Red Knife (28 page)

She hears the cry of many sirens outside.

Hang on, Cara. Hang on, girl. I’m right here with you. You’re going to be fine.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” comes the voice of Darrell Gallagher at her back.

His voice was ice on her fevered thinking. She felt as if she was waking from a bad dream, only to discover a worse reality. She turned her head and looked over her shoulder, keeping her hands on the compress against Cara’s wound. Gallagher stood in the hallway in his long black coat. Visible beneath it was a vest full of ammunition clips. He held a handgun pointed loosely in her direction. He looked oddly calm. On the floor of the hallway where he’d just walked, his boots had left red prints. Streaks ran down his black coat, like dark red veins. Blood, Annie realized, though not his own. She thought for an instant of pleading with him, but she understood clearly that it would be useless. She understood, too, that her own death was upon her, and in that moment, she received a blessing she could never have guessed. Serenity descended and a wonderful, peaceful acceptance filled her. She looked into Gallagher’s eyes, where there was no hint of pity, and she said, “God forgive you, Darrell.”

His reply was a lazy smile as he raised the gun and aimed at her head.

“Darrell!”

Uly’s shout came from down the hallway.

Gallagher kept his gun trained on Annie while he looked behind him. The smile became a short laugh as he watched Uly Kingbird approach. “Son of a bitch. You decided to join in the fun after all.”

Uly carried a rifle. The one he’d picked up at Gallagher’s the night before, Annie figured. He stopped a dozen yards from where Gallagher stood.

“Put the gun down, Darrell,” he said.

“But I just got started,” Darrell replied amiably. “Still a lot of people on the target list.”

“It stops now.”

“I did you a big favor, Uly. Took care of that asshole Allan Richards. You should’ve seen him. He tried to hide in the girls’ bathroom. Cried like a baby before I shot him.”

“Darrell, put the gun down.”

“We can make history together, bro. Go out with our names in lights. It’s what we planned.”

“Not my plan.”

“Come on, Uly. Don’t punk out on me now.”

“I’m not with you, Darrell.”

“Maybe not yet. But, hell, I’ll give you a choice.”

Gallagher swung his arm away from Annie and brought his gun to bear on Uly.

“I pull the trigger and you go down and I waste O’Connor anyway. Or you join me and they put our names in the history books,” Gallagher said. “With a bang or a whimper, dude. The choice is yours.”

From outside came the scream of more sirens. Annie could hear a commotion at the main entrance, the sound of the doors being battered.

“You got three seconds, bro. Decide.”

“All right,” Uly said. He sounded sad and defeated. “I’m sorry, Annie.” He looked past Gallagher and into her eyes and his own dark eyes seemed tired beyond measure. “If I don’t do it, he will.” He lifted the rifle and fit the butt to his shoulder. He jerked his head to the right. “Move, Darrell. You’re in the way.”

Gallagher grinned, opened his arms wide in welcome, and said, “My man.” He stepped to the side.

At the same moment, Uly adjusted his line of fire, following Gallagher. He squeezed the trigger and a round exploded from his rifle. The bullet struck Gallagher in the chest, bore right through him, and tore a hole in the back of his black leather coat as it exited. The round dug into one of the stairs a couple of feet from Annie’s left shoulder. Gallagher dropped in a heap where he stood. His head hit the floor with a resounding crack and his gun clattered across the tiles.

Uly lowered his rifle. He said to Annie in a stone voice, “I had to get him to move. I was afraid I might hit you.” Then he laid his rifle down, put his back against the nearest wall, and slid to the floor. He covered his face with his hands and began to cry.

Annie stared down at Cara. The white cotton sock she’d used as a compress was soaked red, but blood no longer welled up under it. Cara’s chest no longer rose, not even faintly. Her lips didn’t move, nor did her closed eyelids tremble. She was gone, Annie knew, gone without a sound, without a final sigh or gasp or rattle, simply gone. Beneath Annie’s hands, she’d slipped away.

“Annie?”

She felt a light touch on her shoulder. Lifting her eyes, she found her father bending low beside her.

“Dad.”

“Are you okay?”

“No.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No.” She looked again at her friend. “She’s dead.”

Her father knelt and put his fingers to Cara’s neck. “Yes,” he said. He cupped his hand gently under Annie’s arm and eased her up. “Come on, sweetheart. Come with me.”

“No.” She pulled away, stepped past the body of Darrell Gallagher, and went to Uly Kingbird, who sat hunched over, sobbing. She settled beside him, put her arm around his shoulders, and with her bloody hands gathered him in. He laid his head against her breast and she held him. And while he wept she prayed for them both and for them all.

The state girls’ softball sectional playoff was delayed a week while the people of Tamarack County tried to deal with the aftermath of the shootings. The Aurora Blue Jays, when they finally played, lost badly, nine to one. The heart had been knocked out of them.

The town of Aurora was besieged by the media, most of whom had all the sensitivity of a ripsaw. The flood of television and radio and print reporters was swelled by gawkers who descended like locusts.

Graduation that year was a solemn affair. The governor and the state’s two senators came to address the graduating seniors. They spoke of reconciliation, of keeping eyes on the brighter horizon, of moving on.

And moving on was exactly what happened with the reporters and the politicians and the interest of the rest of the nation. Once a year, for several years, as the anniversary of that terrible day approached, a little airtime and a little column space—less and less each year—was given over as a perfunctory nod to the event. But the truth is that tragedy remains tragedy only for those who experience it. For everyone else it becomes history.

Haled as a hero, Uly Kingbird was besieged with requests for interviews.
60 Minutes,
the
Today
show,
Larry King Live
all wanted to talk to the young man who’d been both the friend and the end of the enigmatic Darrell Gallagher. On his son’s behalf, Will Kingbird declined them all. Uly hated the publicity. He spent a good deal of time in counseling trying to deal with the shootings, and at Cork’s suggestion, he accepted the help and guidance of Henry Meloux as well. In late August, shortly before school was to begin again, Will Kingbird sold the Gun Sight and moved his family to Des Moines, Iowa. Lucinda confided to Jo that they hoped Uly might have a better chance of escaping the notoriety and putting together a more normal life. Uly—who kept in touch religiously with Annie over the years—would ultimately find refuge in his music and eventually achieve modest fame as a musician in the mold of his idol, Bob Dylan. He was often accompanied on vocals by his niece, a beautiful dark-haired singer named Misty Kingbird.

Annie O’Connor didn’t go to Madison to play softball for the University of Wisconsin. The shootings altered her course and directed her down a different path.

In the years after, in those nights when she would wake to the sound of gunfire that proved phantom, when her pulse raced and her breath came fast and shallow and she waited for the bullet that was never fired, Annie O’Connor would remember how, in comforting Uly Kingbird in the midst of his grief, she had for a while been able to forget her own. She would grieve, yes—in a way, never stop grieving—but Annie understood that for her there was a way through grief, through sadness, through hate and anger and all the anguish and confusion of the world. It was a path that in a strange way led through the hurting hearts of others, a path that she believed always led to God. And throughout her life Sister Anne would follow it.

On a clear day in late August, Cork O’Connor sat in the cabin of Henry Meloux, smoking tobacco with the old Mide. Outside, Stevie played in the meadow grass with Walleye, trying to coax the relaxed old mongrel into chasing butterflies with him. On the table between Meloux and Cork lay a .38 police special and a Remington Model 700. The rifle Cork had used for hunting since he was a young man. The revolver his father had carried as sheriff of Tamarack County, and Cork, too, when he was sheriff.

“Why not sell them?” the old man suggested.

“That just puts them into someone else’s hands, Henry.”

“There will always be other rifles, other guns, Corcoran O’Connor. I can’t keep them all.”

Through the open window, Cork watched his son play and his heart felt heavy. “I’ve killed men, Henry, and convinced myself it was the right thing to do. Now I lie in bed nights thinking about Darrell Gallagher. In his own mind, I’m sure everything he did was justified.”

The dark creases at the corners of the old man’s eyes deepened and Meloux nodded thoughtfully. “In the woods sometimes I find the bones of deer left by the wolves that brought them down. If a deer had a rifle and could shoot the wolves, I expect it would do just that.”

“My life has been steeped in bloodshed, and God help me, some of that was because I wanted it that way. Once you turn to violence as an answer, Henry, it’s hard to stop looking there first. I don’t want my son growing up to be me. I don’t want him to be able to pick up a gun and have it feel like he’s shaking hands with an old friend.”

Meloux, too, looked through the window and watched Stevie at play in the meadow. “I have been told, Corcoran O’Connor, that the heart has two chambers. I believe it because I do know that the heart has two sides. One is love and the other is fear. One creates, the other destroys. Not every person kills, but every person could. It is how the Great Spirit created us. I do not pretend to understand why; I only know it is so.”

“Maybe you can’t alter the human heart, Henry, but you can remove the weapons. Maybe not so many people would kill then or so many die.”

The ancient Mide gave his head a faint shake. “Handing me your firearms won’t by itself change anything.”

“It’s a start.”

“All right,” the old man agreed, though his voice betrayed his skepticism. He reached out with his wrinkled, spotted hands and drew the weapons toward him. “They’ll be here when you need them.”

“I won’t be needing them, Henry.”

“We will see.”

They left the cabin and walked into the sunlit meadow.

“Time to go, Stevie,” Cork called.

His son bestowed on Walleye a prolonged patting in good-bye and came trotting to his father’s side.

“
Migwech,
Henry,” Cork said.

Meloux smiled and gave a small shrug, and Cork knew exactly what the old Mide was thinking. It didn’t matter.

Together, father and son walked the path toward the woods that edged the meadow. Halfway there, Stevie said, “I’ll race you, Dad.”

“Okay, but wait until I say go.”

Stevie poised himself as if at a starting line.

“On your mark,” Cork said. “Get set.”

And he took off.

“Hey!” Stevie yelled at his back.

In a few seconds, Stevie had caught up. He ran past Cork, his arms pumping hard, his small strong legs carrying him away. Cork slowed and, as he watched his son, his beloved son, racing away from him, he was struck with an overwhelming and inexplicable sadness. In only a moment, Stevie had sprinted out of the sunlight, entered the shadow of the deep forest ahead, and disappeared from his father’s sight.