Page 68 of So Far Gone

“I’ll come back and help,” he said, “I promise.”

“Whose house is this?” asked Asher from the backseat.

Bethany eased her door closed. “Grandpa’s shack-job,” she muttered.

“What?”

“Grandpa’s friend.”

“Oh.”

The woman went back inside and Kinnick walked back to the car, head down, looking chastened. He climbed into the driver’s seat and blew out air, like a tire going flat. “Sorry about that.” He had just reached down to start the car when the door to the blue duplex opened again.

Out onto the porch stepped a well-built middle-aged man, a few years younger than her father, with lightly graying hair and a well-trimmed beard. He was wearing a sweatshirt, baggy basketball shorts, and what looked like hospital slippers.

But it was what he carried in his left hand that caught Bethany’s eye: a half-gallon catheter bag—like the one she recalled Cortland having to use after his prostate surgery. A tube ran from the bag into his shorts and up his leg. A small amount of bloody urine sloshed in the bag as he shuffled quickly down the sidewalk in his hospital slippers toward them. “Kinnick!” the man yelled. “Wait!”

The woman came back out onto the porch to watch, followed by a skinny young man with tattooed arms, who stood behind her, both ofthem wearing half-smiles on their bemused faces as they watched the catheterized man hobble down the sidewalk.

“Oh, Jesus,” her dad said.

“It’s the man from the Rampart,” Asher said from the backseat.

Rhys lowered his window. “Hey, Chuck. How are you feeling?”

He arrived at Kinnick’s window, smiling. “Great! Much better! Hey, Lucy says your granddaughter has gone missing now?”

“Yeah,” Kinnick said. “We’re going to look for her.”

“You think she’s back up there? At the Rampart?”

“We’re not sure, but that’s where we’re going to start.”

Chuck glanced back at the house briefly. “Give me a minute. I’ll go with you.”

“I really don’t think—”

“You can’t go up there by yourself. Face that douchebag army alone?”

Kinnick couldn’t help himself and his eyes briefly darted down. “Chuck, you can’t possibly—”

Chuck gestured to the big plastic bag of urine in his hand. “Don’t worry. I have a smaller day bag. I’ll just strap it to my leg, and we’ll go up there together.”

“You just had surgery!”

“It was like pulling out a splinter! Took them less than an hour. No infection, no internal damage, piece of cake. A few stitches, a round of antibiotics, doctor says I’m good as new.”

“Chuck! You got shot two days ago!”

“Yeah, I was there, remember?”

“Look at you. You’re in no condition to—”

“What, this?” Chuck interrupted, holding up the catheter bag again. “This is nothing! I’ll be out of this in no time.” He flicked the tube. “Get yanked around by my dickhole for a few days until my body remembers how to piss on its own again.”

“Dickhole?” Asher asked from behind them.

“Asher—” Bethany said.

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