The Falling Away (4 page)

Dylan pulled on the sleeve, working it away from Webb's arm as he went down. Webb's screams filled the cab.

Dylan pushed Webb's shirt out of the way and examined the wound. Blood oozed from the small hole. Oozing was good; it meant the bullet hadn't hit any major blood vessels. Dylan knew what that looked like.

“I think it's broken,” Webb said.

“Did you pass out?”

“No,” Webb admitted.

“Then it's not broken. You still got those Perks in your pocket?”

“Yeah.”

Dylan dug into the left pocket of Webb's coat, retrieved the bottle. “Lucky for you, we got plenty of Percocets.” He thought briefly of popping one himself, but resisted; he needed to stay clear right now.

Dylan glanced at the packs he'd thrown into the back of the pickup. One of them contained several thousand tabs of Vicodin and Percocet painkillers. The other contained several thousand dollars in U.S. currency. On an ordinary day, a load he'd be happy to carry. But this wasn't an ordinary day anymore.

Webb took the pills and dry-swallowed them. “Yeah,” he said. “Lucky me.”

Dylan hobbled back to the driver's side, slid in, and wheeled back onto the road again.

“What now?” Webb asked.

“Now you just keep that coat pressed against the wound, keep the blood from flowing. Looks like you're starting to clot, which is good.”

Webb draped the coat over his shoulder and hunched forward in the seat, putting his head against the truck's dash. He closed his eyes and spoke, almost as if he were about to start praying.

Like Claussen
, Joni's voice said inside.

Yeah
, he answered.
Webb's the real praying kind. Let's not start comparing him to dead guys just yet
.

Gotcha
.

Webb spoke softly. “Where we going?”

“Harlem. We gotta get that arm looked at.”

“There's a hospital in Harlem, Montana?”

“Indian Health Services.”

“But I'm not an Indian.”

“Which is why we aren't going there.”

“And don't they have to report gunshot wounds?”

“Another reason we're not going there.”

Webb rolled his head on the dash so he could look at Dylan. “Which brings me back to my original question: where we going?”

“It's the rez,” Dylan said. “I'll find someone.”

“Someone? Like a medicine man or something?” Webb's words were starting to slur now, soft and mushy. Maybe it was a weak attempt at a joke, but more likely it was the Perks kicking in, mixing with the adrenaline and shock.

“Yeah,” Dylan said. “A medicine man. He'll smudge some ash on your forehead and you'll be just fine.”

Webb went quiet and Dylan drove, listening to the rumble of the engine as the pickup's tires spun on the highway.

6

Dylan watched egg yolk drip down Scott's chin and tried to ignore the runny yellow stain.

Not much luck in that department. When he was amped up on Vikes or Perks, odd inconsistencies—items that would normally be simple throwaways—became objects of intense interest and scrutiny. Consciously, he wanted to ignore such things; subconsciously, his mind was fascinated.

Which, really, was part of the appeal of the drugs. Much better to concentrate on runny egg yolks, because the conscious alternative (the undrugged conscious alternative) was to concentrate on images of Claussen blowing up in the Iraqi desert. Which brought out thoughts of Joni, thoughts of the rez, thoughts of abandonment, thoughts of so many things that really needed to go into the kill box right away.

Vikes and Perks took away the need for the kill box. At least for a time.

Dimly, Dylan realized Scott's mouth and egg-splattered chin had stopped moving, which meant he'd stopped talking. He chanced a quick glance at Scott's eyes, which were staring at him expectantly.

Dylan tried a smile. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn't catch that.”

Scott was Dylan's VA counselor, his lifeline to services and support and follow-up in the few months since he'd been discharged from the hospital in Sheridan. Every week Dylan was seeing a therapist here in Billings, working through such things as POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER and PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA and DIMINISHED CAPACITY and other textbook terms that were always spoken in all cap letters by the therapist.

Good thing he never told her about the deepest, darkest things. Joni's internal voice, for instance. Or the odd compulsion to subtract items from his field of vision, put them away in the kill box, and let the item fade from view. Think of the textbook names those things would have.

Funny, he couldn't even remember the therapist's name right now, only that she had this odd crescent-shaped scar on her forehead he always wanted to ask her about.

Even more interesting than the egg yolk on Scott's chin. Scott, who met with him monthly and wrote reports that probably got filed away on some government server, never to be looked at again.

“I said,” Scott repeated, his voice rising a bit, “what are you doing to keep busy?”

Dylan pursed his lips, thought. “Bought the house, you know.”

Scott nodded, encouraging him to continue.

“Needs some work. Painting, remodeling, that kind of thing.”

It was a lie, of course. Dylan had done nothing to the small house he'd purchased on the south side of Billings with part of his disability settlement. For the most part, it was a large hotel room; he'd never even unpacked his clothing and belongings, limited as they were. Sometimes he watched television. Sometimes he took Vicodins or Percocets, both of which had been prescribed for him during his stay at the VA hospital. When he wasn't taking Vicodins or Percocets, he wished he were.

That's how he was keeping busy.

Scott returned his attention to the Cattle Queen Platter in front of him, dabbed a big hunk of steak in the runny yolk that remained on his plate. “Building, repairing—those kinds of things can be very therapeutic.” He stuffed the bit of steak in his mouth, then pointed his fork at Dylan while he talked around a mouth full of meat. “Good for you. So maybe next month you could show me.”

Dylan shrugged. “Sure.”

Strictly playing by the book, Scott was supposed to be monitoring Dylan's home and living conditions each month. Just as he was supposed to keep in regular contact with Dylan's therapist and Dylan's doctor at the local clinic. But Scott had never been to Dylan's home; Dylan had discovered at their first meeting that Scott had a certain affinity for the Cattle Queen Platter at the Sharpshooter Café, and so he always managed to get his meetings with Scott pushed here—even if they were scheduled to meet at Dylan's home. It was part of their ritual.

Scott finally decided to wipe at the yolk from his face, but he did it with the back of his hand rather than the napkin that sat on the booth's Formica top. Sweat glistened on Scott's forehead. “You gettin' around okay? Need anything else?”

Dylan looked away from Scott's zombie gaze again.

“Yeah,” he said. “I ride the bus, mostly. Gets me most places.”

Another lie. Dylan never really went anywhere, outside of the grocery store or the Laundromat. And he never rode the bus; he drove. He had no idea why he was telling Scott he rode the bus.

Because you're a big fat liar
, Joni's voice said.

Odd. At the hospital, and in the first few months since his discharge, the drugs had quieted Joni's voice. An odd side effect. Unwelcome, really, because Joni's voice had been a comfort to him since . . . well, since joining the army. But he didn't deserve comfort. Or Joni's voice. The drugs, and the absence of Joni's constant companionship, had been a crude sort of justice. Just let the therapist, what's-her-name, get hold of that nugget.

Now, though, Joni's voice was filtering back into his mind even when he was on Perks or Vikes. Best of both worlds.

Scott nodded, mopped up some steak juice on his plate with a wedge of toast. “Whatever works for you, man. Bus'd drive me crazy. I gotta have my own ride.”

Scott's ride was a beat-up old hatchback he'd bought at a surplus auction several years ago. You'd think, Scott being a bureaucrat of some kind inside the VA, he'd have more modern wheels. An office pool car, a sensible white sedan with four doors.

Scott picked up his coffee cup, drank, smacked his lips loudly. As if the people at the Sharpshooter Café brewed the richest, finest roast he'd ever encountered in his life. Maybe they did. “So you're good? Feeling good?”

“Yeah.”

“Everything's looking good with your therapist and your doctor.”

“Yeah.”

“Still on the painkillers, though. Your doc says that's a bit of a concern.”

Dylan felt his body stiffen.

“Why?”

“Addictive. Says he's going to start tapering you off them—ah, what is it you're taking?” Scott flipped open one of the folders on the table. “OxyContin?”

“Percocet.” That's what his “official” prescription was for. Last month Dylan had stolen a scrip pad from the clinic, and he was now getting additional refills for Vicodin. See also: OxyContin, the drug Scott had mentioned. He'd had all three, at one time or another, during his long recovery in the hospital. Dylan saw no reason to live without them since leaving said hospital.

“Anyway, you'll feel better in the long run without the painkillers. Your leg's not giving you any ongoing pain, is it?”

“No, no.”

Only partly a lie. The leg didn't hurt, but it was weak. And the weakness hurt. When you're a guy named Dylan Runs Ahead, having a bum leg is a cruel irony. So the pain he experienced in the leg wasn't a physical sensation caused by the scarred muscle or tissue. It was a pain caused by his inability. Let his therapist get a hold of that one too.

Scott pushed his chair away from the table, stood, holding a napkin in his hand. He wiped at his chin with the napkin, erasing the yellow smudge of egg yolk, then threw the napkin on the table.

Awkwardly, Dylan stood and shook hands with him.

“We'll see you next month, then,” Scott said. “I'll come by the house and check up on what you're doing.”

“You got it,” Dylan said, noting that Scott had managed to remove all of the yolk.

He felt a twinge of disappointment; something about the yolk stain on Scott's face had been comforting and . . . right.

Let his therapist get a hold of that one.

7

“Wake up, honey.”

Honey. Quinn was fifteen years old, and this woman had called her honey. Maybe you were a “honey” at age eight, or even age ten. But Quinn was fifteen. She was practically an adult; couldn't this woman see that?

Quinn kept her eyes closed, pretending she was still asleep.

She wasn't ready to open her eyes yet. That meant starting another day, and Quinn didn't want to start another day.

Going to sleep was much better. Her favorite time, really, because her body drifted away to . . . nothingness. That's what sleep was for her. Counselors—the ones at the school she attended, and the ones at the homeless shelters she and her mom frequented—always liked to ask her about sleep. About dreams, actually. What kinds of dreams did she have? Were they frightening? Did she have trouble sleeping?

She played along with it. She told them she always felt as if there was someone waiting to snatch her in the darkness. She told them she had horrible nightmares about being chased, about falling off cliffs, about the kinds of dreams she'd read about in the books at the library. That's what they seemed to want.

But the truth was, she didn't dream. At all. And she wasn't afraid of the dark, afraid of sleep. At all. That was her time of escape. When she slept, she stopped being . . . Quinn. She stopped being anyone. Each and every day, that's what she wanted. To not be anyone at all. Each and every night, that's what sleep brought to her.

“Come on, dear. Time to get up.” She felt someone shaking her arm. A worker at the homeless shelter. She could tell by the volunteer voice. Everyone who worked in these shelters used that voice. It was a few degrees higher than their normal voices, thick with fake, syrupy sweetness. Louder. Slower.

At school, she'd seen special education teachers working with disabled kids, and they used the volunteer voice too. When she was younger, the volunteer voice had confused her. But now, at age fifteen, she'd come to realize it was just the natural cadence of someone talking down to another person. Not that most people realized they were doing this; it wasn't like they were trying to be mean or anything. Actually, she knew it usually meant just the opposite: people who used the volunteer voice were trying to be
helpful
and
warm
and
caring
.

But it never made her feel helped or warm or cared for. For a time, after she understood the voice, it made her feel angry. Then depressed. Now it just made her feel empty.

She opened her eyes, did her best to offer a bright smile. That was the best thing you could do in a homeless shelter: smile at anyone who was there. It made the people working there feel good about themselves. And when the people around her felt good about themselves, they did their best to be nice to her mother.

“I know,” she said. “I need to get ready for school, catch the bus.” She felt in her pocket, making sure she had the card that guaranteed her free rides on the city bus system.

When she was younger, her mom always had her change into pajamas when they came to homeless shelters. Or to temporary housing. It was part of the experience of sleeping inside.

More often, they squatted in abandoned buildings in the run-down parts of town. In the summers, sometimes in parks. Infrequently, when they managed to panhandle enough money, in a run-down motel. Motels were pajama places as well.

But Quinn had given up on the pajamas. It was much easier just to sleep in her clothes, be ready for the next day. Simple was good with her mother.