“Stop the horse!” I shouted once more.
The driver looked back. “All right, all right,” he said, and pulled on the reins. “This is about where you get off anyway.”
The horse came to a stop, and I stooped next to Atticus to help him up.
“I’ll…ve…fine,” he said, his voice muffled, his words altered by his swollen lips.
“Oh, don’t be so manly,” I scolded him, positioned one arm at his back. “Now you have to get up; it’s going to be painful, but you have to walk.”
“Ivcanvalk,” he insisted.
He was coherent, and talking, and that was a good sign—his head injury likely was not as serious as I’d feared.
With terrible effort, the driver and I helped Atticus down from the trailer. He was standing up better than I thought he could, but I had to wonder how much of it was forced and only making his injuries worse. We helped him over to sit with his back against a tree.
“Do you know anything about a raft nearby?” I asked the driver.
He pointed. “If it’s where it’s supposed to be, it’s usually under some brush just over that way, close to the riverbank. Keep in mind, crazy people always watching the river. My advice is stay close to the bank and don’t float off on any creeks. They’ll look invintin’ and all that, being off the big river, but trust me it’s dangerous down them creeks. After that I don’t know what to tell you. Where are you goin’ anyway?”
“Thank you for your help,” I told the man, and left him standing there.
As I helped Atticus to his feet again with his arm over my shoulder, the driver got back on his horse; I heard the familiar tap of his boots against the horse’s sides, and the click-click of his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Let’s go!” he called out to the horse; the trotting of hooves and the crunching of the trailer wheels on the gravel faded as they got farther away, leaving only the sounds of the behemoth Mississippi River nearby. I could see the brownish water through the trees, I could feel the openness beyond them, the vast space between both sides of the river where there were no trees to break the wind that had picked up the moment I stepped off the trailer. The sky was getting darker in the early morning as thick clouds moved in from the west; the smell of rain lingered on the air; low rumbles of thunder kneaded the clouds in the distance.
I contemplated the driver’s warnings about the Mississippi, and although I was sure Atticus would still want to take the raft if we found it, I decided that until the rain passed we would stay on land.
I gazed eastward behind me, opposite the river, and spotted a few small buildings just over a hill. With my support, Atticus made the three-minute walk in ten.
“We’ll stay here until the rain passes,” I said.
Atticus nodded weakly.
I peered into the glass windows of an abandoned beauty salon to see it was empty. And when we ventured inside, the smell of water damage and the must of abandonment was heavy in the room; the floor was covered in sand and muck pushed against the walls, beds of leaves filled with trash had settled in the corners, and there was a dark film on the tall windows and dingy walls that stopped just beneath the doorknob, all signs that the river had overflowed its banks and flooded this place at least once, but probably numerous times.
I helped Atticus through the room and led him to an oversized leather chair where women used to relax as they received pedicures and read magazines and gossiped. He sat into the chair heavily, grimacing with his eyes shut tight as he adjusted his body against the pain.
“What hurts the most?” I asked.
Atticus tried to lift his arm, indicating the dislocated elbow, but the pain was too great.
“You’v’hav to seth’it,” he tried to explain, and then pointed with the opposite hand.
“I…think I can do it,” I said, saving him from having to speak. “But I’m afraid. Reading about how to do these things is not the same as doing them. I’ve never had to reset an elbow before—I’ve never had to reset anything before.”
“You can’thoo’it.” (I trusted her, but I didn’t look forward to the process—whether she could do it or not, it would hurt like hell.)
I braced myself—so did Atticus—and positioned both hands around his arm; a second later and the elbow was set back into place. Atticus threw his head against the faux leather chair and screwed his eyes shut. (Ahh! I tried to focus only on breathing as a burning sensation worked its way mercilessly through my arm and shoulder—I nearly passed out.)
I made him a sling from a beautician’s smock I’d found hanging on a hook on the back of the restroom door. “You need to keep it still,” I told him, hoping my medical knowledge was accurate, or at the very least, not going to make him worse.
I took his hand into both of mine and examined the broken fingers. “No, just relax,” I told him when he tried to lift his head from the headrest. “I’m going to make a splint.” I looked around the place. “And I’ll need to find something to clean and stitch the stab wounds with.” I didn’t want to say it out loud, but I had no confidence in ever finding the latter. Improvisation would be my only option in treating him. But Atticus wasn’t a fishing hook fashioned from a soda can tab, or a—I spotted something while worrying.
“These will work for splints, at least,” I said, walking over to a table beside a tall mirror. I plucked four small wooden spatulas from a glass vase probably used to mix hair dye. In a cabinet above the sink, I found an unused roll of black electrical tape shoved behind an empty box.
I took the items and made splints for Atticus’ broken fingers. I saved the stab wounds for last because I saw nothing in the beauty salon that would help treat them. I needed antiseptic, and clean water, and, most important, antibiotics. I searched in every corner, every drawer; I went into the utility closet and turned it upside-down, hoping to find something, anything, but this place had been picked clean long ago, and all I came across were more smocks and a few brightly-colored hair clamps and some old bottles of dried-up nail polish. Oh! A bottle of rubbing alcohol! I felt my face light up when I saw it behind a small waste basket. But my hope came crashing down when I felt the emptiness of the plastic bottle in my hand. I chucked it into the waste basket right along with my short-lived excitement.
“Atticus,” I began, as I emerged from the utility closet, but he was asleep again.
I wanted to move him so he could lay down flat, rather than sitting slouched in the chair, but there was nowhere flat to move him to, except for the floor, and I was trying to prevent his open wounds from getting infected, not the other way around.