Reapers Are the Angels by Alden Bell Read Free Book Online

takes the elastic band from her hair and winds it tight around her pinky finger to hold the blood in and sits back against the window to take a breath.
    She shakes her head.
    I liked this place too.

4.

    It’s almost four o’clock in the morning when she knocks on Ruby’s door.
    What’s wrong, Ruby says with a mother’s instinct and immediate wakefulness.
    You gonna have to sew me up.
    Temple steps into the room, carrying a heavy green duffel that clatters noisily when she sets it down. Then she shuts the door behind her and lifts up her hand for Ruby to see.
    Oh my God, what happened to you?
    I got hurt.
    We have to get Dr. Marcus.
    We’re not gettin Doctor nobody. I already been to the clinic and hunted myself some lidocaine. I figure you got a sewing kit, and I just need your help on this—just a stitch or two—and then I’ll be on my way.
    You tell me what happened to you.
    I promise to give you the entire picture when I’m not bleedin out here on your carpet.
    Ruby looks again at her hand.
    Come here into the light, she says and brings Temple around and sits her on the side of the bed and lays her hand out on the tabletop under the lamp.
    Here, Temple says, handing Ruby the lidocaine and the syringe.
    How much? Ruby asks.
    I don’t know. Just a little, I’m gonna need that hand.
    Ruby injects it into the fleshy part of her palm just below the finger.
    I don’t know why Dr. Marcus can’t do this.
    Come morning the men around here ain’t gonna like me much. Sometimes they get curious notions of brotherhood, men do. You got a needle and thread?
    Ruby goes to a drawer and sifts through it. What color? she asks, flustered.
    I don’t guess it matters—it’s just gonna be blood black in a minute.
    Oh, of course. It’s silly—I just can’t think straight.
    Come on now, it’s just like mendin a sock.
    Ruby gets the needle and thread, and Temple can feel her hand numbing. She reaches under the nightstand for one of the magazines piled there and puts it down to catch the blood. Then she takes a good look at her pinky finger. It’s gone just above the first knuckle, a clean cut through the bone that shows as a yellow twig poking through at the end. She uses her other hand to draw the skin up over the end of the bone and pinch it shut like a foreskin.
    There, she says to Ruby. Now just run that thread through there a few times and tie it off. It’ll be okay.
    Ruby does it and Temple looks away, staring at a picture of a vegetable garden Ruby has hanging over her bed. In the middle of the vegetable garden are three bunny rabbits and a girl wearing a bonnet. The pain comes sharp through the dullness of the lidocaine. She feels dizzy but clenches her teeth to keep from passing out. She pulls one of the Vicodins from her pocket and pops it in her mouth.
    When it’s done, Temple undoes the elastic hair band from around her finger and watches to see what will happen. A little blood oozes out the seam at the end, but not much. She wraps her finger in gauze and tapes it.
    You did some nice work, thanks.
    I never did that before.
    Well, I reckon I should—
    But when she tries to stand, the room spins around her and she has trouble looking forward and her neck feels loose and squirmy, incapable of keeping her head arranged straight.
    Are you all right? Ruby says, but her voice sounds like it’s coming through cotton. Like it’s coming through lollipops made of T-shirts. Like it’s coming through the cottontails of all the bunny rabbits in all the vegetable patches in the world.
    Temple says, I’ll just sit a sec—
    And that’s when the darkness comes and swallows her complete.

    T HE NEXT thing she knows, she’s lying under the covers in Ruby’s bed and there’s sunlight shining full and bright through the window. No one else is in the room.
    Doggone it, she says and swings her feet to the ground. Her head still feels afloat on purple ether, and her eyes seem a step behind where she’s trying to look.