She slammed her forearms into my sides, sending tentacles of pain into my side wound. I fell back on the floor, trying but unable to scream. Next thing I knew she was on top of me, slamming me in the face with her fists. I couldn't think, couldn't get oriented, couldn't fight back.
Then something long and dark and sharp came into view and it pushed back Angel's head and blood ran onto my face.
Leonard had rolled across the floor and shoved the broken end of his stick into her right eye.
She stood up stiffly. The stick stuck out of her face a full four feet, but it was firm in her head. She didn't take hold of it. She managed to step over me and start toward the fireplace, but got her feet tangled in Howard's legs and went face down. Most of her body landed on the couch, but her head missed and the stick in her eye hit the floor and the back of her head cocked up slightly but sharply, stayed that way.
Then there was a thrashing at the living room window. Soldier had the shovel and was using it to knock out what was left of the glass. Before I could get up, the shovel pulled out, and he kicked out the frame, stooped, and stepped inside, the .45 in front of him. Leonard, still lying on the floor, reached out and caught Soldier's ankle before his foot was firmly planted, sent him stumbling forward, but he got his feet under him again and went past Leonard and caught his foot on Trudy's outstretched arm and fell all the way this time, and when he hit I rolled and fought the explosions in my body and chopped down on his wrist with the edge of my hand. His fingers popped wide like a startled starfish, and the gun went sliding, and he crawled for it, but I got him around the neck and tried to choke him. He made it up to his knees and I went up on my knees too, and I tightened my forearm around his throat and tried to squeeze the life out of him. He pulled a knife from his pocket and flicked it open one-handed and brought it up and slashed me at the crook of my elbow, but I didn't let go, so he did it again, and this time I did.
I scuttled toward the living room window on my hands and knees, saw Leonard lying there, finally too much out of blood to move, and then I twisted and got up on one knee and Soldier was there, slashing at my face. I caught the blade in my hand and the slash went deep in my thumb and scraped on bone. I tried to get my legs under me and get up, but something had finally gone really bad inside me, and I couldn't.
Soldier jerked the blade back and cut me again that way, but I didn't feel it right then, and I dove forward and put my head between his legs and grabbed him behind the knees and popped my head up and caught him in the balls with the back of it and snatched his legs out from under him. His head hit the floor hard. Real hard. I crawled on top of him and got hold of his knife hand with my good left hand, twisted his thumb back and made him let go.
I picked up the knife and put it to his throat. All I had to do was thrust and rip. Hadn't this goddamned out-of-state racist asshole tried to kill me?
He looked at me through those pathetic glasses and I thought of this gawky, sweaty-faced bastard as a kid with a father who slapped his ear into a cauliflower and had convinced him it was for his own good and that dear old kid-beating, wife-beating dad was a good man that demanded respect. And in that same fleeting instant I remembered that I had not gone to war because I didn't want to kill needlessly for a cause I didn't believe in. And here we didn't even have a cause. Just a sad fuck-up without any hope.
I got off of him and held the knife close and said, "Roll on your stomach, Soldier, or I'll kill you."
"Easy," he said. "I got a bad dog bite here."
He rolled on his stomach. I cut his coat from the collar to the center of his back, then pulled the sleeves down so they caught at his elbows. I cut strips from his pants legs and tied his wrists. I cut the back of his pants open so I could pull them down around his knees. I took off his tennis shoes and used his shoestrings to tie his ankles. I rolled his socks up tight, lifted his head, and forced them in his mouth, just in case he might want to talk. I'd heard all of him I ever wanted to hear.
Leonard was trying to sit up. I closed the knife and put it in my pocket and helped him to a sitting position so he could lean against the front door.
"You should have killed him," Leonard said.
"I know."
"It's going to complicate things."
"I know."
"Same ol'Hap."
I made a concentrated effort to rise, and had to use the edge of the couch for support, but I made it. Falling down only twice, I got to the place where the phone ought to have been, saw that it had been pulled out of the wall and tossed on the floor near the kitchen table. Soldier or Angel in their haste had made an effort to disable it, way they had the cars. I grunted and cussed on over there, took hold of it, held my heart in my mouth while I examined it. The little connection at the end of the wire was cracked from being ripped out of the wall and the phone had been thrown down hard enough to knock the back off and let the guts out, but the guts themselves appeared to be in tact. Looked to me they had been in too big a hurry to do the job right. I hoped.
I shoved the phone's insides back into place and crawled over to the wall connection and snapped the clip into place and tried to hold my mouth just right while I punched O. The operator came on the line after three rings and I had her connect me to the sheriff's office. I told them what I thought they ought to know and hung up. The phone was slick with the blood from my cut hand.
I crawled back to the door and sat up next to Leonard.
"We better come up with some story," Leonard said.
I thought awhile. I put my mouth to his ear so Soldier couldn't hear.
"That's for shit," he said.
"Got one better?"
He shook his head. "Hap, you know I told you I been worse?"
"Yeah."
"I lied."
"Me too," I said. "We gonna make it?”
“I am," I said.
Leonard tried to laugh, but it hurt too much. He opened his hand. I took it and held it.
Chapter 30
I remember coming awake on the way to the hospital in the ambulance, and there being a man from the sheriff’s office there. He was determined to have some kind of statement. I think I gave him one. After that, things got hazy, then things got white and there was this light and people bending over me, then I was out again. When I awoke it was to sunlight shining through a hospital window.
A nurse came in and spoke to me and gave me some water and sat me up in bed so I could see out the window better, and later on she came back with an orderly and a wheelchair and they got me in that and pushed me over by the window for an even better look.
I sat and looked out on the hospital lawn. The bad, wet weather was gone and the sun was out and the trees on the big lawn were moving gently in the wind. It was probably a cold wind, but certainly nothing like the way things had been. I wanted to take that as some sort of sign of good things to come, but it wasn't long after that the doctor came in and he had a big man with him in a long black coat and another big man dressed up in hat and boots and the standard issue that the sheriff's office gives out.
The doctor was a little man with a bland face and thinning blond hair. He stood with his hands in front of him, left palm over right. He made me think of a preacher, way he stood there. He was very polite. He said, "Mr. Collins, I'm Dr. Dumas. You know, you been out three days."
"Three days?"
"That's right. And I got to tell you, you're a lucky man."
"I don't feel so lucky," I said.
The man from the sheriff's office took off his cowboy hat and showed me a vein-riddled bald head. He went over to the corner and leaned there. The big man in the long coat took the single chair and pulled it around so that he was straddling it. Both he and the sheriff's man had their eyes on me.