Page 18 of Backwoods
“Okay, let’s think, then.” Amiya sucked in her bottom lip. “All right. We get him to the hospital ourselves. One can’t be too far. Macon’s about ten miles away, correct?”
“Something like that.” Nick looked at Grandpa Lee in his arms. His chest rose and fell slowly, but he appeared comatose. Nick found the handkerchief in his granddad’s front pocket and used it to wipe away the bloody saliva pasted across his lips. He felt a slow but steady pulse in his granddad’s throat.
Please don’t die on me, Grandpa, Nick thought, his chest tight with emotion.Please.
“He’s going to be okay.” Amiya touched Nick’s shoulder, squeezed. “He’s a tough man.”
Nick blinked away the hot tears that hung in his eyes, nodded at her.
“Help me carry him,” he said. “I’ll get my hands under his arms, and you can grab his feet.”
“Let’s do it.”
He hooked his hands in Grandpa Lee’s armpits and Amiya lifted up his legs by grasping his leather boots at the ankles. Nick looked over his shoulder and located the narrow dirt trail they had traveled through the woods to get to the lake.
“You lead,” he said to Amiya. “We’ll follow that trail back to the truck.”
Amiya nodded tightly, and they started off. Earlier, it had taken about ten minutes to walk to the lake, and this time, with an incapacitated Grandpa Lee in tow, their progress was significantly slower. They bumped against trees. Shrubs scraped across their arms and face. Insects buzzed past. More than once, they almost dropped his grandfather, but somehow maintained a hold on him.
As they dragged him along, Nick’s mind doubled back to what had happened—Grandpa Lee snatching that letter out of his hand; blood spraying from his lips and spattering the page—and he could not escape the idea that all of this was his fault, that his pushing his grandfather to sell the land had upset him so much that it had triggered a health crisis. A sense of guilt pressed on him, as tangible as the heat waves permeating the woods.
Please, Grandpa Lee, hold on, he thought.
When Nick finally spotted the truck through the trees, he wanted to scream with relief. His arms ached and he was drenched in sweat. Amiya, too, looked as if she had endured a brutal workout, her hair frizzy and perspiration glistening on her cheeks.
They emerged from the thicket and dragged Grandpa Lee to the pickup truck.
“All right,” Nick said, panting. “We get him in the front seat now. You hold him and I’ll drive.”
Amiya swung open the passenger door and climbed onto the bench seat. Nick maneuvered around, his hands still hooked under Grandpa Lee’s arms. Together, he and Amiya heaved Grandpa Lee up and into the truck, another strenuous effort. Nick raced around the front of the pickup and hustled behind the wheel.
Grandpa Lee had left the key in the ignition. The engine kicked on with a low rumble.
“You remember the way back?” Amiya asked. She was pressed against Nick, her arms gathered around Grandpa Lee’s torso.
“Yeah, I used to come out here with him all the time.”
But the reality was that in his frazzled state, he wasn’t sure of the route back to the house. On the way there to the lake, his granddad had made several turns, branching from one narrow dirt lane to the next without the benefit of directional signs or markers of any kind that Nick had seen. It would have done no good to share that news with Amiya. The land covered nine hundred acres and they had a truck—they would find their way back.
The question was whether it would be soon enough for Grandpa Lee.
Nick worked the manual gear shift. The gears protested with a grating whine.
“Do you know how to drive a stick?” Amiya asked.
“It’s been years, but I know how.” He gritted his teeth, wiped a drop of salty sweat out of the corner of his eye. “Relax and let me focus.”
She mumbled something under her breath, but he couldn’t be concerned about her opinions. All that mattered was getting medical attention for his grandfather.
He shifted into reverse and popped the clutch. The truck jerked backward, tossing them forward, and Amiya let out a thin cry of surprise.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve got it now.”
Amiya gathered her bearings, adjusted her hold on Grandpa Lee. Nick backed up in a half-circle and pointed the Ford in the direction from which they had originally come. He shifted again, working the pedals. The truck leaped forward.
“Hang on, guys,” Nick said as the pickup plowed ahead. The speedometer inched up to thirty miles per hour, the maximum speed that Nick felt comfortable reaching on such a narrow, unpredictable road. Foliage breezed past. The tree canopy disappeared in sections, allowing spears of sunlight to penetrate the woods.
They neared an intersection. Nick went with his first instinct and hung a right.
