The Right Side of Wrong Read online

  Wait! Someone shot at me.

  He recalled the skid, the window rolling down on the other car, the shot, the final loss of control, the car flipping like a carnival ride gone wrong.

  The wreck didn’t kill me, so what about the guys with the gun? Maybe they didn’t hit me, but that window blowing up in my face likely convinced them that I’m dead, or so near dead that it wasn’t worth the trouble to finish the job.

  Breathing through his mouth, Cody probed with his tongue to see if any teeth were missing. He almost laughed. It didn’t matter if all his teeth were scattered like Chiclets on the dashboard. He couldn’t move!

  A high, piercing resonance filled his ears.

  What’s that?

  He listened, and realized the sound originated from his own throat. It was the sound of a wounded animal. He’d heard it before, from men in Vietnam who thought they were dying.

  Calm down and think! Take stock. What do you know?

  Well, most likely his nose was broken since he was breathing through his mouth.

  Blink.

  Both eyes were functioning normally once again.

  Blink.

  The wind soughing through the creaking trees and the muffled sound of chuckling water told him the car had nearly landed in the creek. He’d fallen a long way. It might take hours for a passing vehicle to notice the tracks where he skidded off the road and hours more for help to arrive, if ever. A rescue party would probably find his rock-hard body frozen behind the steering wheel.

  I need to move.

  He was paralyzed! How could he do anything?

  Oh sure, I can think warm thoughts.

  Think!

  Okay. Hypothermia wasn’t an immediate concern. He was dressed for the weather. Because the car was so cold when he left the house, he was still wearing his coat and gloves.

  His forehead throbbed from cracking against the steering wheel sometime during the carnival ride through the woods. Luckily it wasn’t bleeding too much. Or maybe it had stopped.

  Cody thought about that.

  Bleeding out from several different places was a distinct possibility, but since he was paralyzed he’d never know until it was too late.

  Could he bleed to death before freezing?

  No, not when it’s so cold. He recalled stories about people who avoided death in the wintertime because blood froze over a wound, sealing it as effectively as if it were cauterized. His own Great-Uncle Melvin survived grievous wounds during the Battle of the Bulge that same way in the intense Belgium cold.

  So, I won’t bleed out. I still have to worry about freezing, though. Maybe they’ll find my tracks soon.

  He moved his eyes. There was his shoulder, and his left arm dangling by his side. His right hand lay in his lap, limp and empty. Both legs appeared to be unbroken, but that was a guess and nothing more.

  Nausea welled. A wave of dizziness washed over him and he lost consciousness.

  ***

  When Cody came back, his nose was numb and his ears had lost all sensation. His field of vision hadn’t changed while he was out. The door and the trees in the background remained the same, but something was different.

  Darker.

  Heavier clouds.

  Snowing again, covering his tire tracks. They might never find him! Panic rose, but he fought back.

  A single tear leaked out and coursed down his cheek.

  Think positive.

  All right. The headlight is still on. So is the dome light. Maybe someone will see me down here as they pass.

  The lights flickered as something shorted out inside the dash. They blinked several more times. When they steadied, the radio static that had been a steady background noise was silenced.

  Snow fell once again, a repeat of the near white-out storm that met him that morning. With the radio dead, Cody heard the hiss of heavy snowflakes landing on the trees, the car, and the existing snowpack. He hoped someone had already found the tracks, or maybe saw the accident occur, and were even now organizing a rescue.

  Time passed. A dim glow across the creek began to define the snow-laden limbs. Dawn that cloudy morning was only minutes away.

  He heard a sound. Not a tree creaking in the wind. It was different…alive!

  Someone is out there.

  “Here!” Cody’s attempted shout barely came out a whisper.

  Soft footsteps moved around the opposite side of the car. Cody desperately wished to turn his head, move a finger, anything. He most likely appeared dead, and that might cause his rescuer to move even more slowly. “Help,” Cody whispered. “Can you hear me?”

  The sound stopped.

  Listening.

  Then it resumed, coming around the front of the car. Cody waited for the person to step into view. A strange snuffling noise reached his frozen ears. He raised his eyes as far as possible to glimpse a frightened, unkempt dog. It was one of those unfortunate animals abandoned in the country by owners who didn’t have the guts to put the unwanted dog down, or the sense to know that throwing him out near a farmhouse was a slow death sentence.

  With a rush of horror, he realized the huge pit bull had been attracted by the smell of blood. The gaunt animal survived by eating whatever it found.

  “Go away. Get out of here!” He barely breathed the words.

  The scent of fresh blood drove the starving dog mad. The only thing keeping the dog from immediately attacking was the puzzling and unsettling moans coming from the man, even though he hadn’t moved, and that worried it also. Though it sensed he was injured, the man might still be a danger if he wanted to hit, or use the stick that made noise.

  It whined and shuffled uncertainly in the snow. The worried animal sensed security in the car. There was familiar warmth in there, too, and shelter from the wet snow.

  It crept forward, raising its nose again to sniff past Cody, and then reached toward the gloved hand that was dangling out of his sight.

  Cody heard the dog lick tentatively at his bloody fingers. He knew what was coming. “No!” he gasped again, but there was no force behind it.

  The dog licked again, reveling in the taste of fresh blood. The rich, life-giving liquid had dripped into the snow. The dog sniffed at the red stain and eagerly lapped at the frozen blood. It bit at the icy clots, cracking them in his teeth like dry dog food.

  It wasn’t enough. Food!

  Bolder now, the desperate animal became more aggressive.

  Cody tried to scream away this unimaginable horror.

  The result was still another weak utterance not much more than a sigh.

  Belly rumbling, the dog took Cody’s glove in his mouth and tugged.

  No no no no no no…

  Shrieking soundlessly, Cody watched his unfeeling left arm pull away and then drop again to his side. Bolder still, the dog bit again and yanked, trying to remove the hand.

  The dog hadn’t been comfortable in weeks and the thought of a full stomach was nearly driving it crazy. It planted its feet and jerked. Cody’s weight shifted and gravity slowly took over.

  This can’t be happening!

  At the sudden movement, the dog tucked its tail and fled a short distance. It whirled in a flurry of snow and watched the man fall heavily into the snow.

  Cody landed hard on his left side with his feet still inside the Plymouth, legs tilted upward at an odd angle. His head bounced when it slammed sharply onto a half-buried log in the snow. Sparks flashed before his eyes.

  His field of vision was suddenly reduced by more than half. The left side of his face was buried in the icy fluff. Only his right eye revealed his surroundings, the opposite bank of the stream, and the left front tire buried in black loam and dirty snow.

  Now that thing has me out of the car! Oh god oh god oh god! My eye’s fixin’ to freeze harder’n a marble.

 
The dog approached from behind. Cody closed his eyes, and hoped his weakened system would kill him soon. His mind raced. Wild animals always went for the softer parts first.

  Oh Jesus please please don’t let me see him chewing I couldn’t stand it if I saw it with anything in its mouth oh please please please I wish I were deaf, too.

  But the dog didn’t immediately tear into him.

  The one-time pet walked forward on stiff legs, ready to run again. It smelled life in the man that made mewling sounds even though, curiously, he hadn’t moved.

  Drawn by something as powerful as hunger, the dog crept slowly to the car, stretched carefully over the still body, and lifted its front feet onto the doorsill.

  It sniffed.

  Quivering, it squatted, moved its back feet nervously on the ground to gain a secure foothold, and jumped into the front seat. The dog moaned in relief as its cold feet touched the still-warm cloth and shivered with delight, soaking up Cody’s residual body heat.

  What is that thing doing?

  For the first time since he was a boy, Cody cried.

  Through his terror and silent sobs Cody heard the dog growl, low and menacing.

  Muffled swishes more sensed than heard flowed over Cody’s prone body. The musty smell of wild animals enveloped him. A pack of wild dogs, once pets themselves, had also scented the blood and wanted it all for themselves. Feet and legs swarmed over Cody and they attacked the first dog.

  Suddenly, the world exploded.

  Well positioned, First dog fought with determination. The snarling dogs climbed over Cody, but First dog fought back.

  Blood flew.

  Cody squeezed his eyes shut and desperately willed himself to move, to crawl away, but his damaged body refused to respond.

  Overcome with rage, hunger, and bloodlust when they couldn’t get into the wrecked car, the excited pack turned on each other. They stumbled over Cody’s body as the fight escalated beside the car.

  Cody clenched his eyes again as the savage battle rolled over him. He knew their legs and bodies were on his own, but there was no pain with the sensation, only pressure and movement. Snow flew as they sought purchase in the white fluff.

  A large toenail tore Cody’s cheek open. He felt pain there, and wished he couldn’t.

  The battle raged until weaker members of the pack yelped in surrender and retreated. Three others tore a smaller shrieking dog apart only feet away from Cody’s head. His panic took it all in, while peripherally seeing First dog standing in the driver’s seat snarling his defiance at the intruders below.

  Emotionally numb, he wished for a quick death. God I hope they go for the throat so I’ll die quicker.

  The victorious alpha dogs of the pack stopped fighting. First dog growled down at them one final time and they feigned disinterest, examining the feast of their former member and the still man’s body.

  A German Shepherd stepped forward, sniffed at the fresh wound on Cody’s cheek, and licked. Bolder, it licked again, and then opened its mouth.

  The sharp crack of a rifle startled the pack. The German Shepherd was blown sideways. It kicked twice and was still. A second, almost instantaneous shot caught another dog behind the ear, flipping it end over end. At the third report, First dog leaped through the shattered passenger window and disappeared in the opposite direction. The remainder of the pack scattered and vanished into the gray morning.

  Thank God.

  Footsteps squeaked in the fresh snow and stopped beside the car.

  A gravelly, time-worn voice was the sweetest thing Cody had ever heard.

  “You alive, son?”

  Chapter Three

  Twenty-four hours later, Cody Parker lay in the stark light from a single ceiling fixture. Heavily bandaged and sleeping peacefully in the white enamel-painted, 1930s iron bedstead, his foot twitched.

  “That’s what we’ve been waiting for.” Dr. Ernie Patterson rubbed his large belly, sighing with relief. “He ain’t paralyzed.”

  Beside the porcelain sink hanging on the wall, Miss Becky Parker raised her right hand and breathed a soft exclamation. “Hallelujah! Praise Jesus!” The tight bun of gray hair she wore on the back of her neck was an outward example of her devotion to the Word clasped in her hands.

  Norma Faye sat beside the bed where she’d been since they brought Cody into the hospital room. She laughed in relief, wiped tears from her eyes, then took her husband’s limp hand again on top of the covers.

  At the foot of the bed, Constable Ned Parker choked down the lump in his throat and stifled the sob that threatened to break through. He cleared his throat, blinked his blue eyes several times, and stared at the bare metal of the crank handle on the bed where many hands across the decades had worn away uncounted coats of paint.

  Ned said a silent prayer of thanks.

  Everything was monochromatic on that cold winter afternoon. Snow still coated Chisum under a smooth blanket beneath the slate-grey clouds. Inside the hospital room, the white walls were painted with glistening enamel. Tiny black-and-white tiles covered the floor and spread into the hallway where they echoed the quiet footsteps of nuns going about their nursing duties.

  The only decorative color was the framed print of a bearded St. Joseph on the wall above Cody’s bed.

  Half leaning on her husband’s bed, redheaded Norma Faye was a burst of color herself. She absently rubbed Cody’s right hand which was barely healed from his near-death encounter in the Cotton Exchange two months earlier. He breathed slowly, deeply, from the drugs dripping into his arm.

  Ned pondered the round, grey-haired doctor beside him. “That means he’s gonna live, right?”

  Dr. Patterson lifted the thin blanket to reveal Cody’s feet. He took an instrument resembling a fountain pen from his pocket and pulled the dry nib along the sole of one foot, smiling at the tiny reaction.

  “Well?” Ned had no patience with doctors, and Ernie Patterson had gotten on his nerves years earlier. Ned felt Patterson should have used some of the money he made as a doctor to straighten his mouth full of crooked teeth.

  But it wasn’t Ernie’s appearance that truly annoyed Ned, or his slow response to the question. It was the place and the situation itself. Ned didn’t like hospitals, period.

  The nuns in their habits flowed down the halls holding steel trays full of things Ned didn’t like the looks of, and didn’t understand. He didn’t like the glass bottle dangling from a chrome stand by Cody’s head, or the tube leading into the crook of his left elbow.

  Ned hated needles as much as he hated a crooked lawman.

  “I believe he’ll be fine, but he won’t be hoeing any corn for a good long time.” Dr. Patterson replaced the blanket and slipped the pen into the pocket of his white coat. “I suspect most of the paralysis will be gone in a few days. His spine was bruised pretty badly in the wreck, but he’s already getting the feeling back in his extremities. That little dab of movement is a good indication the damage to his spinal column was only slight, so yes, I think he’ll make a full recovery.”

  “He’ll be fine.” Miss Becky squeezed her Bible tightly and gave it a slight shake. “He’s on the prayer list at church, and I know the good Lord will take care of him.”

  Ned thought for a moment. “Well, why ain’t he awake?”

  “I still have him knocked out, Ned. He may look pretty good, but that wreck damn near killed him. Sorry Becky, I meant, it nearly killed him.”

  Ned scowled. “He don’t look good to me at all for a feller who flipped a car after he was shot at. His head must be a mess under all them bandages.”

  A thick dressing made Cody’s face look lopsided. Two stitches closed the toenail cut on his cheek and a small cut on his scalp. His broken nose was also taped. To Ned, it appeared there wasn’t an inch of the young man’s face that wasn’t damaged.

  “Something slapped him
pretty hard and he has a little frostbite on that left ear, but it’ll heal all right. I’ve checked his eyes, and we don’t think there’s any damage to his sight. We’re lucky there. He’ll look better when the swelling goes down.”

  “He needs to rest now.” Norma Faye used her free hand to tuck a renegade curl of long red hair behind one ear. They’d been married for less than a year, but she’d settled into the family faster than anyone expected, despite the scandal she and Cody had created when they started seeing each other. “Where’s James and Ida Belle?”

  “Downstairs with the kids.” Miss Becky’s thumbs unconsciously worried at the worn leather of the Bible’s cover. “They’ll be up directly, when we leave. Top and Pepper wanted to come up here in the worst way, but one of them nuns said kids weren’t allowed on this floor.”

  “I’ll bring them up later if I want to.” Ned scowled and fiddled with the stained felt Stetson in his weathered hands. “Nuns or not.”

  Norma Faye always wanted the kids close. “Where are they now?”

  Ned shifted from one foot to the other to ease the ache in his knees. “Either in the waiting room, or outside throwing snowballs, I reckon.”

  “Top had that case he’s been carrying. They’re probably playing secret agent, like on that television show they’ve been watching.”

  The idle conversation was a relief valve, of no consequence, but it briefly took their minds off Cody’s condition.

  Worn out from sitting at the hospital since they brought Cody in, Norma Faye softly stroked Cody’s hand with her painted fingernails. Miss Becky didn’t like such vain foolishness one bit, though it was slightly less sinful than makeup, in her opinion, but she held her tongue.

  “You need for me to do anything, sweetie?” Ned hated to stand around and do nothing. “I’ll bring you some dinner if you want, later.”

  Norma Faye smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling. “I’m not a bit hungry. They have a little café in the basement if I need anything, but I want to be here when he wakes up.”