In the long, long minute before the weight was lifted, as I lay prone under the terrifying burden, I felt something wet on my face and opened my eyes to see blood dripping to the gleaming new sidewalk a half-inch from my nose.
After a frantic little inventory of pains, I was pretty sure it wasn’t my blood.
Out of a cacophony of voices I discerned Paul Allison bellowing for calm, and I could hear one woman set up a steady howl for help-Bettina Anderson, I thought. “Ready on three,” I heard Martin say, and the shuffle of feet all around me. “One, two, three!” Martin said, and the weight on top of me was eased off. I had had the breath knocked out of me, and was frantically trying to take in air, with the usual result that I was foiling my own attempt.
I saw some knees hit the pavement beside me.
“Don’t move,” Martin said tensely. “Baby, is anything broken? Are you hurt?” Struggling for breath, I couldn’t answer.
“Call 911!” exclaimed a male voice, Jesse Prentiss’s, I thought. “You! Perry Allison! There’s a phone in the manager’s office to the left of those glass doors!” Running feet, light; Perry pounding obediently into the community center.
Running feet, heavy. “Who got hurt?” Dryden, breathing raggedly. So I’d been right; he’d been parked at the far reaches of the lot.
“Move back, people, police are on the way,” Paul Allison said loudly in his police official voice. “I’ve already radioed from my car. Step back, everyone, unless you’re an EMT.”
“I am,” Jenny Tankersley was saying as I felt Martin’s hands running over my body.
“Then get over here,” Martin snapped, and Paul Allison said in a shocked voice, “Has Roe been hurt?”
“She took a fall, she’s okay,” Dryden said-rather cavalierly, I thought. “But this man here is really bleeding.”
“There’s blood on Roe,” Paul pointed out tensely.
And then I could breathe. Nothing had felt as good in weeks as that deep intake of air.
“I’m okay,” I croaked. “Just help me up, Martin, I don’t think it’s my blood.”
I managed to push up with my arms to achieve a kneeling position, and then Martin lifted me up the rest of the way, frantically touching my head and neck to see where I’d been hurt.
We were a little apart from the activity now, which was centered on someone lying on the ground. The girl with the ponytail, Sue, was sobbing hysterically by one of the lampposts. “He just fell down,” she said over and over, “he just let go of my arm and fell down.”
“Not my blood,” I reassured Martin. This time he listened.
“Tell me how you’re feeling,” he said.
“I bumped my cheek on the pavement,” I gasped. I took another deep breath and started again. “I’m going to have sore hands and arms from trying to stop my fall, and my knees are scraped. Other than that, I’m fine. How’d I get knocked down?”
“Something happened to Arthur Smith,” Martin said slowly, his eyes never leaving my face. “He was right behind you. Without any warning, he began to fall, and fell on you and took you down with him.”
“Did he have a heart attack?” No, the blood. “Was he shot? How could he have been hurt?”
“Here comes the ambulance,” Martin said. “Maybe we’ll find out.”
Jenny Tankersley had been working on Arthur, ripping off his shirt to find the source of the bleeding, checking his pulse. The EMTs pelted out of the ambulance.
“He’s been hurt on his shoulder somehow,” she told them, moving aside. No one was talking to Arthur himself, though I could see his eyes were open and he was taking in what was going on around him. He looked as dazed as I felt. But when his eyes focused on the first man out of the ambulance, Arthur seemed to collect himself. He said clearly, “Murray, I was stabbed in the shoulder.”
A hush fell over the little crowd. Martin put his arm around me and I leaned on his chest. I had a moment of thankfulness that Martin had been holding my hand when the attack on Arthur occurred, so it was out of the question that Martin could have been involved. Not that he would do anything like that, but other people, knowing of the dislike between them, might make something of Martin’s proximity.
Then I realized what must have already occurred to everyone there. If Arthur had been stabbed instead of shot, it had to have been by one of the people in the small cluster on the sidewalk.
As the ambulance rolled off with Arthur in the back, the Prentisses offered Sue a ride home.
“I’m afraid we’re all going to have to stay here for a while,” Paul said in his calm way, and to reinforce his words, two police cars flew into the parking lot, shortly to be followed by two more.
A police detective was down, and this made the second officer in a week who’d been attacked. Before the evening was over, I’d seen every member of the force come and go at the community center.
We were all searched, even me, which made no sense at all, as Martin pointed out several times.
“Martin, I don’t mind,” I told him wearily, as I got up to go to the women’s room with a female officer- thankfully, not Lynn Liggett Smith. “I just want to get this over with and go home.”
So off I trudged, my little evening bag tucked under my arm, to submit my bag and my body to an examination.
No knife or any other pointed object was found on any person in the group.
It was as if a knife had fallen from the sky, stabbed Arthur in the shoulder, and been pulled back up by an invisible cord.
Chapter Nine
I woke in the morning to a warm bed, Martin still asleep beside me, and rain lashing around the house outside. I peeked at the clock on my bed table; only seven-thirty. Plenty of time to get ready for church at nine-thirty. I squirmed over to press against Martin.
He’s a quick waker. As soon as I heard his breathing change he turned over and put an arm around me.
“Martin, about last night,” I said, my voice still heavy with sleep.
“Not right now,” he whispered, his hands beginning to travel.
“Ummmm,” was the next thing I said, and then I didn’t say any more for a good few minutes.
In fact, I didn’t say one coherent word until Martin was coming out of the shower I’d previously vacated. As I was tucking my beige-and-black silk blouse into my long beige skirt, I gave him an exaggerated leer. He held up a hand in protest, which caused the bath towel to droop interestingly.
“Don’t even think of it,” he said. “Remember my advanced age.”
I laughed, and began brushing my hair. “I’m pretty sure I could overcome your feebleness,” I said. “But I don’t want to be late for church. Of course, there’s all afternoon…”
“So you’re not going to the funeral?”
“Oh, shoot.” I put my brush down and made a face into the mirror. “I wish you hadn’t reminded me. I guess I could think of an excuse, but I really ought to go. After all, he fell into our yard. I think that obliges me.”
“You Southerners have the strangest sense of obligation,” Martin observed.
He didn’t often begin a sentence that way, so I forgave him.
“I know you have to go get Shelby, so you won’t be thinking about going to church,” I said carefully. “Do you think you’ll be home in time for the funeral? Do you even want to go?”
“I should go out to the plant for a while,” he said, pulling on his left sock, “especially since I was gone for a couple of days this week.” I tried not to let my face fall. Martin felt he had to go in to work most weekends.