All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
Wavy jerked open the rear passenger door, getting ready to crawl into the backseat before I caught her. She tried to pry my hand off her arm, so I grabbed her around the waist and tossed her over my shoulder. Even with her kicking and pounding on me, I didn’t dare let go of her.
Headed down the road toward the ranch, with the headlights at my back, I saw what I’d tripped over coming out of the meadow. Donal, laying face down in the ditch. I set Wavy down, but when she saw her brother, she went crazy trying to get to him, so I had to drag her back.
“Don’t, Wavy, don’t! You can’t move him. You can’t.”
She dug her nails into my arm where I had her around the waist, but she stopped fighting.
“If he’s hurt, his back or his neck, you can’t move him, okay? Promise?”
She nodded and when I let go of her, she crawled to Donal and touched his hand. I woulda checked for a pulse, but it didn’t matter. If Donal was alive, we needed to get help. If Donal was dead, we needed to get help.
“You’re faster than me, Wavy. You gotta run and get help.”
She stood up and looked west down the road, then east. Trying to decide which was closer.
“Go down to the ranch and tell them what happened. Run as fast as you can,” I said. I wanted that to be the right thing.
She ran west, toward the farmhouse.
She was gonna call 911.
The day I wrecked, I sent her to call Liam, because you don’t call 911 if you wreck your bike a mile from a four-thousand-square-foot metal barn full of meth-making equipment. But when your little brother’s lying in a ditch, maybe with a broken neck, things like that don’t matter.
I got down on my hands and knees in the road next to Donal. I put my ear as close to his cheek as I could and held my breath. So soft I almost couldn’t hear it over the wind in the hay, Donal breathed in and out. In and out. Whatever happened, Wavy made the right choice.
11
DEE
“Thank God we weren’t cooking tonight,” Dee said. The cops had been less than a mile from the barn. If Butch had been cooking, the cops would have smelled it, but they didn’t. And nobody got killed. The cops said getting thrown out of the car probably saved Donal’s life. All he ended up with was a concussion and a broken arm. If he’d had on his seatbelt, the engine would have crushed him.
The other good thing was that when the ambulance came, the only person the cops talked to was Kellen. He kept them away from the trailers.
Liam freaked out anyway. Of course, he loved Val—she was his wife—but listening to him cry and carry on pissed Dee off.
“She’ll be fine,” Dee said as they drove to the hospital in Garringer. She’d smoked too much crystal trying to get herself jump-started. So had Liam, because he couldn’t stop talking.
“This whole deal is my fault. If I were living at the farmhouse, taking care of her like I promised, this wouldn’t have happened. I’ve gotta fix this. I’ve gotta make this right.”
“It’s gonna be okay, baby.” Dee kept saying that, because if something got fixed, it might fix her out of the picture.
At the hospital, there wasn’t enough crank in the world to make Val look okay. They glimpsed her through a window, lying in a bed with tubes running in and out.
“I’m her husband,” Liam said, so they let him into the room for a minute.
Dee got in with a lie: “I’m her sister.”
Val was fucked up. A Frankenstein monster with stitches running across her forehead.
Liam cried for a good ten minutes after he saw Val. Dee held him, relieved. Yes, he loved Val, and he had the hots for Sandy, but Dee was there for him when there was a problem. He needed her.
People came and went all day: Sandy, Scott, Vic, Butch, Lance, Ricki. In the evening, while Liam was in the bathroom topping himself up, Kellen showed up with Wavy. They looked rough around the edges, but at least they hadn’t been at the hospital all day, unlike Dee, who felt like someone had run a cheese grater over her nerves.
When Liam saw Kellen talking with Butch, he headed right for them and bailed into Kellen.
“What the hell happened?” Liam said.
“Like I was telling Butch, I was out in the meadow and heard the crash. I don’t know what happened, except Val went off the road and hit that cattle gate. I’m sorry the cops came out, but it looked really bad. That’s why I called 911. And the cops didn’t go near the ranch.”
“I mean, what happened? Why was Val out driving?”
“I don’t know,” Kellen said.
“How can you not know? You were at the house, weren’t you?”
“No. I was in the meadow.”
“Don’t lie to me, you son of a bitch.” Liam jabbed his finger into Kellen’s chest.
It scared Dee when Liam got wild-eyed like that. As big as Kellen was, Liam would take him on when he got in that state.
“I wasn’t at the house.” Kellen’s voice was too soft for Liam to hear when he got crazy. “I think Sean—”
“You think I don’t know how you’re always hanging around, trying to insinuate yourself into her bed?”
“It’s not like that. I never—”
“You think she’d ever have a use for some slob like you? What? You think she’s gonna divorce me and marry you?”
“What’re you talking about?” Kellen said.
“Liam, don’t.” Butch put a hand on his arm, but Liam shoved it away.