The Ranger - Ace Atkins [62]
Quinn took a deep breath, feeling the trigger under his finger, thinking about Uncle Hamp cutting down bamboo to make cane poles, teaching him how to drive a truck when he was twelve. He saw his uncle walking down a fire road at sunset into the heart of that never-ending forest after ten-year-old Quinn had started to believe he was the only man left on the planet. Uncle Hamp welcomed him with a smile and took him down to the Fillin’ Station for four cheeseburgers and a scoop of ice cream.
He’d never stopped looking for Quinn.
Gowrie looked feral, with those broad tattoos across his back and shoulders, lording over these shitbags. He was animated and wild, sucking the smoke deep into his lungs, not feeling the cold on his bare chest.
Quinn felt that trigger so perfect on his fingertip. He breathed soft and easy.
Quinn lowered the gun. And waited. The only guilt Quinn felt was for the damn ease of the shot.
About that time, Quinn heard a girl scream.
Pain was a son of a bitch, and every time Lena wanted to get up the doctor kept on pushing her down and telling her it was better for the baby, and she couldn’t get up and move on out of this filthy room in this damn dim light and walk out into the cold darkness. The pain kept on coming along and then it would stop, and then start again, Lena wishing it would just hit her hard and constant and not make her feel like things were going to get any better. One of Gowrie’s women, a girl not much older than her with big tits and streaked hair, held one of her arms, and the doctor motioned for another young girl to hold the other, both of them loopy and giggling but strong, when she’d buck up and tell ’em, baby or no, she was getting the hell out of there.
“Come on,” the girl with big tits and silly hair said. “Just take it easy.”
“You done this before?” she asked.
“Hell no.”
“Then why don’t you shut the hell up,” Lena said.
She wanted to be cold. Lie on a cold stone somewhere.
The doctor had her legs spread open, her underwear cut off and tossed away, a big tent of sheet over her legs. She couldn’t see what was going on there and didn’t really care, just fought with those girls and gave one big huge massive push that felt like she was trying to take the biggest damn dump ever. She forced herself to her elbows, legs spread apart, vision dimming, the words and sounds and screams going dull in her ears, as she yelled and pushed and felt her whole body just arch and ache with pain, the pain no longer coming in waves but just a steady kind of hurt, a tensing of everything in her, as she pushed and pushed, the doctor telling her that she wasn’t pushing and her calling him a goddamn dirty liar and him saying if she didn’t start pushing the baby wasn’t coming out. And Lena said, “I don’t care if it ever comes out.”
“Yes, you do,” the doc said.
“You lousy bastard.”
“Grab my hand and squeeze till you think you’re gonna break me,” the doctor said. “Call me Luke.”
“I’ll crack your bones like a pecan, Luke.”
The pain hit her again, and her elbows gave way, those pimply-faced girls holding her down, acting like they knew something, like they had some kind of strength or knowledge that made them right for this. But them girls would be on their backs right now, legs spread so wide they was going to split, if Gowrie didn’t have sense. That man had more sense than Charley Booth, Jody Charley Booth. In jail. In prison. A big smile on his face. Yeah, I didn’t finish.
Hell he didn’t.
“Don’t cut me. I ain’t no fish. Goddamn, don’t you cut me.” And she pushed hard and long, and breathed and breathed and breathed, ’cause that was something that people all around her were saying: Breathe, breathe, breathe. “Hell yeah, I’m breathin’, and hurtin’, too.”
And then the hurt stopped, Lena thinking that her heart and insides had done exploded. No breathing, no pushing, no pain. Maybe she was dead?
“One more time,” Luke said. “About there.”
“I’m done.”
“Push.