He jogged first one way, then the other, desperately flashing his light around, looking for something, anything, but the shooter was essentially invisible, and the backyards on the new block were even more clogged with shrubs, hedges, and fences than the last one, and Shrake was down, and Virgil moaned, “Ah . . . fuck it!” and ran back toward Jenkins and Shrake.

—

Shrake had been wearing the same kind of vest as Virgil, and Jenkins was struggling to pull it over Shrake’s head as Shrake groaned in pain, and Virgil saw that Jenkins’s hands were already red with blood. Virgil grabbed Shrake’s shoulders from the front and pulled him to a half-sitting position so Jenkins could get the vest free, and Shrake said, “My back . . . Got me from the side . . . Never saw him. Never saw him . . . Hurts . . .”

“You would have if he’d tried to cross the street without shooting you,” Virgil said, and to Jenkins, “Roll him on his side.”

They rolled him. Shrake was wearing a Patagonia jacket with a shirt beneath it; both were soaked with blood. When they tried to get the jacket off, Shrake said, “No, no . . . don’t do that, I feel like I’m coming apart.”

“We got to get it off in case there’s a big artery,” Jenkins said to Virgil. “We can’t move him without knowing.”

Shrake looked up at Virgil, and said, “Left pant pocket . . .”

Virgil went for his left pant pocket and pulled out a six-inch switchblade. He said to Jenkins, “Hold him up,” and Jenkins propped him up, and Virgil cut the coat off and then the shirt and the undershirt with the razor-sharp knife, and Shrake groaned again, and then said, “I’m puttin’ in for all the wrecked clothes,” and Jenkins said to Virgil, “Hold the light. Put the light on him . . .”

Shrake: “How bad?”

“Cut the T-shirt all the way off,” Jenkins said. “I need to sop up the blood.”

Virgil did that, pulled the shirt free. Jenkins used the unbloody part of the shirt to wipe Shrake’s upper back. The big man was bleeding profusely from a long, twisting cut across the middle of his back, at the level of his armpits. Jenkins said, “I don’t see any big pulses, so we got that. Twiddle your fingers at me, Shrake.”

Shrake twiddled, and Jenkins said, “Move your feet back and forth . . .”

Shrake did, and Jenkins said, “Looks like your spine’s okay. Of course, if we don’t get you to a hospital, you’re going to bleed to death, and we’ll have all that fuckin’ paperwork. It’s like you to do that to me, you inconsiderate fuck.”

Virgil told Jenkins, “Use the T-shirt to pack the cut. I’m going to run get my Tahoe. Back in one minute.”

“Go.”

As he stood and ran, Shrake said, “Tell me how bad . . .”

—