Backlands by Michael McGarrity Read Free Book Online

continued climbing.
    â€œI’m starting up,” Matt announced, swinging onto the low branch. He threw a leg over it, pulled himself upright, found his footing, and scrambled upward. Above, Jimmy had almost reached the nest.
    â€œWhat do you see?” Joe Pete yelled.
    â€œNothing yet,” Jimmy replied.
    Matt was a good twenty feet above the ground when Jimmy crawled out on a branch that supported the nest and rose to take a look.
    â€œIt’s empty,” Jimmy reported as the branch cracked and gave way. He tumbled down, arms and legs flailing, crashing against the boughs, the eagles’ nest disintegrating around him as it also fell. He landed with a thud, his head bouncing hard against an old log.
    Matt scurried down the tree to Joe Pete, who was at Jimmy’s side trying to rouse him. Blood gushed from a wound in the back of Jimmy’s head, and he wasn’t moving.
    â€œTake Blue,” Matt ordered. “Ride to town. Get help. Leave the canteen.”
    Joe Pete stood frozen, staring at Jimmy’s bloody head and vacant eyes. “Is he dead?”
    â€œGo on,” Matt shouted. “Get!”
    Joe Pete dropped the canteen on the ground and ran to get Blue.
    Matt shucked his coat, took off his shirt, and tried to stem the blood from the wound, but it just soaked through the shirt and kept bleeding. He poured water on Jimmy’s face to wake him, tried shaking him conscious, yelled his name over and over. Jimmy didn’t move.
    He lowered an ear to Jimmy’s mouth. He wasn’t breathing. He put his ear to Jimmy’s chest. His heart wasn’t beating.
    Matt sank back on his haunches, tears rolling down his face. He kept Jimmy company without moving, shivering in the cold until Joe Pete and a posse of men with lanterns gleaming in the dusk arrived.
    â€œI should have caught you,” Matt whispered into Jimmy’s ear as hands pulled him away. “I should have caught you.”
    It was the worst day of Matthew Kerney’s young life.

3
    P atrick Kerney slipped into one of the last remaining empty seats at the back of the church. Up ahead, the small casket containing Jimmy Potter’s body stood in front of the altar rail. Except for soft organ music from the choir loft above, the occasional shuffling of feet, and a stifled cough or two, silence reigned. In the front pew Patrick could make out the broad back and big shoulders of Jimmy’s father, Luke Potter. Luke had been a friend since his arrival in Engle some years back. He’d come from Kansas to supervise the vast freight yards built by the railroad to store and ship materials to the massive Elephant Butte Dam construction project on the Rio Grande. When the job ended, Luke got promoted and transferred to Las Cruces. Patrick hadn’t seen much of him since then.
    Luke’s wife, Jeannie, sat next to him. She was a tall, thin woman, quiet by nature. Her sunny personality and intelligent brown eyes livened up her otherwise plain features. She slumped against Luke as if the spark in her had been permanently extinguished.
    On the same aisle two rows back, Emma sat with Matt, her arm wrapped protectively around his shoulders. Patrick had long given up the notion that Emma would ever reconcile with him enough to let him back into her heart or into her bed. Instead, they had forged a tense, polite truce based on his promise to do his best to be a good father to the boy. Two years of trying hadn’t done much to strengthen the ties that bind. Patrick accepted his share of the blame, but Matt had never warmed to him, and Emma always seemed to have one reason or another to cut short their ranch visits.
    They’d settled into a routine of three ranch visits a year during Matt’s school holidays. Although Patrick would never say it aloud, that suited him fine. He just didn’t have much of a talent for fathering. He’d proved that long ago with CJ, the day he shot the boy’s pony