We were almost there.
Douglas Kent
Standing close to the front of the gathered rabble, I patted Roscoe on his little hammer head.
“How you doing in there, pal?”
“Same as you’re doing out there, pal.”
“All set to lose the Faith?”
“Knock off the puns. We have serious business here.”
“Very serious business here. Avenging Storm.”
“Not a bad title for a book.”
“I won’t be around to write it.”
“You never know. First-person account of a sodden newspaper hack who goes cunningly bonkers after the murder of his beloved town punchbag, anthropomorphizes his old man’s—”
“Big word for a little gun.”
“—I say, anthropomorphizes his old man’s .38 to the point of holding interior philosophical discussions with it, and the two of them exact their vengeance in front of a couple of hundred eyewitnesses and an eager TV audience of many thousands. Socko stuff.”
“Not really,” Kent said. “All we’re doing is following in giant footsteps — imitators, not innovators. Nobody’d publish it.”
Voices rose around us in an excited roar. I looked and said, “Ah, the cop chariot enters the arena at last.”
“Americans and Romans,” Roscoe said pityingly, “you can’t have your metaphors both ways. How many fuzz with Faith?”
“Three. And only one of you.”
“I’ll still get off first.”
“You’d better. Look, they’re climbing out.”
“I can’t look, I don’t have eyes.”
“Shut your muzzle.”
“Then I can’t get off at all.”
“Here they come. Ready, pal?”
“Ready, pal.”
“Heigh-ho, here we go.”
Roscoe and me, and Jack Ruby makes three.
Jay Dietrich
I was intent on John Faith lifting his huge body from inside the police cruiser, Chief Novak on one side and Sergeant Erickson on the other and Sheriff Thayer standing off a couple of paces with his attention shifting between the prisoner and the TV cameras, when somebody bumped into me from behind, It was a hard, lurching bump, hard enough to nearly knock me down. I glared at the man who’d done it, who was now pushing past me.
Mr. Kent.
I hadn’t even known he was here. Drunk as usual, that was obvious. How he could function with so much—
Hey, what was he doing? Staggering out onto the brightly lit sidewalk, making a beeline toward Faith and the officers. Pulling a shiny object out of his pocket—
Oh my God’
“He’s got a gun!” I yelled it at the top of my voice. “Look out, he’s got a gun!”
Richard Novak
It all seemed to happen at once, everything jumbled and compressed into one long, bulging moment.
I heard the warning yell, saw the man coming toward us, recognized him, saw the handgun he was bringing to bear, heard someone else shout and a woman scream and feet and bodies beginning to scramble out of harm’s way — and on automatic reflex I threw a shoulder into Faith to take him from the line of fire, then lunged to meet Kent. I deflected his arm downward just as he squeezed off. The pistol made a flat crack that was lost in the bedlam around us, the bullet going harmlessly into the sidewalk, chipping pavement but not ricocheting. I battered Kent’s wrist with my right hand, clawing for the weapon with my left. It came loose from his grasp, but I couldn’t hold it; it fell with a clatter and by accident I kicked it with my shoe. Then I had both hands on his coat and I jerked him off his feet, flung him down hard. But I lost my balance as I did that, slipped, fell on top of him. A grunt, the whoosh of his breath, and he went limp under me.
All around us, then, there was a sudden rising hiss and babble — sharp intakes of air, little frightened cries, more shouts, another scream. I pushed up off Kent, swung around on one knee. And stayed there like that, motionless, going cold inside.
Faith had the gun.
And he was pointing it straight at me.
Verne Erickson
There was nothing I could do, any of us could do. Faith was on that pistol as soon as the Chief kicked it, quick as a cat on a piece of raw liver. I had my service revolver half drawn; so did Thayer, a few steps away on my left. But we both froze when we saw Faith come up with Kent’s weapon and throw down on Novak. There might’ve been time to get off a shot at him before he could fire at the Chief, but training stopped me and the sheriff and any other officer close enough to think about trying it. People were milling around, pushing and shoving, but the immediate area was still crowded with those damn-fool TV cameramen and their whirring Minicams, photographers and their popping flashbulbs. You didn’t dare risk a wild shot in confusion like this. It was six kinds of wonder that the round Kent had triggered hadn’t ricocheted and taken some bystander’s head off.
Faith kept us all in place with bellowed words like a series of thunderclaps. “Nobody move! Come at me, I’ll shoot! Try to get behind me, I’ll shoot!”
He was moving himself as he spoke, in a scrabbling crouch to get clear of the individuals clogging the station doors. When he had his back to bare wall he stopped and lowered himself to one knee. His eyes and the Chief’s had been locked the entire time. There was maybe eight feet of wet pavement separating them.
Novak said loudly, “Do what he says. No sudden moves.” If he was afraid, being under the gun like that, he didn’t show it.
More flashbulbs exploded, the Minicams ground away. I could almost hear the reporters gleefully smacking their lips. I felt exposed and foolish and mad as hell — at myself and Thayer and Novak and Faith and most of all at that crazy drunken son of a bitch Kent lying there unconscious behind the Chief. What had possessed him? What in God’s name did he think he was doing?
Faith said, “I didn’t want it like this,” still booming his words. “Let a lawyer handle it, get some more facts before bringing it out in the open. But that bastard trying to shoot me... that’s the last straw. Now I want everybody to hear the truth, my lips to your ears, let the whole damn world know what this town’s done to an innocent man.”
Thayer found his voice. “This isn’t buying you any sympathy, Faith. Surrender the gun before—”
“Shut up. I’ll surrender it when I’ve had my say.”
“Say it, then. Get it over with.”
“Innocent man!” Faith thundered. “Innocent! I’m not a murderer, not some kind of monster. I didn’t kill the Carey woman.”
“Liar!” somebody in the crowd shouted back.
And somebody else: “You killed her, all right, you dirty—”
“No, by God, I didn’t. But I know who did. You hear me out there, all you people? I know who did!”
Audrey Sixkiller
I stood among a crush of others in the middle of the street, trying to see Dick and John Faith, listening to the words that were being flung against the night. But it was as if I were standing there alone, on a mist-shrouded plain, seeing and hearing everything from a great distance. I thought: Don’t hurt him, please don’t hurt him. At the same time I did not believe John Faith would shoot, knew that his cry of “Innocent man!” was the truth. The confusion spawned an intense, irrational desire to run away from here, away from the poison, very fast and very far, like the god Coyote rushing home to his sanctuary atop the dano-batin, the mountain big, that rises high above the south shore.
And when John Faith spoke again I almost did run — I took two faltering steps before the press of bodies stopped me. Then I stood tree-still with his words echoing in my ears, mixing with the frantic voices of the others to create a roaring, near and yet far off, like the mad gabbling of spooks and witches.