The Vulture Read Online Free Page B

wound on Hicks’s arm, all down his chest and into the waistband of his swimming trunks. A crimson blotch covered the damp knit on my back.
    The old man raised from his slumped position long enoughto hand me a stiff flannel shirt and a pair of paint-stained overalls.
    ‘This all I got,’ he said.
    ‘Thass all right,’ I told him.
    ‘Gotta be . . . you got any money?’
    ‘Naw. I ain’ got nuthin’ but a wet ass.’
    ‘. . . an’ a dyin’ frien’. Mebbe we bettuh take ‘im to the hospital.’
    ‘We can’t!’ I shouted.
    His old eyes regarded me with annoyance from their sunken caves. He shrugged and reached into the front pocket of his own tattered overalls and came up with a ten-dollar bill.
    ‘You go an’ git me a big box a gauze an’ some cotton swabbin’ things an’ some adhesive tape. I need some a them ice packets too. Evything else I need, I got . .. an’ git what-evuh you need fo’ yo’ own patchin’s. You don’ look like you ‘bout to fall out dead to me.’
    I had been changing into the dry clothes, waiting for the instructions. The thought of Hicks laying in that back room was scaring me. More than the gang leader’s death was at stake. What to do about the old man would be a problem if Hicks died. Maybe he was willing to help me as long as Hicks lived, but death would change all that. What would I do with the body? What would I do to silence the old grocer? I was thinking that I would definitely be forced to kill my good Samaritan if Hicks couldn’t make it. I broke into a cold sweat and started running toward the drugstore.
    The old man’s ten spot was squeezed tightly in my hand. Even the dampness of my body could not overcome the warmth that came with the fear that was now a part of me. Inside my head I was reviewing the store’s layout and making plans. There had to be a back way out. I had to convince Hicks when and if he recovered that he had been responsible for the death of the boy whose body the police had probably already seen floating in theriver. Once I had made Hicks believe he was the killer, and not me, I wouldn’t have to worry about any pressure that the Man would apply to Hicks when they caught him.
    I played the part at the drugstore, listening to the druggist’s jokes about winos burning the docks down while high on Robutussin Cough Syrup. I bought the articles the old man had listed and started back down Eleventh Avenue. The commotion that had been in the streets fifteen minutes before was fading. Firemen remained to hose down the blaze, but ambulances were speeding away behind patrol cars. I returned to the store.
    The old grocer was waiting quietly when I returned. He had left the door unlocked for me, and I went straight through to the back room, where he sat with a wet towel across Hicks’s forehead. He had ripped another towel into strips and was using it as a tourniquet. Hicks was twisting and moaning in a semicoma.
    Without a word the weatherbeaten hands took the package from me and set things in order on a scratched nightstand next to the cot. A dim light cast shadows around the cubicle and distorted the crow’s feet about the eyes.
    ‘I useda be a medic back in prehist’ry times far as you concerned. I wuz a man noted fo’ steady han’s an’ allat.’ He was talking for me, not to me.
    ‘Why you doin’ this, old man?’ I asked him suddenly.
    ‘I dunno why,’ he said, without looking up. ‘I wuz jus’ askin’ me why I wuz doin’ it.’ He took a needle and thread from a pan of hot water on the nightstand. ‘I guess it’s cuz I knew them whitey police wuz gon’ ketch yawl an’ whup yo’ po’ l’il asses. I didn’ wanna see no white man beatin’ yawl.’
    ‘One cop like another,’ I said.
    ‘I wanned t’see yo’ poppas beatin’ yawl, not no cop,’ he said.
    That was the last thing I remember hearing. He told me the next morning that I had passed out.
    The thoughts of the Dock Battle party entered my mind as I hiked the three