Butch heard the cry once more and started slowly backing up toward Whitney’s position on the ambulance back bumper.
Dale crossed under the yellow police tape between the two fire trucks and loudly called again, “Brooke!”, then sat on the rear deck of one of the trucks. Tears welled up in his eyes as he spoke out to her. “I just wanted you to be with me!” He removed his gun from his pants and painfully confessed, “I wanted us to have our kid and make it outta here.” Peeking around the corner of the fire truck, he noticed Danny being led to one of the ambulances. He, too, started walking directly toward the ambulances with his gun in his right hand, tucked up under his left arm. “Brooke!” he shouted once more. To most of the police and emergency personnel, a person calling out for someone at the scene of an accident was nothing new, but to Butch, Danny, and Whitney, it was a sign.
Danny turned his head to see Dale as he again shouted, “Brooke!” He scoured the crowd for Butch, but could only see Whitney, sitting open and exposed on the ambulance rear bumper.
“Brooke! I love you!” Dale yelled a mere twenty yards away.
Upon hearing the name yelled once more, Butch stepped out from behind the ambulance door just in time to see Dale raise his gun and pull the trigger, firing off one round. Instead of striking Whitney, the bullet found its way to Butch’s chest. Butch fell to the ground as the police opened fire on Dale. His body was riddled with speeding bullets that tore away at his flesh.
“No!” Danny screamed and watched Butch’s body slump to the ground. For a moment, he was ten years old again, reliving the moment Tommy Lee was shot in front of his own eyes.
Whitney fell to the ground, clinging to Butch’s arm as he gasped for breath. A paramedic rushed to his side and shouted, “He’s alive! Get me a stretcher!” Whitney laid Butch’s head in her lap and stroked his hair as she wept. Danny quickly hobbled to Butch’s side as the paramedics tended to his wound. Danny lowered his knee into a puddle of Butch’s blood that had dripped onto the asphalt.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he wept, clutching Butch’s hand.
“This is kinda how we first met! Remember?” Butch asked, smiling wearily. “C’mon, what’s to be sorry for? You gave me back my dad. You’re my friend.”
Danny heard Dale screaming in pain as police and paramedics surrounded him.
“I know that if your daddy were here right now…” Butch said, reaching up to stroke his friends face, “…he’d be proud of you… ’Cuz if you were my boy I’d be proud o’ you!” He turned to Whitney and said with a wink, “Hey, girl! You gotta take care o’ my boy!” Butch turned his eyes back to Danny and asked, “You know I love ya, right?”
Danny nodded his head as he and Whitney both began to sob heavily. “And you know…” he started, but never finished his thought. Butch died with his hand in Danny’s and his head on Whitney’s lap.
The silence was broken by Dale’s screams. “Brooke! Brooke, I love you!”
As he looked over his shoulder at Dale and the care being administered to him, Danny’s heart erupted, dark with rage. In his mind he saw the faces of his childhood friends, Tommy, Brooke, and the faces of Dale’s other victims. He reached over Butch’s body and took the pearl-handled .9 millimeter from his hand. Whitney watched as Danny’s face suddenly lost all expression.
“Danny?” she said, her voice filled with panic and concern.
He looked at her with lifeless eyes, not saying a word.
“Danny!” she firmly said. “Stop this right now!”
He turned away and painfully struggled to his feet. Danny looked down at the gun, removed the safety, and pulled back the barrel to load a bullet. A few officers noticed Danny walking toward Dale and the EMTs, then spied the gun in his hand.
“Freeze!” one of them shouted and drew his gun, alerting the other officers who, in turn, drew their guns.
“Danny!” Whitney screamed, still holding Butch’s head in her lap “Danny! Stop! Don’t!”
Danny kept walking toward the paramedics, who abandoned Dale and fled for safety.
“Freeze!” they again demanded and shouted. “Drop the gun!”
Danny, oblivious to their orders, rewound the images of himself sitting in the floorboard of his father’s squad car and the knock on the window. He remembered his father, standing in the freezing rain, smiling and telling him that everything was okay, then his head disappeared.
Whitney removed Butch’s head from her lap and clumsily rushed to Danny, begging, “Please, Danny, stop!” She wrapped her arms around his waist and struggled desperately to restrain him, but he was too focused and much too strong. He dragged her behind him as he approached Dale.
The officers yelled at Whitney, “Ma’am, stay down!” But she, too, wouldn’t listen.
Whitney jumped up in front of Danny as he stood over Dale. She threw her arms around his neck and whispered softly in his ear, “Danny, baby…please…don’t do this. I love you!”
“Brooke!” Dale called out somewhat apologetically when he saw Whitney standing above him. “I just wanted us to be happy. I miss you so much!”
Danny slowly lowered his gun then tossed it to the side as Pastor Brock’s words spoke to his heart. Therefore let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you!
Danny tried to suppress his tears upon remembering the sermon and coming to the realization of what he must do. He reached out for Whitney’s hand and both squatted down over Dale, each taking one of his hands. Danny lowered his head, closed his eyes, and began reciting, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done…”
The dying sociopath opened his eyes and looked lovingly upon Danny and Whitney. He smiled to himself, breathed a sigh of contentment, and was gone.
AND ALL FLESH SHALL BE MADE NEW
I t was Sunday morning and Pastor Cregan was addressing his congregation. “If you’d please turn in your Bibles to the book of Ephesians, chapter six, as we learn of God’s instructions on how we are to prepare ourselves for spiritual battle.”
A whimpering infant temporarily disrupted the quiet, attentive congregation. Danny gently took his tiny baby boy, Cleo Lee, from Whitney’s arms. The beautiful child always seemed to fall asleep faster when being rocked in his daddy’s arms.
The Folds Page 29