American Boy - Larry Watson [69]
She took my hand, perhaps assuming that she was going along with a joke. “Where are we going?”
“Didn’t you say you wanted to go to Denver?”
“Someday—”
“—So let’s go.”
She allowed herself to be pulled to her feet, but then she must have seen something in my eyes, something that told her how serious I was, and she tried to tug herself free of my grasp.
By then it was too late. I had a hold of her—it was my last chance, the doctor would be back any minute now, and I wasn’t letting go—
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go. I’ve still got the keys to the car. We’ll be a hundred miles from here before they even figure out what to do.”
I pulled and she pulled back. “Cut it out, Matthew. This isn’t funny.”
“I’m serious. You want to go to Denver. We can do it together.”
This was as close as I could come to a declaration of love, but Louisa wasn’t having it. “Goddamn it, Matthew! You’re hurting me!”
I released her wrist, but before she could break away from me I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her tight to my side. Louisa was not a small woman, but she couldn’t do anything to check our progress toward the cabin door.
She tried reasoning with me. “Matthew—stop. Please! We can’t do this!”
Instead of resisting, she tried collapsing through my arms. She almost succeeded in this, but I pulled her back to her feet.
The door opened, and Johnny and the cold air came in together. I was so far gone that I almost asked my friend to help by grabbing Louisa’s dress and coat. But I stopped myself, remembering that during his absence my friend had become my enemy.
“Jesus Christ, Matt—what the hell are you doing?”
There was no satisfactory way to answer his question. The doctor understood that and didn’t bother saying a word. He rushed in right behind Johnny, and used his forward momentum to put even more force into a punch that would have been plenty powerful if he’d swung flatfooted. His fist caught me just above the temple, and I was on my way down before I fully comprehended that I’d been hit. I crumbled to the floor as Dr. Dunbar shouted, “You sonofabitch! You stupid meddling sonofabitch!”
I tried to gather myself and get to my feet, but then another blow to the head knocked me back down. Had the doctor kicked me? Had Johnny? I heard the doctor say, “Out! I want him the hell out of here!”
My lips and nose went numb, and darkness crowded the edges of my vision. I was losing consciousness and I knew it. The doctor used to counsel putting your head between your knees if you believed you were going to pass out, but what was I supposed to do when I was already on the floor?
I rolled away from the most recent blow, but before I could do anything more to move out of danger, someone grabbed my feet and began dragging me toward the open door. I tried to kick free, but four hands were now gripping my ankles. Somehow I’d brought father and son together, uniting them in a single effort. Johnny had ahold of one leg and his father had the other.
My coat was open, my sweater and shirt rode up, and my stomach’s bare flesh burned as they towed me across the threadbare carpet. It was the doctor’s plain intention to throw me out in the snow, and there was nothing I could do about it.
My chin banged on the doorsill as they dragged me across it. I tried again to grab ahold of something, but I succeeded only in snapping a fingernail and abrading both palms on the frame’s rough wood.
They kept pulling until I was closer to the cars than the cabin, and then they let go—simultaneously, as if a signal had passed between father and son. Any thought I had of getting up was abruptly quelled when Dr. Dunbar pinned me in the snow by putting his foot on the back of my neck.
In the next I felt the pressure of a foot on my back, too. Because the pressure wasn’t substantial enough to be the doctor’s, the other foot had to be Johnny’s. The son imitating the father, he pressed my pelvis down as if to grind into the snow the part of me that had been responsible for sundering our friendship.
Father and son kept me down long enough for me to be