The girl was in the boat faster than a jackrabbit. Tim just froze. Leonard and I crouched. Leonard said, “This time, we got to get him.”
Big Guy, who seemed to have lost his wits, came charging along the planks and Leonard and I, as if through some mind-meld of knowledge, went for his legs, went low and lifted high. It wasn’t quite perfect. Big Guy went a little to the right, out over the platform and hit headfirst in the boat. The boat cracked, rolled, sent the girl into the water with a scream. Tim, who was standing behind us and had caught some of Big Guy’s body as it was thrown, was knocked the length of the platform.
The boat righted itself, and there was Big Guy, hanging on to the side of it. The girl, who was crying loudly, was clinging to the bow. I got down on my belly on the platform and grabbed one of the paddles floating in the water and stood up and cracked Big Guy over the head with it. It took about three licks before he went under.
There was movement at the door. I turned my head. Tonto came through, followed by Jim Bob. Somehow, Tonto had ended up with the double-barrel shotgun.
Big Guy was back, clinging to the side of the boat, trying to climb inside. Tonto came over quick and stepped off the platform and onto the boat. It was a graceful move and the boat only rocked a little. He got Big Guy by the hair and stuck the double barrel in his open mouth and pulled the trigger. The back of Big Guy’s head jumped out onto the water, and something, pellets, skull shrapnel, rattled against the clapboard wall across the way.
Big Guy, missing most of his head, went under, except for one hand that clung to the side of the boat. Tonto squatted and took hold of the fingers and peeled one of them off and then they all came loose.
Leonard said, “You better find that sonofabitch and drive a stake through his heart. I don’t want him coming back.”
Tonto made his way to the bow of the little boat and pulled the girl out of the water, then handed her up to me. I set her on the platform. She was shivering with the cold, just like me and Leonard and Tim. Tonto climbed up on the platform and took a deep breath. He smelled like the shotgun blast.
“The others?” I asked.
“They’re napping,” Tonto said. “Deep napping.”
“Yeah,” I said. “There’s one in the cabin, and he’s kind of sleepy too.”
41
At the top of the hill, with me carrying the bag of money, and it was a big bag and pretty damn heavy, we discovered that the two thugs were indeed napping by the Ford. While they were napping some red stuff had run out of them and onto the ground and had been mixed up and thinned by the rain so that it looked like spilled strawberry Kool-Aid. They were lying on their backs and they had some holes in them and their open mouths were filling with rain.
We grabbed the stuff from the cabin that belonged to the kids, got the guns, and wiped the place down of blood and fingerprints as best we could, hauling the dead guy out of the kitchen, putting him and the other two in the Ford. Jim Bob drove the Ford, Tonto drove his van, and Leonard took the keys of the Escalade from Tim and drove the rest of us out of there, me in the back with the boy, the girl beside Leonard. The windshield wipers beat methodically as he drove and the heater made it cozy. It was hard to believe that a moment before we had been in a gunfight, a fistfight, a wrestling match, and the like. It seemed surreal, though my ears were still ringing from the gunfire in the small cabin and I hurt all over.
We followed Jim Bob down a narrow clay road with trash thrown out on both sides. He parked the Ford and left it and joined Tonto in the van. Tonto and Leonard found places to turn around and got us back on the main road, which was a strip of aging blacktop.
We followed along behind the van. No one in our car had said a word. And then: “That man,” the girl said. “He … he was so strong.”
“Tell me about it,” Leonard said. “And he had a bulletproof vest on to boot.”
“You noticed that too,” I said.
“I did,” Leonard said. “For a moment I thought Superman had gone bad, and it was a real relief to discover he was just a man.”
“He was just plenty of man,” I said.
“I hurt all over,” Leonard said. “I feel like I been chewed up by a wolf and shit off a cliff and my pile got stepped on by an elephant.”
“I hear you,” I said. “I’m dizzy and I got a headache and I want my teddy bear. Bastard must have taken something. Some kind of drug. Damned if I know. But I’m going to dream about him, and I’m not going to like it.”
“I used to have a teddy bear,” the girl said out of nowhere. “His name was Lew. I think my momma still has him.”
We let that sail around the car for a moment, then, “Figure guy owns the cabins has already called the law,” Leonard said.
“No,” Tim said. “He said he would be gone a few days. Went off somewhere with his brother. We paid in advance.”
“I hope you left a dead body deposit,” I said.
“We didn’t give our real names. He wrote down our plates, but they’re false. I switched them.”
“Normally, I wouldn’t want to encourage such criminal enterprise as license-plate switching in the young, but let me, at this moment in time, give to you a symbolic high five.”
It was entirely symbolic. Neither of us moved.
Tim said, “So … are you going to hurt us?”
“Nope,” I said. “We already would have if we were. But you got to go back.”
“My dad … he turned himself in.”
“For you. And he’s going to talk to the feds. Putting himself in danger from the Dixie Mafia for one reason and one reason only. You.”
Tim was quiet for a moment, then said, “He’s done some bad things.”
“He has, and I suppose he’s actually going to get away with having done a lot of them if he tells the feds the right things, things they want to know. But there is this. He loves you pretty damn strong to do what he’s doing. Putting himself in danger, maybe going to jail, or having to be in the witness protection program. Something you may have to do too. Thing is, he’s doing what he’s doing for you so you can maybe do something a lot better than he’s done with his life.”
“You think so?”
“I think so.”
“What about me?” the girl said.
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “We’ll figure something out.”
“He just couldn’t stand we were together, her being black.”
“He got over it,” I said. “He only wants you happy.”
“He said that?”
“Yep.”
“Are you friends of his?”
“Nope,” I said. “Not even close.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
“We sort of have our asses over a barrel and we got picked because we were expendable.”
Leonard said, “Girl, what’s your name?”
“Katie,” she said.
“All right,” Leonard said. “That’s good to know in case I want to call you to supper. Hap, are you okay back there?”
“A little traumatized. Not every day you meet Dracula and live.”
“Ain’t that the truth? We owe Tonto one.”
“We owe that shotgun one. Maybe we can take it to lunch.”
42
Leonard wheeled us away from the lake, and Tonto, who was driving in front of us, pulled the van to the side of the road and parked. We pulled up beside him, real close, lowered the window on the girl’s side. Tonto lowered his window, said, “Now what?”
“I think we ought to think this over before we do anything,” Leonard said.
“What’s that mean?” Tonto asked.
Leonard looked back at me. I leaned forward in the seat and spoke loud enough for them to hear. “I’m with Leonard. I think now we’ve done the deed, we should regroup a little. Gonna hand these kids off, I want to make sure I’m not dropping them in the lion’s den. We maybe hole them up somewhere, then me and Leonard see how the lay of the land is, figure what to do next.”