The Dispatcher (35 page)

He stops and puts his arms up, still holding his dad’s .30-06 in his right hand. First his younger brother, then his older brother. Now the one in the middle.

‘What are you doing, Sarah? How’d you get out?’

‘Shut up,’ she says. ‘Shut up and put down that gun.’

‘You don’t even know how to use that gun, Sarah. You’re not gonna shoot me.’

‘It’s a semiautomatic and the safety’s off,’ Sarah says. ‘You told Beatrice. All I have to do is aim and pull the trigger.’

He takes a slow step toward her.

‘I said stop!’

He does.

‘Put down your gun.’

‘You’re not gonna shoot me.’

Sarah licks her lips and raises the barrel of the pistol so it’s pointed at his face. He stares into it, and then past it to Sarah, and he sees that she will shoot him. If he isn’t careful she will shoot him. He thinks of Beatrice’s ankle. He never did find out exactly how that happened, but looking into Sarah’s face he thinks he knows. Her eyes tell him that she is very much her father’s daughter. At least in one respect she is: once she begins something, she does not quit.

‘Put down your gun,’ she says again. ‘Right now.’ Her voice trembles with rage.

He thinks of all the times he tied her hands, all the times he hung her from the punishment hook. He thinks of leaving her in the basement. He thinks of hearing her cry when she was younger. He thinks of when the crying stopped.

He nods, then leans down slowly and sets the rifle onto the floor.

‘Did you shoot Beatrice?’

‘No,’ Sarah says. ‘I didn’t have to.’

‘Good,’ he says. With him leaning forward she is almost within arm’s reach. He wonders if he might be able to lunge at her and get the gun away. ‘Good,’ he says again. ‘You don’t want to shoot anybody.’

‘I don’t. But I will.’

‘I know that, Sarah,’ he says. ‘I know th—’

He jumps at her and just manages, barely, to grab her wrist before the gun goes off. The sound rings in his ears, deafening him completely, if only momentarily, and he staggers backwards, hand still wrapped around Sarah’s wrist.

Son of a bitch: she actually shot him. He’s faced off against half a dozen cops in the last few days and come out unscathed, only to be shot by a fourteen-year-old girl.

But he will not die like this. He will not.

He struggles to pull the gun out of Sarah’s hands.

Ian sits on his haunches and waits, the rifled shotgun in his hands and the sawed-off shotgun tucked into the back of his Levis. He heard gunfire echo its way out the front door of the school and now he waits for something human to emerge.

Silence follows silence.

He swallows and can feel his Adam’s apple bob in his throat. His mouth is dry, his lips cracked. His eyes sting.

And then he sees movement on the other side of the doorway, behind the shadows. His first urge is to stand and shoot, but he does not do that. He waits to see what emerges from the shadows and what emerges from the shadows is Henry. Henry carrying Maggie, holding her around the waist and with a pistol to her head. He is pale and glistening with sweat and there is a hole in the middle of his neck like a tracheotomy and blood is running down the front of his shirt and Maggie is trying to pull his arm away from her waist so she will be let loose.

Behind Henry and Maggie is Beatrice. Her head is low and her shoulders slumped. She barely seems to be there at all.

Ian stands, pointing the 11-87 at Henry and walking around the front of the car. He feels wobbly on his legs, but he does not care and he does not move slowly. He cuts the distance between Henry and himself in half.

‘Let her go,’ he says.

‘So you can shoot me?’ Henry says, his voice little more than a frog’s croak. ‘No chance.’

‘I’m gonna shoot you anyway, you son of a bitch.’

Henry shakes his head. ‘You won’t risk killing your own daughter, Hunt.’

‘I said let her go.’

‘No. You’re not gonna risk shooting her. I know it and you know it. So just drop your gun. We’re walking to Ron’s car and we’re driving away and that’s the end of it. You lose, Hunt. You tried, but you lose.’

Henry takes several slow steps toward the parking lot where a white Toyota sits. His wife Beatrice walks behind him. Her eyes are wet with tears and glistening.

‘Put down your gun, Hunt.’

‘Let her go.’

‘Put it down or I’ll shoot her myself.’

He presses his pistol against Maggie’s temple.

Maggie looks at him with eyes filled not with fear but with anger. ‘No, Daddy! Don’t put it down! Don’t let him get away! Don’t let him take me away again! Please, just don’t let him take me away again!’

‘Shut up, Sarah,’ Henry says. ‘Put it down, Hunt, or she dies.’

Ian’s chest throbs with pain. He thinks he could probably get Henry. He could probably get Henry, but even the small chance of hitting Maggie makes him hesitate. He will not do that. He nods, more to himself than to Henry, and leans down to set the 11-87 on the ground. But as he stands, black dots swim before his eyes and the light seems to fade from the sky, as if night were falling all at once, and there is a brief moment during which he thinks he may pass out, just drop like a corseted lady in an old film, and then will come the gentlemen with fans, and all he can think is two words over and over again: not now not now not now not now.

And he manages, barely, to hold on to consciousness. Light runs back into the dome of the sky like liquid over an upturned glass bowl. He regains his balance.

‘Smart man,’ Henry says.

‘No,’ Maggie says. ‘
No!’

And she slams both her elbows back simultaneously into Henry. The left elbow sinks into his gut, and a strange sound explodes from Henry’s mouth, like a large dog letting go a single bark, and Maggie drops to the ground from his loosened grip. She drops to the ground and runs toward Ian. Her face is full of terror and joy.

Henry swings the pistol around toward her, and shouts, ‘Stop, Sarah, or I’ll—’

But that’s all he manages to get out before Ian reaches behind him—with a great tearing pain in his chest and back, as if a hot metal rod were pushed clean through him—and pulls out the sawed-off shotgun and swings it around so it’s pointing at Henry, and fires. It seems to happen in slow motion. First everything quickly—the elbow, the drop, the running—and then he grabs the shotgun and time slows like suddenly they were all moving through honey. Maggie seems to hang in the air between running steps and Henry’s arm is moving slowly—slowly—and his words sound like a seventy-eight playing at thirty-three and a third. The sound of Ian’s shotgun firing is extremely loud, and he can see the buckshot emerge. He can see the last few grains of gunpowder spit from the barrel behind the eight .36 inch pellets before they burn to nothing on the air. He can see smoke blue and thin curl from the barrel. Multiple cracks as the buckshot hits bone and tight groups of holes punch themselves into his face and head, and his skull seems to dent inward like an empty beer can as the contents splatter on the sun-bleached asphalt behind him as well as Beatrice’s face and hair and dress.

Then Maggie is jumping at Ian and he leans down to accept her hug. She wraps her arms around him and kisses him and says, ‘You’re bleeding, Daddy. You’re bleeding,’ and he kisses her cheeks and her eyes and her mouth and he can feel her heart beating against his stomach, and tears well in his eyes, the first time he has cried in a long time.

Henry falls to the ground and a puddle of blood spreads like a blanket beneath him.

‘Maggie,’ Ian says. ‘My Maggie.’

But then he sees Beatrice lean down and pick up Henry’s pistol and he swings the shotgun up, aiming at her. But he does not fire. He sees immediately that she does not intend to continue Henry’s fight. She stands and she looks toward them and tears well in her eyes as she says, ‘I’m sorry.’ Then she puts the pistol into her mouth.

It’s a semiautomatic and the safety’s off, so all she has to do is pull the trigger.

 

 

 

Diego walks down the street toward them and they wait, Ian and Maggie, with her small hand in his large hand. Ian looks down at her and smiles. She looks up at him and smiles back and her green eyes that could break your heart if she wanted them to smile also. He can hardly believe it is her hand he’s holding. His daughter. His little girl. His Maggie. He thinks of holding her on the day she was born. He thinks of standing over her crib and watching her sleep. He thinks of the first time she wrapped her tiny fist around his thumb. He thinks of changing her diapers. He thinks of her cradled in his arm, taking a bottle. No matter what happens next he knows what he’s done and what he’s become, it was a price worth paying. He would pay it twice and again if he had it still to give. And if there’s more to pay he will pay that too.

 

 

 

Diego looks sick. He is pale and sweaty and his eyes are far away.

‘I killed one of them,’ he says.

‘I’m sorry,’ Ian says. ‘I didn’t want you to have to do that.’

‘The bullet hit him right here.’ He touches his own cheek.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Right here,’ he says.

 

 

 

They take the white Toyota back to the falling-down house Ron lived in before he decided the world was no longer his home. Diego, Ian knows, would try to talk him into heading to a hospital if he weren’t lost inside himself, but he is, and Ian does not intend to go anywhere tonight. He is too tired. If he wakes up tomorrow he’ll think about it, but he believes he’s earned a few hours with his daughter. He believes she’s earned a few hours with her daddy.

They get to the house and open the door and go inside.

Diego finds a bedroom in the back and goes there and sits alone.

Maggie eats and talks and talks and talks, as if she has not spoken to a soul in years. Ian sits with her and listens. She tells him about the Nightmare World, and about counting till her head was filled with numbers so that the bad thoughts could not get in, and about how Henry’s brother Donald brought her books and even gave her lessons sometimes, in history and math, and about Borden and how he was her only friend, and about how she tried to escape, how she ran through the woods and how his voice, her daddy’s voice, gave her hope and made something in her that she thought was cold burn hot. She asks about Mommy and he tells her that Mommy is waiting for her return. He tells her that Mommy loves her very much. He tells her that Mommy will probably let her sleep in bed with her for a long time. He tells her that she is the strongest, bravest person he has ever met. He tells her that she is a miracle.

The hours they spend together are the best hours he’s ever lived and the truest, and when they fall asleep beside one another on the fold-out sofa-bed with Maggie’s head leaning against his shoulder and her small hand in his large hand he has a smile on his face and the dreams he dreams are of the future, a bright future full of joy and laughter.