5
The moment Keech was gone Thorn moved quickly to the door. He was hurt, it was true, but not as badly as he had let on. The people outside had flocked away from the windows when they saw Arnold Keech coming. They had gathered on the other side of the road in front of town hall again.
When Thorn threw open the door he wobbled and nearly blacked out from the exertion. Maybe he was more hurt than he was letting on. But he didn’t have time for that. He couldn’t let silly things like a throbbing headache or blurred vision get the better of him. He didn’t even stop to pick up the money Keech had thrown at him. Yes, Thorn liked to create an air of bravado about doing this for the money, but that wasn’t the real reason he did it. He did it for the challenge. Arnold Keech had nearly bested him and that money he’d thrown in Thorn’s face was an indignation. Maybe after he was standing over Keech’s broken body he’d come back to pick it up. The image brought a smile to Thorn’s face.
A roar from outside shook the windows of the Stag’s Bells as Keech fired up the motorcycle. He spun the tires and kicked up a rooster tail as he aimed the monstrous machine at the townspeople. They scattered like pigeons. Keech toppled the town hall’s front porch before he pointed the motorcycle south. He was off to the next town. Off to cause more senseless and selfish destruction.
Thorn had a desperate plan that had occurred to him while they were passing the bottle back and forth at the bar. He couldn’t defeat Keech in a fair fight. Maybe he had become too civilized. Or maybe experience had made him smarter. One thing was certain and that was that experience had not made him any less stubborn or less prideful. He was burning with indignation at nearly being beaten and at this point would do just about anything to bring in this bounty.
Thorn sprinted to his buggy and jumped in the seat. He coiled his left leg beneath him, sitting on it like a spring. The much smaller sound of his engine was swallowed by the roar of Keech’s. The motorcycle gleamed in the morning sun as it left a rut in the dirt road. Thorn had to catch Keech’s attention somehow. His engine wasn’t nearly loud enough and he didn’t have much hope of catching up. Thorn was vaguely aware of the townspeople. They had reformed their crowd in front of the Stag’s Bells, watching curiously to see what was going to happen next.
Thorn drove to the middle of the road to make himself as conspicuous as possible in case Arnold Keech did happen to glance back. Keech was already somewhere between a quarter and a half a mile down the road. These were nice long straight roads and Thorn was grateful for that, at least he was grateful insofar as they aided what he had planned.
He needn’t have worried about Keech glancing back. When he reached the end of the larger buildings comprising the center of town he turned a few circles and stopped dead when he saw Thorn’s buggy sitting in the middle of the road in front of the saloon. Thorn revved his engine and kissed the tips of his middle and forefinger before pointing them squarely at Keech.
Keech’s shaggy red hair and beard were blowing in the breeze as a smile began spreading across his face. His bloodied teeth gleamed almost as brightly as the exhaust on his motorcycle. He spun around and pointed himself back towards town. When he revved his engine the windows shook up and down the stretch.
The group of townspeople watching the spectacle was growing as more people came out of their shops and homes. They jumped every time Keech revved his engine. Thorn couldn’t worry about them. He had his full attention on the man he was staring down. They were eyeing each other like gunslingers waiting for the slightest indication to draw, the smallest muscle twitch to indicate that they were on. The expectation on Keech’s face was contagious. Thorn knew it well because he wore a similar expression. It was the desire to prove himself. It was the desire to punch the world squarely on the nose. It was the desire, above all, to test himself against impossible odds, and win. Thorn knew that when they started down this stretch of road towards each other that Arnold Keech would never flinch. He knew that once they kicked into gear they would be on a suicide course from which neither was willing to swerve.
The difference was that they were playing different games. Thorn had matured from those early days of nihilism and now he measured his success by completing the job. He didn’t need to destroy his body by flinging it at some imaginary foe. What he needed to do was to defeat Arnold Keech and haul him back to Marshal Wolcott. That was how Thorn would measure his own success.
He ran a hand over the hood of his buggy. “Sorry about this,” he muttered.
He estimated the distance between them to be over a third of a mile. His own buggy could get up to around fifty in half that distance. Keech’s motorcycle though? Probably closer to seventy or eight. Either way the combined collision would be well over a hundred. He only hoped it was enough.
Thorn drew first.
Thorn fired a shot of fuel into his engine. Pistons pumped and his tires kicked up a pair of rooster tails as they bit into the road. Keech leaned forward and his motorcycle roared as it leapt. It sprang like a lion, the front wheel coming off the road before Keech lowered it by leaning over the handlebars. His hair blew straight behind him. He was leaning so far forward it looked as though he wanted to take Thorn with his forehead. He bore a grin as wide as his face.
Thorn was not smiling. He was watching his adversary intently, squinting against the sun hitting his left side over the buildings, riding high on the adrenaline of the moment. He could see every speck of dirt in Keech’s face.
To everyone standing in front of the Stag’s Bells the spectacle was over in seconds. To Thorn and Keech, however, rushing headlong towards each other in the dusty alley, time seemed to stretch to eternity. The road raced out from beneath their tires as if it would never end.
Two hundred yards. One hundred. Thorn was up to fifty already. The stretch was longer than he had estimated. The roar of Keech’s engine was like rolling thunder as it approached with the swiftness of a summer storm.
Thorn had to time this perfectly. Too early and Keech would be able to pull up. Too late and Thorn would be a smear on the road.
Keech was moving a lot faster than he was, chewing up more of the road.
Fifty yards.
Thorn was acutely aware of how quickly they were racing towards one another. One more second and they’d collide. He didn’t need a second. It was too late for Keech to pull up. Thorn held Keech’s baby blues until the last millisecond. Thorn’s was a poker face forbidding the larger man from reading his intentions. And it worked.
Thorn bailed.
He extended his coiled left leg, using it to propel him out of the buggy. He slammed shoulder-first into the road. He landed hard. The impact sent of bolt of tingling pain all the way down his arm. He completed the roll to his feet, pivoting back to watch the crash. Keech’s eyes were wide with triumph as he plowed into Thorn’s buggy and flipped over the handlebars.
Keech never slowed down. He had accelerated straight through until the moment he was thrown. The motorcycle crushed into the buggy and they shattered together in a spray of metal flung like crystals in the morning sun. Keech soared at least twenty feet like an ungraceful swan before face-planting on the road. His momentum crushed him against the surface and torqued his body around itself as he skidded another ten feet.
Thorn’s arm was hanging limply as he pulled himself to his feet. It was tingling like he had pinched a nerve. He could already tell it was going to be hurting bad later on. He tried working his fingers, opening and closing them as he stalked towards the wreckage. He found that his fingers didn’t want to respond.
The front A-beams of his buggy had been ripped wide open. The frame was rent and twisted. Part of the radiator was hanging from the motorcycle’s exhaust; another part was five feet away in the dirt. The engine was crushed under the motorcycle’s front wheel. The bike had not fared much better. It looked like it had been squashed by a giant hand. Both vehicles were utterly demolished.
Thorn’s eyes followed the trail of broken metal to the body of Arnold Keech. He lo
oked to be as badly twisted as Thorn’s buggy. Thorn didn’t want to think about how many broken bones or internal injuries he’d suffered.
He walked slowly over to Keech, still trying to flex his fingers as he chose his steps carefully over the debris. Twisted pieces of the bike and buggy were everywhere. He glanced up at the sizeable gathering of spectators and stopped trying to flex his fingers. He didn’t want them to know how badly he had been hurt. He was too stubbornly prideful for that.
Thorn’s stomach sank as Arnold Keech was trying to sit up. Even after all that the man was going to get up. If he got up from that, Thorn thought to himself, he’d let him just walk away. Keech’s face had skidded along the road. A lot of skin had been torn away.
As he knelt beside him Thorn’s fears evaporated. Keech wasn’t going to get up from this. “Don’t move,” Thorn said. “You’ll just make it worse.”
Keech’s eyes were out of focus as he stared past Thorn. He seemed to be staring at the sun through Thorn’s head. When he smiled his teeth were crimson and he spoke through a bubble of blood. He croaked something that Thorn didn’t understand.
“Sorry?” Thorn said as he leaned in closer to hear.
“I won,” Keech said. He attempted to laugh and couldn’t. Instead he sputtered more blood into his beard. “You flinched. You bailed.” He was unable to hold himself up and collapsed onto the road. But he maintained his smile even as his eyes were staring in different directions. “I won,” he repeated.
Thorn stood up and the townspeople began crowding around the scene of destruction. They were murmuring in hushed and awed voices. Thorn couldn’t find a way to hold his arm that didn’t hurt. It was throbbing with pain as his adrenaline high was wearing off. Finally he clasped both hands behind his back because he didn’t know what else to do with them.
The town’s physician approached with a fold-out stretcher and a satchel. He unfolded the stretcher alongside Arnold Keech’s body and knelt down. He whistled. “If I didn’t see it with my own eyes I wouldn’t have believed this man was alive.”
“It’s his thick skull,” Thorn responded. “Just do what you have to in order to make him transport ready. I’d like to get him back as soon as possible.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth Thorn groaned inside. He had no way of getting Keech back. His buggy and only means of transportation was slung all over the road. He hadn’t thought this through very well. Now that his adrenaline high was wearing off he began to see just how stupid this whole thing was. Had he really, just a few moments ago, been congratulating himself on outsmarting Arnold Keech?
While the physician began a preliminary examination of Arnold Keech Mayor Haversham began buzzing around Thorn trying to shake his hand. Thorn turned from him several times to prevent his injured arm from being grabbed up by the little man’s incessant need to shake it. Thorn finally shoved Mayor Haversham aside. He didn’t mean to be rude, but he was in pain and didn’t want to show it. Mayor Haversham gave him a hurt look, but recovered quickly as he turned to the rest of the townspeople.
“Um, well, um, this man needs a drink!” he said. “Let’s get that saloon reopened.”
The physician had been poking and pulling on Arnold Keech to get him straightened out. A moan escaped Keech’s lips. Thorn did not envy the physician his job. It was a lot easier to wreck a person than it was to put him back together again, especially when you didn’t care much for that person to begin with.
“Excuse me,” the physician said. “Before you go to the saloon, would you mind giving me a hand? My office is just a few doors down. I’ll be able to treat him more efficiently once I get him on my table.”
Thorn looked in the direction the physician indicated to see that one of the store fronts a few doors down declared him as Dr. Long, Physician of Crooked Crag.
“If you wouldn’t mind lifting that end,” Dr. Long said, indicating the much heavier upper body, “I can lift his feet and someone can slide the stretcher under him.”
The barmaid from the Stag’s Bells stepped forward, kneeling by the stretcher so she could slide it under when they lifted the large man’s body from the road. She grinned at Thorn, then watched Dr. Long for the signal.
Thorn didn’t know if his right hand could even grasp Arnold Keech. But he was in no position to say no. Dr. Long counted to three and they both lifted. Thorn grimaced as his arm exploded with pain. Keech let out a long painful moan as he was lifted a few inches from the ground and the barmaid slid the stretcher under him. Thorn let his body drop a little harder than he would have wanted and Keech let out another grunt.
When he realized that he would also be expected to carry the stretcher into the physician’s office the pain finally got the better of his pride.
“Do you mind finding someone else to carry him?” Thorn asked. “I landed a bit hard back there.”
Dr. Long was at his side at once. “I’ll gladly take a look at you before I start on him,” he said. “Can you make a fist?”
“No,” Thorn said, then quickly corrected himself. “Yes. Look, I’m fine, I just pinched a nerve when I landed is all. I just need a moment.”
“Of course, no problem,” Dr. Long said, although he did have a bit of concern in his eyes. He could see that Thorn was in pain. He could also see that Thorn was not going to allow himself to be examined. So he decided not to press the issue, and instead drafted two of the volunteer police from the crowd to help carry Arnold Keech into his office.
Before they could lift the stretcher Thorn stopped them. “Hey Keech,” he said. Keech raised his head but his eyes didn’t look like they could see anything. He wasn’t just broken; he was crashing from his bender. He’d probably be out for days. Even before he said it Thorn knew it was petty. But his pride had suffered in front of his audience and he needed to do something to recapture his image. Arnold Keech probably couldn’t hear him anyway.
Thorn said, “If you won, then how come I’m the one still standing?”