Free The Odds by Kathleen George Page A

the police and I know some people would kill you and your family on the way to killing me, that’s how they are. If you don’t believe me, it’s going to be bad for both of us. My leg is shot.” The man looked straight at him, then seemed to collapse. “I can’t move. That’s what I’m saying.”
    “You want me to look at it?”
    “You know what a bullet hole looks like?”
    “No. Yeah, I do, from pictures.” Joel looked toward the leg. He wanted to see it. He wanted to be able to look at anything.
    “Go on, then, take a look.” The man’s voice was raspy, almost a whisper, and the more he talked, the more Joel got used to his voice and the less scared he was. “You aren’t afraid of things, huh?”
    He was. He looked around behind him to see if the other man moved at all.
    “One shot and it killed him. I was lucky. He got me once and I’m still here.”
    Joel looked toward the other guy for a few more seconds. Not a twitch.
    “He’s dead. For sure,” the man said.
    Joel nodded.
    “I need you to reach in my pocket. Go on. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t even want to hold you down, but you’re a kicker. Pull out my wallet.”
    Joel did this gingerly. He thought his own right leg might never move again and he now had blood as well as dirt on his clothes. His hand brushed the plaid hunting shirt the man wore and it reminded him of something good. His father. Maybe that’s what broke him down. He stopped fighting and tried not to cry while he waited for directions.
    “Open it up. Take out a twenty.”
    Joel did this. He saw another twenty in there and maybe more behind it, but he took only the one. It’s what he’d come in for after all, money. Got it one way if not the other.
    “That’s for peroxide, bandage, water, food maybe, and some kind of stick to wrap my leg. But hurry.”
    Water was the most important thing, Joel knew, the crucial thing, but if he said it, the man might take the money away.
    “Good boy. Good boy. I’ll take anything. Peroxide, alcohol. Whiskey would be a treat. Anything you can find in the way of yardsticks, rulers, rags, bring them. I have to splint my leg and figure out how to walk. You’re going to do this for me?”
    He felt now how hot the man’s hands were as, sweating and shaking, the man reached out to retrieve his wallet.
    He looked back to the leg, wondering how the bullet went in.
    “Anybody can see it’s … it’s bad,” the man said.
    Close up, the bullet hole was a spirally burn right through the man’s jeans. And the shape of the lower leg was funny looking, but maybe it was just the angle the man was in and the blood on the pants. No. It was a compound fracture, that’s what they called it.
    “You have to let me call an ambulance.”
    “No. If you believe in anything, no. They’ll kill me.”
    “The doctors?”
    “Other people. I’m telling you, don’t call. You’d be killing me. Just get me what I need.”
    “Okay.”
    The man let him go.
     
     
       MEG WAS CLEANING THE kitchen when she heard Joel come into the house. She was planning a family meeting to be held at the kitchen table during lunch when she served the macaroni again. The food, if they ate small amounts, would get them to Sunday noon. The four of them had decisions to make. “Did you play basketball?” she called after him.
    “Some. Ryan didn’t show. I went to Russell’s house for a while.”
    She started up the steps and saw him turning the corner. “Did they offer you food?”
    “No. I was just using his computer a while.”
    “Are you changing clothes again?” she called out.
    “Putting old clothes on,” Joel called back.
    “Should have done that to begin with.” She never knew what Joel was going to do, never could guess. “You going out again?”
    His voice was muffled, but she heard, “I don’t know.” His answer was a surprise. He might be getting sick. Something was off. She knew for sure something was off when she heard his footsteps on the