Nine

Dan

When we got home, I gave Billy the .22 I kept under the bed and sent him out to play in the backyard.

I needed to think

Like I’d said, I still had a lot to figure out. There was something else going on here besides gunshots and flesh wounds. It was something about the way that bullet just appeared in Bridget’s hands, the way those docs hovered over Pam. Something that told me that it wasn’t just about what had happened. It was about what was going to happen.

Plus, I needed to put together some kind of plan. After that stunt at the hospital the cops would probably be headed our way sooner rather than later regardless of how long it took them to find out the Magnum was registered in my name.

Of course, Pam wasn’t home yet. It was about two hours after she was due back from the library, and it was almost getting dark, but the house was empty.

And let’s just remember that before you start pointing all your fingers my way. You can think what you like about how I’ve raised my boy, but since this all began, you can say one thing about me that you sure as Samson can’t say about Pam—-I was there. I was making decisions on what was best for the future of my boy. Picking faults after the fact is as easy as picking your nose after a head-cold, but there’s the facts. Yours truly: present. Ms. Know-it-all, save-the-boy-from-himself-hero-mom: she was M.I.A.

I’d burned half a can of Spaggettios and was just getting ready to call Billy back in when I finally got her call.

“Look Dan,” she said. “You and Billy are going to have to fend for yourself tonight. I drove out to BCC”—that’s the local community college—“to talk to the director of their criminal psychology program. I probably won’t be home until after nine.”

It had only been three days of the new Pam, but I’d already drunk about two fingers past my fill. I asked her “what gives?” making it pretty damn clear that I wasn’t going to truck with any more of her not giving two farts for her own family.

“This is something I need to do for me,” she said, the tightness in her voice telling me she was frowning into the phone. I could just see her jutting out her chin in that little tough-gal pose that had looked so damned cute back in the days before I’d married the hell out of her. “I’ve lived the last three years of my life for the rest of the world. What happened the other day—the accident with the gun—it’s taught me that it’s high time I started letting my own feet fill the footprints of the rest of my life.”

Whatever the hell that meant I wouldn’t have time to find out, cause while Pam was going on about her footprints I heard the short loud crack of that .22 call out from the backyard.

I left the phone dangling from the cord in the kitchen, took the steps two at a time into the basement, and flew out our back door.

Sure enough, Billy had shot the little neighbor boy right through the mouth. Put a bullet between his open lips, through his parted teeth, and out the back side of his cheek.

Now, let me stop a second and tell you a little something about this kid to give you a full picture of all this. I can’t say his real name because you might know him, so let’s just call him Chad Woodlake.

Chad was a nice enough kid. He was six, but he horsed around with Billy when he was out in the neighborhood, anyway. He didn’t act like he was big shit just cause he was older and his dad worked up in the new phone company building and had enough dough to have both a swing set and one of them above-ground pools in the backyard.

His parents had different ideas though.
Somewhere along the way they’d gotten it into their heads that little Chad was special. He was born, they insisted, to be a singing star, and they sunk every dime they didn’t spend on swing sets and above ground pools into out-of-town music lessons for the boy. Then they drug him out to do the National Anthems at all the American Legion base ball games, got him booked doing Air Supply covers in that little gazebo in the food court in the mall, and lately had even floated a rumor that he just missed getting onto Star Search, which was still pretty new at the time, but a big deal all the same.

Now he was a good kid, sure, but you tell the truth, you’d have to say he wasn’t taking his dog and pony show any further than that food court. First off, he was cross-eyed as a flounder, but second, he sang straight up through his nose—sounded like a chipmunk hopped up on helium.

To his parents, though, he was the next Barry Manilow. So you can imagine, with him taking a bullet in the mouth and all, they were already throwing quite a fit.

The Woodlakes must have been outside when Billy shot Chad, cause by the time I got out there the mother was already kneeling over him, bawling herself sloppy while the father screamed at Billy. “What did you do?!” he shouted. “What did you do?!”

“He shot your ugly, tone-deaf son in the face, asshole, that’s what he did” is what I wanted to say, but I realized the situation called for a little more tact. So I just gave Billy a long cold look, snatched the .22 out of his hands, and tucked it into the back of my jeans.

“Didn’t want to take no nap,” Billy mumbled without looking up at me, but I couldn’t waste any time figuring out what he was talking about. I needed to check out the damage.

Of course, Chad was still blubbering when I crouched over him to see his face. But while I’m sure it stung and the blood scared him a bit, this was Billy’s cleanest shot yet.

“Look at that, he’s getting better with each one,” I said running my finger over the little bloody hole in the back of Chad’s cheek. “That’s clean enough to look like a blade did it. I mean that’s just not what bullets do. Even .22s.” I looked at the mother, but she didn’t say anything. Her mousy face just sort of crumbled at the edges as her eyebrows slid together as if to say, why are you touching my precious future star with your filthy hands?

I slid the tip of my pinky finger inside the hole, and Chad squealed out. So goddamned dramatic, you think they’d have chose acting lessons rather than singing. “This ain’t no bigger than the bullet,” I said. “You know anything about ballistics, and you’d scratch a hole in your head over this.”

The Woodlakes weren’t impressed. The mother just screamed at my face while the father pulled at my arms and shouted a rainbow mile of cuss words, but, sure enough, by the time they’d pulled Chad away from me, that little hole in his cheek had all but stopped bleeding.

“Throw a band-aid on it, and he’ll be fine by bed time,” I shouted as they carried him up the hill toward their car, which was parked out front three houses down. “Don’t waste your money on the hospital.”

Then I turned to Billy. “Take this and get inside,” I said tossing him the gun. “I’ll be back in a bit, and then we’ll sort this out.”

Billy went in through the back door, and I chased after the Woodlakes up around to the front, catching up to them just as they were trying to load the kid into their car. “Look,” I said holding my hands out at my side. “I know this has kind of got you all revved up, but it’s not as bad as it looks. If you would just let me look. We could really help each other out here.”

The mother turned back to me as the father struggled to load Chad—who was now kicking, clawing, and hissy-fitting about not wanting to go to the hospital—into the back seat of the car. “Look,” she said, struggling to control herself, still shaking like a twig in the mouth of a rabid dog. “I don’t know what you want from us, but our son needs medical attention now.”

“He don’t though,” I said. “That’s the thing. Look at him, he’s barely bleeding and he don’t want to go to the hospital. Hey Chad”—I stepped forward to call out to the boy over his father’s shoulders. You ain’t hurt that bad are you? You want to go to the hospital, or you want I should fix you up?”

“Stay the hell away from my son,” Mr. Woodlake screamed shoving me in the center of my chest, so hard that I had to take a step backwards and almost knock over his wife.

I tried to help her up, but she just cussed and slapped at my hands.
Then Chad finally stopped his wailing and spoke up for himself. “Daddy,” he said. “My cheek don’t hurt that bad. I don’t think I need to go to the hospital.”

Finally, I had somebody on my side here. But before I could make use of my new ally, another gunshot rang out, its crack distinct but slightly muffled, coming now from inside the house.

As we all spun our heads to look back at my house, I noticed that there was a cop car parked about two doors past it. I was wondering how long it had been there when I noticed that my front door was hanging open, and I realized I didn’t have time to wonder about shit anymore.

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