Countdown (9 page)

Chandra, who had been sitting as far away from the rest as possible, as instructed, jumped up when she saw Mike fall from her own mama’s attack, and ran to him.

With tears in her eyes, Holly looked up at Jean and nodded. ‘I’m so sorry, Jean.’

‘Goddammit, Earl!’ Eunice said, turning on her son. ‘Why’d you go and do that for?’

‘I dunno, Mama! She just got up and I didn’t know what she was doing and I just sorta … you know … kinda shot her. It was an accident really.’ He looked at his mother sheepishly, then brightened and said, ‘Just like Darrell shooting Joynell! An accident!’

Eunice backhanded her son with her gun hand, busting his lip and starting the blackening process of his left eye. ‘Don’t you never compare yourself to Darrell! You ain’t a wart on that boy’s ass!’

‘Mama!’ Earl wailed, swiping at the blood coming from his busted lip. ‘Why you gotta say such mean things?’

Eunice sighed. ‘You just bring out the ornery in me, Earl.’ Turning away from him, she said mostly to herself, ‘You remind me too much of your stupid father.’ To her daughter, she said, ‘Good going, Marge, girl. At least you got some sense. Is that that damn waiter fella? Why’s he got a gun?’

Marge shrugged. ‘I dunno, Mama,’ she said. To her own daughter, Chandra, who was cradling the waiter’s head in what was left of her lap, Marge said, ‘Girl, get away from him! He’ll get you all bloody!’

Chandra gently laid Mike’s head on the floor and stood up, walking as close to her mama as she could get. She whispered, ‘Mama, he’s my baby’s daddy.’

Turning her mouth away from her own mama, Marge asked, ‘You diddled the waiter?’

‘Mama, he’s a cop. He came up here undercover,’ Chandra said.

‘Shit!’ Marge said, a little louder than she meant to. ‘Girl,’ she said, her voice now a whisper, ‘don’t tell your mee-maw or the boy’s dead for sure.’

Tears welled up in Chandra’s eyes. ‘Mama, we gotta do something! This has gotten way out of hand!’

Meanwhile, Jean turned on Eunice. ‘Look what you’ve done!’ she said, her voice loud, her body shaking with anger. ‘You need to call this off immediately before anyone else gets hurt! That man killed my friend! It was no accident and you know it—’

‘Shut the hell up,’ Eunice said in a tired voice. ‘I’m gonna kill you next myself. So go sit down. And you, bride-to-be, you go with her.’ She looked at Holly long and hard. ‘You love this man you’re marrying?’ she asked.

‘Yes, ma’am, with all my heart,’ Holly answered.

‘Lucky girl,’ Eunice said, turning back to the window. ‘I loved me a man once.’

Earl and Marge exchanged looks. She wasn’t talking about Daddy, Marge thought. There was never any love lost between those two. So, Marge set to thinking, Mama had her a man before Daddy. As the oldest of Eunice’s children, Marge couldn’t help but hope that maybe her real daddy hadn’t been a Blanton either. Maybe if she was only half-Blanton she’d have the guts – like her own daughter – to do something about this situation. She didn’t necessarily want her mama to meet a bloody end but, well, truth be known, it wouldn’t hurt much if she wasn’t around.

‘Ah, ma’am?’ Rex Kitchens said from the floor. ‘You think it’d be OK for me to get going now? I have another gig after this one.’

Eunice turned to him. ‘Gig? What’s a gig?’

‘Another performance. I’m a performer,’ Rex said proudly.

‘Well, you ain’t been performing none here.’ She turned to the other women. ‘Y’all wanna see this boy’s show?’

No one said anything. They looked at Eunice, horrified.

‘Marge, you and Earl wanna see his show?’

‘Sure, Mama,’ Earl said quickly. Feeling only half-Blanton, Marge just shrugged and looked away, then smiled to herself. Oh, yeah, she thought, I’m sure as hell not a full-blooded Blanton!

Eunice turned to the boy. ‘OK, whatja got?’

Rex stood up, a little uncertain. ‘Well, ma’am, let me get my boom box from over there.’

Eunice nodded her head and Rex went to a table near the front door where someone had placed the boom box. He brought it to the coffee table and turned on the music. ‘Baby Got Back’ came out loud and strong and Rex began to gyrate. Eunice frowned, wondering what kind of performance this was. When Rex pulled away his fireman’s suit, showing nothing but a G-string underneath, Eunice picked up a chair from the small table by the window and body-slammed the stripper. He went down in a heap as she began beating the boom box into submission.

Drew Gleeson and Jasper Thorne drew up to the Longbranch Memorial Hospital’s ambulance bay. Jumping out, they both opened the doors and helped the firefighter with the broken arm down, then let him walk in on his own, while the two EMTs dragged out the gurney holding the injured and unconscious pizza guy, pulled out its legs and rolled him into the hospital. They deposited the injured, Drew filled out and signed a couple of forms then, sirens blazing, Drew put the pedal to the metal and hauled ass toward Bishop. There hadn’t been any communication from anyone in Bishop yet, to his knowledge. Not even the firefighters and the two cops had radioed any information. But then he supposed he probably wouldn’t hear it – they’d be radioing their own people. It would have been polite to keep him in the loop, though, he thought.

Getting pissed about that helped to take his mind off Joynell, so he thought he’d get more pissed. Just get good and mad, he told himself. Maybe knock a few heads together. That would take care of some of the crap building up in his heart and his head.

He’d been just about ready to ask Joynell to leave Darrell. It hadn’t taken long, just these past two to three months for him to know that she was the one – the love of his life. He’d have given up his new job in a heartbeat if she’d said yes. Go back to Tulsa and get his old job back. It paid pretty well – not as good as his new job but well enough. Blantons didn’t venture far from home, so there’d be no fear of Darrell coming after them if they were in Tulsa. And if Joynell could have gotten a job they’d have done pretty well financially. She’d been a cafeteria lady at the elementary school not far from Blantonville when she’d met Darrell. She could probably have got another job like that, he thought. But that was not to be – not now that asshole Darrell Blanton had gone and killed her. Drew could hardly keep his anger in check, and it had little to do with the police and firefighters not keeping him in the loop. It was Blanton. That black-hearted SOB! He’d torn Drew’s own heart out with his selfish and cowardly act. At least he couldn’t hurt anyone anymore …

Get your mind off it! he yelled at himself. Stop thinking about her! It’s over. She’s gone. And then he found himself bawling and had to pull the ambulance over because he couldn’t see.

Johnny Mac studied the situation as the dog studied him. Cody, still lying in the slight depression in the forest floor, closed his eyes and hoped he wasn’t going to die.

Finally, Johnny Mac saw what he needed. About fifty yards from him was a tree limb that hadn’t been chopped up or defoliated from the storm. It was one of the rare elms in this part of Oklahoma (Johnny Mac, of course, being eleven years old, was not aware of this), and had large leaves and strong, smaller limbs. He could use it as a litter – get Cody on it somehow and pull him out of this mess!

He went over to Cody, whose eyes were still closed and said, ‘Cody? You dead?’

Cody opened his eyes. ‘Sure hope not,’ he said.

Johnny Mac breathed a sigh of relief. ‘You’re alive. Look, I found a bushy tree limb I think we can use as a litter—’

‘What’s a litter?’ Cody asked, his voice weak.

‘It’s something you can use to lay a person on and drag them out. Don’t you watch westerns?’

‘No, my dad likes Steven Seagal movies. I don’t think he makes westerns,’ Cody said. ‘But that litter thing – that sounds good.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Johnny Mac said. ‘But I’ve got to get you on it. What can you move?’

Cody lifted his left arm, then his right. ‘My arms,’ he said. He lifted his head. ‘My head,’ he said. He tried again to move his legs but nothing was happening until the left foot stretched out like Cody was trying to be a ballerina. ‘Hey! My foot!’ Cody smiled up at Johnny Mac and Johnny Mac smiled back.

‘Now we’re making progress!’ Johnny Mac said.

‘Woof!’ The golden retriever/Shetland barked in agreement.

Anthony and Dalton were both at the wall connecting their suite with the suite next door, both holding glasses to the wall and listening. They heard Jean berating the old bitch for killing her friend.

‘We need to call this in to Milt,’ Anthony whispered as he put down his glass and moved to the other side of the suite where the bathroom was. He went inside and shut the door, pulled out his cell phone and rang Milt.

‘Hey, what’s up?’ Milt asked.

‘They got Mike,’ Anthony said. ‘Hit him over the head. We all heard a gunshot. Mike got there first and rushed in and that’s when they got him—’

‘Who’d they shoot?’ Milt asked, his voice low but steely.

Anthony gulped in air and said, ‘We listened through the wall and heard your wife yelling at the old bitch about shooting her friend. I’m real sorry, Milt.’

‘My wife’s alive?’

‘Yes, sir. They shot her friend, and I think maybe she’s dead,’ Anthony said.

‘OK,’ Milt said. There was silence for a long moment.

‘Milt,’ Anthony said, ‘I think there may be a problem with Dalton. He’s losing it. I had to pull him away from the door before those people saw us. And I had to practically gag him and drag him into my suite.’

‘He’s in there with you now?’ Milt asked.

‘Yes, sir, but I’m in the bathroom with the door closed, so he can’t hear me,’ Anthony said.

‘You OK staying up there for a while?’ Milt asked.

‘Sure, yes, sir.’

‘Then send Dalton back down. And watch him to make sure he gets in the elevator.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Anthony said, and hung up.

Jean had gone to Catholic schools from kindergarten through to her senior year of high school. Her co-ed grammar school had given way to an all-girl high school. Her mother wanted her to go on to a convent after graduation and become a nun, but one of her teachers, Sister Mary Celeste, had told her, when Jean mentioned her mother’s wish, that it probably wasn’t a good idea.

‘You’re a cripple, Margaret Jean. We need girls of sound mind
and
body. Tell your mother it’s not going to happen,’ the nun had said.

Jean never told her mother this – it would have only hurt her to think that the church she loved so much wouldn’t accept her daughter as she was. Rose McDonnell had been steadfast in her belief that Margaret Jean could do anything she put her mind to – crutches or no crutches.

The all-girl high school had an associated all-boy high school, and the two would occasionally get together for parties and dances. Jean went because her mother insisted, but she was the very definition of a wallflower. She’d find a place to sit, lean her crutches against the nearest wall, and endure. During her freshman year she got asked to dance at least once at every get-together, but then the boy would notice the crutches; sometimes he would blush, sometimes he would just swagger away, but always he would leave. By her sophomore year, even the new boys had been told that Margaret Jean, sitting over there by herself, was a gimp. Stay away. By the time Jean graduated from high school, she hadn’t even talked to a boy – at least, not one related to her in some way – in two years.

So the day she’d walked onto the campus of Northwestern University had been an eye-opener. There’d been boys everywhere. Thin ones, fat ones, cute ones and not-so-cute ones. Everywhere. Then she’d walked into her dorm room, her mother and father carrying her belongings in behind her, and seen Paula for the first time. Four years of a private girls’ school and never a crush – until that moment. Beautiful, blonde, blue-eyed, voluptuous Paula, sitting on her single bed barefooted and her legs crossed, wearing short-shorts and a halter top. On seeing her, Jean’s father had turned immediately and left the room. John McDonnell (for whom Jean’s son would be named) didn’t believe in facing temptation. Better, he always said, to run from it like your feet were on fire.

Jean had lived a very sheltered life and, at seventeen, knew nothing about homosexuality. She just knew that her new roommate was one of the most fascinating girls she’d ever seen, and that she immediately liked her a lot. It would be a long time and many psychology classes later before Jean would be able to recognize what had been going on in her heart those first few months, maybe years, of her relationship with Paula. She had always been grateful that Paula had never noticed, or, more likely, since Paula had been quite worldly, had decided not to acknowledge it.

But now Jean couldn’t take her eyes off the body of her friend. The small carcass left on the floor didn’t look like it could possibly be that of the Paula of old. Jean could feel the tears burning the backs of her eyes. She couldn’t let them out – not here, not now. Not in front of this horrible old woman and her crazy-stupid son!

Next to her, Holly stood up. ‘Ma’am?’ she said, talking to the old woman.

Eunice sighed. ‘What now?’

‘Can we get something to cover up the body?’ Holly asked. ‘Like a blanket from one of the bedrooms? And maybe something for the waiter and that stripper boy. You know, like a cold compress or something?’

Eunice glanced down at the unconscious again stripper boy. ‘You order such a thing for your stupid party?’

‘No, ma’am,’ Holly answered. ‘It was a surprise party. I didn’t know anything about it.’

‘Humph,’ the old woman said. ‘Well, I just don’t truck with such things. A woman should only see the privates of her husband, not every Tom, Dick and Harry who wants to walk around dangling their dick! It’s just not proper!’ She sighed again and said, ‘Well, go ahead and get a blanket for the body.’ To her daughter, she said, ‘Marge, you go with her. I don’t know that there ain’t another door in the bedroom and she’s just sneaky enough to try to leave.’

‘Oh, no, ma’am!’ Holly said. ‘I’d never leave my friends—’

‘Just go!’ Eunice said.

So Marge led Holly out the living room and into the bedroom of the suite. Jean watched them go. Covering Paula wasn’t going to change anything. She’d still be there – stiff and lifeless under a blanket, instead of in plain view. Holly was right, of course, Jean thought. It was the respectful thing to do, not only for Paula but for the other women in the room. The civilians surely didn’t need to have that constantly in sight.