“I can understand that,” Virgil agreed.
“Then Sport, he said we’d have to take Willie to the hospital right away. He picked him up.”
“Alone?”
“Yeah, Sport, he’s strong. Willie, he was cryin’ when Sport put him in the back o’ the car. Then he told us to beat it before any cops come and he drove off.”
“Why did you call him ‘Beater’?”
“’Cause he was a real good drum man. He had a beat, he had.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I came home.”
“Did you tell your family what had happened?”
The boy hung his head. “No. I figured Willie would be maybe all right and I didn’t want to get into no trouble.”
With that interview behind him Tibbs drove to the home of the boy called Harry, the fourth member of the group which had accosted Johnny McGuire. He was not there; his mother reported that he was working in a car wash a few blocks away. With the cooperation of the wash rack manager he spent a half hour with the last of the witnesses and found him slightly more articulate than Jeffrey had been. Once again he heard substantially the same story, the only significant addition came when Harry timed the second shot as having followed almost at once. He was also definite that Johnny had been still struggling with his captor at the time.
After close questioning designed to get behind the ingrained hostility which the boy had allowed to build up massively in his mind, Tibbs determined that Harry was grudgingly of the opinion that both of the shots had been accidental. He was relieved that he had been able to develop this information. While Harry’s opinion would not be admissible in court, it being a conclusion of the witness, a good defense attorney would be able to bring it out.
Grimly satisfied that he had learned all that he could from Harry at the moment, Tibbs got back into his car. He had to go now and find Johnny McGuire. He had to calm him down, get his gun away from him, and bring him safely into the police station. He also had to do something about the McGuires, by now Johnny’s mother would be frantic.
Hopefully he had to do all this before any militants could arrive on the scene. If they and their followers were to pour in and start their own search for the McGuire boy, disaster and tragedy would hang in the balance. Johnny McGuire had already fired his gun three times and was probably in a near crazed state of mind. He would no longer be in the heat of rage, but he was now outside the law and old enough to grasp that fact. To avoid capture he might in desperation fire again, and there were still bullets in his gun.
8
Johnny McGuire awoke early in the morning. As soon as the full light of day began to penetrate the thicket in which he had taken refuge he opened his eyes, remembered, and then lay still.
For a few moments he felt terribly alone and had an almost overwhelming urge to rush to the wonderful shelter of his mother. Then an even more powerful voice told him that to do that might mean disaster.
He relived again the nightmare that had happened to him on that dark, silent street. Once more he saw the four older boys approaching him, felt the weight of their size, and the pressure of their number. He had never intended to fire the gun, he had not done it on purpose, but it still had been his hand that had pulled the trigger.
Like a hypnotic dream in which every normal motion is slowed to an agonizing pace that will not be hurried, he felt again the unexpected hands gripping his arms from behind. He felt himself trying to lunge forward, but his movements were torturously slowed. Then his hands tightened into fists in order to fight back, that involuntary motion had pulled the trigger.
He heard again the terrible blast of sound and felt once more the mighty kick of the gun in his hand. He saw once more the boy standing before him, then watched as he folded his arms across his abdomen and began to sink to the ground.
He lived again the paralyzing terror of that moment: the shocked seconds of confusion; the sight of the boy he had shot crumbling to the ground and he was aware of nothing else until he knew that he was running away. It seemed as though he were running through water up to his waist; he was not wet, but some unseen force was holding him back so that he could not move except very, very slowly. It was a battle each time he lifted a knee high enough to run….
Abruptly he came back to the present as he realized that he could not remain where he was much longer undiscovered. People were not up yet, but they would be soon and he would have to make good his escape. He wanted desperately to go home, and he thought about it carefully. He had seen the police cars in front of Billy Hotchkiss’s house and he knew that the goddamn cops were after him. They would also know who had shot the black boy in the street. Of course it was not as serious as it would have been if he had been white, but they would be mad at him just the same. They might even arrest him for it.
Just like the shows on TV, they would wait for him at his home. That meant he could not go there now, he would have to wait until evening and after they had quit for the day. Conscience prodded him with the bitter fact that his mother would be terribly worried, he had never stayed away from home overnight before. He drew in a quick sob of breath when he thought of her, he wanted her so much! Bitterly he forced himself to realize that he couldn’t see her for several more hours, it was part of the price he had to pay for shooting into Billy Hotchkiss’s home.
He had to have somewhere to go, somewhere to stay that the goddamn cops couldn’t find him. They would know him right away by his jacket because everyone did, they kidded him about it at school. It was warm on him now, but because it was his only jacket, and the only one he could remember ever having had, he loved it. Then he reasoned it out. Carefully he took it off, folded it inside out so that the red color would not show, and tucked it into the base of the thickest bush. Tomorrow, he resolved, he would come and get it back.
He wondered if he should leave the gun too. If he did, he would be free of it at last and the danger it would represent if he were caught. Then he remembered the black faces he had seen only dimly in the dark, one of them was sick now, but the other three would be out for his blood. If one of them found him, and he didn’t have his gun, he might be killed.
As best he could he considered the matter, weighing one danger against the other. He could not decide until he remembered the evening when he had sat beside his strong and wise father and had first been shown the gun and had it explained to him. “A gun is a good thing,” his father had said. “Because sometime you might have to protect yourself or your ma. Maybe sometime two or three of ’em will come at you and you won’t have a chance. Then the gun makes you the boss; when they see a gun they stop real quick. When you’ve got a gun, nobody’s gonna give you no trouble.”
The decision to keep the gun made for him, he wondered now where he could go. He had all day to spend, but if he just walked the streets it would be too dangerous. He had no relatives he could go to, no friend he could trust. Then, out of the clear blue, a sudden and wonderful idea rushed upon him, an idea charged with electric possibilities. He could go to the baseball game!
He could go and see the Angels themselves, the real players, the big league stars in action. It almost took his breath away, but it was possible. He had more than fifteen dollars in his pockets and it was his own money. He had no idea where Anaheim was, but thousands of people went there every day to the great stadium.
Then, as though his own dedicated guardian angel had spoken to him, he remembered that he did have a friend after all, a great and powerful friend! With shaking fingers he pulled out his little plastic wallet and extracted a worn piece of paper. He had carried it so much, and had read it so many times, it barely held together at the folds. With great care he opened it and read once more the words he could easily have repeated from memory: