Coot and the Gophers

Carl Kincaid turned over in his bed to try to find a more comfortable position. He looked over to his roommate, an old duffer in his mid-eighties also on oxygen. Carl thought to himself, ‘There is enough oxygen in this room to blow the whole damned place to kingdom come. And that probably wouldn’t be the worst idea any one ever had.’ He raised his hospital bed to he sit up and look out the window. He could see the first signs of morning caressing the prairies. It was quiet in the house and he could hear some overactive meadowlark singing its heart out. It was a pretty place, if it wasn’t where it was. From the bedroom window, he could look over the yard north of the house and toward the windbreak. The lilacs were finished blooming but the foliage was still deep green. He could just make out the edge of the road into the Schroeder farm and the corner where it attached to the main gravel road to Merton, North Dakota. ‘How in the hell did I end up in the middle of this God forsaken country?’ he wondered to himself. ‘Sharing a room with an old guy who can’t be happy about anything and living with people I only met a few weeks ago.’ He actually knew how it happened, but it made no sense at all. In his whole life, he had never been so irrational. Some violent psycho, scam-artist-turned-preacher who specialized in blackmail and extortion took a shot at him. Well, that wasn’t really true. He tried to kill his own little girl who was just a toddler and Kincaid saw him point the gun at her. Without thinking, he threw himself on top of her like a Secret Service agent over a President and knocked her to the floor. Carl was about six feet tall and weighed about two hundred forty pounds. He could have killed the tiny malnourished thing if he landed wrong. The bullet traveled through him and landed in her hip. She ended up with a flesh wound, a hairline fracture of the hip and a lifelong fear of flying men, no doubt. Kincaid twisted his pillow around, trying to find a way it was comfortable. Poor little kid. Usually in his work, he had little to do with the victims and rarely saw them for more than a second after the case closed. This case was not like that. In fact, nothing about this case was normal. As soon as he was well enough to travel, they took him to North Dakota where he was going to live with Elton’s family until he healed up enough to be on his own. Zach had a second floor apartment so Kincaid couldn’t be there. As much as he hated being an invalid, he had to say it was damned nice of these folks to take care of him. They were still a bunch of petunias, but decent sorts of folks. He hoped the petunia wouldn’t rub off on him too much before he got well enough to leave. He wanted to get well and go back to his non-life.