Nightwoods - Charles Frazier [75]
Bud grinned and said, Correct me if I am wrong, but besides being the word for scream, holler’s also local talk for a sort of narrow valley, ain’t it?
He slammed the door shut behind him.
Stubblefield was still bent around his wound. Blood dripping into a pool at his feet. Luce straightened him up and made him hold his cut hand under the faucet. Somebody started to come in the door, but Luce put out her foot and blocked it.
—Later, she said, and flipped the lock.
She pulled at the roll of towels, but it was at the end. All the used droop looked grubby. She lifted her skirt and stepped out of her half-slip underneath. It was the color and sheen of mercury with lace at the hem, and she didn’t even try to rip it into strips of bandage. She wound the whole thing tight as she could around Stubblefield’s hand. They went out the back door, the way to the stables in the day of horses.
LUCE DROVE THE HAWK, headlights dim in fog, probing forty feet out and then fading into the grainy dark. Stubblefield hunched forward pale-faced with his clammy forehead almost on the dash, his bleeding hand clamped between his knees. He rocked in his seat, saying, Shit, shit, shit.
Stubblefield twisted and thumbed on the dome light with his right hand. He unwound the bloody wad of silver slip from his cut hand and held his wound to the light. Blood began running down the inside of his forearm and dripping off his elbow. Stubblefield tipped his head down and studied his bloody sign. On his black shirt it looked like a grease mark, and puddled on the upholstery it looked exactly like what it was. He switched the light right back off.
Luce said, You need stitches.
—I look like a damn autopsy victim.
—Your hand’s cut. We’ll get it fixed.
—I saw bones, he said. I thought they would be white. They’re sort of blue.
—Tendons, Luce said. They’re bluish.
—Bones, Stubblefield said.
—Move your fingers. Touch each one to your thumb.
Stubblefield did so, and everything worked right. The bleeding, though, still bad.
—Wrap it back tight, Luce said. You need a bunch of stitches.
—No shit. But not the hospital.
—That’s where I’m headed.
—No, Stubblefield said.
Luce turned and looked a quick question at him.
—Because if we do, Lit will hear of it. Your father keeps up with everything.
—And then, so what? Luce said.
—And then that could be bad. What I heard, he and that man are tight. Buys uppers from him. And you heard what he said back there. I’m not leaving you that exposed.
—Shit, shit, shit.
LUCE PARKED WITH the headlights aimed through fog at Maddie’s house, amid its tangle of wildflowers. Half-dead brown stems and stalks and canes arcing toward winter, the tangle cut through by a narrow footpath to the steps. No light showing on the porch or in the windows.
Not wanting to startle Maddie, with her shotgun hanging over the door on two hooks cut from forks of tree limbs, Luce said, Maybe we’ll sit here a minute with the lights on and then toot the horn.
Stubblefield reached with his good hand to the horn ring and held it down for a long blast.
A yellow light came on in the window to the right of the front door. Almost at the same time, Maddie opened the door and stepped out into the headlights. She had on a pale nightgown that fell to her bare feet. Her white hair fanned across her shoulders, and she held the shotgun at an angle slightly below parallel.
Luce opened her door and got out and shouted, Maddie, it’s Luce. We need your help.
Maddie dropped the twin muzzles to rest on the porch boards and visored her free hand against the light. She said, Shut out those goddamn lights and come on in the house. You’ll wake up the kids.
The fire had burned to a bed of hot coals, and Maddie threw on a dry split of red oak and it blazed up in seconds. Stubblefield sat at the dinner table at the end of the kitchen, and Maddie switched on the light and cleaned his hand with peroxide and looked at the cut.
She said, You’ll live. It’s not all that damn deep. I guess