ALLUSIVE AFTERSHOCK (34 page)

Court smiled and let
go. “Don’t worry.”

When the door closed, I
turned back toward the fireplace and glanced briefly at Max.

“What the hell, Adela?”

“What do you mean?” I
played dumb.

“You and Courtland, why
didn’t you tell me?”

“There’s really nothing
to tell.”

“No? I wake up and find
you clutching him against you and then you grab him and kiss him goodbye? That’s
not nothing, Adela.”

“I thought you knew.”

“No. How would I know?”

“I thought Court told
you outside.”

“He never said. I was
only guessing.” Max shook his head. “How could you, Adela? How could you let
that freak touch you?”

Court never told Max
anything? I was extremely pleased to learn Court wasn’t the kind of guy to kiss
and tell. “He is not a freak and I don’t like what you’re insinuating. I kissed
him because
I
wanted to and I will continue to kiss him because I want
to.”

I sat in front of the
fire, steaming in silence and staring into the amber ashes in the fireplace, the
sizzling fire the only sound for several minutes until Max said, “You really
like him?” His voice was low and soft as he came and sat beside me, the way he always
did when we talked about important things.

I looked at him. “Yeah,
I do.”

“Are we still friends?”

“Yes, of course.”

“So how can you like
him when you know he can’t stand me?”

“I don’t think he feels
that way about you. He just knows you don’t like him. Am I supposed to not like
somebody because you don’t?”

He shrugged.

“That’s kind of
childish, don’t you think? And you used to like him until you realized he could
take you in a fight.”

“I was only ten then
and he was a whole foot taller than me. But I bet I could take him now.” He
grinned.

“Don’t even think about
it. It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters.”

The door flew open and Courtland
walked in covered with snow, carrying over his shoulder … a small deer?

“You got a deer?”

“It’s a fawn still. I
hated
killing her, but we gotta eat and rabbits and turkeys are hard to find in the
snow,” Court said, laying the animal down on the floor. “We won’t be able to
eat all of this but we can keep some of it fresh packed in snow for a little
while.”

“Slick, dude, you
killed Bambi,” Max said.

“Shut it, Max. I won’t
be able to eat any of it if you keep that up.” I walked up to Court. He looked
absolutely devastated that he had to kill that poor creature. His head hung low
as he knelt over the deer, stroking its side.

“She gave her life for
us. I didn’t want to have to kill her, but there was nothing else out there. At
least she’ll give us food for a few days.”

“Don’t worry about it,
dude. You probably saved our lives. It looks like it might snow for a while.
So, good job.” Max patted Court on the shoulder. “Want some help skinning her?”

“Okay. You sure you’re
up for it?”

“Yeah.”

Something happened
between Max and Adela the day I went out and killed that deer. Something good.

It snowed nonstop for
the next three days. By the amount of snow that dropped, I realized we were no
longer just in the foothills, but somewhere smack dab in the middle of the
Sierra Mountains.

Somewhere between the
forest and the smoke, I’d lost track of the sun and took a wrong turn so that
we’d headed too far east instead of north. This wasn’t something I wanted to
mention at this particular juncture, not when Max was actually acting human
toward me.

Adela no longer seemed
worried about cuddling up next to me and Max stopped shooting daggers at me
with his eyes. Max spoke to me more often and actually laughed at my stupid
jokes, almost the way he did when we were kids.

A chill ran through the
air and I noticed the fire needed stoking. Since our little pile of firewood had
dwindled to only two logs, I stood and headed toward the door.

“Where are you going?”
Max asked.

“The wood’s getting low
so I’m going out to gather some more before it gets dark.”

“I’ll come with you.”
Max grabbed the blanket we’d found him wrapped up in and put it around his
body.

I shrugged. “Suit
yourself.”

As soon as we stepped outside,
Max grabbed my shoulder. I turned toward him just in time to meet his fist with
my jaw. I stumbled back and fell into the snow.

“Now we’re even,” Max
said, rubbing his knuckles with his other hand.

I rubbed my jaw and
stood up, hands fisted at my side, expecting Max to charge me. I didn’t want to
fight; I was sick and tired of fighting. When Max didn’t make a move toward me,
I frowned. “What the hell, Wendell?”

“Now that we’re older, I
just wanted to make sure I could actually take you.”

I nodded and walked
past him toward the pile of wood. “You didn’t take me, you just sucker-punched
me.”

All of a sudden Max
plowed into me from behind, tackling me to the ground. He got in another punch,
but I was quick to counter. So much for thinking Max and I were going to start
getting along again. I didn’t want to fight but I wasn’t going just lie still
and let Max beat the holy crap out of me. He sent his fist flying again and
caught me below the eye but I came right back and planted my knuckles against
his jaw. We scrambled to our feet and just as I regained my balance, he head-butted
me in the stomach and I fell backwards on the ground with Max on top of me. We
wrestled for a few minutes, our arms wrapped around each other like lovers and I
realized neither one of us was winning.

“Have you had enough
yet?” I asked. We were both breathing heavily, our breath hovering in little
white puffy clouds.

“Yeah, guess so,” Max
huffed out and I let him go.

“You’re an ass.”

“Yeah, well, you are
too.” He stood and held out his hand to me. I blinked, not sure if it was a
joke or not, but decided to take a chance. I latched on as he pulled me up and Max
spread his blanket on the ground. “Let’s load it up. We can take twice as much,
but we need to hurry. It’s freezing out here.”

“Good idea.” We quickly
piled wood onto the blanket.

“Did you know her eyes
light up when you enter the room?” Max asked, tossing another log on top of the
blanket.

I didn’t say anything,
not sure how to respond, but I was beaming inside at the revelation.

“Well, they do. I’ve
never seen them light up like that before.”

We piled more wood onto
the blanket in silence until we had a stack about two feet high and four feet
long. “I think this will do it for now,” I said.

“If you ever hurt her,
Reese, I’ll bust your balls.

I nodded. “I wouldn’t
expect anything less, but there’s no chance of that ever happening.”

“Which one?”

“Both. Me hurting Adela
or, you busting my balls.”

Max grinned. “Yeah,
right. Man, you’ve got it bad. I always knew you had a thing for her, but never
realized until this moment how bad.”

Holding on to the
corners of the blanket, we walked it back toward the door of the museum.

“I’m sorry about your
mom,” Max said.

Startled, I glanced back
at him, causing me to trip over a rock. I fell forward, dropping my end of the
blanket as pieces of wood scattered across the white ground.

“Klutz,” Max said,
laughing while he tripped over one of the logs and fell to the ground beside me.
I balled up a handful of snow and threw it at him.

“Cut it out!” He
grabbed a handful and sent it right back and then, as if no time had elapsed, we
were back in fourth grade, throwing snowballs at one another and rolling around
laughing.

Adela opened the door.
“What’s going on?”

“Court tripped,” Max
belted out in uncontrollable laughter.

“Then Max tripped,” I
managed, laughing even harder.

Then Adela was down in
the snow, wrestling with the two of us, giggling. We rolled around throwing
snow at each other, laughing so hard my stomach hurt. It felt good to laugh
with Max again, even better to laugh with the three of us together. This was
the way it was supposed to be.

The rumbling started out
slow ... but quickly intensified as a loud crash from somewhere above our heads
reverberated through the air.

Jeez, when are these
aftershocks going to stop?

The crack was so loud
it sounded like an explosion. It was almost like slow motion as a tree limb broke
apart from its trunk while gravity did the rest, bringing that humongous branch
right down toward us. Our bodies did the slow-mo dreamlike scramble.

“Look out!” Max shouted
and rolled to his right.

“Adela!” I grabbed onto
her arm and tried to pull her toward me and out of the way, but the branch fell
too fast and too hard, and she screamed as it caught her left shin, pinning her
to the snow angel impression she’d made only a few seconds earlier.

“Oh God.” I scrambled
over to her, squatting at her side. At the same time, Max jumped up and ran to
her, kneeling in the snow on her other side.

She pushed down with
her hands to pull herself free. “I … I can’t move.” She winced, biting her
lower lip and cried, “God, my leg … my leg.”

“Can you move?” I
asked.

“No. I’m stuck. Ow, it
hurts,” she grunted. “I think it might be broken. Help me, please,” she cried.

“Shhh … shhh.” I
whispered and stroked her head. “We’ll get you free.”

She leaned her head
back in the snow and grimaced. 

I glanced at the limb.
The bulk of it landed about five feet from her but the portion that lay on top
of her leg didn’t look to be so heavy that we couldn’t lift it.

“We gotta get this off
of her. I might be able to pry it up if you can pull her out,” Max said.

I sprang to my feet and
stared down at the branch. “Okay, count to three and I’ll pull her out.”

“Ready?”

He nodded. “One, two,
three.” Max’s face contorted from the strain but the limb wouldn’t budge. He
straightened, glanced around and ran to the other side of the yard. He came
back in a few seconds with a large thick metal rod.

I nodded. “Okay, that
should work.”

Max placed the rod
under the tree limb and put his entire weight on it until the limb rose up
enough to see Adela’s leg, pressed down and packed into the snow. When I
prepared to shift Adela’s body, he yelled at me. “Wait! Don’t pull yet. You’ll
need to come here and clear some of the snow away before you move her.”

Max maintained pressure
on the rod while I dug the snow away with my hands.

“I’ve still got it. Go
ahead a pull her out now.”

I tugged Adela several
inches away from the fallen tree and she screamed in agony. I knelt down beside
her and lifted her pant leg, revealing the already bruised skin surrounding her
ankle.

Max looked at her foot.
“It looks like the snow may have helped reduce some of the impact. It doesn’t
look too bad,” he said as he glanced at me and shook his head.

I could have kissed Max
right then for having the brains to keep the damage assessment to a minimum.
The last thing Adela needed was to know her ankle was shattered. There was
nothing in any emergency medical kit that was going to help her even if we hadn’t
left it in the cellar.

“We need to get you
inside.” I glanced around the area for something to place under her leg so we
could carry her into the building. The scent of fresh cut pinewood filled my
nostrils as I turned my head toward the broken branch and the old dilapidated
museum we now called home. I grabbed three flat—as flat as I could find—boards
about four to six inches wide from the pile Max and I lugged over and slipped
one under Adela’s ankle being careful to go deep enough under the snow not to
disturb it. I put a board on each side making a sort of wooden cast.

“Max, inside my pack
there’s some thin rope. Can you go get it?”

He sprang up, running
into the museum before I even finished asking him to go get the twine. He was
back a minute later with the curled up strands hanging from his hands.

“Wrap that around the
boards to keep them in place.” I held the pieces of wood and her leg a few
inches from the ground so he could get the twine around several times. “Don’t
bother knotting it. We’ll need to undo it when we get her inside. We can put a
better splint on it then to keep it immobilized until we can get her to a
doctor.”
If we can get her to a doctor.
“Grab her under the arms. I’ll
take this half since I’m already here. Let’s try not to jostle her leg too
much.”

We carried Adela into
the building as if she was a fragile piece of glass ready to break if we bumped
into anything, her ashen face cringing with every move. We laid her on the
sleeping bag close to the fireplace then Max ran out and gathered up some of
the wood we’d dropped and built up the fire.

“Adela,” I whispered
close to her ear and she opened her eyes.

“Court, it hurts.”

“I know and I’m sorry.
I’m pretty sure it’s broken. I’m gonna go outside and get some snow to pack
around your ankle, which should help keep the swelling down.”

I found two slats of
plastic lying on the floor behind the counter. They must have been part of the
display. They were a little too wide but flatter than the boards I’d used from outside.
I placed them on each side of Adela’s ankle, leaving one of the boards underneath
her, and wrapped the twine around them to secure them in place. Actually, it
was good that the plastic pieces were wide because it left room to pack on the
snow. I propped her foot on top of several boards and used the blanket Max had as
a cushion under her foot. We packed some snow around her ankle then sat huddled
in front of the fire; Max had stoked it up fairly high. Adela’s ankle needed to
be set and I was worried we might not be rescued, a bit of information I
decided to keep to myself. I figured Max was thinking the same thing.