I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive (16 page)

Perhaps it was the
onza,
the wolf-cat her grandfather had told her about. The ancient Mexicans called it
cuitlamiztli
and it was only one of many animal spirits in the world, and though they were worthy of respect, the presence of any of them was natural and rarely cause for trepidation. All the same, she instinctively imposed herself between Doc and any encroaching shadow. Whatever was out there, if it was coming for Doc and intended him harm, it was going to have to get through Graciela first.

Hank is seething, helplessly pacing from corner to corner. Just who the hell does she think she is, anyway? Doesn't she know? Doesn't she see?

But there's the fly in the buttermilk. She does see. Nobody else but Doc has ever seen Hank.

But the girl sees and she tracks every move Hank makes and watches over Doc every waking moment.

Well, Hank reckons there's more than one way to skin a cat.

Manny was waiting in the parlor and he hauled himself up to his considerable height and followed Doc out onto the porch. He knew better than to ask about the kid's condition, reckoning that a report would be forthcoming just as soon Doc was good and ready. He scrambled to light a crooked Camel that dangled from Doc's lower lip.

"Well, he's lost a hell of a lot of blood, Manny," Doc lectured. "And he needs to be in a fucking hospital!" He took a deep drag on the cigarette, held it, and then let it go, long and slow, the thick white smoke issuing from his nose as well as his mouth along with the words. "But the bleeding has stopped, for now, and he's resting, so we'll just have to wait and see." He offered one of his cigarettes and Manny accepted it gratefully.

"Thanks, Doc! I owe you! And my sister—"

"You don't owe
me
shit. But Marge is another story. And Graciela, her being illegal and all. Hell, nobody in this place needs the police to come snoopin' around. What happened, anyway?"

The kid was Manny's nineteen-year-old nephew David, his sister's oldest boy. He and a carload of his friends had double-dog-dared one another to rob a liquor store that night, and for a minute there it had looked like they would get away with it. The owner had politely handed over $256 and a case of beer and then waited until the fleeing desperados were piling into their car before opening up with a .357 magnum and hitting only young David, who, as shitty luck would have it, was bringing up the rear. His partners in crime had intended to dump him in the emergency room driveway but he was on probation for a previous charge and he had begged them to drive him to South Presa instead. His uncle Manny, he said, was a big man down there. He would know what to do.

"I didn't know where else to go, Doc."

"Yeah, well, I'll tell you where you're fixin' to go now. Out there in the street and put your ear to the ground and make damn sure that nobody's going to show up here looking for this boy. No bondsmen, no
migra,
no local John Law! I swear to God, Manny, I'll haul him downtown myself if I have so much as an inkling that something's getting ready to come down, you hear me?"

"I hear you, Doc, I hear you, but don't you worry about nothin'. He had a stockin' over his face and I know that old
boleo
that owns that liquor store. He's like all the rest, can't tell one Mexican from another. No offense, Doc. Anyways, I'll talk to my man downtown, just to be on the safe side." He dropped the butt of his smoke on the porch and stepped on it. "So ... you reckon he's gonna be all right then, Doc?"

"I've done everything I know to do, Manny. It's out of my hands now." He cocked his head in the direction of the bedroom upstairs where Graciela continued to pray at the kid's bedside. "But she hasn't lost one yet."

The big man grinned but Doc wagged a blood-and-nicotine-stained finger in his face.

"Just as soon as he's well enough to be moved he's out of here, Manny, you hear what I'm sayin'? Now, come on, it sounds like Marge is up. You can settle with her for the room."

Marge was back in the kitchen presiding over a skillet full of sausage while the oven heated up to receive a cookie sheet full of drop biscuits. The coffeepot had just stopped percolating. Doc poured Manny a cup and one for himself and then sat down hard, leaning so far back in the chair that the front legs hovered a foot off the floor.

"Don't do my chair like that, Doc! You'll break it down."

Doc straightened up, spilling a little hot coffee in his lap. "Sorry, Marge." Doc winced and he and Manny exchanged shrugs. Marge had never turned around.

"I heard it creak. It's bad for 'em to lean 'em back like that. Not to mention dangerous. Long night?"

Doc shook his head. "Trust me. You don't want to know. I am going to need room five for a week or so, though. Manny'll be pickin' up that tab. He'll pay you up front."

Marge never looked up from the stove. She did trust Doc and she had learned years ago that it didn't pay to know about everything that transpired under her own roof. Simply looking the other way had always been a way of life at the Yellow Rose. In her father's day it was simply a courtesy extended to the establishment's regular clientele. As the South Presa Strip continued to decline, plausible deniability became, more and more, a matter of legal expediency. And since Graciela had arrived, events had transpired in the old firetrap that Marge intuitively felt she was more comfortable knowing little or nothing about.

"That'll be twenty-five bucks through Saturday, another five if you need linens."

"That's another thing." Doc motioned to Manny, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together, and the big man hauled out a roll of bills and began peeling them off. "Those old sheets are about ruined, I reckon. The pillowcases too, along with every last towel that was in that room and a couple that we had to borrow from seven."

"I see—well, new linens is ten. The extra towels two and a half, plus the two from next door, that comes to—"

"Forty-five dollars. Manny, pay the woman."

And Manny laid the money on the table without complaint and then, turning up the collar of his sport coat against the predawn chill, left to tell his sister the good news.

Marge finally turned around long enough to give Doc a quick look up and down.

"You hungry, Doc? I could fry you a couple of eggs to go with some of this sausage."

"No, thank you, Marge. I'm about whipped. I think I'll lie down for a while."

Doc left a half a cup of coffee sitting on the table and climbed back up the stairs. He looked in on his patient and went through the motions but he knew what he'd find. Stable pulse, steady and strong, respirations normal, no fever, no nothing. And Graciela down on her knees by his side, her hands folded, her rosary beads entwined between her fingers, and fresh blood spotting her bandage. Six months had passed and Graciela's wound still hadn't healed.

But the kid's would. It would heal quickly and cleanly without any trace of a scar.

The kid was going to make it. There wasn't the slightest doubt in Doc's mind. It didn't make any sense. By all rights the kid should be dead, or at least in a coma. An irreversible coma. Hell, he wasn't even in shock.

In fact, Doc reckoned that David would not only live but probably thrive, maybe even turn over a new leaf that very day and never steal or cheat or lie ever again. He would, against all odds, in spite of where he came from and one hell of a bad start, amount to something someday and make his mother very proud. He might not become rich or famous but he would certainly keep safe for the rest of his days and get married and have children, and when his time came he would go peacefully and face his Maker with his eyes wide open.

Doc couldn't credit any science or craft, certainly no skill of his own, for young David's inevitable recovery. It wasn't a matter of faith because Doc reckoned faith was the act of believing in something without any physical proof, the proverbial leap beyond ration and reason. Doc still didn't believe in much of anything, unless it was Graciela herself. But he had personally witnessed her perform one miracle after another, so no suspension of disbelief was necessary. He knew from experience that the kid would pull through, just like that redheaded girl last week.

Her old man had cracked her head like an egg without leaving a mark on her face. A smart pimp never hit a girl anyplace that might show because it damaged the merchandise. The girl couldn't see her way clear to calling the law dogs down on the son of a bitch so she refused to go to the hospital and she damn near died before somehow she wound up on Marge's front porch and Marge and Dallas had helped her up the stairs and banged on Doc and Graciela's door. Graciela had taken the girl's hand and begun to pray and Doc had shined his little light into one of her eyes and then the other, and though it defied what sixteen years of formal education and a lifetime of misery had taught him, he knew that she'd make it. He knew because they all made it. All they had to do was get through that door. Sometimes he would perform the procedures that he'd been taught, but he was never sure if he was really contributing anything. The first few times cold chills ran down his spine but eventually he became accustomed to knowing. Now he just knew and that was all and that was that. The girl made it. And when she was up and around she left her pimp and left town and began a new life somewhere else.

And David would make it too.

"I'll be down the hall if you need me," Doc whispered, and Graciela nodded affirmatively, but he knew Graciela wouldn't be coming to bed and he was too tired to undress so he lay diagonally across the four-poster and fell asleep.

Doc's back in his old office above the liquor store in Bossier and he's drawing down a shot of straw-colored liquid from a bottle marked with crossed bones and a grinning skull into his big glass syringe. He thumps the syringe just below the needle with the back of his index finger and squeezes out the last tiny bubbles of air. Clenching the loaded syringe between his teeth like a pirate's dirk, he's just about to wrap the rubber tube around his arm and summon up a suitable vein to receive the dose when someone clears his throat. He knows the voice before a word is uttered.

"
What the hell are you waitin' on, Doc? Christmas?
"

Hank's leaning against the examining table, his pants down to his knees, his shorts pulled down just far enough to expose a patch of translucent flesh the size of a half-dollar. He looks like hell, eat up with the gaunt-ass, Doc used to call it, his skin the color of spoiled milk, but he does appear to be solid enough to stick a needle in and when Hank turns and glares back over his shoulder, Doc can only stare slack-jawed in return.

"
I swear to God Almighty, Doc. You gonna stand there and stare at my ass all night or are you gonna give me a shot?
"

Doc looks down at the loaded syringe, then over at Hank, sighs, and crosses the room.

"
Sure thing, Hank. Take a deep breath." He deftly stabs the needle into the spare flesh, pressing the plunger with his thumb and watching the liquid disappear into Hank's hip. What a waste. It won't even help the pain. Nothing helps Hank's pain.

Hank's tucking in his shirt and eyeing Doc suspiciously. "You ain't turnin' queer on me, are you, Doc?
"

Doc's still disoriented but he has managed to regain the power of speech. "I wouldn't worry too much if I were you, Hank. Even if I were a little light in my loafers you wouldn't be my type. I've always been partial to an ass with some meat on it.
"

Hank looks Doc up and down. "You all right, Doc? You ain't actin' like yourself.
"

"
Yeah, I'm okay. It's just that, well, I'm a little bit...
"

Fuck it, Doc decides. Just ask him.

"
Is this a dream?
"

Hank manages half a smile and shrugs. "For you, maybe. For me it's just a place that I can follow you and she can't get in the way.
"

"
But you're alive. I mean, you look as alive as you ever did.
"

"
I'm only alive because it's your dream and you're dreamin' that you're back in Louisiana, and in Louisiana I was alive. That is"—Hank surveys the office with distaste—"if you call this livin'.
"

"
So—when I wake up, you'll be dead again, and we'll be back in Texas?
"

Hank's up and moving now. Restless, pacing the worn linoleum floor.

"
I reckon. It don't make no never mind to me, Doc, but for the life of me I can't figure out what would ever make you want to go back to a place like that. All that bleedin' and screamin', one hard-luck case after another. And what do you got to show for it? Nothin'. Bean money, at best, and nothin' to knock the edge off at the end of a long, hard night." Hank stops, freezing for an instant before turning and closing in on Doc in one long, sliding step, leaning in close, grinning from jug-handle ear to jug-handle ear.

"
Big ol' shot of dope'd be good right now, wouldn't it, Doc? Just what the doctor ordered? Well, you're the doctor!
"

Hank steps aside and with a flourish reveals the medication cabinet, its doors open wide to showcase an army of glistening amber soldiers dressed in shining glass armor. Doc crosses the room in a step or two and reaches for a bottle, half expecting, even hoping, that it will melt in his hand, but it doesn't. It's hard and cold to the touch, every bit as solid as Hank is in this topsy-turvy dream of Doc's. Without bothering to sterilize his syringe he turns the bottle upside down and pushes the needle through the rubber cap.

"
There you go, Doc! Live a little. I don't understand the attraction myself. That stuff's just medicine to me. It does wonders for the pain in my back but then it puts me right to sleep. Give me a drink of whiskey any ol' day of the week.
"

Doc's got the tourniquet wrapped around his arm again and he's found a vein but Hank's rattling is getting on his nerves...

"
What the hell are you waitin' on, Doc? Christmas?
"