The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint by Brady Udall

Author:Brady Udall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2001-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

THE ELDERS

I SHAMBLED ALONG the gravel road, limping stiffly and moaning like a sad, disoriented swamp monster risen from the muck. I was encased in a thick crust of dried mud and my left knee had swollen up so badly I had to tow my leg behind as if it was made of solid iron. Above everything else, the river had stolen both my shoes, one of my socks and one of the two pair of pants I owned. Thankfully, Edgar still had his underwear.

It was a sharp beautiful morning, birds singing and the sun warming everything like a blessing. Up ahead, I heard the rattling of bicycle chains before two people appeared on the rise ahead of me, coming along fast. I stepped off the road and tried to camouflage myself in the dirt and bushes; the last thing I wanted to do was give somebody a fright. I watched them out of the corner of my eye and they were easy to recognize: two young men, wearing white short-sleeved shirts and ties: the Elders.

When they saw me they both put on the brakes, their back tires chattering and hopping on the loose rock. One of them was thick-limbed with a wide, curved face, and the other, smaller and leaner, had a head of red-blond hair that shone in the sun like hammered copper.

“Hey,” the big one said, “you okay?”

I looked down at my feet, which were bleeding from the gravel shards and broken beer bottles in the road. I thought if I stayed absolutely still and kept my head down they might give up on me and go on their way.

They got off their bikes, let them fall right in the middle of the road and came over to me. The blond one craned his neck and peered into my face as if I was something that had just fallen out of the sky. He said in nearly perfect Apache, “What happened to you?”

I glanced up at the big guy, who was looking a bit alarmed, and shrugged. I said in English, “I jumped off a cliff.”

“What? You did what?” said the big one. His voice was much too high and sweet for such a large body. I saw from the black tag on his shirt that his name was Elder Turley.

“I jumped off a cliff. I don’t feel real good.”

The Elders looked at each other. “Have you been drinking?” asked the blond one, who, according to the tag on his shirt, was called Elder Spafford.

I shook my head, then nodded. “No,” I said. “Yes.”

The Elders quickly agreed that I should be gotten to a doctor as soon as possible. Elder Turley hoisted me onto his handlebars and began pumping at the pedals like a man possessed, his hot breath on the back of my neck. In the round mirror above his rubber handgrips I could see my reflection. My eyes were startlingly white, like two boiled eggs embedded in a dirt clod. My hair was matted in such a way that it stuck up from both sides of my head like a pair of horns.

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