The Highway Kind(13)

Pop. Pop.


Brandon didn’t want to wake up, and each time he got close, he faded back. He dreamed of freezing to death because he was.

He groaned and rolled to his side and his head swooned. He threw up on the sleeve of the old man’s ranch coat and it steamed in the early-morning light. His limbs were stiff with cold and it hurt to move them. His face throbbed and he didn’t know why. When he touched the area above his right ear he could feel a crusty wound that he couldn’t recall receiving.

But he was alive.

He gathered his knees under him and pushed himself clumsily to his feet. When a wave of dizziness hit him, he reached out and grabbed the end of the open shed door so he wouldn’t fall again.

It took a minute for him to realize where he was and recall what had happened. He staggered toward the Power Wagon, toward the pair of boots that hung out of the open truck door.

Dwayne Pingston was dead and stiff with a bullet hole in his cheek and another in the palm of his hand. No doubt he’d raised it at the last second before Wade pulled the trigger.

Brandon turned and lurched toward the open shed door.

The morning sun was streaming through the east wall of willows, creating gold jail bars across the snow.

The Jeep was gone but Tater’s body lay facedown near the tracks. Peggy was splayed out on her back on the front porch, her floral dress hiked up over blue-white thighs. Both had been shot to death.

“Marissa!”

He stepped over Peggy’s body like he’d once stepped over the old man. The front door was unlocked and his eyes were wide open and he was breathing fast when he went inside.

His movement and the warmth of the house made his nose bleed again, and it felt like someone was applying a blowtorch to his temple. He could hear his blood pattering on the linoleum.

“Marissa!”

“Oh my God, Brandon, you’re alive!” she cried. “I’m in here.”

She was in the old man’s den.

When he filled the door frame and leaned on it to stay up, she looked up from behind the desk and her face contorted.

“You’re hurt,” she said. “You look awful.”

He didn’t want to nod.

Five tiny hairless mice, so new their eyes were still shut, wriggled in a pile of paper scraps on the desk in front of her.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Checking on my babies.”

It was incomprehensible to him. “What happened?”

She shook her head slowly and said, “When I heard the shots outside I ran upstairs and locked myself in the bathroom. All I could think of was that you were gone and that I’d be raising this boy by myself.

“I heard Tater yell and run out, then Peggy followed him. There were more shots and then I heard a car drive away. I didn’t unlock my door and come out until an hour ago. I went outside and saw you lying in the snow and I thought you were gone like the others.”

Brandon said, “And the first thing you did after you saw me was check on the mice?”

“They’re helpless,” she explained. Then he noticed her eyes were unfocused and he determined she was likely in shock. She’d succumbed to her maternal instincts because she didn’t know what else to do. His other questions would have to wait. He hoped their baby had no repercussions from her terror and tension throughout the night.

“I’ll get the car,” he said.

“Can I bring the babies?”

He started to object but thought better of it.

“Sure.”

As he turned he heard her say, “There’s a towel in the bathroom for your face.”

Brandon was shocked at the appearance of the person who looked back at him in the mirror. He had two black eyes, an enormous nose, and his face was crusted with black dried blood. A long tear cut through the skin above his right ear and continued through his scalp.

Wade, he thought. Wade had stood over him after he’d shot Pingston and fired what he’d thought was a kill shot to his head. He’d missed, though, and the bullet had creased his skull.

He looked like he should be dead.

When Brandon went outside he saw that Wade had left them a present: all four tires on their minivan were slashed and flat and there was a bullet hole in the grille and a large pool of radiator fluid in the snow.

When he shook his head, it ached.

Then he turned toward the shed.

When he went inside, long-forgotten memories rushed back of observing the old man, Pingston, and various other ranch hands working on equipment, repairing vehicles, and changing out filters, hoses, belts, and oil and other fluids. The old man thought it was a waste of time and money to take his equipment into town for repair so he did it all himself. Those were the days when a man could actually fix his own car. And as the men worked, Brandon would hand them the tools they requested.

It had been another world, but one Brandon eased back into. A world where a man was expected to know how a motor worked and how to fix it if necessary.

The battery in the Power Wagon was long dead so he borrowed the battery from his minivan and installed it. The air compressor in the shed sounded like an unmuffled jet engine, but it sufficed to inflate the tires. He filled the Dodge’s gas tank from a five-gallon can he found in the corner. Then, recalling a technique the ranch hands had used on especially cold mornings, he took the air filter off the motor and primed the carburetor with a splash of fuel.