Six Bad Things Part 18

--Come here and help.

She unbuckles and climbs down out of the truck.

--Take this.

I put her hand on top of the jacket over her daughter's forehead.

--Just hold it here, keep pressure on it.

Patterson doesn't have its own police force; it's served by the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department. Last I knew they had two cars working the whole west side of the county. With a bit of luck, they'll have to send one from Newman. The nearest hospital and ambulance service is in Turlock. So the siren that raises up now is probably the fire department.

I take my hand off of Leslie's. She looks from her daughter's face to mine.

--I think she's OK. Just keep the pressure on and someone will be here real fast.

She nods.

--I have to go.

I walk up the driveway to Wade. His body is a tangled jumble. I touch his face, pocked with acne scars, the crazed hair clipped short and thinning. Oh s.h.i.+t, Wade.

--Wade?

I turn my head at the voice. A woman my age is standing at the top of the drive. She's wearing flannel boxers, a too-large jacket she must have grabbed on her way out the door, and little booty socks on her feet. Her face is pillow-creased and her short dark hair is severely bedheaded. I recognize her from high school. Stacy Wilder. Wow, Wade hooked up with Stacy "The Wild One" Wilder. Way to go, buddy.

--Wade?

I stand up. Point at him.

--He.

And Danny shoots me in the back.

IT'S THE back of my leg, really.

My left leg flies out from underneath me and I fall on my back. Beyond the sound of the shot echoing in my ears, I hear doors slamming shut up and down the street as the rubberneckers dive back inside. The siren is coming closer.

--Got you, f.u.c.ker.

I tilt my head and see Danny behind me.

--Got you good, wanted man.

Wanted man? Now how in h.e.l.l does he know that? He takes a step closer. He's bleeding from his mouth. Something to my left moves. I look and see a boy coming up behind Stacy, where she stands frozen, staring at Wade.

The boy is about thirteen, has Wade's hair and flat nose. He's wearing a San Jose Sharks jersey and carrying a hockey stick. He's sees me and Danny. And then he sees his dad. His eyes go big and his mouth opens. I lift a hand.

--Stacy.

She looks from her husband to me. Danny nudges my head with his sneaker.

--Shut up.

I point at the boy.

--Stacy, get your boy inside.

Her eyes move from me to Wade, to me again, to Danny's cheap Korean Glock knockoff. She turns, finds her gaping boy there, grabs him, and pulls him toward the front door.

--Shut the f.u.c.k up.

He's right over me now. Perspective has him flipped upside down.

Upside down.

That's a good idea.

--Danny, shouldn't you be taking care of your daughter?

He turns his head to look over his shoulder and I reach up, grab his ankles, and pull his feet out from under him. The gun goes off and a bullet pokes a hole in the garage door. Danny hits the ground flat on his back, makes a woofing noise, and the gun jars out of his hand and skips down the driveway. I stand up, take a step to go after the gun, and my left leg folds under me.

Oh yeah, I'm shot.

Danny rolls onto his stomach and is crawling for the gun before I can try to stand again. I look at my leg. It's bleeding, but it looks like it's just the obligatory flesh wound, a shallow gash on the side of my thigh. Ready for the pain this time, I get to my feet and start limping around the side of Wade's house, running from Danny and his s.h.i.+tty gun and the siren that is now very close.

The gate is unlatched from when Wade and I came out for our walk. I swing it open and pull it closed behind me, hearing the latch click as it locks. I limp toward the woodpile.

--Freeze, f.u.c.ker.

Danny is climbing over the gate, gun waving in my general direction. He slips at the top of the fence, lands roughly on his side, and the gun goes off again, splintering firewood. I dive through the side door into the dark garage, close it and lock it, and limp toward the workbench.

I grab the drawer and yank. It's locked. Well, of course it's locked, you watched him lock it, a.s.shole. There's a crowbar mounted on the pegboard over the bench. I shove it into the crack between the drawer and the benchtop and heave. Grinding and a small snapping noise, but the drawer holds. Danny is banging on the door. I can see him framed there in the window. The siren sounds like it's right up the street. I heave again, the drawer flies open, off its tracks and onto the floor. Danny presses his face against the gla.s.s, trying to see through the darkness inside.

--Open up, f.u.c.ker. f.u.c.king open up!

I grab the gun, flip the empty cylinder open, and squat painfully, digging through the mess that fell from the drawer, looking for ammo. Nothing.

Danny hits the window with a piece of firewood and it shatters.

I stand, and right there at eye level, on a shelf above the bench, is a black plastic box with MAGNUM written across the top in big red letters. I grab the box, pop the lid, and a handful of feathers flutters out.

Wade Hiller on the subject of pigeon feathers: "I save them in a little box."

The siren screams close and stops right out front. For a moment a red and blue light pulses through the hole Danny shot in the garage door. Then he turns on the overheads and everything goes bright.

I flip the empty cylinder closed and turn. Danny squints at me and I squint back. He's raising his gun. I bring up the .357 he has no idea I'm holding, and point it at his face. His eyes turn into Frisbees. He freezes, his gun hand wavering.

Before he can decide to shoot me, I do what Jimmy Cagney would do, and throw my empty gun at him.

AT SIXTEEN, my fastball was in the mid-eighties and frequently grazed ninety. I used to stand in the backyard and throw pitch after pitch from the mound Dad and I had made, through the tire he had hung from the limb of a tree exactly sixty feet and six inches away, Major League distance. Once, with a bunch of teammates watching and egging me on, I threw a hundred and four in a row, right through the center. All fastb.a.l.l.s. My shoulder blew up like a pumpkin and Dad was p.i.s.sed at me for risking my arm, but the kids talked about it for weeks, and it made me feel so cool.

A BASEBALL weighs about five ounces. The gun in my hand feels like it's two or three pounds. Fortunately, Danny isn't sixty and a half feet away. More like eight. The Anaconda clocks him in the forehead and he goes down.

I can hear voices outside yelling. I walk over to Danny. He's out. I stuff the Anaconda in my jeans and grab his pistol. There's blood all over his face from the mouth wound and a new cut I've opened on his forehead.

Over a black leather jacket, he's wearing a blue-jean vest covered in patches: Insane Clown Posse, Slipknot, G.o.dflesh, etc. The jacket has fallen open; underneath is a bloodstained concert T-s.h.i.+rt, the same one he had on the other day.

Except it's not a concert s.h.i.+rt.

I tug his jacket open the rest of the way and expose the big America's Most Wanted logo. I remember Robert Cramer mentioning my episode of that show in his book, and the expression on Danny's face when I looked him in the eye after I beat him up, and the way he pointed at me.

Danny knows who I am.

Which means his friends know who I am.

Which means, just as soon as the cops get here, they'll be telling them that I'm alive and in town.

Gla.s.s crunches under a shoe. The firefighter standing in the door is a woman around twenty-five, she's carrying a big EMT kit. She sees me, sees the gun. Freezes.

Too late, Henry. Too late to do anything now but run.

I tilt my head toward the street.

--The sheriffs out there yet?

She licks her lips.

--Not yet.

--How long?

--Couple minutes maybe.

I point at my leg.

--I need you to wrap this up. Quick.

She doesn't move.

--It's OK, you're gonna be OK, I just need you to do your job.

She nods, walks over, kneels, and opens her kit. I reach down, grab the edges of the hole in my pant leg, and rip so she can get to the wound. She tears open a sterile pack and starts wiping blood away. I whine a little and grit my teeth. She stops and looks up at me.

--It's OK, just hurry.

She looks at the wound.

--It needs st.i.tches.

--Just bandage it, for Christ sake.

She starts wrapping my leg, going over the wound, and around the pant leg.

--The guy outside, next to the garage?

She's concentrating on her work.

--Yeah?

--He alive?

--I don't know, my partner's on him. One of the neighbors said someone in the garage might be hurt. I came in here.

The wrap is done.

--Got any penicillin in there?

--Yeah.

--Better give me a shot.

She pulls out an ampoule, rips it out of its pack, and stabs me in the leg. I can hear another siren. The sheriffs. Time to go.

--Thanks.

I point at Danny.

--Why don't you work on him and we'll skip all the lying-on-the-floor-and-counting-to-a-hundred c.r.a.p.

--OK.

She turns to Danny and takes his pulse. I open the door to the house.

STACY WAS a year behind me and Wade. She was a real good girl; honor roll, student government, extracurricular this and that. She was also the hottest chick in school. Being a star jock at school, I crossed paths with her brainy-but-popular crowd. I remember flirting with her once, not really trying to get anywhere except in the way teenage boys are always trying to get somewhere. But I didn't try that hard. I didn't have to try hard with any of the other chicks, so why bother with one who wanted me to work for it? What I thought. Wade's crew of burnouts wouldn't have crossed paths with her clique, wouldn't have even had cla.s.ses together, let alone social interaction. But I remember being baked with him in PE and watching her run track with the girls and him saying that if he could nail any chick in school she'd be the one. Man, I'd love to hear the story of how they hooked up in the first place. But Wade can't tell me, and I can't ask Stacy because she's too busy right now beating me with her son's hockey stick.

I STEP inside, close the door, and get one upside the head. I take a couple more weak blows before I get a grip on the stick and rip it out of her hands, and she comes at my face with her fingernails. I get my forearm in front of my face and shove her off as I run toward the back of the house. She keeps after me, beating on my back. I duck into the kitchen. Down the hall I catch a glimpse of her kids; the boy I saw before, another a few years younger, and a tiny little girl who's going to grow up to look like her mom.

Stacy shoves me hard and I stumble into the kitchen as she runs toward her children.

--Get upstairs! Get to your rooms!

And that's the last I see of her, herding the kids upstairs, away from the scary man. I head for the patio door at the back of the kitchen. Stop. There's a pile of mail on the kitchen table. I flip through until I find what I want, and cram it in my back pocket. I go out the back, close the door behind me, and pause for a moment, staring back into the house. The Christmas tree and decorations, the Nativity scene, the mess of kids' toys. Then the sheriff's car sirens up in front of the house.

THEY'RE UP. With all the noise, how could they not be up? I come over the fence into the backyard, see the lights on inside, walk to the side of the house, and dump the guns over the gate into a bush in the front yard. I won't carry a gun into my mother's house. When I open the back door and come in limping, Mom starts to cry.

--Henry. Henry.

--It's OK, I'm OK.