My head became an old dirty sponge jammed with gravel and broken glass. Shanks kept making sounds, little venomous squeaks in between the twittering of the cell phone, until his weird huffing squeals were louder than the tweets. Through the shroud of pain I realized he was laughing. We performed a brutal ballet across the living room and I felt the wet heat heavy in my nostrils, filling my ears and dripping down my neck.
The pain had almost lifted to a floating ache of dull purple and yellow streaks, and new star systems erupted with each strike, but still nothing that would put me all the way under. I couldn't get to the phone in my jacket pocket. I couldn't even find my hands. Frost gargled on the floor and I fell beside him, scrambling to my knees and collapsing again.
Shanks switched the sap to his left hand, hauled back and waited until I'd floundered into the correct position for him to bash me over the ear once more. I managed to wheel aside just enough so that he hit my shoulder instead, and my arm went completely numb. I dropped over backward and lay there breathing hard, unable to see him clearly enough through the glittering haze to protect myself in the slightest anymore.
He knew it, too. A lamp snapped on and a harsh circle of white lit the far corner, igniting among the rest of the swirling patterns of blunted colors vaulting before my eyes. Groaning, I wanted to roll aside but couldn't. My gaze had shifted back to see Brian Frost weakly struggling to get loose from the chair, groaning right back at me.
I expected a lot from Shanks but not this new silence. It went on and on. I had the bizarre sensation of standing outside myself and running through the house looking for Teddy, moving in behind Shanks and pummeling the crap out of him. Unfortunately, it was only a sensation. He stared at me with the clear and innocent eyes of a Secretary of Defense. He was in no rush to proceed.
He said, "You know what the beauty of this moment is?"
Neither Frost nor I had any answer and we both sort of rocked and continued to grunt.
Nick Crummler appeared in the foyer, hands in his pockets, his wet hair slung down across his eyes. Trails of rain poured down his face, and when he blinked water squirted out like tears.
"Oh," Shanks said, and stretched and rubbed his bad back. "It's you."
"Hello," Nick said.
They approached as if to shake hands, and my chest tightened until I thought it might crack, and I wondered about how it all fit, with the two of them working together. I struggled to think and make connections but the throbbing became a steel-toed boot kicking me in the head. I tried to talk but my bottom lip hung a half mile beneath the roof of my mouth. He hadn't hit me in the mouth, but I must've bitten my tongue because it felt swollen and bloody and too heavy for words.
Nick glanced down at me and shook his head. He looked up at Shanks as they moved closer toward each other, then back at me once more, still nodding. Sparky broke into a run and rushed Nick with the blackjack raised in his fist, and I felt a great sense of relief washing over me as I started to vomit.
The blackjack came up high and angled down at Nick, but when it descended it slipped through the air uninterrupted. Nick moved that fast. Overextending that way threw Shanks off and he nearly hit himself in the knee. I couldn't turn my head enough to watch the whole fight: they swerved in and out of my line of sight, Nick feinting, keeping tight, blocking blows and without any indication of what he was thinking. I craned my neck and my skull flooded with a vat of molten metal. I would've screamed if I could have found the rest of my mouth.
Rain hammered at the windows like the hands of children. The wind roared. They kept circling behind me, where I could hear wheezing and the slap of fists on flesh, Nick's coat still snapping as he wheeled to avoid the sap. They'd come around in a wide circuit over and again, and each time Shanks looked a little sweatier and a lot happier, thin ribbons of blood dangling from his chin, the ripped lip tearing his face up with a vicious smile.
"I should have killed you a long time ago," Shanks said. "It might've saved your life tonight."
"First thing I do when I get back to the hospital is break your brother's legs."
"You're not going back."
They stepped on Brian Frost's hair as they went dancing by and Frost didn't have enough left in him to even cry out. The floorboard in front of my nose thunked heavily with the weight of the blackjack. The cell phone was ringing and I couldn't tell if it had been doing so the whole while or if it had just started again. The back of Sparky's shoe brushed my nose.
Nick Crummler scooped up the blackjack and said, "I remember this." He hauled back his arm and brought up the sap. I knew what was about to happen. Nick showed nothing in his face but somehow the seething, irrepressible hatred he felt came through
I tried to shout "No," but all that came out was a garbled, "Uhnumn…" The blackjack kept rising. "Uhnumn."
Those hands, with the power in them, backed by his incredible fortitude, his rage, all the grudges in his life, especially those against a tormentor, and his need to protect his brother, coming in and down toward that smiling face. The blackjack wavered just a bit like it had hit an air pocket, then straightened and speeded up, gliding in the ultimate course of action, and smashing directly between Shanks' eyes.
Sparky stiffened as his frontal lobe caved in, and he went back onto the balls of his feet, wavered there for what felt like a few minutes, and slowly toppled to the floor, dead.
"Now that's the beauty of the moment," Nick Crummler said.
He answered my phone and told Lowell what had happened. He lifted and carried me over to a divan in the back room, untied Frost and sort of propped him up against my shoulder, staunched our bleeding heads and said, "You're going to be all right. Tell them the truth. I can't get involved with this and you know why." He put the phone on my lap and ate some of the crab meat quiche. "I'll be around."
I sat on the divan with a towel on the back of my neck and listened to Frost mumble in his semi-conscious state, slowly regaining some feeling in my extremities. By the time I heard the sirens and the room filled with whirling red-and-blue lights, and Lowell's face suddenly loomed in front of mine, I could almost stand.
Lowell put a palm to my chest and gently pushed me back down. "Careful, you might have a concussion."
"I'm okay," I told him, but it came out as though I was conjugating Latin verbs.
Lowell kept his hand on my chest. "Whatever the hell you just said proves my point, don't you think? Just lie there."
The ambulance and other deputies arrived a few minutes later, followed by Keaton Wallace who, for a Medical Examiner, always looked a little put out by blood. He stared at the floor where Frost and I had bled and screwed up his face. He didn't know whether to bag Frost's splintered teeth or let one of the cops do it. He fingered his dentures in sympathy. Wallace glanced over at me and said, "Jesus God, Jonny Kendrick, what the hell are you into now?"
The EMTs loaded Frost onto a gurney and rushed him into the back of the ambulance, taking his blood pressure and shouting numbers at each other. A petite blond with rubber gloves on and the fingers of a masseuse checked my pupils and scalp. She felt my lumps and washed me with something that stung like hell but also brought me fully back to my senses. She gave me a sweet smile that made me hurt worse. "We're going to take you in for a CAT scan."
I was ready to consent until the front door opened and a portion of Harnes' party-goers poured in: Anna and Broghin and Oscar, followed by a weeping Alice Conway, who stared over at Frost on the gurney. She hugged her elbows, and her knees were about to give out. Oscar realized she'd fall over any second and fumbled around trying to grasp her in his arms. Broghin pushed my grandmother into the foyer; he'd had a lot more practice with the wheelchair and could've maneuvered it up the rotting steps where Oscar probably couldn't have.