Then the coyote, which had gone airborne after the first shot and before the second, hit David and knocked him backward.
His father screamed and scrambled out from under his bunk. The kid appeared to be fighting with the animal on the landing beyond the doorway, but Johnny found it almost impossible to believe the coyote could have much fight left in it; he had heard the slugs go home, and both the hardwood floor and the desk were painted with the animal’s blood.
“David! David! Shoot it in the guts!” his father screamed, dancing up and down in his anxiety.
Instead of shooting, the kid fought free of the coyote, as if it were a coat he had somehow gotten tangled in. He scooted away on his butt, looking bewildered. The front of his shirt was matted with blood and fur. He got the wall against his back and used it to posh his way onto his feet. He looked at the gun as he did it, seemingly amazed to see it was still there at the end of his arm.
“I’m okay, Dad, settle down. I got it, it never even nipped me.” He ran his hand over his chest and then down the arm holding the gun, as if confirming this to himself, as well.
Then he looked at the coyote. It was still alive, panting harshly and rapidly with its head hung over the first stair riser. Where its chest had been there was now a wide bloody dent.
David dropped to one knee beside it and put the barrel of the.45 against the dangling head. He then turned his own head away. Johnny saw the kid’s eyes clenched shut, and his heart went out to the boy. He had never enjoyed his own kids much-they had a tiresome way of upsetting you for the first twenty years and trying to upstage you for the second twenty-but one like this wouldn’t be so bad to have around, maybe. He had some game, as the basketball players said.
i’d even get down on my knees with him at bedtime, Johnny thought. Shit. anybody would. Look at the results.
Still wearing that stressful expression-the look of a child who knows he must eat his liver before he can go out and play-David pulled the trigger a third time. The report was just as loud but not quite as sharp, somehow. The coyote’s body jumped. A fan of red droplets as fine as lace appeared below the stairwell’s railing. That harsh panting sound quit. The kid opened his eyes and looked down at what he had done.
“Thank you, God,” he said in a small, dull voice. “It was awful, though. Really awful.”
“You did a good job, boy,” Billingsley said.
David got up and walked slowly into the holding area. He looked at his father. Ralph held his arms out. David went over to him, starting to cry again, and let his father hold him in a clumsy embrace that had bars running through the middle of it.
“I was afraid for you, guy,” Ralph said. “That’s why I told you to go away. You know that, don’t you.”
“Yes, Daddy.” David was crying harder now, and Johnny realized even before the kid went on that these tears weren’t about the fleabag, no, not these—“Pie was on a huh-huh—hook downstairs. Other people, t-t-too. I took her down. I couldn’t take the other ones down, they were grub-grownups, but I took Pie down. I s-sang… sang to h-h-”
He tried to say more, but the words were swallowed in hysterical, exhausted sobs. He pressed his face between the bars while his father stroked his back and told him to hush, just hush, he was sure David had done everything for Kirsten that he could, that he had done fine.
Johnny let them have a full minute of this by his watch-the kid deserved that much just for opening the goddam door when he knew there was a wild dog on the other side waiting for him to do it-and then spoke the kid’s name. David didn’t look around, so he said it a second time, louder. The boy did look around then. His eyes were red-rimmed and streaming.
“Listen, kiddo, I know you’ve been through a lot,” Johnny said, “and if we get out of this thing alive, I’ll be the first one to write you a commendation for the Silver Star. But right now we have to get gone. Entragian could be on his way back. If he was close by, he probably heard the gunshots. If you’ve got a key, now’s the time to try it out.”
David pulled a thick ring of keys out of his pocket and found the one which looked like the one Entragian had used. He put it in the lock of his father’s cell. Nothing happened.
Mary cried out in frustration and slammed the heel of her hand against the bars of her own cell.
“Other way,” Johnny said. “Turn it around.”
David turned the key over and slid it into the lock-slot again. This time there was a loud click-almost a thud—and the cell door popped open.
“Yes!” Mary cried. “Oh, yes!”
Ralph stepped out and swept his son into his arms, this time with no bars between them.
And when David kissed the puffy place on the left side of his father’s face, Ralph Carver cried out in pain and laughed at the same time. Johnny thought it one of the most extraordinary sounds he had ever heard in his life, and one you could never convey in a book; the quality of it, like the expression on Ralph Carver’s face as he looked into his son’s face, would always be just out of reach.
Ralph took the mag-key from his son and used it to unlock the other cells. They stepped out and stood in a little cluster in front of the guard’s desk-Mary from New York, Ralph and David from Ohio, Johnny from Con-necticut, old Tom Billingsley from Nevada.
They looked at each other with the eyes of train-wreck survivors.
“Let’s get out of here,” Johnny said. The boy had given the gun to his father, he saw.
“Can you shoot that, Mr. Carver. Can you see to shoot that.”
“Yes to both,” Ralph said. “Come on.
He led them through the door, holding David’s hand as he went. Mary walked behind them, then Billingsley. Johnny brought up the rear. As he stepped over the coyote, he saw that the final shot had pretty much pulver-ized the animal’s head. He wondered if the kid’s father could have done that. He wondered if he could have done it.
At the foot of the stairs, David told them to hold on. The glass doors were black now; night had come. The wind screamed beyond them like something that was lost and pissed off about it. “You won’t want to believe this but it’s true,” the boy said, and then told them what he had seen on the other side of the street.
“Behold, the buzzard shall lie down with the coyote,’ Johnny said, peering out through the glass. “That’s in the Bible. Jamaicans, chapter three.”
“I don’t think that’s funny,” Ralph said.
“Actually, neither do I,” Johnny said. ‘—It’s too much like something the cop would—ay.”
I-fe could see the shapes of the buildings over there, and the occasional tumbleweed bouncing past, hut that was all. And did it matter. Would it matter even if there were a pack of werewolves standing outside the local poolhall, smoking crack and watching for escapees. They couldnt stay here in any case. Entragian would be hack, guys like him always came back.
There are no guys like him, his mind whispered. There were never in the histoiy of the world an)’ guys like him, and you know it.
Well, maybe he did, but it didn’t change the principle of the thing a hit. They had to get out.
“1 believe you,” Mary told David. She looked at Johnny. “Come on. Let’s go into the Police Chief’s office, or whatever they call it here.”
“For”.”
“Lights and guns. Do you want to come, Mr. Bill ingsley.”
Billingsley shook his head.
“David, may I have the keys”.”
David handed them to her. Mary slipped them into the pocket of her jeans. “Keep your eyes open.” she said. David nodded. Mary reached out, took Johnny’s hand—her fingers were cold as ice-and pulled him through the door which led into the clerks’ area.