I tried the doorknob. The door eased open. “Trey?” I called, sticking my head into the Kinnard living room. It was unkempt, newspapers in an untidy heap by the door, a pizza box and crushed beer cans tottering on the coffee table, a Winnie the Pooh cartoon playing mutely on the ancient TV set, the couch made up for sleeping with rumpled sheets.
“Daddy?” Mark called, the word sounding unfamiliar in his throat. It wasn’t much more than a whisper.
I’m not sure what impelled me forward; the slightest sound of a groan, or maybe the faintest smell of blood or gunpowder. Some atavistic sense kicked in and I hurried across the living room, into the kitchen.
Trey had dragged himself across the floor, smearing a dark red trail on the dirty tiles. He was pulling himself toward the open back door, and his eyes, dimming of life, looked up at me. Blood streaked his face and his beard. Breath faintly gurgled in his throat.
Mark collapsed by his father. “Dad! Dad!”
“My God, Trey, who did this?” My legs gave way and I knelt by him. I saw three terrible red splashes on his back. The stench of gunfire hung thick in the air. A colored stain caught my eye on the
faded striped wallpaper of the hallway. Written in blood were the words: 2 DOWN.
“He’s shot, he’s shot!” Mark moaned. I stood and grabbed the phone. I barked the address to the 911 dispatcher, telling them we had a man shot and needed an ambulance immediately. The operator asked me to stay on the line. I knew that the emergency headquarters was roughly fifteen feet away from Junebug’s office and I wished that my friend were here.
Cradling the phone against my shoulder, I hunched down by Trey. He rolled on his back, his thin chest moving in ragged dance as he tried to draw air. I swallowed when I saw the wounds; maybe a lung, maybe the stomach. Oh, God, where was the ambulance?
Mark sobbed, clutching one of his father’s bloodied hands in his. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” he mewled, like a small child would, rocking back and forth on his heels. I leaned in close over Trey; his eyes sought mine, pulling away from Mark’s for a moment.
“Trey! Who shot you? Who?” I yelled into his face. “Can you hear me? Who shot you?”
His eyes, flecked with blood, tore away from mine and found Mark’s. One hand closed around his son’s; the other touched the tears on Mark’s cheek.
“Muh-muh,” he tried, the spittle and blood foaming on his lips.
“Who?” I cried again. Oh, God, this wasn’t happening. He wasn’t going to die in front of us. A distant siren grew closer.
“Mull-my boy,” Trey coughed raggedly, squeezing Mark’s hand.
“Yes, I’m here, Daddy, please, please hang on. Please.” Mark wept, trying to wipe the blood from his father’s cheek, chin, throat.
“Luh-love you, Mark,” Trey grunted. “Love you.” His head, raised to look into the face so much like his own, dropped to the cold kitchen floor.
And with those words, he died.
6
Mama sometimes said I didn’t have sense enough to come in from the rain. I was glad she didn’t see her grandson and me standing out in the easing mist that morning. I couldn’t leave Mark, not for one second, and I wasn’t about to ask him to go back into that house of death.
The paramedics had arrived, attempted their useless rituals, and pronounced Trey dead. We waited on the scraggly, unkempt front lawn. A fine veil of uncertain rain kissed our skins. Mark stared at his hands, his fingers daubed with his father’s blood. My daddy always kept a handkerchief in his pocket and I wished I’d picked up the habit. I tried wiping the blood off with the corner of my jacket, thinking: I must get Trey’s blood off him. I can’t leave his hands like this. Mark looked up at me from his gory palms, dark eyes welling with trembling tears.
“Why? Why?” he screamed. I hugged him hard to me and let him weep, feeling his heart pound through the thin fabric of his windbreaker. Trey told Mark he loved him instead of telling me who killed him. Did Trey even know who shot him?
I saw some of the Kinnards’ neighbors venturing out onto the lawns, drawn by the shrill siren of the ambulance and the police.
I don’t know how long I held Mark. Eventually his weeping subsided and he just took long, slow breaths. I didn’t know what to say; I didn’t know what to do. Where is the survival manual for this sort of horror? Sister, I thought. Mark needed Sister.
I heard the pang-pang of a bouncing basketball and looked up from Mark’s shoulder. Scott Kinnard stood there, holding a basketball and staring at us in the fine rain.
“What’s happened? Why are you here?” Scott asked me, glancing at the whirling lights atop the ambulance. “Where’s Trey?”
Mark pulled his face from my shoulder. The two boys looked blankly at each other. Scott whispered, “Are you Mark?” Mark just kept staring.
I tried. “Listen to me, Scott, you can’t go in there. Trey is-”
The basketball fell from Scott’s fingers, rolling on the rain-splattered pebble driveway. He blinked at me and ran for the house.
“Scott! Don’t!” I yelled, but he paid me no heed. He yanked open the screen door and barreled inside. I bit my lip; surely the police would escort him back out, and then I’d have two traumatized boys to deal with. I took a long, fortifying breath.
After a moment Junebug brought Scott outside. Where Mark had given a primal scream, Scott seemed choked into silence. He pressed his hands into his face, pushing his eyeglasses askew. Junebug gently guided him to the porch steps.
“That’s the boy he was living with, ain’t it?” Mark asked me in a dead voice.
“Yes. His name is Scott Kinnard.”
“He’s stupid looking,” Mark observed, watching the other boy begin to cry in short, staccato heaves. Junebug glanced over at me, a helpless look on his broad, unshaven face.
“I want to go home. Please, let’s go home,” Mark begged.
I didn’t like the tone of his voice-tentative, breathy, like a small child who’s just learned the words. I knelt by him and turned his face to mine. Blood decorated his cheek, like a swath of war paint, and I remembered Trey stroking his son’s face in those final awful moments.
Mark’s dark eyes were horribly vacant, retreating from death, looking inward for solace.
“Mark. Listen to me, son. We’ll go home, okay? But I think that, if you can, you should help me and tell Junebug everything we saw. So we can catch whoever-whoever did this to your daddy.”
Mark gaped at me as if I were speaking Finnish. I repeated myself and this time the words took hold.
“Okay, talk to the police,” he said, dragging the back of his hand across teary cheeks. “Just like on TV, right?”
“That’s right, Mark, just like on TV.” I squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll be there, and your mom’ll be there. Okay? It’ll be all right.” I was babbling, I knew I couldn’t possibly be comforting to him, but I didn’t know what else to say. Jordan Poteet, he of the vaunted quick wit and sharp tongue, and I was as dulled as a rusty old potato knife. His hand closed on mine and I felt, sickeningly, the wetness of blood pressing between our palms.
I could see a garden hose entwined by the side steps that led from the house to the driveway. I stood and started to ease him toward the house. We’d just rinse the redness from our hands. The first step, I thought. The first step.
He refused to budge. His grip tightened, and his rain-cool fingers dug into mine. “No! No!”
“Okay,” I said. “Wait here. I’m just going to get the garden hose. I’m not leaving your sight.”
He nodded miserably. I turned and jogged to the coiled hose, turning it on, splashing my bloodstained hands underneath the cool cascade of water and rain. I watched the traces of Trey wash off my skin, staining the gray stones of the driveway. I pulled a length of hose to take over to Mark. That’s when I saw it and my heart really stopped beating for the day.