Lean on Pete by Willy Vlautin

gauze, a package of white bandages, a bag of cotton balls, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, two ace bandages, a roll of white tape, a bottle of aspirin, and a tube of Neosporin. When I went up to the counter I kept my hurt hand in the windbreaker pocket, and I got my money out with my good hand and paid for it. Afterwards I walked out of the store into the parking lot and looked again for the police but they weren’t there.
    It was late when I got back to the tack room. My leg hurt bad, but when I took off my jeans there was only a little blood leaking through the bandage. The cut itself was red and filled with blood but it wasn’t gushing out like it had before. I poured hydrogen peroxide on it, and it spit up and foamed but it didn’t hurt. After that I covered the cut with Neosporin, wrapped it with the new bandages I’d bought, and covered it with the ace. I did the same with my hand, then I tried to clean up the place the best I could. There was blood soaked into the plywood floor, and I couldn’t think of anything to do about it except cover it in dirt and straw. I took four aspirin, got in bed, and shut the light off. As I lay there I kept imagining the cop walking down the shedrow looking for me. I tried not to move at all or make any sound and time passed. I tried to sleep but every time I got tired I began thinking about the cop and then I started thinking about the Samoan and my dad in the hospital and I hardly slept at all.
    When I got up at six-thirty my hand hurt right off but my leg felt alright until I started moving around; then it hurt pretty bad. I put on my pants and hid the sleeping bag and put the duffel away and went out and cleaned the stalls.
    Del didn’t show up until eight and he was in a foul mood and yelled at me a couple times, then he yelled at the girl, Maxine, who fed the horses and she started crying.
    Del didn’t work Pete at all so he was just stuck in his stall. He wasn’t favoring any of his legs, and he didn’t look like he was hurting, he just looked bored. When I was done working I pet him and talked to him and told him about my cuts and the cop and the broken TV. Then Del found me and I helped him wash down a horse named Simmer Slew.
    “What happened to your hand?” he said when he saw the bandage.
    “I was helping my neighbor tear down a fence and I wasn’t wearing gloves.”
    “Is it gonna get in the way of you working?”
    “No,” I told him.
    “You feel like making some extra money?”
    “Sure.”
    “You know how to stack wood?”
    “I’ve never done it,” I said.
    “It’s not hard,” he said.
    “And you’ll pay me?”
    “I’ll give you ten bucks.”
    I only had seven dollars and change left so I agreed. I followed him to his truck and we drove a couple miles to a neighborhood in Northeast Portland, where we stopped in front of his house. In the driveway was a huge load of split firewood.
    He unlocked the door and I followed him. I could smell something bad in there right off but I couldn’t tell what from. The entry was full of boxes and you could hardly walk by. There were stacks of Daily Racing Form s and newspapers and magazines and there were a couple bales of hay stacked against a wall. He led me to the living room where on a couch was an old dog. It wagged its tail but didn’t get up. The smell was coming from him.
    The wood stove was in that room and Del wanted me to stack the wood behind it, along the wall. He brought in a chair and said I could use it to stand on so I could get the wood all the way to the ceiling. Then he went into another room, turned on a TV, and shut the door.
    I stood there for a while and just looked around. There was nothing on the walls, no pictures or photos, and nothing really in the room except the couch with the dog on it and the stacks of boxes. On the floor was a worn-out tan carpet that was covered in dirt and pieces of bark and scraps of wood. I made sure the bandage on my hand was alright, then I walked back