Dog Run Moon Read Online Free Page B

himself, bleed out on the side of the highway while her drunk boyfriend got handcuffed and pushed into the police car. The boyfriend’s pickup was upside down in the barrow pit, the headlights still on, shooting off into the trees at a crazy angle. The girl was coughing, blood coming up. She’d been thrown from the truck and impaled on a jagged limb of a fallen pine tree.
    He asked the other EMTs how they did it, coped with the constant trauma. Margie suggested meditating. That hadn’t worked. Tim said that he ran every day, no matter what. Dale tried this, and was surprised that it seemed to settle him in some way. Everyone said you became numb to it, or if not numb then just more able to break it down into a series of responses you needed to make to perform your job. Every situation, no matter how horrific, had a starting point, a place you could insert yourself to go to work.
    He had to do something. He knew that. He’d floundered for three years at the university in Missoula, changed majors four times, finally just decided to not return for what should have been his senior year.
    He’d been in the bar, drinking with some friends, half-watching a football game, when an old guy a few stools down keeled over and hit the floor, his back in a reverse arc, the cords of his neck straining, lips going blue. Dale stood up, looking around. Someone had his phone out, making the call. A guy that had been sitting at a table with a woman—maybe they were on a date, they were both kind of dressed up—came hustling over. He got down next to the old man, turned him on his side. He’d taken his jacket off and rolled it up under the old man’s head. He was holding his arm, saying things to him that Dale couldn’t hear. Aaron Edgerly, one of Dale’s friends, walked over, started saying something about jamming his wallet in the old guy’s mouth so he wouldn’t choke on his tongue, but the man waved him off.
    “Just stand back,” he said. “If you want to do something, clear these barstools away. They’re going to need to get in here with a stretcher.”
    Aaron grumbled a little. But he put his wallet away, started moving stools. There was something in the man’s voice, ex-military probably. He was calm when everyone else was freaked out. Eventually the ambulance showed up. The paramedics carted the old guy off and the man went back to his date and Dale had spent the whole night thinking about how it would feel to be the guy who knew what to do in a situation like that, the one who people listened to when things got heavy.
    Dale signed up for the EMT course the next day. He hadn’t told his dad. He wanted to wait until he had something, a certificate or diploma or whatever you got when you passed the exam.
    Not long after he’d quit school and moved back home he’d overheard his dad talking to his uncle Jerry. They were sitting out on the porch listening to a baseball game on the radio. The kitchen window was open, and Dale was pouring himself a glass of milk.
    “He’s a good kid,” his dad was saying.
    “He is,” Jerry said. “A great kid, always was.”
    “He’s just kind of a beta dog. You don’t like to say that about your only son but it’s true. He’s willing to be led, is what I’m saying. I love him to death.”
    “Of course you do.”
    “There’s alphas and betas. It’s how it has to be, but you just want the most for your kid. You know?”
    “He’s young. I bet he gets it together.”
    “I’d started my own business by the time I was his age. Bought a house.”
    “Everyone’s different, man. He’s a good kid.”
    “I know. That’s what everyone says.”
    Dale went back down to his room at this point.
    —
    Though Dale’s first ride-along was forever burned into his memory—months later and the sight of the girl run through with a pine stob was still freshly horrible—his second was oddly pleasant, fortuitous even. It was a quiet evening in town, they’d only had a couple calls. One