Ghost Medicine Read online

  “The trick is”—and Tommy spit a big wet string down at his feet—”don’t swallow it, or they say it’ll make you sick, but that’s never happened to me. And know when to shut up and just smile. That’s one of the hidden benefits. It makes people shut up.” And he spit again before saying, “So let’s go!”

  Well, first of all it smelled pretty good, I thought. And it didn’t taste bad, either, although it was powerfully minty and it kind of burned in my mouth. But then in about twenty seconds, as we were walking Arrow around toward the other horses, I all-of-a-sudden had to grab on to one of his stirrups just to make sure I wouldn’t fall down. Everything suddenly seemed far away, including Tommy’s laughter and his voice echoing dimly, “Pretty good buzz, huh, Stottsy?”

  “Oh yeah.” And I spit, but not with the same seasoned and classy experience as a Tom Buller. I got it on my shoe.

  Gabriel watched me, in shock and disgust, his mouth open and curled down.

  And to think I’d actually seen Tommy Buller drive a car with this stuff in his mouth and not veer off into the lake. At least I knew I could count on Reno to navigate me safely.

  We rode slowly south toward the field the Benavidez cattle pastured in during late spring, now picked fairly clean; the grass dried straw-blond. I disposed of my chew and washed out my mouth and spit. Then I took a long drink of water from my canteen. I was still undecided as to whether or not I liked it enough to try it again. Tommy kept his in for a long time, and could carry on conversations naturally so that you’d hardly notice he was chewing. Sometimes, because of the way he’d punctuate his speech with spitting, you’d swear he had it in his mouth even when he didn’t.

  “Give me your money,” Tom said, holding out his hand. We each gave him five dollars. It was our way of gambling on our shooting skills, although I believed at the outset that they’d both be better off just handing their money over to me and saving their bullets.

  Tommy had brought along an assortment of targets: empty beer cans and plastic milk jugs. We never used bottles or glass for targets on Benavidez land. And none of our horses was gunshy, but as Tommy set up the targets atop rocks or downed trees on the hillside, I tied the three of them up in the shade of a big mushroom-shaped oak about a hundred yards away.

  I walked back to our makeshift range, carrying a brick of five hundred rounds and my old Winchester bolt-action .22. My dad gave me the rifle when I was ten, and it was already about forty years old at that time. But it was real easy to take care of, and it shot with extreme accuracy.

  Tom brought out his .40-caliber handgun, the magazine ejected and the slide latched back so we could all see it was unloaded. He reloaded his own ammo because bullets for that thing were expensive, while .22 rounds were practically free.

  Gabriel didn’t have his own gun. I doubted his parents knew he was with us. I had taken him shooting before, though, and he was a fair shot with my .22, even though he seemed afraid of guns. But I think Gabriel was more afraid of admitting he was scared to me and Tom than he was of shooting. Of course, living where we did meant that people pretty much had to have guns. I guess, for boys, having a gun was about the same as having a bicycle if we had lived in the suburbs. And Benavidez did try to push the issue on him, but I knew Gabriel had such an aversion to guns and the thought of hurting things, even though he’d tag along with me and Tom no matter what we wanted to do.

  “Okay,” Tommy said, “ten shots at ten targets. After you shoot, you go up and set ‘em up again. First one to twenty-five wins the cash. Who wants to go first?”

  “Not me,” Gabe said, to no one’s surprise.

  “You set ‘em up. Go ahead, Tom.”

  Tom pushed ten of the stubby rounds into the magazine and slid it, with a click, up into the handle of his gun. He pressed down on the catch and released the slide forward. He raised the gun with both hands and cocked his head back slightly. “Okay, I’m going across left to right.”

  I was watching Tommy and the target arrangement, but when he pulled off the first round, I could see Gabriel jerk, startled, out of the corner of my eye. Maybe I did, too. Even out here in the open field, that gun of Tom’s was painfully loud.

  He missed the first shot.

  “Why don’t you just give me the cash now?”

  “You’ll get a chance with that peashooter, Stotts.”

  He cleanly hit the next seven in a row, but missed the last two targets.

  “I’m up. Let’s see how you did.” And we all walked up the hill to replace the targets and count up the score.

  It really was kind of unfair, my using a rifle against Tommy’s handgun, but he didn’t complain, so after I hit all ten targets in my first round I offered, “Let’s trade guns for round two, okay?”

  “Fair enough,” Tom said.

  “Can I try your gun?” Gabe asked Tommy, who widened his eyes and said, “Sure, if you really want to.”

  We walked back down to our shooting place and Tommy handed Gabe an empty magazine and a box of reloads.

  “Just push in ten of ‘em like you seen me do,” Tom instructed. Tom pulled the slide back on the .40 and latched it, then handed it to Gabe, who inserted the magazine.

  “Okay, now. When you release the slide, there’ll be one in the chamber, so be careful ‘cause it won’t stop shooting till it’s empty. Aim it just like a rifle, only your arm’s the stock.” And Tom spit down at his boots.

  We both stood back, behind Gabriel, watching him take aim at the first target. He pulled the trigger, and a good five seconds before we realized it, all of these things happened at once: The first target, a beer can, spun up in the air, whirling like a propeller blade and disappearing into the brush behind it. As the gun kicked back in Gabriel’s hand he said, “Ow!” and pulled his hand in toward his chest. Gabriel let go of the gun and it flipped over the back of his hand. When the gun hit the ground, it discharged a second time, this time sending a bullet cutting through the air just between Tommy and me. We were standing just about eighteen inches apart.

  I looked at Tommy, slack jawed, examining him up and down to see if there was any blood. I’m sure Tommy was looking for the same thing on me. Neither of us said anything, we just stared at each other, each thinking, I’m certain, about how unlucky we almost were.

  “I hit it!” Gabe was joyous. Then he realized what had happened with the gun, no longer in his startled hand.

  “You know, Gabey,” Tom began, “we always promised to be lifelong friends, but I wasn’t planning on me being barely seventeen when that came to an end.”

  “I can’t exactly say sixteen is an old man, either,” I said, “so why don’t you just stick to the .22, bud?”

  Tommy carefully picked the gun out from the weeds at Gabe’s feet. “You didn’t by any chance bring a couple baseballs with you, Gabey?” Tommy asked. “You’d take us for sure.”

  Gabriel could throw a baseball faster and straighter than anyone I’d ever seen.

  We all laughed. I know Gabe felt horrible, and things didn’t get any better for him when Tommy added, “And by the way, you only have eight shots left, Gabey.”

  “No fair!” Gabe said, but, after almost killing us, there was no way we’d let his protest amount to anything.

  Gabe ended up scoring five on the first round. I’m sure his nerves got the better of him, because I’d seen him do better with my rifle plenty of times. Tommy’s handgun was a little heavy and difficult for me to aim, and as I hefted it, I kind of got a sense that it was hungry to get a person.

  Despite using the pistol, I took nine targets in my second round, so it looked to all of us that I’d be the winner again today.

  “It’s not over yet, Stotts,” Tommy said. “Let’s count ‘em up.”

  And we all went up to reset the targets. That first beer can was getting the worst of it; its top was nearly shorn off. Once again it had been knocked behind the log on which it had rested, into the cover of dried grass.

  “There it is,” Tommy said, and st
epped over the log while Gabe and I looked along our range at the other fallen targets.

  That’s when Tom Buller kneeled down right on top of one of the biggest rattlesnakes I’d ever seen.

  The thing I hate most about rattlers is how whenever you’re looking for one, walking with that feeling that it’s around and trying to be careful to see it before it sees you, you never see one. And then one day you’re walking along, minding your own business, thinking about something that bothers you, admiring the beautiful day, thinking about a girl, and next thing you know you’re calling yourself every variation of stupid for nearly stepping right on one.

  Tom let out a stifled scream and jumped back, but it was too late. The big snake whipped back around and bit Tommy through his pants, just below his right knee.

  “Dammit!” And Tommy grabbed at his leg tightly with both hands and rolled onto his side.

  The snake, fat and black, slid off through the grass, down the length of our target range. I chased after it. Our guns were left behind, resting at the spot where we’d been firing from, but I found a branch from an oak tree and began clubbing the snake. I hit it squarely in the center of its back and it suddenly bent, stiffly, at a right angle, and turned back toward me. His back was broken, he would die for sure, but not soon enough. I drove his head down into the ground with the end of the branch and his body wriggled and twisted in protest. I stepped down on his head with my left foot and pulled the Dawson from my back pocket, opening it with the thumb of my right hand. The snake twisted violently as I cut the head clean from the body, and then, as blood vomited in thick purple clots from the wound, the decapitated rattler crawled off a few more feet into the weeds.

  I stepped on the headless snake at the tail end and cut the rattle off. As I cut, the body still twisted and coiled and tried to crawl away from me. Gabriel was in shock, frozen, staring down at Tommy, afraid to move.

  Sometimes I wanted to take hold of Gabriel and shake him so hard. I can’t really blame him for having no confidence, because I know he understood his father believed Luz was so much better and smarter and that Gabriel could never be man enough to run that ranch. But at times I still angrily hoped that my friend could snap out of his runt-of-the-litter complex, at least when he was with Tom and me; especially when we needed him.

  I still had the open Dawson in my hand, the rattle in my left.

  Tom was lying on his left side, rocking, clutching his right knee, and moaning.

  And I didn’t know whether I should laugh or cry, or just kick him for being so reckless, but I heard myself saying out loud, “I can’t get mad at Tom Buller for being Tom Buller.” Then I spit and wished I had some more of that tobacco.

  “You’ll be okay, bud. Here.” I knelt beside him and stuffed the rattle down into Tom’s hip pocket.

  Gabe still hadn’t moved.

  “I’m going to need some help, Gabe,” I said and he took the few careful steps over the log toward us.

  “Sorry, Tommy, we’re going to need to see how bad it got you. If it’s bleeding and deep or just in the skin,” I said and then began cutting up the side seam of his jeans from the bottom. “Pull that boot off, Gabe.”

  Gabriel pulled Tommy’s boot away and I cut his pants up just past the knee.

  “It burns so bad!” Tommy said. “Oh God, I’m going to puke.”

  “What’re we going to do?” Gabe asked, his voice cracking.

  “Listen, it’s going to be okay. Just do what I tell you, Gabe. You’re not the one who’s bit.”

  “Man, it feels like your horse is standing on my leg. It hurts really, really bad, Troy.”

  That’s when I knew he was in bad shape. He used my first name. I saw the little pink holes where the rattler had bitten into Tom’s leg, and it was striking to me how insignificant they seemed compared to the amount of pain Tom appeared to be in.

  “Yeah, you’re bit. But it’s just under the skin so it’s not too bad.”

  “Yes it is, Stotts.”

  “Are you going to have to suck the poison out?” Gabriel asked.

  “No. That’s not what you do.” I couldn’t believe Gabriel had lived up here all his life and didn’t know what to do for a rattlesnake bite. Everyone knew, I thought. But I did find myself remembering about what to do from reading it in a book.

  “I’m going to get that chew, Tom,” I said, and winced as I put my fingers into his mouth and pulled out his wad of tobacco. “You don’t want that in your mouth right now. Here.” I pressed the chewing tobacco down over the bite marks.

  “My mouth tastes really bad, Stotts. What did you have on your hand?”

  “Nothing. That’s the poison. It’ll do that to you. Come on.” And I grabbed his right arm away from his leg and put it around the back of my neck.

  “Gabe, you got to help me walk him down to the shade by the horses,” I said. “We’re going to sit him up against the tree. You keep him sitting up and keep him cool. Put water on his head and give him some to drink if he’ll take it. I’m going to ride Reno out to the Foreman’s house and call for help. Got it?”

  “I can do that,” Gabriel said.

  We got Tommy seated against the tree. He was yellow and sweaty and his mouth just hung open like there was something in it you couldn’t see. I grabbed the three canteens we had with us and tossed them down on the ground by Gabriel.

  “Don’t tie it off, either,” I said. “I’ll get help. They’ll probly send a helicopter.”

  And then I wiped back Tommy’s hair from his clammy forehead. “You’re going to be okay, bud. You’re tougher than any twenty-four-pound house cat.”

  “But will I ever dance again, Doc?”

  “Don’t worry, Tommy,” I said, “Christy McCracken’s already got the tickets for the end-of-school dance.”

  I heard Gabriel laugh nervously behind me. I wondered if he was picturing those two all over each other at the dance back in May.

  “If I wasn’t about to throw up all over myself, I’d slug you for that.”

  I got up onto Reno’s saddle.

  “Stotts,” Tommy said to me, his open mouth slurring the words slightly, staring down at his knee, which was swelling now, “for once in your life, ride him hard and don’t fall off.”

  I held on to Reno, tight and low against his neck. I let him go. I had never ridden him this fast before, I had always struggled with holding him back because he was so big and strong for someone my size.

  Do you like him? Because I know he likes you very much, and sometimes these things just happen with horses.

  He’s a great horse, Mr. Benavidez.

  He’s for you, Troy. Take him home.

  What? Why?

  I was only thirteen years old, and sitting on Reno was like being stopped at the top of a Ferris wheel. He was so big, and his front feet were dancing like he wanted to bolt from a starting gate. Mr. Benavidez was holding him steady and when he saw I had my tennis shoes in the stirrups and had pushed my black Stetson down across my eyebrows, tight, he let go.

  He’s mine?

  I’m sure he is.

  Thank you, Mr. Benavidez.

  You are welcome, Troy.

  I looked up at the mountains, their granite fingers. Sweat, salty, stinging, blurred my eyes. I looked up to that cross-shaped airplane, where it would be if I could see through those rocks.

  He’ll be okay, he’ll be okay.

  Reno pushed so hard and I stayed on him, holding the reins loose and steering him with my face and shoulders, pressed against his thick pumping neck. I felt like Tommy Buller, a real rider. I wished he could see us cutting across the south field toward his house.

  I called for rescue at the Foreman’s house. Carl hadn’t come back yet, and, as usual, the doors had been left standing open. Then I phoned the Benavidez house, and Luz, worried, rode out to meet me on my way back to the south field. The helicopter was already landing by then.

  Tommy spent four days in the hospital, and after he got out he never walked en
tirely straight again. Part of the danger of living where we did, up in the mountains, was that in an emergency you had to handle things yourself or wait for help and hope for the best. A lot of the kids we went to school with didn’t like the fact that it was thirty miles to the nearest movie theater, but there were no such things as stoplights up here either, and Tom and I liked that just fine. So his knee never recovered entirely from the rattlesnake bite, but Tom Buller never complained about it, either.

  We knew Tommy wasn’t supposed to get on a horse so soon, but he just waited until Carl wasn’t paying too much attention, which wasn’t much of a wait, and rode out to meet us at the fire pit the day after he got home from the hospital.

  “You should see what it did to my leg,” Tommy said. “It turned so black and puffy, I looked like something you’d find floating facedown after a flood. It’s still so purple, I don’t know if it will ever look right.”

  “Let me see,” Gabriel said.

  Tommy pulled his jeans’ leg up slowly over the top of his boot past his knee. The wound looked horrible. The flesh was separated and brilliant red where the doctors had to cut the dead tissue away, stitched together with thick black fibers. It looked so painful, but Tommy just smiled and poked at the edges with his finger.

  “Are you gonna be okay, Tom?” I asked.

  “It feels like my knee’s never going to work right again,” Tommy said, slightly bouncing as he pushed his pants back over his boot. “But you gotta see this.”

  He lifted his shirt up past his bony ribs and pulled the waist of his jeans down as the smoke from our fire curled around his pale body like the hand of some giant ghost. Gabe and I saw the tattoo of the rattlesnake on his right hip. It was small and black, with diamonds on its back, looking like it was crawling along his belly toward his heart.

  “Did it hurt?” I asked.

  “Not as much as getting bit,” Tommy said, “but it hurt pretty good. It still hurts a little.”