“Look at the baby,” George said, amused.
Ki had slumped back in her lawn-chair and was looking at us with glazing eyes. Most of her hair had come out of the scrunchy and lay in clumps against her cheeks. There was a dab of whipped cream on her nose and a single yellow kernel of corn sitting in the middle of her chin. “I threw the Frisbee six fousan times,” Kyra said. She spoke in a distant, declamatory tone. “I tired.” Mattie started to get up. I put my hand on her arm. “Let me?” She nodded, smiling. “If you want.” I picked Kyra up and carried her around to the steps. Thunder rumbled again, a long, low roll that sounded like the snarl of a huge dog. I looked up at the encroaching clouds, and as I did, movement caught my eye. It was an old blue car heading west on Wasp Hill Road toward the lake. The only reason I noticed it was that it was wearing one of those stupid bumper-stickers from the Village Cafe: HOW, N BROKEN—WATCH FOR FINGER.
I carried Ki up the steps and through the door, turning her so I wouldn’t bump her head. “Take care of me,” she said in her sleep. There was a sadness in her voice that chilled me. It was as if she knew she was asking the impossible. “Take care of me, I’m little, Mama says I’m a little guy.”
“I’ll take care of you,” I said, and kissed that silky place between her eyes again. “Don’t worry, Ki, go to sleep.” I carried her to her room and put her on her bed. By then she was totally conked out. I wiped the cream off her nose and picked the corn-kernel off her chin. I glanced at my watch and saw it was ten ’til two. They would be gathering at Grace Baptist by now. Bill Dean was wearing a gray tie.
Buddy Jellison had a hat on. He was standing behind the church with some other men who were smoking before going inside. I turned. Mattie was in the doorway. “Mike,” she said. “Come here, please.”
I went to her. There was no cloth between her waist and my hands this time. Her skin was warm, and as silky as her daughter’s. She looked up at me, her lips parted. Her hips pressed forward, and when she felt what was hard down there, she pressed harder against it. “Mike,” she said again. I closed my eyes. I felt like someone who has just come to the doorway of a brightly lit room full of people laughing and talking. And dancing. Because sometimes that is all we want to do. I want to come in, I thought. That’s what I want to do, all I want to do. Let me do what I want. Let me-I realized I was saying it aloud, whispering it rapidly into her ear as I held her with my hands going up and down her back, my fingertips ridging her spine, touching her shoulderblades, then coming around in front to cup her small breasts. “Yes,” she said. “What we both want. Yes. That’s fine.” Slowly, she reached up with her thumbs and wiped the wet places from under my eyes. I drew back from her. “The key—” She smiled a little. “You know where it is.”
“I’ll come tonight.”
“Good.”
“I’ve been. .” I had to clear my throat. I looked at Kyra, who was deeply asleep. “I’ve been lonely. I don’t think I knew it, but I have been.”
“Me too. And I knew it for both of us. Kiss, please.” I kissed her. I think our tongues touched, but I’m not sure. What I remember most clearly is the liveness of her. She was like a dreidel lightly spinning in my arms. “Hey!” John called from outside, and we sprang apart. “You guys want to give us a little help? It’s gonna rain!”
“Thanks for finally making up your mind,” she said to me in a tow voice.
She turned and hurried back up the doublewide’s narrow corridor. The next time she spoke to me, I don’t think she knew who she was talking to, or where she was. The next time she spoke to me, she was dying.
“Don’t wake the baby,” I heard her tell John, and his response: “Oh, sorry, sorry.”
I stood where I was a moment longer, getting my breath, then slipped into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. I remember seeing a blue plastic whale in the bathtub as I turned to take a towel off the rack. I remember thinking that it probably blew bubbles out of its spout-hole, and I even remember having a momentary glimmer of an idea—a children’s story about a spouting whale. Would you call him Willie? Nah, too obvious. Wilhelm, now that had a fine round ring to it, simultaneously grand and amusing. Wilhelm the Spouting Whale. I remember the bang of thunder from overhead. I remember how happy I was, with the decision finally made and the night to look forward to. I remember the murmur of men’s voices and the murmur of Mattie’s response as she told them where to put the stuff. Then I heard all of them going back out again. I looked down at myself and saw a certain lump was subsiding. I remember thinking there was nothing so absurd-looking as a sexually excited man and knew I’d had this same thought before, perhaps in a dream. I left the bathroom, checked on Kyra again—rolled over on her side, fast asleep—and then went down the hall. I had just reached the living room when gunfire erupted outside. I never confused the sound with thunder. There was a moment when my mind fumbled toward the idea of backfires—some kid’s hotrod—and then I knew. Part of me had been expecting something to happen. . but it had been expecting ghosts rather than gunfire. A fatal lapse. It was the rapidpah/pah/pah/of an auto-fire weapon—a Glock nine-millimeter, as it turned out. Mattie screamed—a high, drilling scream that froze my blood. I heard John cry out in pain and George Kennedy bellow, “Down, down! For the love of Christ, get her down/” Something hit the trailer like a hard spatter of hail—a rattle of punching sounds running from west to east. Something split the air in front of my eyes—I heard it. There was an almost-musical sproing sound, like a snapping guitar string. On the kitchen table, the salad bowl one of them had just brought in shattered.
I ran for the door and nearly dived down the cement-block steps. I saw the barbecue overturned, with the glowing coals already setting patches of the scant front-yard grass on fire. I saw Rommie Bissonette sitting with his legs outstretched, looking stupidly down at his ankle, which was soaked with blood. Mattie was on her hands and knees by the barbecue with her hair hanging in her face—it was as if she meant to sweep up the hot coals before they could cause some real trouble. John staggered toward me, holding out a hand. The arm above it was soaked with blood.
And I saw the car I’d seen before—the nondescript sedan with the joke sticker on it. It had gone up the road—the men inside making that first pass to check us out—then turned around and come back. The shooter was still leaning out the front passenger window. I could see the stubby smoking weapon in his hands. It had a wire stock. His features were a blue blank broken only by huge gaping eyesockets—a ski-mask. Overhead, thunder gave a long, awakening roar.
George Kennedy was walking toward the car, not hurrying, kicking hot spilled coals out of his way as he went, not bothering about the dark-red stain that was spreading on the right thigh of his pants, reaching behind himself, not hurrying even when the shooter pulled back in and shouted “Go go go!” at the driver, who was also wearing a blue mask, George not hurrying, no, not hurrying a bit, and even before I saw the pistol in his hand, I knew why he had never taken off his absurd Pa Kettle suit jacket, why he had even played Frisbee in it.
The blue car (it turned out to be a 1987 Ford registered to Mrs. Sonia Belliveau of Auburn and reported stolen the day before) had pulled over onto the shoulder and had never really stopped rolling. Now it accelerated, spewing dry brown dust out from under its rear tires, fishtailing, knocking Mattie’s RFD box off its post and sending it flying into the road.
George still didn’t hurry. He brought his hands together, holding his gun with his right and steadying with his left. He squeezed off five deliberate shots. The first two went into the trunk—I saw the holes appear. The third blew in the back window of the departing Ford, and I heard someone shout in pain. The fourth went I don’t know where. The fifth blew the left rear tire. The Ford veered to that side. The driver almost brought it back, then lost it completely. The car ploughed into the ditch thirty yards below Mattie’s trailer and rolled over on its side. There was a whumpfl and the rear end was engulfed in flames. One of George’s shots must have hit the gas-tank. The shooter began struggling to get out through the passenger window.