Chick wasn’t heavy at all. This didn’t seem right. Both rear doors of the cruiser were open. The cop told Leo to back through one door and exit the other and don’t bump anything as we lay him on the seat. When Leo stepped backwards out of the car, leaving Chick laid out in the back seat, he could see Chick’s stomach move a little with his breathing, but not much. The policeman got an orange rain slicker from the trunk and covered Chick with it. Then he shut both doors, got in behind the wheel, and called in on his radio, telling Sergeant Mike he was going straight to Holyoke Hospital. The blue light on the roof turned back and forth in its globe. He pulled the door shut. “Get in.”

“I can’t leave his truck here; is it okay if I meet you there?”

The cop hesitated a second, then put the cruiser in reverse. “I’ll see you there. No malarkey.” He backed all the way down the hill in the rain and the siren came on as he hit the river road and headed for the bridge.

The thing is, Allie looked like her old self when Leo rushed into Beatrice’s wetter than water itself. She was ringing up a check for two older women who wore those see-through plastic scarves over their hairdos, and she was smiling as she handed them their change, chatting about a waterfall she’d read about, and so Leo was the party-wrecker and he knew it, and when she saw him and smiled even more, he knew he was taking joy in being about to smash what’s been missing between them through no fault of his own, and as soon as he knew all this he felt immediately worse because all this hinged on Chick, who wasn’t playing any kind of hand here at all, who was hurt so bad he was maybe beyond help.

Something along these serious lines Allie had to have seen because her face changed, and even though the place was busy, Leo took her hand and led her to the door.

“You’ve got to come with me right now, Allie; your dad’s messed up.”

On the way to Holyoke, the flatbed’s wipers going top speed, the road water sluicing out and away from the truck, Leo described the whole fight right up to him going back in the cruiser to find Chick laid out on the ground. Allie sat still and looked straight out the windshield as Leo talked. When he told her about Chick’s blue face, her mouth became a flat line, her eyes shallow.

This was a reaction Leo hadn’t figured on. He was hoping for more softness, some tears maybe, something he could put his arm around. He should’ve pictured this, but he hadn’t, not Allie looking like she could kill someone.