I saw LuEllen’s mouth moving but couldn’t hear what she was saying. The world was going pink on me, and I realized that while I could see the shot go through Arnie’s skull, I hadn’t actually heard it, or the noise hadn’t registered. I thought I might be dying.

A few seconds later I was moving. Trying to focus. Trying. We were outside, the cool air on my face, and then I was in the back of the station wagon, lying flat on my back. I could see LuEllen, all black and white, like a black-and-white film, holding the pistol with both hands, marching Hill away

Sometime later, I don’t know how long, the car was moving. Bouncing. LuEllen’s voice came in, finally, and from far away, with static, like a Juarez radio station when you’re driving at night across Montana

“Hold on, Kidd,” she said. “Hold on, Kidd

“

Some long time after that, it seemed, another woman leaned over me and said, “His pressure’s OK, but we’re gonna want a peritoneal lavage, blunt trauma, looks like the ribs, mostly, let’s get some film on his skull

keep that neck straight

“

I can barely remember three other things before the black plastic mask came down over my face, three things that I wonder about. Were they dreams, or were they real?

I can remember the catheter going in. That’s not something you forget, no matter how skillful the nurse; it doesn’t particularly hurt, but it’s a memorable feeling.

And I remember somebody talking to LuEllen, almost chanting: “Has he been drinking, using street drugs, allergic to aspirin

?”

And I remember driving out of the yard at animal control, the yard light spinning by the window like a sudden moon, and the sound through the window, the sound coming back, that familiar ooka-ooka-ooka

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 19

The afternoon was getting on.

I’d left New Orleans the day before, heading north. The winter and spring had been dry, and both days were hot and hazy. From the highway you could see long trails of gravel dust kicked up behind the plantation pickups as they rolled along the good earth to the west.

The first day I went only as far as Vicksburg, with the excuse that I’d never inspected the battlegrounds as thoroughly as they deserved. And I like Vicksburg; back in ‘80 I rode down the river on a pontoon boat and camped on a Louisiana island in the Vicksburg harbor. I was sitting there, eating freeze-dried beef Stroganoff, when a dozen wild turkeys rambled by, beautiful birds that looked to me as large and foreign as ostriches.

After the last night in Longstreet I woke up with LuEllen beside the hospital bed. Consciousness came slowly. I didn’t hurt anywhere, but I’d been pumped full of drugs. When I did come up, we were alone.

“Can you hear me?” she asked.