need you,” I said.
He turned off to the side and started to mutter. I made a fist and thumped him on the chest but he never turned back to face me. I kept pounding and then I grabbed at his coat and tried to pull him toward me, almost like I thought I could yank him back somehow—like death is just some edge you can keep someone from falling off.
Portis didn’t come back, of course. He was gone and I screamed out as I watched the life leave his eyes—like the light going down on a dimmer switch.
Chapter Twelve
Shelton had just put the gun on Hector when the buzzing in his chest began. He thought he was having some sort of indigestion, or perhaps a heart attack, until he heard the ringing and realized it was the cell.
He took the phone from the front pocket of his snowsuit and kept the laser sight on the boy. They were far enough away from the bike path, two blocks at least, so Shelton wasn’t worried about Hector slipping away again. He was perfectly happy to keep the boy frozen there for another minute or two while he took his call. First and foremost, Shelton was a businessman.
It was Krebs. Krebs never bothered to say hello, or ask Shelton how he was. He just launched right into his story about how Arrow had been burned to a crisp.
“Do what?” Shelton said.
“He’s burned up,” said Krebs. “He’s dead.”
“You say Arrow McGraw has been burned up dead?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Goodness,” said Shelton.
“We found that goddamn baby. Portis had her in a fucking deer blind. We could hear it crying.”
“You found the baby?”
“Yeah,” he said. “And then Arrow set himself on fire.”
“Why did he do that?”
“What do you mean, why? It was a goddamn accident.”
“Did you get her? Did you get Jenna?”
“Hell no,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because Arrow burned and then I run.”
“What did you run for?”
“’Cause Portis had a rifle! He had the position in that blind, too. Wasn’t nothing I could do.”
“So what you’re saying is that Portis Dale has the baby?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“So this doesn’t have nothing to do with Little Hector or the Mexicans?”
“There weren’t no Mexicans. I don’t know nothing about no Mexicans.”
“Thank God.”
“Yeah, thank God Arrow didn’t get killed by a Mexican. That would have made all the difference, you fucking dipshit.”
“It’s not like that,” Shelton said. “It’s complicated.”
“Not for Arrow.”
“Arrow’s dead,” Shelton said.
“I know, motherfucker. I’m the one that called and told you.”