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I get up.
“I should go.”
“Why?”
“One of us should talk to Gisco and he barely knows me. He’ll know your voice.”
Doris unhooks her ax.
“He has a point.”
“All right,” Wanuri says. “Make it fast.”
We half run, half crawl up the hill. When we reach the tree, I get on the low side and put all my weight on it. Doris gets on the other side and hacks at the roots with her panabas. Each blow vibrates through my whole body. But the wood is hard and Doris has to hack a lot longer than either of us wants. I move farther up the trunk and lift my feet off the ground, hoping the extra weight will help. Hanging there as useless as a shriveled peach. I have a clear view of the Tenebrae on the far side of the mountain. In one second, I’m excited. In the next, I’m queasy with tension.
Everywhere mortals exist in the world has an echo in the Tenebrae. A fragile phantom version of the real thing. Squatting ugly, dark and filthy, barely a shadow of the real thing, is the Tenebrae ghost of L.A. And it’s only a few miles away. From there, I know how to get into Hell. It ain’t salvation, but it’s where Traven and I can disappear and never think about this traveling carny show ever again.
Wood splinters. A shudder runs through my body as the tree trunk splits from the roots. I drop a couple of feet, taking the weight on my shoulder. Doris grabs the other end of the tree and we haul it down the hill as fast as we can.
Wanuri is still with Gisco. He’s awake and she’s giving him sips of water. While Doris pushes a smaller rock underneath so we can balance the trunk, Wanuri and I get the end of the tree under the rock.
“Get ready,” Wanuri says. “Haul him out the moment he’s clear. This shitty wood might not hold long.”
Doris says, “I can do it.”
Wanuri and I lay our weight on the tree trunk. The boulder moves. Gisco screams.
“Just a little more,” says Doris.
We push harder. Gisco screams. The tree cracks.
“Got him!” Doris yells.
The trunk snaps in half and the boulder thuds back into place. But Doris has Gisco out and propped against a pile of rocks nearby.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is his right leg. The lower part is bent at almost a ninety-degree angle. There’s no bone sticking out, though.
That’s the other good news.
The bad news, though, is that it means whatever bone is left is probably pulverized.
“Should we straighten it?” says Wanuri.
“No. We splint it like that,” I say. “Get him back to camp before we start fucking with it.”
“You sure?”
“I’ve dealt with a lot of these injuries over the years.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Look at my face. I didn’t get these scars in pillow fights.”
That seems to convince her. Never doubt the power of ugly.
“Okay,” she says. “We can chop up the tree. How do we secure him to it?”
