ah… read this article in a Nebraska paper. There was this man and woman who lived on a farm. With their son. A passing neighbor heard their cow bellowing to be milked, so he banged on the door and looked in through the window. Then he ran off for help. They found the woman dead. A broken neck. The man had been shot. Almost blown in half. ' He paused, but Matthew didn't respond, didn't even raise his head; his eyes remained lost in the shadows. 'The neighbor described Mrs. Dubchek as a decent, God-fearing woman, and the husband as a violent ne'er-do-well who was 'no stranger to the bottle. ' The son was nowhere to be found. The paper suggested that he might have been kidnapped by the murderers. Or maybe killed and buried somewhere. When he was asked about the boy, the neighbor couldn't give any useful description. 'Just a boy,' he said. 'Nothing special. ' ' B. J. leaned forward into the light. 'That neighbor was wrong, Matthew. The boy was very special indeed. And my heart goes out to him when I think of how he must have felt when he found his parents… like that. Or, even worse, maybe he actually witnessed the murders. What a burden of pain and horror he must be carrying inside him.'
Matthew lifted his head and looked into the space between B. J. and Ruth Lillian. He reached up and touched his temple with his fingertips, then his lips, then his hand fell into his lap. He swallowed dryly. When he spoke, he started in midstream, as though he had been talking for some time, but the words hadn't come out. '… so Ma, she'd spent the day with a neighbor lady because Pa'd beat her up real bad, and she wanted to get looking better before she came home because it used to make Pa mad to see her face beat up. Well, I… you know… I didn't want to be there alone with Pa, all drunk and smelling of whiskey and up-chuck so I… you know… I walked into town, just to get away for a while. But I didn't have any money, and it was getting dark and starting to rain, so I came back. And Ma was lying there on the floor with her head sort of sideways and… wrong. And he was standing over her, sobbing and clawing at his cheeks. What was going to happen to him? What would they do to him? He hadn't meant to hurt her! He'd just given her a little shake! He got ahold of my collar and pushed his face up close to mine and asked me what was he going to do? But I wouldn't look at him, so he let go of me and fell on his knees beside Ma, and he started moaning and rocking himself. He wasn't crying because Ma was dead! Only because of what they might do to him! And the smell of whiskey and up-chuck! I couldn't breathe. I couldn't see or breathe. He knelt there beside her, rocking and moaning. He didn't hold my poor broken mother and rock her. No, he just rocked himself! So I just… you know… I took his shotgun down and I said, 'Pa?' But he didn't look up, so I said, 'Pa?' again. And he still didn't look up, so I just… ' Matthew swallowed so hard that Ruth Lillian could hear it. His voice was full of tears, but his eyes remained dry… distant… empty. This was not what B. J. had expected to hear.
PRESSING BACK INTO THE deep shadow of the kitchen, Coots cocked his pistol and eased his head out toward the trapezoid of harsh light from the barroom. Two reflector storm lamps stood on the bar, their light directed toward the open kitchen door. They were so bright that it was hard to see past them, but he could make out Jeff Calder standing behind the bar, half-asleep on his feet. By stretching his neck a little more, Coots could see the backs of Bobby-My-Boy and Tiny sitting at a table on either side of Chinky, each with a hand in her lap. The 'deacons' were on their loafers' bench near the player piano, where Professor Murphy sat with his body twisted to avoid contact with Queeny, who leaned over his shoulder searching through the piano rolls, looking for a song that- Wait a minute. The storm lamps! Why were they set up on the bar, pointed toward-?
'They tell me you're called Coots,' Lieder whispered, his pistol pressed into the soft spot beneath Coots's ear. 'I like to know a man's name.'
'YOU ACTED ON THE spur of the moment, Matthew,' B. J. explained. 'The shock of seeing your mother lying there on the floor, and knowing that your own father had… Anybody might have done what you did. You've got to understand that, and you must try to forgive yourself. Oh, it's going to take a long time to get over what happened. Maybe you never will. But believe me, son, in time you'll find a way to live with it… or live around it. And any time you feel that talking things out might help, well, we're here and we-'
'After I… did it, I dropped the gun on the floor,' Matthew continued. Nothing B. J. had said had penetrated his mind. 'I couldn't pick it up. I tried, but I couldn't make myself touch it.'
'But you did pick it up,' Ruth Lillian said, hoping to guide him back to reality. 'You brought it here with you.'
He blinked and looked at her with a confused frown, as though realizing that fact for the first time. 'You're right. I… I brought it with me.'
'Why?' B. J. asked. 'Why'd you do that, Matthew?'
'I don't know. Maybe because it was Pa's. And because he never had any luck.'
Ruth Lillian repeated his words in a wondering whisper. 'Because your pa never had any luck… that's why you carried that gun more'n a hundred miles?'
He settled his eyes on her without answering. The storm was fleeing southeast as quickly as it had roared in from the northwest. The wind had suddenly fallen, and the last of the departing lightning billowed dimly within horizon clouds, followed at a long interval by the distant mutter of weary thunder.
'Matthew?' she repeated gently. 'Is that why you brought it?'
'I hate that gun, Ruth Lillian. I really and truly hate it. I don't ever want to see it nor touch it again!'
'And you don't have to,' B. J. assured him. 'You'll never have to touch that gun again. If you want, I'll go over to your place with you and we'll-What was that!'
A gunshot from across the street. Followed by five more shots, the rounds squeezed off at regular, unhurried intervals.
B. J. rushed to the window.
Having emptied his gun into the air to attract attention, Lieder was standing on the porch of the hotel, lit from behind by a tombstone-shaped slab of light formed by the open bat-winged doors.
The wind had died away, but that heavy, soaking rain that follows the trailing edge of mountain storms continued to drill down vertically, making such liquid din on glistening roofs and in mud- lathered puddles that Lieder had to cup his hands around his mouth and shout, 'I know you're out there, schoolteacher! Come out, come out, wherever you are! All-ye, all-ye ox-in-free!'
B. J. could make out two figures standing behind Lieder… his lackeys. And between them there was a tall- 'Oh, God,' B. J. whispered. 'Oh, God!'
'What is it?' Ruth Lillian asked.
They had Coots. His arms were bound to his sides, and he was standing on a chair beneath the central beam of the hotel porch. B. J. couldn't see clearly, but he knew from the way Coots was standing-up on his toes to relieve the pressure-that there was a rope around his neck, running tight over the beam. And there were other men crowded along the wall of the porch, Lieder's 'deacons'. Witnesses.
Lieder shouted again, but some of his words got lost in the noise of the rain. '… Coots here… guilty… assassination! You… last words with…?'
With an agonized cry, B. J. rushed from the window and pounded down the stairs to the darkened shop, stumbling at the bottom and ending up on his knees. He scrambled up and staggered on through the dark, catching his hip on the counter and upsetting a stack of cans. He reached the front door, which he shook until the spring bell above complained, but it was locked! 'Wait!' he cried. 'Wait!'
'Come out, come out, wherever you are!'
B. J. barged blindly through the store to the back door, clawed it open, and lurched out into a puddle being excavated by a thick rope of water falling from guttering overburdened with rain. 'Wait!'
Lieder had expected to see B. J. coming from the direction of the Livery, so he was surprised to see him emerge from between the Mercantile and the ruins of the Pair o' Dice Social Club, slithering in the mud.
'Well, now! What were you doing over at the Jew's? Come on, schoolteacher! Run! You can make it! Hurry up, there!'
'Wait!' B. J. rasped, his lungs screaming for air.
'Run!' Lieder set his foot against the chair on which Coots stood on his toes. 'Come on! Go it, schoolteacher! Attaboy! You can make it!' He kicked the chair out from under Coots. 'O-o-oh. Too late.' The crack of his neck was audible through the rain; his body jerked twice with such convulsive force that he broke the cotton clothesline that bound his arms; then he hung still, turning slowly, his hands cupped, knuckles forward, his toes turned inward. There was an eternity of human suffering in those bare, gnarled old feet… turning.
B. J. stumbled up the steps of the hotel and grasped Coots around the knees. He tried to lift the body to take the weight from the rope, but he couldn't: the knees and waist were limp. 'Help me!' he begged Tiny and Bobby- My-Boy, who looked on, interested. 'Somebody help me!' There was a nervous stir among the deacons, but no one stepped forward. B. J. hugged the knees to his chest and moaned.
