The man is wary. Watching me. So I keep my eyes straight ahead until I’m past them. It’s only when I’m far enough for him to let down his guard that I whirl around.
I shoot him in his right shoulder, making him howl and drop the knife. He falls, and the boy dives away from him, tumbling into the ditch beside the road.
The woman runs for her son, and Molly and I run for the man. Molly grabs a mouthful of his pants and starts tugging while I kick the man in the jaw before he can reach for the gun holstered on his belt.
My kick is hard enough to knock him out.
I retrieve his gun before I straighten up. “Good girl,” I tell Molly, snapping again to get her to let go. “Good job.”
The woman has her arms around her boy when I reach her. “Thank you. We were married a long time ago, and he came all this way to find me. He kept saying he’s still my husband in God’s eyes. But he’s not. He’snot.”
I nod and hand her the gun I took from the man.
Then Molly and I walk away.
We’ve not quite crested the next hill when I hear the gunshot.
The hourit takes to hike back home is uneventful. After I turn off the road onto the trail, I don’t see a single other person.
I’m relieved when I reach the creek and follow the bank toward where my camper is hidden behind thick trees.
The first sign that something is wrong is the broken limb I always rest loosely across branches of two trees, which has now fallen to the ground. I snap for Molly and pull my pistol back out of my holster.
The next sign is something dark staining the dirt a few feet farther.
I don’t know for sure, but it might be blood.
The clearing around my camper is utterly silent. Not even the stray frog or bird I occasionally hear.
I move slowly, scouring my surroundings until I see something out of place around the back of the camper.
Some of the stacked wood has rolled off the pile.
Moving warily, I walk around, gun extended and a once-again-growling Molly at my heel.
There’s a man sprawled out on the ground beside the camper.
He’s big. He has a full beard and closely cropped hair.He’s wearing camo pants and a gray T-shirt with the sleeves torn off.
There’s blood all over his shirt and waistline of his pants.
He’s injured. Very injured. He’s big and strong and unknown and collapsed right there next to my home. He’s not dead. There’s sweat on his skin, and his chest is rising and falling in fast, shallow breaths.
Molly freezes at exactly the same time I do.
What the hell am I supposed to do with this half-dead man lying a few feet from my front door?
2
I’m notsure how long I stand like a statue, my mind whirling with anxious questions and potential outcomes. But eventually the chaotic whirl in my mind tightens down to only one possibility.
Unless I’m prepared to actively kill this man or listen to him die right outside my door, I have no real choice but to help him. The only way to be rid of him is to get him better enough to leave on his own.
So while Molly sniffs at his face, ruffling his dirty beard with her wet nose, I kneel beside him and lift his shirt to investigate the source of the blood.
It’s a gunshot. I see that immediately. The bullet has ripped through the flesh on his side, just above his left hip. There’s so much blood it’s hard to assess the extent of the damage, but as far as I can tell on first look, it’s likely to be the loss of blood that’skilling him rather than damage to any of his internal organs.
Good for him. And probably good for me too. If he dies, I’ll have to figure out what to do with his dead body. So I’d rather his wounds be recoverable so he can get better and get out of here.
