Trouble (29 page)

He dropped the broken bottle.

Then the man with the shotgun held up his arm to avoid the branch that Sanborn threw.

He wheeled the shotgun around.

And pulled the trigger with his eyes closed against the sparks that dashed around his face.

And slammed fourteen white-hot pellets along the lines of Henry's exposed rib cage—his arm still held high from his throw.

Henry felt himself blown back and down. At first he thought it was the sound of the gun that was still booming in his ears. But that was only for a moment. Every nerve in his right side carried the piercing heat that tore at him. He tried to scream, but the pellets and the fall together had shocked the air entirely out of him and he gasped as though someone was holding a forearm against his throat. He gasped to draw some air back in, but there didn't seem to be enough.

Suddenly, Chay and Sanborn were over him, and he could see their eyes opened into wide circles. They looked almost funny, like clowns, their eyes were open so wide. Like something you'd see in a cartoon. "I think I got shot," Henry finally said.

Chay had Franklin's shirt again and was pressing it against Henry's side. "Don't get it bloody," Henry said. Then he threw up. With every retch, he thought his whole body was being torn to pieces.

All this time, the man with the shotgun stood transfixed, the smoke still coming in a wisp from the gun barrel. "I didn't mean anything," he said. "I didn't mean anything. We were just going to scare him. That's all."

Henry, between waves of raw pain, thought they had done that just fine.

Chay took Sanborn's hand and pressed it against Franklin's rugby shirt. Then, quickly, he stood up, knocked down the shotgun, and had his hands up around the man's throat. "Give me the keys!" he yelled. Lying on the ground, Henry was astonished. He didn't think that Chay had ever yelled in his whole life.

"What?" said the man.

"The keys!" Chay screamed. "Give me the keys to your car!"

Henry watched as the drama acted out, with the fire as the footlights and the invisible dark Katahdin as the backdrop. Everything seemed to be playing in slow motion and someone needed to adjust the focus, until he remembered that you don't need to adjust the focus at a play. He tried to blink his eyes, but his eyelids went down and came back up very slowly. He thought that if he tried it again, they might not come back up and he would miss the play. And he didn't want to miss the play, because here's the part where the second bad guy—Mack—is sneaking around behind the first good guy—Chay—who is holding the first bad guy—the one who dropped the shotgun—and trying to get the keys out of his pocket. From far away, Henry heard the second good guy—Sanborn, who was sitting next to him and probably getting Franklin's shirt all bloody—holler something out. But he was too late. The second good guy is always too late, Henry thought. Because the second bad guy had picked up the fallen bottle and swiped it against the first good guy's back and left a staff of new, sharp, bright red lines.

Henry tried to blink again, and he was right—it
was
hard to get his eyelids back up. And when he finally did, he saw that he had missed something. Chay was kneeling beside him, stiff and twisted. And both the bad guys were gone. But Henry could still smell the metallic smoke of the shotgun. And though the pain in his side was getting sharper, he decided that the nauseating ache that was pressing in through his whole chest was a whole lot worse.

"Henry," Sanborn was saying. "Henry."

It took a little while for Henry to shift his head so he was facing Sanborn.

"We've got to get him some help," he heard Sanborn say. Henry felt him pull away Franklin's rugby shirt from his side. "He's bleeding a lot."

Chay nodded.

Why aren't they talking to me anymore? thought Henry. He tried to sit up, and wasn't sure if Sanborn was holding him down or if something heavy was lying on top of his chest—like Chay's unchromed pickup.

Then Chay was standing up and the play started again: He said something to Black Dog—something not in English—and Black Dog looked at him as though she understood, and then they disappeared together into the dark wings.

Suddenly, all the lighting changed for the next scene. Henry, his head on the ground, tried to keep his eyes open because it was done so well, with all the smooth rhythm of a perfectly synchronized crew team. It began with a spotlight that backlit Katahdin, starting with a soft glow and then growing whiter until the rim of the mountain was burning with the white light. And then the spotlight tilted up even more, and then more and more, quickly, rising in a huge, impossibly huge ball above the mountain and dropping its light all down the front of Katahdin, settling silvery gossamer folds between the ridges, the trees, the stones, so that everything on the mountain shivered into wakefulness and threw shadows that shrank back as the spotlight rose higher, then higher, so that now its light folded down even to their campsite, and then came across Henry and Sanborn, so that Henry could see everything with perfect clarity.

"Sanborn," he said.

"You should be quiet, Henry."

"Thanks, Mom."

"Shut up, Henry."

"Sanborn, did you know that you have this huge zit on your nose? It's throwing a shadow."

"Thanks for pointing that out, Henry."

"Maybe we should call some book of world records."

"You know, the only reason I'm not smashing your face into the ground right now is that I'm holding your insides from spilling out."

"Don't get Franklin's shirt bloody."

"Sure, Henry."

Henry turned back to the spotlight. It had changed its color to the lightest yellow. I wonder how they did that, Henry thought. He watched the drapery on the mountain change color, too—all except for Katahdin's rim, etched with dark precision against the starry sky.

"Henry, do you think you could hold this shirt against your side? No—with your other hand."

Henry felt himself moving—slowly.

"Good job."

"Thanks, Coach. I gave it all I have."

Sanborn went over to the woodpile and drew out some more branches. He loaded them onto the low flames, and they quickly caught, the little branches snapping into flame and sparkling up into the sky. He went back again and loaded the fire once more. Then he went to his pack and found the water bottle, brought it to Henry, and held up his head—and let it down again when Henry screamed.

"Okay, okay," he said. "That wasn't exactly the right thing to do."

Sanborn tried tipping the water bottle to Henry's lips, and Henry tried to turn his head to catch some without his body shrieking. But he decided that he would do better just by staying still—absolutely still. Maybe he'd concentrate on the flames that were crackling merrily, as if nothing at all was wrong in the world and he didn't have a shotgun blast buried in his ribs.

The spotlight drew higher—and dimmer. Maybe it's running out of batteries, Henry thought.

Whatever the reason, as the spotlight dimmed, the air grew colder and Henry's legs began to shiver a little. Sanborn brought one of the sleeping bags over and laid it on top of him. But Henry still felt his legs shivering, even though he was starting to sweat, too. "Sanborn," he said, "we could try that water again."

They did, and Sanborn managed to get a little into Henry's mouth. When Henry swallowed, he could feel the ripple of pain follow the water all the way down his esophagus. He threw it all up again, and whatever else was left in his stomach, and by the time he was finished, he was crying.

"This," said Henry very, very slowly, "is embarrassing."

"Then we'll only tell people who've been shot by a shotgun," said Sanborn. "And, boy, when I find them, I'll tell them how Henry Smith couldn't even get shot without throwing up."

"You ... jerk."

"Shut up, Henry."

And he did. They both did. The moon rose big above them, dimmer but still bright enough to fade out most of the stars. Bright enough to light all Katahdin, so that it shimmered against the darkness behind it. And still bright enough to light the campsite around them. And the trees. Why had he never noticed the texture of tree barks? How they showed the way these trees had faced the weather that swept down from the mountain and had come out full of scars—but still okay. What a miracle the tree barks were in the moonlight.

Sanborn got up to put more branches on the fire. And he brought back another shirt. He folded it into a pad and replaced the rugby shirt against Henry's side.

"You got it bloody, didn't you?" said Henry.

"
You
got it bloody," said Sanborn.

"You never get a rugby ... you never get a rugby shirt clean after it gets blood on it."

"You use bleach," said Sanborn.

"That's why you go around with pink rugby shirts, you jerk. You don't use bleach on colors."

"You can use bleach on colors if the water is cool enough. And they're not pink—they're just faded."

"They're pink because you use bleach."

And that's what they were talking about—whether or not you should use bleach with your colored laundry—when a row of flashing lights came screaming up the road and stopped opposite the field. Lights came on as doors were opened and Henry could hear voices. Sanborn stood and called and waved his arms, and Henry felt as if the last act of the play was finally coming on to the great climax. It had been a long play, and it was time to go home to bed, because he was awful tired.

So when the first new member of the cast came on and knelt beside him, Henry looked up at his face—he tried to keep it in focus, but it was blocking out the spotlight and the crisp edges of Katahdin—and he closed his eyes.

"Henry," a voice said.

Now Henry was sure he was in a play. It sounded like his father.

"Henry!" Louisa?

Something licked his face and whined.

"You're going to be all right," said his father's voice.

That sounded like his cue. Henry turned his face away from the licking and let his eyes close. He did not try to open them again.

H
ENRY DREAMED STRANGE DREAMS.
His father's face was in many of them. Sometimes it was Captain Thomas Smith's face, held with his shaking hands and lit by firelight. High and shrill noises. Shrieking pain. Too many blankets. Bright lights. White. Chrome. Strange and heavy odors that gagged him.

His Buck knife—he wondered where his Buck knife had gotten to. And Black Dog.

His father's face. Louisa's face. Sanborn's face. His mother's face.

Then more of the strange and heavy odors. He tried to stay awake. He tried to straighten his eyes to figure out why he kept seeing these faces. And then the odors got too heavy, and he fell asleep. Deep and dreamless, like the mountain.

And when he woke up, he saw his father's face again. And his mother's. He blinked, and blinked again. His arms were too heavy to raise up to wipe his eyes, so he blinked once more to clear them.

His parents were still there after all the blinking, faces and all. They were slumped in two chairs they had pulled together at the end of Henry's perfectly made white bed. Their arms were around each other, their faces side by side, as if they had fallen asleep cheek by cheek. This probably wasn't easy for his mother, Henry figured, since it looked as if his father hadn't shaved in at least a week—which, once upon a time, had been unusual. His mother's face was not as pale as Henry's sheets, but it was heading in that direction, and it wasn't helped by her uncombed hair above or rumpled clothes below. Henry blinked again. He could see their breathing, their mouths so close that it seemed as if they were giving vital air to each other.

He tried to stay as still as everything else in the room. He didn't want to wake his parents. He watched them. He watched their love.

Then quietly, because they were so deeply asleep, he raised his right hand slowly, and then his arm to see if he could do it without hurting himself. He couldn't—but it wasn't a bad hurt. More like the kind of hurt you feel the next morning after a hard crew workout. He twisted his body a little to see what that would do—and decided he wouldn't twist it again for a while.

He tried raising his legs, and that went well—which was good, because he'd have to go to the bathroom soon and the apparatus on the table next to him that looked designed for the purpose wasn't anything that he intended to use.

He let his legs down, then raised them again.

And that was enough to waken his parents—whose eyes opened. Who stood up in their rumpled clothes. Who automatically tried to straighten their clothes, which were past straightening. Who gave up and were on Henry's bed. Who opened their mouths.

And who had no words to say.

Henry watched his parents catalogue him. They laid their hands against their son's face. They looked down at his two good arms. They listened to his breathing, in and out. They saw the brightness of his eyes.

"I'm all right," Henry said. It was hard to talk. He could still smell the strange odors, still feel their heaviness in his throat. "I guess I'm all right."

His father nodded. They took each other's hands. Then Henry closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

He slept for about a day.

Sometimes he woke up a little.

When he did, he saw his parents. Once he thought he saw Sanborn. Twice he thought he saw Louisa.

But mostly he slept dreamlessly, the kind of deep, deep sleep that a body needs for everything to reset. He did not turn on the bed, and hardly noticed when a nurse came in to check on him, or when an orderly went by to collect an uneaten meal, or when his father kissed him lightly on the forehead, or when his mother or sister held his hand. So when he finally did wake up, he woke up half-startled, as though he had come up out of a deep and long ravine and suddenly he was on the summit, and the air was brilliant and blue, and the wind low and smooth, and the smell in the air ...

Well, that was when he realized he wasn't up on a mountain. That, together with the throb in his ribs. And his father and mother in their chairs, slouched against each other, asleep again. Holding hands. Smiling. How long had it been since he had seen them together, smiling?