Free The Drowned Life by Jeffrey Ford

and was so bad off with whatever he had, he couldn’t get out of bed. He deputized Reed Bocean, the barkeep and the most sensible man in town, to look after Gatchfield in his absence. Reed did a good job as sheriff and Samantha double-timed it at the Blind Ghost—both solid citizens.
    In the early days of May, I burned my hand badly at work on a hot car engine and my boss drove me over to Kvench’s office to get it looked after. While I was in his treatment room, and he was wrapping my hand in gauze, the doctor leaned close to me andwhispered, “I think I know what happened.” I didn’t even make a face, but stared ahead at the eye chart on the wall, not really wanting to hear anything about the incident. “Gatchfield’s so isolated that change couldn’t get in from the outside, so Nature sent it from within,” he said. “Mutation. From the dream.” I looked at him. He was nodding, but I saw that his goatee had gone squirrelly, there was this overeager gleam in his eyes, and his breath smelled like medicine. I knew right then he’d been more than sampling his own pills. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
    June came, and it was a week away from the day that Witzer and I were to begin practicing for the Drunk Harvest again. I dreaded the thought of it to the point where I was having a hard time eating or sleeping. After work one evening, as I was walking home, the old man pulled up next to me in his pickup truck. He stopped and opened the window. I was going to keep walking, but he called, “Boy, get in. Take a ride with me.” I made the mistake of looking over at him. “It’s important,” he said. I got in the cab and we drove off slowly down the street.
    I blurted out that I didn’t think I’d be able to manage the Harvest and how screwed up the thought of it was making me, but he held his hand up and said, “Shh, shh, I know.” I quieted down and waited for him to talk. A few seconds passed and then he said, “I’ve been to see Jolle. You haven’t seen him have you?”
    I shook my head.
    â€œHe’s a goner for sure. He’s got some kind of belly rot, and, I swear to you he’s got a deathberry bush growing out of his insides…while he’s still alive, no less. Doc Kvench just keeps feeding him pills, but he’d be better off taking a hedge clipper to him.”
    â€œAre you serious?” I said.
    â€œBoy, I’m dead serious.” Before I could respond, he said, “Now look, when the time for the celebration comes around, we’re all going to have to participate in it as if nothing had happened. Wemade our oath to the sheriff. That’s bad enough, but what happens when somebody’s dead relative tells them in a Night Whiskey dream what we did, what happened with Lonette?”
    I was trembling and couldn’t bring myself to speak.
    â€œTomorrow night—are you listening to me?—tomorrow night I’m leaving my truck unlocked with the keys in the ignition. You come to my place and take it and get the fuck out of Gatchfield.”
    I hadn’t noticed but we were now parked in front of my house. He leaned across me and opened my door. “Get as far away as you can, boy,” he said.
    The next day, I called in sick to work, withdrew all my savings from the bank, and talked to Darlene. That night, good to his word, the keys were in the old pickup. I noticed there was another truck parked next to the old one on his lot to cover for the one we took. I left my parents a letter about how Darlene and I had decided to elope, and that they weren’t to worry. I’d call them.
    We fled to the biggest, brightest city we could find, and the rush and maddening business of the place, the distance from home, our combined struggle to survive at first, and then make our way, was a curative better than any pill Dr. Kvench could have prescribed. Every day there was