Anne Lasky jumped. I have to admit that the word did sound awfully funny coming out of Carol Granger’s mouth.
“Just like that,” she said bitterly. “It was all wrecked. Spoiled. Like an apple you thought was good and then bit into a worm hole. ‘Hi, cunt.’ As if that was all there was, no person, just a huh-h-h…” Her mouth pulled down in a trembling, agonized grimace. “And that’s like being bright, too. They want to stuff things into your head until it’s all filled up. It’s a different hole, that’s all. That’s all.”
Sandra Cross’s eyes were half-closed, as if she dreamed. “You know,” she said. “I feel funny. I feel…”
I wanted to jump up and tell her to keep her mouth shut, tell her not to incriminate herself in this fool’s parade, but I couldn’t. Repeat, couldn’t. If I didn’t play by my rules, who would?
“I feel like this is all,” she said.
“Either all brains or all cunt,” Carol said with brittle good humor. “Doesn’t leave room for much else, does it?”
“Sometimes,” Sandra said, “I feel very empty.”
“I…” Carol began, and then looked at Sandra, startled. “You do?”
“Sure.” She looked thoughtfully out the broken windows. “I like to hang out clothes on windy days. Sometimes that’s all I feel like. A sheet on the line. You try to get interested in things… Politics, the school… I was on the Student Council last semester… but it’s not real, and it’s awfully dull. And there aren’t a lot of minorities or anything around here to fight for, or… well, you know. Important things. And so I let Ted do that to me.”
I looked carefully at Ted, who was looking at Sandra with his face frozen. A great blackness began to drizzle down on me. I felt my throat close.
“It wasn’t so hot,” Sandra said. “I don’t know what all the shouting’s about. It’s…” She looked at me, her eyes widening, but I could hardly see her. But I could see Ted. He was very clear. In fact, he seemed to be lit by a strange golden glow that stood out in the new clotted darkness like a halo, a supernormal aura.
I raised the pistol very carefully in both hands.
For a moment I thought about the inner caves of my body, the living machines that run on and on in the endless dark.
I was going to shoot him, but they shot me first.
CHAPTER 24
I know what happened now, although I didn’t then.
They had the best sharpshooter in the state out there, a state policeman named Daniel Malvern, from Kent’s Hill. There was a picture of him in the Lewiston Sun after everything was all over. He was a small man with a crew cut. He looked like an accountant. They had given him a huge Mauser with a telescopic sight. Daniel Malvern took the Mauser to a gravel pit several miles away, test-fired it, and then brought it back and walked down to one of the cruisers parked on the lawn with the rifle stuffed down his pants leg. He rested in the prone position behind the front fender, in deep shadow. He gauged the windage with a wet thumb. Nil. He peered through the telescopic sight. Through the 30X cross-hatched lens, I must have looked as big as a bulldozer. There was not even any window glass to throw a glare, because I had broken it earlier when I fired the pistol to make them stop using the bullhorn. An easy shot. But Dan Malvern took his time. After all, it was probably the most important shot of his life. I was not a clay pigeon; my guts were going to splatter all over the blackboard behind me when the bullet made its mushrooming exit. Crime Does Not Pay. Loony Bites the Dust. And when I half-rose, half-leaned over Mrs. Underwood’s desk to put a bullet in Ted Jones, Dan’s big chance came. My body half-twisted toward him. He fired his weapon and put the bullet exactly where he had hoped and expected to put it: through my breast pocket, which lay directly over the living machine of my heart.
Where it struck the hard steel of Titus, the Helpful Padlock.
CHAPTER 25
I held on to the pistol.
The impact of the slug knocked me straight backward against the blackboard, where the chalk ledge bit cruelly into my back. Both of my cordovan loafers flew off. I hit the floor on my fanny. I didn’t know what had happened. There was too much all at once. A huge auger of pain drilled my chest, followed by sudden numbness. The ability to breathe stopped. Spots flashed in front of my eyes.
Irma Bates was screaming. Her eyes were closed, her fists were clenched, and her face was a hectic, patched red with effort. It was far away and dreamy, coming from a mountain or a tunnel.
Ted Jones was getting out of his seat again, floating really, in a slow and dreamy motion. This time he was going for the door. “They got the son of a bitch!” His voice sounded incredibly slow and draggy, like a 78-RPM record turned down to 33 1/3. “They got the crazy-”
“Sit down.”
He didn’t hear me. I wasn’t surprised. I could hardly hear myself. I didn’t have any wind to talk with. He was reaching for the doorknob when I fired the pistol. The bullet slammed into the wood beside his head, and he shied away. When he turned around, his face was a stew of changing emotions: white astonishment, agonized unbelief, and twisted, murdering hate.
“You can’t… you’re…”
“Sit down.” A little better. Perhaps six seconds had gone by since I had been knocked on my ass. “Stop yelling, Irma.”
“You’re shot, Charlie,” Grace Stanner said calmly.
I looked outside. The cops were rushing the building. I fired twice and made myself breathe. The auger struck again, threatening to explode my chest with pain.
“Get back! I’ll shoot them!”
Frank Philbrick stopped and looked around wildly. He seemed to want a telephone call from Jesus. He looked confused enough to try and carry on with it, so I fired again, up in the air. It was his turn to go a hundred miles in his head during half a second. “Get back!” he yelled. “Get the Christ back!”
They retreated, getting back even quicker than they had gotten down.
Ted Jones was edging toward me. That boy was simply not part of the real universe. “Do you want me to shoot your weenie off?” I asked.
He stopped, but that terrifying, twisted expression was still on his face. “You’re dead,” he hissed. “Lie down, God damn you.”
“Sit down, Ted.”
The pain in my chest was a live thing, horrible. The left side of my rib cage felt as if it had been struck by Maxwell’s silver hammer. They were staring at me, my captive class, with expressions of preoccupied horror. I didn’t dare look down at myself because of what I might see. The clock said 10:55.
“DECKER!”
“Sit down, Ted.”
He lifted his lip in an unconscious facial gesture that made him look like a slatsided hound that I had seen lying mortally wounded beside a busy street when I was just a kid. He thought about it, and then he sat down. He had a good set of sweat circles started under his armpits.
“DECKER! MR. DENVER IS GOING UP TO THE OFFICE!”
It was Philbrick on the bullhorn, and not even the asexual sexuality of the amplification could hide how badly he was shaken up. An hour before, it would have pleased me-fulfilled me-in a savage way, but now I felt nothing.
“HE WANTS TO TALK TO YOU!”
Tom walked out from behind one of the police cars and started across the lawn, walking slowly, as if he expected to be shot at any second. Even at a distance, he looked ten years older. Not even that could please me. Not even that.
I got up a little at a time, fighting the pain, and stepped into my loafers. I almost fell, and had to clutch the desk with my free hand for support.
“Oh, Charlie,” Sylvia moaned.