Page 27 of So Far Gone

“Anyway, it takes more than a bullet to slow me down. How are your grandkids?”

“They’re fine. Thank you. I left them with some friends for a while. What the hell happened up there?”

“Ah.” Chuck waved the question away. “One of those toy soldiers got nervous and his gun went off! I was trying to keep those

idiots from following you, and this kid pulled his piece on me, shot me, and then shit his own drawers.”

“I’m so sorry, Chuck.”

“Guy was weirdly protective of his tires. I would’ve buried the poor kid, but he threw his hands in the air and practically

started crying like a baby. I felt sorry for him.”

“Did they arrest him?”

“Nah, Sheriff Yahoo says he’s still investigating it. But I doubt he’ll charge the kid. Your eagle-killer was there, too,

and he and the pastor are claiming the kid shot me in self-defense. Now, there’s a cold fish, that guy Burris.” Again, a quick

glance to Lucy. “But even Brother Dean knew better than to draw on me .”

Lucy muttered something.

“I shouldn’t have gotten you into this,” Kinnick said.

Chuck waved this off again. “Are you kidding? This is my job.”

Lucy muttered again, but this time louder. “Not your job.”

“I shouldn’t have left you alone up there,” Kinnick said.

“Bullshit. It was the only way to get those kids out of there.” He glanced briefly at Lucy, as if making sure she was hearing

this. “I had the whole thing handled. Just didn’t count on a nervous kid not knowing how to handle a firearm. That stupid fuck !”

Kinnick took a half step back.

Lucy put a hand on Chuck’s chest, between all the wires. “You should rest. You’re getting worked up again.”

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it, Chuck.”

“Yeah, well...” Chuck shrugged. “I’m no hero.” As if someone had been arguing that he was. “We just did what had to be

done, am I right, partner?”

Kinnick nodded.

But the air seemed to have gone out of Chuck. He leaned forward and adjusted the blanket covering his lap and his legs. A

catheter tube led to a square bag clipped to the side of his bed. Bloody piss was dribbling into it. Chuck sighed, leaned

back, and closed his eyes, as if the enormity of the past day had suddenly hit him, and he realized how close he’d come to

not coming off that hill.

Kinnick looked at Lucy, who wouldn’t return his stare and was watching Chuck’s face. “I brought these back,” Rhys said, and

he held out the key fob and the cell phone for Chuck to see. “Your truck’s in the parking lot. Do you want me to move it somewhere?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Lucy said. She held out her hand without looking at Kinnick and he gave her the key fob.

“You got messages and calls on your phone, too,” Kinnick said. “It’s been buzzing nonstop. Seems like a lot of people care

about you.”

Chuck made no effort to reach for the phone. Instead, he looked away and swallowed. Lucy reached over and took the phone,

too.

The curtain was pulled open again, and a tall woman in white scrubs entered.

“Mr. Littlefield, I’m Dr. Eltman, your anesthesiologist. I understand we’re taking a little souvenir out of your hip today?”

“Okay,” Chuck said, his energy totally sapped now.

“I should go,” Kinnick said. “But I’ll be back to check on you in a couple of days, hopefully with my daughter.”

He’d planned to bring Chuck up to speed on the latest development—Leah telling him where he might find Bethany—but the wounded

old cop had lost interest, or perhaps the drugs had just kicked in. He leaned back again and closed his eyes.

Kinnick had just started to edge out when Chuck spoke again. “Watch out for those guys, yeah?”

Rhys turned back. “I will.” But Chuck’s eyes were still closed.

On his way out, Kinnick saw two uniformed police officers, a man and a woman, standing in the hallway. He stiffened, but as

he got closer, he could see they weren’t waiting for him. They were talking to the young mother who had brought the screaming

toddler in.

“How did the baby get burned?” one of them asked her.

The girl shrugged.

“These look like chemical burns, Lisa,” the male cop said.

She shrugged again.

“Is someone making meth at your house, Lisa?”

The boy’s mother met Kinnick’s eyes as he passed, and the regret he saw in that brief look crushed him. How could life be

so hard?

As he walked away, Kinnick could still hear the female officer’s voice. “I don’t want you to lose your baby over this, Lisa.

That’s all.”

That’s all. That’s all.

Kinnick was crying by the time he stepped out into the dark evening.

Lisa was going to lose her baby. That’s all.

Bethany, too. And him, he’d lost his baby a long time ago. Oh, this world.

He was still teary as he walked through the parking lot, to where he’d left Brian, sitting alertly in the driver’s seat of his Ford Bronco, scoped .30-06 hunting rifle across his lap.

Kinnick climbed in the passenger seat. “Would you put that thing away.” He wiped at his eyes. “What do you think, an elk’s

gonna walk by?”

“Elk season is not until fall.” Brian got the leather rifle case from the backseat. “Spring is protect-your-friend-from-racist-assholes

season.”

“I just don’t want you accidentally shooting me .”

Brian showed Kinnick a ribbon pinned to the leather case. “You know what that is?” It was small, black in the middle, gray

on either end, with two beige stripes.

“Boy Scout badge for stubbornness?”

“Marksmanship ribbon. Lackland Air Force Base, 1982. Second in my training class. Hit sixty-eight of eighty targets. You know

what my instructor said... Nice shooting, Cochise.”

Kinnick winced. He often had the urge to apologize to Brian for things other white people said.

Brian carefully placed the gun back in the case. “Your cop friend gonna be okay?”

“I think so. Surgeon’s about to take the bullet out. Lucy’s with him.”

“How about you? Are you okay?”

Kinnick nodded. “I don’t like hospitals.” He rarely thought about his mother anymore, who went in for emergency gallbladder

surgery in Seattle and simply never came out. Kinnick was in college then, and only heard about it afterward; the suddenness

still struck him, a feeling like someone had been left behind. His mother was alive one day and then, simply... not. And

poor Celia. How terrified she must’ve been. He remembered when they got flu shots, how she needed to stare into his eyes and

squeeze his hand; he couldn’t imagine her going through chemotherapy alone. Or radiation. Was Cort with her? Was Bethany at

Celia’s side? Did she die alone? It made him feel nauseated that he didn’t know how his ex-wife had passed.

He looked over. Brian was staring at the hospital, too, a familiar, pained look on his face.

He knew that Brian had lost both parents, a sister, and a nephew to cancer.

Two of them rare sarcomas. It was the reason he and Joanie had begun their protest of the Dawn uranium tailings pond in the first place.

Kinnick turned his body. “Thanks, Brian. You’re a good friend.”

Brian nodded. “ X?est sx?l?x?al?t .”

Good day . It was a Salish phrase Kinnick had heard Brian use before, his own personal all-purpose, bone-dry, conversation-ending punchline,

shorthand for everything from See you later to It’s a good day to die. Brian set the rifle case in the back of the Bronco.

Kinnick looked back once more at the hospital, where Chuck was about to go into surgery. As nuts as that guy was, Kinnick

couldn’t help wishing he still had Chuck’s help. What was it he’d said this morning in the coffee shop?

“What do you say, partner?” Kinnick turned to Brian. “Should we go find my daughter?”