Boy's Life (60 page)

     Mr. White emerged from his office, scuttling sideways like a crab. Sheriff Amory rolled his window down, and they exchanged some words but I couldn’t hear what was being said. Then Mr. White returned to his office. A few minutes later, he was leaving wearing a grease-stained jacket and a baseball cap. He got into his DeSoto and drove off, blue smoke in his wake like dots and dashes of Morse code.

     The sheriff’s window went back up again. I checked my Timex. It was two minutes before twelve.

     Two minutes later, the bus had not arrived.

     Suddenly a voice behind me said, “Don’t move, boy.”

     A hand seized the nape of my neck before I could turn my head. Wiry fingers squeezed so hard my nerves were frozen. The hand pulled me, and I retreated from the building’s corner. Was it Wade or Bodean who had me? Lord, wasn’t there some way to warn my dad? The hand kept pulling me until we were back at the trash cans. Then it let me go, and I turned to see my adversary.

     Mr. Owen Cathcoate said, “What the damn hell are you doin’ here, boy?”

     I couldn’t speak. Mr. Cathcoate’s wrinkled, liver-spotted face was topped by a sweat-stained brown cowboy hat, its shape more of a Gabby Hayes than a Roy Rogers. His scraggly yellow-white hair hung untidily over his shoulders. He wore, over his creased black trousers and a mud-colored cardigan sweater, a beige duster that looked more musty than dusty. Its ragged hem hung almost to the ankles of his plain black boots. But this was not what had stolen my voice. The voice stealer was the tooled-leather gunbelt cinched around his slim waist and the skeleton-grip pistol tucked down into its holster on his left side, turned around so the butt faced out. Mr. Cathcoate’s narrow eyes appraised me. “Asked you a question,” he said.

     “My dad,” I managed to say. “He’s here. To help the sheriff.”

     “So he is. That don’t explain why
you’re
here, though.”

     “I just wanted to—”

     “Get your head blown off? There’s gonna be some fireworks, if I know what the Blaylocks are made of. Get on that bike and make a trail.”

     “The bus is late,” I said, trying to stall him.

     “Don’t stall,” he countered. “
Get!
” He shoved me toward Rocket.

     I didn’t get on. “No sir. I’m stayin’ with my dad.”

     “You want me to whip your tail right this minute?” The veins stood out in his neck. I expect he could deliver a whipping that would make my father’s seem like a brush with a powder puff. Mr. Cathcoate advanced on me. I took a single step back, and then I decided I wasn’t going any farther.

     Mr. Cathcoate stopped, too, less than three feet from me. A hard-edged smile crossed his mouth. “Well,” he said. “Got some sand in you, don’t you?”

     “I’m stayin’ here,” I told him.

     And then we both heard the sound of a vehicle approaching, and we knew the time for debate was ended. Mr. Cathcoate whirled around and stalked to the building’s corner, the folds of his duster rustling. He stopped and peered furtively around the edge, and I realized I was no longer seeing Mr. Owen Cathcoate.

     I was seeing the Candystick Kid.

     I looked around the corner, too, before Mr. Cathcoate waved me back.

     My heart jumped at what I saw. Not the Trailways bus, but a black Cadillac. It pulled into the gas station and parked at an angle in front of the sheriffs car. I dodged away from Mr. Cathcoate’s restraining hand, and I ran for a pile of used tires near the garage and flopped down on my belly behind them. Now I had a clear view of what was about to happen, and I stayed there despite Mr. Cathcoate motioning me back behind the building’s edge.

     Bodean Blaylock, wearing an open-collared white shirt and a gray suit that shone with slick iridescence, got out from behind the wheel. His hair was cropped in a severe crew cut, his mean mouth twisted into a thin smile. He reached into the car and his hand came out with a pearl-handled revolver. Then Wade Blaylock, his dark hair slicked back and his chin jutting, got out of the passenger side. He was wearing black pants so tight they looked painted on, the sleeves of his blue-checked cowboy-style shirt rolled up to show his slim, tattooed forearms in spite of the chill. He had a shoulder holster with a gun in it, and he pulled a rifle out of the Cadillac with him and quickly cocked it:
ka-chunk!

     Then the rear door opened, the Cadillac wobbled, and that big brute heaved himself out. Biggun Blaylock was wearing camouflage-print overalls and a dark brown shirt. He looked like one of the November hills come to life, ripped loose from its bedrock to roll across the earth. He wore a toothy grin, his bald head with its tuft of gray hair gleaming with scalp oil. He breathed hard, winded from the exertion of leaving the car. “Do it, boys,” he said between wheezes.

     Wade leveled the rifle. Bodean cocked his pistol. They aimed at the sheriff’s car and started shooting.

     I almost left my skin. The bullets hit the two front tires of Sheriff Amory’s car and knocked them flat. Then Wade and Bodean took aim at Dad’s truck even as Dad threw the gearshift into reverse and tried to skid the truck out of danger. It was fruitless; the two front tires blew, and the truck was left lame and rocking on its shocks.

     “Let’s talk some business, Sheriff Junior!” Biggun thundered.

     Sheriff Amory didn’t get out. Donny’s grinning face was pressed up against the window glass like a kid looking at fresh cakes in a bakery. I glanced over to see what Mr. Cathcoate was doing. But the Candystick Kid wasn’t there anymore.

     “Bus ain’t comin’ for a while!” Biggun said. He leaned into the Cadillac’s rear seat and came out holding a double-barreled shotgun in one ham-sized hand and in the other a camouflage shoulder bag. He put the bag on top of the Caddy’s roof, unzipped it, and reached in. “Funniest damn thing, Sheriff Junior!” He broke the shotgun open, brought out two shells from the ammo bag, and pushed them in. Then he snapped the weapon shut again. “Damn bus had two flats ’bout six miles down Route Ten! Gonna be hell fixin’ them big mothers!” He rested his weight against the Caddy, making it groan and sag. “Always hated changin’ tires, myself.”

     A gun spoke:
crack crack!

     The Cadillac’s rear tires exploded. Biggun, for all his bulk, jumped two feet in the air. He made a noise that was a combination of hootenanny yodel and opera aria. Wade and Bodean whirled around. Biggun came down with a concrete-cracking concussion.

     Smoke drifted around a figure that stood behind the Cadillac, next to Mr. White’s parked tow truck. The Candystick Kid was holding his pistol in his right hand.

     “What the fuckin’ hell of a shit—!” Biggun raged, his face swelling up with blood and the tip of his beard quivering.

     Sheriff Amory jumped from his car. “Owen! I told you I didn’t want you around here!”

     The Candystick Kid ignored him, his cool gaze riveted to Biggun. “Know what this is called, Mr. Blaylock?” He suddenly spun his pistol around and around his trigger finger, the sun glinting off the blued metal, and he delivered the gun to its butt-first position in the left-sided holster with a
shrick
ing noise of supple leather. “This is called,” he said, “a standoff.”

     “
Standoff, my ass!
” Biggun shouted. “
Nail him, boys!
”

     Wade and Bodean opened fire as Sheriff Amory yelled, “No!” and brought up the rifle he’d been holding at his side.

     The Candystick Kid might have been an old, wrinkled man, but whatever was in him that had made him the Kid now showed its mettle. He dived behind the tow truck as bullets crashed through the windshield and pocked the hood. Sheriff Amory squeezed off two shots, and the Cadillac’s windshield blew out. Wade yelped and went for the ground, but Bodean turned around with fury contorting his face and his pistol popped. Sheriff Amory’s hat flew off his head like a pigeon. The next shot from the sheriff’s rifle put a part in the side of Bodean’s crew cut, and Bodean must’ve felt the heat of its passage because he hollered “
Yow!
” and dropped to a snake’s view.

     Mr. Marchette climbed out of the sheriff’s car, holding a pistol. Dad scrambled out of the pickup truck and threw himself to the pavement, and a thrill of mingled pride and fear went through me as I saw he was gripping a gun, too. The Moon Man stayed in the truck and ducked his head, only his top hat showing.

    
Boom!
the double-barreled shotgun said. The tow truck shook, pieces of glass and metal flying off it. Biggun was on his knees beside the Cadillac, and it came to me that he shouldn’t destroy that tow truck because he was going to need it to stand up again.

     “Daddy!” Donny shouted from the sheriff’s car. “Get me outta this, Daddy!”

     “Ain’t nobody takin’ what belongs to me!” Biggun yelled back. He fired off a shell at the sheriff’s car, and the grille exploded. Steaming radiator water spewed like a geyser. From the back seat, where he must’ve been restrained by cuffs or a rope, Donny hollered, “Don’t kill me ’fore you save me, Daddy!”

     I saw where Donny got his smarts from.

     Biggun reached up and grabbed the ammo bag’s strap, and he hauled it down with him to reload. Another bullet smacked into the Cadillac, and a taillight crashed. The Candystick Kid was still at work.

     “Ain’t no use!” Biggun said, snapping the shotgun shut again. “We’re gonna go through you like shit through a goose! Hear me, Sheriff Junior?”

     Dad got up. I almost shouted for him to stay down, but he ran alongside the sheriff’s car and crouched next to Sheriff Amory. I could see how pale his face was. But he was there, and that’s what counted.

     There was a lull as everybody got their second gulp of courage. Bodean and Wade began firing at the sheriff’s car again, and Donny hunkered down in the back seat. “Stop that shootin’, ya damn fools!” Biggun commanded. “You wanna blow your brother’s head off?”

     Maybe it was my imagination, but neither Wade nor Bodean stopped firing as fast as they should have.

     “Get around behind ’em, Wade!” Bodean yelled.

     “
You
get around behind ’em, dumb ass!”

     Bodean, proving the cunning of a poker player did not translate into common sense, stood up and sprinted for the building’s corner. He got about three strides when a single gunshot rang out and he grabbed at his right foot and fell sprawling to the pavement. “I’m shot, Daddy! Daddy, I’m shot!” he whined, his pistol lying out of reach.

     “Didn’t think you were fuckin’
tickled!
” Biggun roared back. “Lord God, you got the brains of a BB in a boxcar!”

     “Gimme somethin’ else to shoot at!” the Candystick Kid urged, well-hidden in the shadow of the tow truck. “I got a gun full of lonely bullets!”

     “Give it up, Biggun!” Sheriff Amory said. “You’re washed up around here!”

     “If I am, I’ll make you choke on the soap, you bastards!”

     “Ain’t no use anybody else gettin’ hurt! Throw out your guns and let’s call it quits!”

     “Sheeeeyit!” Biggun snarled. “You think I got anywhere in this life by callin’ it quits? You think I come up from hog turds and cotton fields to let a little tin star take my boy away from me and ruin
everythin’?
You shoulda used that money I been payin’ you to buy a head doctor with!”

     “Biggun, it’s over! You’re surrounded!” That was my father’s voice. To my dying day I shall never forget the steel in it. He was a Blackhawk, after all.

     “Surround
this!
” Wade jumped up and started firing with his rifle in my father’s direction. Biggun hollered for him to get down, but Wade was balanced on the lunatic edge just like Donny. Bullets struck sparks off the concrete, and one of them thunked into a tire in my nest of concealment. My heart seized up, it was so close. Then the Candystick Kid’s gun cracked again, just once, and a chunk of Wade’s left ear spun off his head and red blood spattered the Cadillac’s hood.

     You would’ve thought the bullet had chopped off something more central, because Wade screamed like a woman. He clutched at his ragged ear, fell to the ground, and started wheeling around and around like the Three Stooges’ Curly having a caterwauling fit.

     “Oh, my soul!” Biggun moaned.

      It was obvious that, like the Branlins, the Blaylocks could dish it out but they sure couldn’t take it.

     “Damn, I missed!” the Candystick Kid said. “I was aimin’ for his head instead of his ass!”

     “
I’ll kill ya!
” Biggun’s voice returned to the thunder zone. “
I’ll kill every one of ya and dance on your graves!
”

     It was a frightening sound. But with Bodean and Wade writhing on the pavement and Donny yelping like a sad little puppy, there wasn’t much lightning left in the storm.

     And then the pickup’s passenger-side door opened and the Moon Man stepped out. He was wearing a black suit and a red bow tie, as well as his top hat. Around his neck were six or seven strings and attached to the strings were small things that looked like tea bags. A chicken foot was pinned to one lapel, and he wore three watches on each wrist. He didn’t duck or dodge. Instead, he began walking past the sheriff’s car, past Fire Chief Marchette and my dad and Sheriff Amory. “Hey!” Chief Marchette shouted. “Get your head down!”