The numbness had mostly gone out of my side, though my arm, for some reason I couldn’t fathom, felt like a wet Kleenex. I reached across with my left hand and felt where the bullet had gone in and out through my shirt and flesh, but neither wound seemed particularly dreadful. I didn’t seem to be bleeding much. I let that give me some comfort.
I left Russel standing over his dead son, went in and knelt down by Jim Bob. The trip from one room to the other assured me all my parts were working, and more feeling was coming back into my arm; it felt like it had gone to sleep and was struggling to wake up.
Russel came in and got down on his knees by me and reached out and touched Jim Bob’s arm. Jim Bob opened his eyes and looked at us.
“I thought you weren’t going to do that,” Russel said.
“It seemed like the right thing at the time,” Jim Bob said. “I don’t think I’d do it again, though.”
“Bad?” Russel said.
“Bad enough that Rodriguez is going to make some money. You look a mite piqued yourself.”
“A mite,” Russel said.
“Dane?”
“I’m hit,” I said. “I feel okay though. I think it went through the fat meat on the side. I’m not even bleeding much.”
“You got a cut on your neck,” Jim Bob said.
I reached up and touched where a bullet had sliced me, came away with blood on my hand. “They seem to be shooting all around the edges,” I said.
Russel touched Jim Bob’s forehead. “No fever,” he said.
“I haven’t got the flu,” Jim Bob said. “God, did we get them all?”
“Uh huh,” Russel said.
“Damn, we’re better than I thought,” Jim Bob said.
“Can you get the truck?” Russel asked me. “I must be getting old. I feel winded.” His eyes were full of tears.
“Yeah,” I said.
“The girl seemed all right didn’t she?” Jim Bob said.
I glanced over at the bed. She hadn’t gone anywhere. Her face was turned toward us, those pecan-colored eyes taking us in.
“She’s okay,” I said. “Just scared shitless.”
I got the keys out of Jim Bob’s pocket and walked to the truck and drove it back. Upstairs, Russel had used the skinny man’s knife to cut off the side of the sheet the girl was lying on (I bet she enjoyed seeing him coming toward her with that wicked knife), and had used it to make bandages for Jim Bob. When I got there, Russel took off his shirt and I used some of the sheet to bandage him, then he did the same for me. We put our shirts on, and I went looking for our guns, including Jim Bob’s lost. 38 which he said the Mexican had swatted from him and knocked across the room. I found it twisted in the thin man’s white suit, which lay on the floor beside the bed.
I put all the guns in the truck, then Russel and I used our good arms to carry Jim Bob downstairs and over the dead bodies. We dropped him only once. He cussed until the air sizzled. We put him in the camper and gave him his hat to lay on his chest, then Russel and I went upstairs and cut the girl loose, found her clothes under the bed, and turned our backs while she put them on. When she was dressed, we led her downstairs. She didn’t say so much as one word and her eyes told me she still hadn’t figured us out. After what she’d been through, she was entitled to doubt and silence.
We put her in the back of the truck with Jim Bob and Russel climbed in there too and rested his back against the cab and found one of his cigarettes and lit it and coughed some smoke out.
“You sure you can drive?” he asked me.
“I’m not seeing spots or anything,” I said. “My side hurts, but my left hand is good. My right hand has more feeling than it had just a few minutes ago.”
“Get weak, we'll swap on the driving,” Russel said.
“I’ll go as fast as I can without bringing the law down on us,” I said. “I’ll try not to make it too rough a ride, Jim Bob.”
“Don’t pamper me,” Jim Bob said. “I ain’t gonna die or nothing. Long as they didn’t shoot my dick off, I’m gonna be okay.”
I closed the back of the camper and went around and got behind the wheel and drove us away from that big house full of death.