Glass crunches under a shoe. The firefighter standing in the door is a woman around twenty-five, she’s carrying a big EMT kit. She sees me, sees the gun. Freezes.
Too late, Henry. Too late to do anything now but run.
I tilt my head toward the street.
– The sheriffs out there yet?
She licks her lips.
– Not yet.
– How long?
– Couple minutes maybe.
I point at my leg.
– I need you to wrap this up. Quick.
She doesn’t move.
– It’s OK, you’re gonna be OK, I just need you to do your job.
She nods, walks over, kneels, and opens her kit. I reach down, grab the edges of the hole in my pant leg, and rip so she can get to the wound. She tears open a sterile pack and starts wiping blood away. I whine a little and grit my teeth. She stops and looks up at me.
– It’s OK, just hurry.
She looks at the wound.
– It needs stitches.
– Just bandage it, for Christ sake.
She starts wrapping my leg, going over the wound, and around the pant leg.
– The guy outside, next to the garage?
She’s concentrating on her work.
– Yeah?
– He alive?
– I don’t know, my partner’s on him. One of the neighbors said someone in the garage might be hurt. I came in here.
The wrap is done.
– Got any penicillin in there?
– Yeah.
– Better give me a shot.
She pulls out an ampoule, rips it out of its pack, and stabs me in the leg. I can hear another siren. The sheriffs. Time to go.
– Thanks.
I point at Danny.
– Why don’t you work on him and we’ll skip all the lying-on-the-floor-and-counting-to-a-hundred crap.
– OK.
She turns to Danny and takes his pulse. I open the door to the house.
STACY WAS a year behind me and Wade. She was a real good girl; honor roll, student government, extracurricular this and that. She was also the hottest chick in school. Being a star jock at school, I crossed paths with her brainy-but-popular crowd. I remember flirting with her once, not really trying to get anywhere except in the way teenage boys are always trying to get somewhere. But I didn’t try that hard. I didn’t have to try hard with any of the other chicks, so why bother with one who wanted me to work for it? What I thought. Wade’s crew of burnouts wouldn’t have crossed paths with her clique, wouldn’t have even had classes together, let alone social interaction. But I remember being baked with him in PE and watching her run track with the girls and him saying that if he could nail any chick in school she’d be the one. Man, I’d love to hear the story of how they hooked up in the first place. But Wade can’t tell me, and I can’t ask Stacy because she’s too busy right now beating me with her son’s hockey stick.
I STEP inside, close the door, and get one upside the head. I take a couple more weak blows before I get a grip on the stick and rip it out of her hands, and she comes at my face with her fingernails. I get my forearm in front of my face and shove her off as I run toward the back of the house. She keeps after me, beating on my back. I duck into the kitchen. Down the hall I catch a glimpse of her kids; the boy I saw before, another a few years younger, and a tiny little girl who’s going to grow up to look like her mom.
Stacy shoves me hard and I stumble into the kitchen as she runs toward her children.
– Get upstairs! Get to your rooms!
And that’s the last I see of her, herding the kids upstairs, away from the scary man. I head for the patio door at the back of the kitchen. Stop. There’s a pile of mail on the kitchen table. I flip through until I find what I want, and cram it in my back pocket. I go out the back, close the door behind me, and pause for a moment, staring back into the house. The Christmas tree and decorations, the Nativity scene, the mess of kids’ toys. Then the sheriff’s car sirens up in front of the house.
THEY’RE UP. With all the noise, how could they not be up? I come over the fence into the backyard, see the lights on inside, walk to the side of the house, and dump the guns over the gate into a bush in the front yard. I won’t carry a gun into my mother’s house. When I open the back door and come in limping, Mom starts to cry.
– Henry. Henry.
– It’s OK, I’m OK.
She’s shaking her head.
– Something woke us up, a crash and then, then, then.
She can’t talk, she’s crying too hard. Dad holds her.
– It sounded like guns out there, Hank.
I’m turning off the lights.
– I’m going to go away.
Mom buries her face in Dad’s chest. It sounds like she’s saying no over and over, but I’m not sure.
– The police are gonna know I’m here. I have to.
Dad is shaking his head.
– We can talk to the police, Hank, it’s time to stop this. It’s time to fix this.
– Dad.
– We can, we know people here, we can fix this and you can stop.
– Dad, listen.
He grabs me by the shoulders and looks into my eyes.
– You listen, son. Enough of this. It’s time for you to stop running from this trouble and do something about it.
I’ve never said no to my father, always done what he told me to do. I look back into his eyes.
– I killed people.
Whatever was going to come out of his mouth freezes in there, and dies.
– Some of the people they said I killed. I killed them. I’m a killer.
I go upstairs to my old room. I grab my money and the clothes I washed earlier and the phone Dylan gave me and I go back down. Dad is at the foot of the stairs, Mom next to him. Dad reaches for my hand as I come down, I pull it back.
– I need the keys to the shop.
He points at the table next to the front door. I grab the keys. I feel Mom’s hand on my back.
– Henry, oh my poor baby. Oh, baby.
She wraps her arms around me, and I feel Dad grab us both in his big arms and squeeze us together, trying to compress us into the one flesh we once were. But we are no longer. I am different. I pull myself free.
– Don’t try to protect me anymore. It’s not. I’m not worth it. Just.
Mom tries to hug me again, I look at Dad, he stops her.
– The police will be coming, tonight I think. You can’t lie about hiding me. Tell them you tried to get me to
