“It should have worked—though, you’re right, it was stupid,” Jenkins said. “Now we’re gonna have to listen to that fuckin’ Shrake bragging about getting shot with an arrow and how he gutted it out. Lunch is gonna be a total shitshow for the next six months.”

“Could be worse.”

“Yeah, it could be. By the way, we recovered both arrows. Maybe . . . Nah, there won’t be anything on them, except blood.”

* * *

—

An emergency room doc came out a half hour after Shrake was taken into an operating room and told Virgil that a surgeon had been called in to do the repairs. “There were no huge bleeders back there, and we zapped the bigger ones with a cautery. We’ve got some Ringer’s ready but haven’t had to hit him with it yet . . . Unless there’s something going on that we don’t know about, he’ll be okay. Though, his back will itch like fire for a few weeks.”

“I’ll take that,” Virgil said. “I need to call his best friend and tell him.”

Virgil passed the word to Jenkins, who said, “I never was very worried.”

And Virgil asked, “Then why’d you pee your pants?”

“I guess it’ll be a long recovery?”

“A few weeks, is what I hear so far,” Virgil said. “Cut into your golf season.”

“Wouldn’t you know it? Bright side is, he’s got that loose swing with his driver, maybe this’ll tighten him up.”

“I’ll give him the good news when I see him,” Virgil said.

“Keep calling me. We’ll wind things up here in the next little while, but I’ll still be up until I hear from you.”

A surgeon came out to talk to Virgil an hour later, and said, “He’s all stitched up. A wicked kind of wound; I’ve never seen anything quite like it. The blade was rotating when it went through, a spiral wound, almost like what you see when somebody gets run over by an outboard motor. We’ve got to worry about infection, is the biggest thing now. Let’s hope the shooter didn’t punch that arrow through a deer before he shot your friend.”

“How long will you keep him?” Virgil asked.

“Three days, four, depends on how it comes together. He’s asleep now; he’s gone for the night. You might as well take off.”

* * *

—

Virgil squeezed a few more details out of the surgeon, then called Jenkins and filled him in. “I’m coming back. You might as well get some sleep. We’ll run over here first thing tomorrow morning soon as we hear he’s awake.”

“About the motherfucker who shot him? I’m gonna kill him,” Jenkins said.

“You already said that.”

“I know. I’m reiterating. Don’t tell Shrake.”

* * *

—

On the way back to Wheatfield, Virgil thought about all the trips he’d made to hospitals, all the unhappiness he’d seen there. He’d been a few times himself and had the scars to show for it, but the worst trips were with cops he knew, or bad scenes he’d tumbled over when interviewing people in emergency rooms.

He’d once gone to a hospital to interview a woman who’d been shot by her boyfriend. She’d said it was an accident, and after Virgil checked the circumstances, he thought she was telling the truth. He was chatting with her doctor when a teenager was wheeled into the emergency room with an injured neck and no feeling in his limbs. His girlfriend was with him, and she told Virgil and the doc that the kid had jumped off a boat into the Minnesota River and apparently hit an underwater log with his head.

An X-ray was taken, and Virgil and the doc wandered back into the radiology department as the on-duty radiologist was bringing the images up on a video screen, and the first thing he said was, “Goddamnit . . . Goddamnit . . .”

He tapped the screen with a fingernail, and Virgil could see an abrupt shift in the narrow line of the kid’s spinal cord.

Virgil: “Is he . . . ?”

“Yeah. He’s a quad. He’s done.”

Virgil was leaving the emergency room when the kid’s parents arrived, worried, and they spotted the girlfriend, and asked, “Is he okay?”

“I think he just hit his head a little,” the girl said.

They didn’t know yet, but Virgil did, and he felt like crying that night, and into the next week, every time he thought about it.

* * *

—

He got back to Wheatfield at 2 o’clock in the morning and managed to get to sleep by 3. At 8, Jenkins called, and said, “I didn’t want to wake you up, but I’m heading over to Fairmont.”

“Give me fifteen minutes. I’ll pick you up,” Virgil said. “You got the arrows?”

“No, the sheriff’s got them. Carbon fiber, identical; three broadhead blades, sharp as razors. When we get the guy, maybe he’ll have a few more to match.”

When Virgil had bought his Tahoe, he’d negotiated to get premium seat covers thrown in the deal. They resembled the real leather seats beneath them but were actually a skillfully manufactured vinyl, because Virgil often transported untoward people and occasionally things like bait buckets. That had paid off, because when he went out to get in the truck, he found the passenger seat covered with dried blood.

He spent five minutes, and used most of a roll of paper towels and half a bottle of Formula 409, cleaning it up. When Jenkins got in the truck, he sniffed, and said, “Four-oh-nine . . . Original, not Lemon Fresh.”

“The policeman’s friend,” Virgil said.

At the Fairmont medical center, they found Shrake awake and in a bad mood—but a groggy bad mood, more pissy than violent: “They say I’m staying here for three or four days. If I keep running my mouth, they’ll keep me for a week.”

“Must have some smart people running the place to shut you up like that,” Jenkins said. “So, you gonna live?”

“I don’t feel like it right now, but they don’t seem to be concerned about how I feel,” Shrake grumbled.

“Still hurt?” Jenkins asked.

“It’s more annoying, than anything, and I expect I’ll be annoyed for several more weeks, from what they tell me.”

“Any good-looking nurses?”

“Yes. They already worship me.”

Jenkins suggested that the scar would tighten up Shrake’s wild golf drive, and Shrake advised him to go fuck himself. “Attaboy,” Virgil said. “You’re on the way back.”