He glared malevolently at Eric and slid himself from under the van. Without breaking his stare, he reached for the gun.
Eric drew the bearing to his ear; his arm was straight and steady. “Don’t do it,” he said. Forty yards separated them.
Beetle-Eyes froze, his hand a foot from the pistol. “I don’t have to kill you, kid,” he said. “You can put that squirrel shooter away and walk right now, but if you try to hurt me again, I’m going to pick up this gun here and blow your head off.” His hand inched downward.
Sweat trickled down Eric’s face. One good shot, one perfect shot, and Beetle-Eyes would be done, but if he missed, he wouldn’t have time to reload. Far away, a bird sang. Eric thought, meadow lark, and released the shot.
He missed.
Beetle-Eyes came up with the gun and straightened from his crouch. Holding it in front of him, he walked toward Eric. “You stupid little kid,” he said, then clicked the hammer back. The meadow lark trilled through his song again. Eric’s dad had taught him many bird calls. He couldn’t believe that the last thought he would ever have would be the name of a bird song. Beetle-Eyes stopped. “Oh, shit.”
A rumble behind Eric startled him and he stepped aside. Like a black and white boat, the police cruiser flowed past Eric. Through the tinted windows, Eric saw the glint of mirrored sunglasses. The car’s brakes screeched loudly when it stopped. Beetle-Eyes stepped backwards, gun at his side, until he bumped into the van.
The police car’s door clicked open and Gloria’s Dad, the ghost cop, unfolded himself from the driver’s seat, his gun gripped in his right hand, the black glove on his left.
Without looking at Beetle-Eyes, he walked to a body bag. Caked mud clung to his boots. Eric wondered if it were from the football field.
The ghost cop bent, inspected the bag, pulled a mangled hand out, then, holding the hand gently in his, bent farther, briefly pressed his forehead to the dead person’s hand, then tucked it back into the bag. He zipped it shut and stood.
“We just got here,” shouted Beetle-Eyes. “The kid will tell you!” He pointed his gun at Eric, as if he’d forgotten that he held it.
The ghost cop brought his revolver up and fired. Echoes bounced back. Eric had seen many movies. He’d seen a million shootings, but this wasn’t like anything he’d seen. The shot was sharper, more crisp, but less loud than he’d imagined. A very distinct puff of smoke drifted away from the gun. He followed it until it dissipated.
Beetle-Eyes sat, his legs spread in a V, his head resting against the bumper. Tears slicked his cheeks.
“You didn’t have to do that,” he said. Eric couldn’t see any blood on Beetle-Eyes, but a single rivulet of red streaked the white van where he had stood. He sniffed, “I wasn’t doing anything.” His sack had ruptured at the bottom and rings and watches reflected sunlight in a pile beside him. The ghost cop dug into his back pocket and brought out a pair of hand cuffs. Keeping his gun trained on Beetle-Eyes, he clipped one wrist and reached for the other.
Out of sight from the cop, but where Eric could see, the passenger door swung quietly open. Slowly, a sneakered foot, then a bare leg slid into view. The ghost cop struggled to cuff the other hand, but the mechanism seemed jammed. Beetle-Eyes blubbered, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Don’t hurt me.” Stunned by the nearness of his own death, by the violence of the shooting, Eric watched slack jawed, as if the event were television. Whatever anger had motivated him to confront Beetle-Eyes was gone. A short-skirted woman hefting a baseball bat emerged from the door. She raised the bat above her head and ran around the corner of the van where the ghost cop knelt over Beetle-Eyes. Eric snapped out of his lethargy. “Watch out!”
Arching her back like a woodsman, the woman paused before swinging the bat. The ghost cop rolled, fired; the woman fell.
Beetle-Eyes stretched for his gun, got it, swung it around.
The ghost cop fired.
Two puffs of smoke floated away like carnival balloons.
Dusting his pants off, the ghost cop trudged back to the cruiser, gun hanging from his hand as if it weighed a hundred pounds. From the back of the car he took two of the black plastic tarps Eric had seen earlier and unfolded them. They were body bags.
As Eric watched, the cop uncuffed Beetle-Eyes, fitted a bag over him and rolled him over so he could close it; then he bagged the woman. He tossed her bat in the bag with her and drug both of them to the side of the road along with the other bodies. Everything he did, he did tiredly, seeming to barely have the strength to move himself from place to place.
Stooping over the last bag Beetle-Eyes had robbed, the ghost cop placed the hands inside and zipped it up. He moved to the next one and did the same.
Eric turned and looked behind him at the hundreds of open bags and beyond them where oily black smoke poured into the sky from the Coors plant. A meadow lark lilted through its notes again and the sun shimmered in waves off the road. Eric went to the nearest bag. Trying not to look in, he gripped the large, square zipper tab and pulled it shut. Soon the cop caught up with him and, not speaking, they worked together moving from body bag to body bag, softly putting hands back inside and closing them. An hour or so later, when they finished, Eric straightened painfully and rubbed his back. The cop’s face was an agony of exhaustion lines, the skin sallow and muscleless.
Eric said, “Maybe you should go home.” The mirrored sunglasses reflected blankly back at him.
“Nobody will know.”
Wind flicked hair across Eric’s eyes. He brushed it back. The cop said, “I haven’t been relieved.” And that seemed to settle it for him.
They walked back to the cruiser. Eric collected his bike and backpack from the road. When he left, the cop was sitting in the car, door open, his hands wrapped around the steering wheel. At the top of the hill, where Illinois Ave. met U.S. 6, Eric looked back. The line of body bags stretched almost to town, a black border on the road. Distinctly, Eric heard a car door slam and an engine start. Then the cruiser rose out of a valley in the road and headed for Golden’s smoke and fire and emptiness. Eric watched until it vanished from sight.
Chapter Nine
THE FLATS
Our fourth morning, Eric thought, and we’re still in good spirits. Dodge led, dashing from side to side to pick flowers, Indian Paint Brush and Rocky Mountain Bee Plants. Rabbit hung back and whistled tunelessly. Eric strode up the highway, pleased by the hardness in his leg muscles that a few days of activity had given him. He did a skip step. Highway 93 roller-coasted generally uphill north out of Golden in front of him along the foothills to Boulder. Eric compared the landscape to what they had passed through before; this was the first that had not been a part of the suburbs. Ruins of shopping malls, subdivisions and shopettes dominated the ten miles west from the Platte River, and the fifteen miles north to Golden. But here, he hiked through real country. Clean of brick walls, concrete foundations, or houses in varied states of decay, the grasses dropped away from the road through a gentle valley to lap against a scrub pine shoreline at the foothills a mile away.
He rubbed his sun-warmed right cheek. Four days of stubble scratched his palm. He felt poetic. Perfect weather, he thought.
Sun rises… like a great red whale.
Mid-afternoon: cloudless, arching blue
storm builds on mountain