“Hold this,” I said to Barney and gave him the flashlight.
He kept the beam on Roy. I grabbed one of the Pepsis and got it open and put the bottle to Roy’s lips and forced a little into his mouth.
It took him maybe a full minute but his eyes finally came open. And then it was maybe another twenty seconds before he showed any signs of recognizing us. His wound was starting to take its toll. He looked real pale and there was a kind of crust on his lips and his sweat was cold-looking and greasy and, to be honest, he kind of smelled pretty bad. That’s one thing movies can’t give you — smell. When John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd and Al Capone die up there on the screen, the audience doesn’t have any idea of how bad they smell.
“Hey, slugger,” Roy said to me.
“We got your stuff,” Barney said.
Roy raised his eyes to Barney. Even that seemed to take a lot of effort. “Thanks, kid.”
So we fed him. Barney propped the light up on top of the money sack and sat on one side of Roy and I sat on the other. We put the grocery sack between us and took turns feeding him, the way we once fed a hawk. We were out in the woods one bright fall morning and we heard this big booming gun go off and it was this hunter of course and then we heard something fall into the bushes beside us and it was this hawk. He was all covered with blood and his dark eyes were frantic and wild and we were scared for him and scared for us because we didn’t know what to do. And so we just grabbed all these colorful autumn leaves and made him this little bed and he just sat there staring up at us and we tried feeding him grass and we tried feeding him leaves and Barney even dug up some night crawlers with his fingers but the hawk wouldn’t eat any of them and so all we could do was pet him and say soft little things to him like the soft little things you say to sick kitties and we knew he was dying and he knew he was dying and then he started twitching and shuddering and making these tiny scared noises and so Barney picked him up and put him in his lap, not caring about the blood or anything, and sort of started rocking him, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth till I had to say, very softly, “Barney, I think he’s dead” and Barney looked down at the unmoving bird and said, “You’re a fucking liar, Tom, he isn’t dead!” but he was dead, of course, the poor bastard, and so I took him from Barney’s hands, lifted him real gentle, and all the time I did Barney just kept screaming at me “You’re a fucking liar, Tom! That’s what your fucking problem is, buddy-boy! You’re a fucking liar!” And I took the hawk down to the river bank where the earth was softer and I scooped out this grave with my hands and I put him in it and even all the way down to the blue run of river, even above the jays and the owls and the ravens, I could hear Barney crying.
So it was sort of like that now, feeding Roy. I mean, because he was so weak he couldn’t even hold a piece of cold meat in his fingers.
“It’s so goddamned cold in here,” he said.
On the bank Time and Temperature sign downtown about twenty minutes earlier the Temp had been 89.
Barney fed him the Twinkies and the Pepsi and I fed him the Oscar Mayer sliced bologna and dutch loaf. And then we both took turns feeding him the Cracker Jacks which Barney had said would be a good way to finish off the meal.
When he was finished eating, Roy said, “You boys bring the bandages and stuff?”
“Yessir,” I said. “We sure wouldn’t forget something like that.” And right then, just the way he gave me this almost imperceptible nod of thanks, he looked a whole lot like Mitch.
“You boys think you can clean a wound?”
“Sure,” Barney said.
I looked over at him and frowned. What the hell did we know about cleaning a wound?
“You just take the hydrogen peroxide and let it soak into some of those cotton balls I told you to get and then you just kind of clean the wound,” Roy said.
We cleaned the wound.
I’ll tell you, it was unlikely either Barney or I were ever going to get scholarships to medical school, the way we poured too much peroxide on the cotton balls and spilled the stuff all over, and the way we grimaced when we had to tear the blood-soaked part of his shirt away from the wound.
“Oh, God,” Barney said when we finally got a good look at the wound. So much for a quiet, steady manner.
I wanted to say oh, God, too, but I just bit down real hard on my lip and took one of the soaked cotton balls and put it up to the wound.
Where the bullet had gone in everything was kind of scabby and you could see green pus leaking from the hole.
In all, we went through eleven cotton balls. I got rid of as much of the scabbing as I found, and at least temporarily I stopped the pus from seeping.
And then we were done and Roy sat back against the wall and felt in his shirt pocket for a cigarette but he was all out so Barney handed over the Chesterfields he’d taken from the supermarket and said, “This was the only brand I could steal.”
“They’re fine. I appreciate it.” He got a cigarette in his mouth, looking a whole lot like Mitch just then, and then he took his Zippo out and thumbed it into lighting. He set the lighter down on the floor and I looked at it. Somebody had carved a skull and crossbones into it, with two little fake red diamonds for the eyes. It was the coolest lighter I’d ever seen.
“There’s one Twinkle left, Roy,” Barney said. “You want it?”
“You eat it, kid,” Roy said.
I laughed. “He was hoping you’d say that.”
Barney gulped it down in two bites.
Roy kept dragging on his cigarette but he did it with his eyes closed. His breathing was starting to get real noisy again and you could tell he was exhausted.
“You think you could bring me some more food tomorrow night?” Roy said. He kept his eyes closed.
“Sure,” I said. “But we can do better than that. We can bring you some rolls for breakfast.”
“Yeah,” Barney said. “From Emma’s Cafe. She makes ’em fresh every morning.”
Eyes closed, he shook his head very gently. “Somebody might see you in the daylight. You don’t want to make anybody suspicious. Wait till night to come out here.”
When he used the word “suspicious” my stomach knotted up. I kept thinking of old man Hamblin at the pharmacy just staring at all the money I had.
“Roy,” Barney said.
“Yeah?”
“Could I use your lighter?”
“Sure.”
“I really appreciate it,” he said, leaning forward and taking the lighter from where it sat on top of the pack of Chesterfields on the floor.
The way the three of us sat, we might have been around a campfire.
Barney picked up the lighter and stared at the skull and crossbones and a low whistle came from his lips. “Cool.”
Barney got a cigarette going and I got a cigarette going and then Barney said, “Roy?”
“Yeah.” Eyes still closed.
“Would you really have killed yourself if we’d brought the law back?”
Roy thought a long moment. “You want an honest answer?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I don’t know if I got the guts to kill myself. I’ve thought about it all my life off and on, and one night when I caught my girlfriend in bed with this guy, I put a gun in my mouth but I couldn’t pull the trigger. I wanted to and I think in a strange way she wanted me to, too, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”
And then he made a little grunting sound again and he took the cigarette from his mouth and jabbed it out on the floor. And then he gave out with this deep sigh that made his chest shudder.
“I don’t think I can talk anymore, boys. I need some sleep.”
“We’ll be back tomorrow night, Roy,” I said. “We’ll bring you better food, too.”
We left him, left the warehouse, and went back to town.