The smell of iron and scorched oil filled the cab. Sela moved on instinct, feet carrying her down the splintered porch steps three at a time.
"Harlan!"
Pip hovered at the doorframe, small hands clamped over her mouth. Behind the coop, Pidge the ferret gave an agitated chitter, scurrying through the tall grass toward the rear bumper.
Sela tore open the dented truck door. Harlan rolled sideways, heavy and slack, his forehead hitting her shoulder. A low groan scraped from his throat. The black wool of his mackinaw was soaked through, tacky and hot against her wrists.
"Get... inside, Sela," he slurred, words thick with grit. "Tires... road was bad..."
"Hush. Don't speak. Pip, bring the wash basin and the clean rag from the dresser! Don't let Ona come near!"
With strength she hadn't known she possessed, Sela braced her hips against the running board and hauled his dead weight out of the seat. He stumbled, boot dragging in the dirt, before she steered him up the porch steps and straight into their small rear bedroom, away from the prying windows of the main parlor. She slammed the door shut, kicked the iron bolt across the frame, and eased him onto the feather mattress.
His skin was the color of skimmed milk, beaded with cold sweat.
She ripped open his salt-crusted canvas shirt. Below his ribcage, a jagged furrow had gouged the meat of his flank, bright crimson welling up and pooling in the hollow of his stomach. A second slug had punched clean through the fleshy meat of his upper left bicep.
In this town, a wound like this was a death sentence. Rural doctors were three days out by rail, and the local barber treated sepsis with turpentine and prayers.
Sela closed her eyes for a single heartbeat. The mental door swung wide: bright, sterile fluorescent tubes, the hum of refrigerator displays, the clean scent of paper towels and isopropyl alcohol.
Aisle 7. First aid.
Her hands dipped beneath the pile of coarse wool blankets at the foot of the bed. When she drew them back, she held brown glass bottles, foil-sealed ampoules, pre-threaded surgical nylon in peel-back envelopes, sterile non-stick gauze pads, and a pack of broad-spectrum cephalexin capsules. She tore the plastic wrapper off a bottle of iodine solution with her teeth, not caring about the absurdity of modern packaging in this crumbling dust-bowl room.
Harlan’s eyelids fluttered. Through heavy, half-blind lashes, his pupils locked onto the bright yellow plastic cap she discarded onto the quilt.
"What... is that?" his voice rasped, rough as broken bottle glass.
"Hold still," she whispered. Her palms trembled, but her grip stayed firm. "It will sting. Please, Harlan. Grit your teeth."
She poured the iodine across the tear in his side. Harlan arched off the bed, a harsh grunt tearing from his chest. His callused hand clamped around her wrist—not to hurt, but anchoring himself against the fire coursing through his flesh. The heat of his grip was scorching.
"No thread... from sheep..." he muttered, delirious, staring at the translucent monofilament gleaming beneath the yellow lamplight. "Sela... what did you... where did..."
"Don't look at it. Look at me," she pleaded, wiping away the dark flow with pristine cotton squares that soaked up the red without shredding into lint. "Look at my face, Harlan."
He obeyed. His dark irises, usually guarded and weary, fixed on hers. He saw the sweat pasting wisps of brown hair to her cheeks, the fierce clamp of her jaw, the fierce care burning behind her shy demeanor.
She pressed the needle through the parted edges of his skin. He made no further sound. He simply stared into her face, chest heaving in shallow, ragged bursts. With each neat, measured loop, her knuckles brushed against the hard contours of his ribs, the dense muscle of his torso. The air in the tiny bedroom smelled of copper, antiseptic, and their shallow breathing.
"You aren't what they said," he murmured, his thumb weakly stroking the inside of her wrist where his blood stained her skin. "Not a simpleton. Not a coward."
"They say a lot of things in this valley," she whispered back, knotting the final suture with practiced precision and snipping it with stainless-steel shears. She uncapped two white capsules and tipped them against his cracked lips, bringing a cup of fresh water from the nightstand. "Swallow these. Both of them. It stops the fever before it starts."
Without hesitation, he parted his dry lips. He took them from her palm, his lips brushing the tender pad of her skin, and drank the water down in one gulp.
"I should be dead in a ditch near Oakhaven," he breathed, his gaze drifting from her face to the impossible white adhesive tape she pressed across his ribs. "A crew was waiting at the old culvert. They knew my brake schedule. They had rifles, Sela. Nobody knew I took the culvert road except..."
He stopped. Tendons corded along the back of his hand against the stained quilt.
A scratching noise broke the silence at the bottom of the door. A furry, cream-colored nose pushed beneath the draft-cloth, followed by a tubby body. Pidge slipped inside, dragging something heavy with his teeth.
The one-eyed ferret proudly trotted up to the foot of the bed, dropping his haul onto the floorboards with a soft, meaty slap. It was two links of supermarket garlic sausage, covered in lint, accompanied by a crumpled sheet of yellowed postal paper he had clearly scavenged while rummaging for grease.
"Pidge, no," Sela chided under her breath, reaching down.
"Wait," Harlan rasped, leaning up on his good elbow despite the fire in his flank. "That paper. That's the post office telegraph seal. Yellow stock."
Sela smoothed out the wrinkled paper. The dark purple typewriter ribbon of the Brimley Post Office was unmistakable.
*TO: ONA RUSK, BRIMLEY RURAL ROUTE 4*
*FROM: S. VANDER, DISTRICT CREDIT OFFICE*
*NOTICE: DEBT OF FELIX RUSK TRANSFERRED TO IRON FORGE SYNDICATE. PRINCIPAL SUM: 10,000 CREDITS. FAILURE TO SATISFY BY FIFTH OF MONTH RESULTS IN SUMMARY EXECUTION. COLLATERAL CLAIMS APPROVED ON ALL FAMILY ASSETS OR BOUNTY RECOVERY.*
Written across the bottom in Ona's cramped, frantic handwriting was a series of scrawled notes: *Harlan cargo manifests—sugar, kerosene, Oakhaven culvert 3:00 PM. Widower Vance cash down: 200 credits for girl. Remainder to follow.*
Harlan’s face hardened into granite. The fever hadn't taken him, but a cold, terrible clarity did.
"Felix," he whispered, the name dropping like lead. "Her golden boy didn't lose his harvest. He gambled ten thousand credits in the capital's backrooms. And she gave the syndicate my crossing time to collect the bounty on my truck."
The crumpled telegram rustled in her grasp. Ona hadn't just tried to sell Pip to Widower Vance; she had arranged Harlan's execution on a dirt road to pay off her darling scoundrel's debt.
A heavy knock rattled the front door of the house, followed by the screech of wood hinges swinging wide.
"Harlan?" Ona’s screeching voice echoed down the hallway, dripping with false distress. "Harlan, boy, is that your truck in the dirt? Oh, saints above, the sheriff is right behind me with Widower Vance! They say your truck matched the description of a smuggler's rig down south! Open up this house!"