Secret Vows

Chapter 2: The Old Rules

The door came open.

The man had his hand in at the latch. He pulled, and the door swung out and the water on it came off in one sheet.

"Can you move?" he said, down at the hole in the glass.

Nothing came out of the car that Trey could hear.

"Can you move," the man said.

"...Yeah."

"Give me your arm."

An arm came out through the hole as far as the elbow. He got both of his own in after it, and then he was stepping back and the man from the car was coming out after him, head first, one boot catching on the door frame and dragging.

He stood up with the man from the car against his chest, one arm under his knees. The man he was carrying had an arm hanging down, and the hand at the end of it was red to the wrist, and it stayed red.

He turned and came down the shoulder past Trey, and Trey got out of his way without being told. Past the burning car. Past the next one and the next. Past the trailer lying across the lane with the two cars under it, wheels up. In the open doors, men stopped what they were doing to watch him carry a man past them, and nobody said anything to him, and he didn't say anything to them.

He went on past the last car and kept going, thirty feet, forty, down the shoulder, and where the ground rose up out of the standing water he bent and put the man down in the grass.

Then he came back. He came back faster than he'd gone.

He stopped in front of Trey and put a hand flat on the top of Trey's head, heavy and wet, and tipped Trey's face up toward him.

"Go down there and watch him for me. Don't move him."

"Okay."

"Go."

Trey went. Behind him the boots started back up the lane.

He was two cars along when a hand came down on his shoulder and turned him. A man out of one of the cars behind, wet through, no coat on.

"Hey. How old are you?"

"Nine."

"Nine." The man looked up the lane and back down at him. "Then get yourself back where you came from—"

"I have to watch him."

The man's mouth moved like he was going to start again. Then he didn't, and he let go of Trey's shoulder and ran past him, up the lane, into the light.

The man in the grass was on his back with his eyes open and the rain going into them, and he didn't blink. Trey got down in the grass beside him. There was nowhere for his hands. He put them on his knees.

He could feel the blood on them from the door handle. He didn't look at it.

Then it went off again, up the lane behind him.

He didn't hear it. The air came down over the top of him and put him in the mud, on his face, with his mouth full of it. Something hot went over him, and then the cold came back, and he was pushing up onto his hands and knees.

Fire stood up over the cars. It went up and then bent off in the wind, black through the middle, and it was taller than the trailer.

"Mister—"

The man was up the lane with his back to him, walking. He took two steps, and both of them landed wrong. His knee came down in the water and the rest of him went over the side of it, and one arm was out and the hand was in the mud.

Men came. They came from behind Trey and from the side of him, running, more than two of them, throwing water off their boots.

"Chief—"

"Chief!"

The first one got his arm under him and held him up off the ground. "Chief. Chief, sit—"

The man's hand came up flat against the arm holding him and stayed there. His head went loose. He worked his mouth and got it out.

"...The old rules."

"Merrick—"

That was a different one, further off.

The man got his head up.

"Shut your f*****g mouth."

The hands under him went still.

Trey was up. He went in past the shoulders and the elbows, and got himself where he could see.

The blood was at the back of the man's neck. It came from up under his hair, and it wasn't dripping, it was running, down the neck and into the collar of the coat and out the bottom of it, and the shirt under the coat was red down to the shoulder.

"You're bleeding," Trey said. "Mister. You're bleeding."

The man turned his head and found him. He smiled.

The smile was still in the corner of his mouth when he went down out of the hands that were holding him, into the mud.

"Chief—"

"Mister—Mister—"

Trey went down on his knees in the mud next to him and yelled for him. The man was going to get up. He had carried a man the whole way down the shoulder with one arm and come back for Trey, and he was going to get up. The men came in around them and closed over him, and after that Trey couldn't see him anymore.