by Dean Ing
As he moved along the central hallway toward the back porch Bridger saw a flashlight beam sweep across the porch floor, and realized a man was entering the house. He ducked into a vacant bedroom while the beam speared sideways into the kitchen, and flattened himself against the wall listening to footsteps approach. The bedroom was entirely bare of furniture so he had no place to hide. When a deep male voice announced, “Austin city police,” every one of Bridger’s bones turned to oatmeal and leaked away somewhere. He could not have taken a step to save his life, but he could stand rigid as a plank against the wall waiting to be speared by that flashbeam, so that is what he did. There is no telling how long he might have lingered there if not for the single gunshot downstairs, which brought the police lieutenant running along the hall, his flashlight leading the way. The beam did not stray into the bedroom.
The beam did not stray into the bedroom! God bless Dom Pinero, thought Bridger, for creating a diversion to save his partner in crime. Medicated back to vigor by the ruckus of a policeman bounding downstairs into the basement, Bridger found his bones magically renewed in an instant. He darted back into the hallway and aimed himself toward the screen door, careened through it, then bore its remains along with him as he stumbled down the slippery outside steps.
Lightning is unruly and makes up its own mind when to strike, so it chose not to flash until Bridger had fallen to his knees beyond the steps, still wearing parts of the rickety door frame like a cloak. Squad cars of that time did an awful job of keeping moisture from the insides of windshields, so Hardin did not see Bridger emerge from the house. He quickly wiped his palm across the inside of the glass, which made him blink, because now the screen door was no longer in view. He did not notice the dark shape that slid ghostlike into Pinero’s panel van.
However, he was thunderstruck when the old vehicle’s starter began to whine ten yards away, and he came boiling out of the squad car while the van’s engine was still coughing to life. Bridger kept his headlights off and trusted the heavens to provide his light, but the van could only creep into motion before Hardin planted himself squarely in its path and aimed the riot gun.
Then the van moved faster, and Hardin did what he had to do. To Cade Bridger the flash and roar must have seemed like lightning and thunder combined.
Redmon heard a pistol shot fired in the basement, and an answering cry from somewhere near it, then descended the stairs two at a time. His gaze darted around him though he saw nothing move in his flashbeam, which now furnished more light than the oil lantern’s faint gleam. As he stood in a spreading puddle and sent the beam probing here and there, he found a concrete storm sewer at the height of his belt, the pipe so badly damaged that a man might climb through the hole into which a torrent was now pouring. In fact, he thought he could hear someone moving away. Maybe people moving away in both directions.
Meanwhile, the only thing of note in that basement was a sturdy old printing press, and unless his trained ear had lied, in the past few seconds someone outside had fired a ferocious blast that could only be a riot gun. He raced back upstairs because for Lieutenant Cotton Redmon, the voice of a riot gun was as serious as business can get.
With a boy pulling on each of Jackie’s arms, he managed to wiggle up through the manhole far enough that his chin was level with the pavement. None of the boys had breath to spare for shouting, and at this moment those flocks of shoplifted candy bars, those throngs of second helpings of mashed potatoes, those gangs of extra pounds Jackie wore to dominate other boys, all crammed him in place as a fleshy cork in a concrete bottle. Some regions of his broad circumference were free for water to drain, but his belt buckle scraped and so did his rump, so perhaps Pinero’s warning shot was, after all, a helpful one.
Charlie had no idea that Pinero or his weapon existed, and he flinched at the reduced yellow flash and report of the revolver in the pipe, thinking it seemed unfair that lightning could attack from such a place, but Jackie had seen the weapon and knew instantly what caused that searing pain across his backside. Aided by the bullet that grazed his bottom and two boys pulling him by the arms, he rocketed up from imprisonment with the shriek of a lost soul and set off for home without a word of thanks.
Two boys and a dog found themselves staring mystified into that vacated manhole. Aaron was first to admit his curiosity. “What just happened?”
“We were heroes, is what. Maybe something bit him,” Charlie said. “Your old ghost cat, maybe,” he added out of spite.
Aaron opened his mouth to counterattack but was struck dumb by a thunderous explosion and a wink of yellow light through the trees, not at all like lightning, from somewhere behind the bungalow. As the boys glanced toward the house they were astonished to see a dark shape materialize from the porch and hurtle out of sight. Seconds later Aaron offered some revised thoughts. “People are shooting real guns around here, guy. I think Jackie got shot.”
“Didn’t slow him down a lot,” Charlie said. “I bet Jackie will have to admit we’re heroes, too.”
As the rain began to pound them with less fury they gradually lowered their voices and Aaron spoke almost normally now. “You know what, Charlie, this isn’t a lot of fun anymore. I’m gonna see if I can sneak back in our house. This hero business can go to the devil, I think maybe I hear my mom calling.” He turned to leave but flung over his shoulder, “In fact, I wasn’t even here.”
“Me neither, if I can manage it,” said Charlie, and scratched his dog between the ears. Then they were gone.
CHAPTER 21:
PINERO’S FATE
During the few minutes Charlie needed to reach home the storm lurched away, and through its final sprinkles he heard his name called again and again. As he reached the backyard he sensed a note of panic in his mother’s cry of, “Don Charles Hardin!” Half-illuminated by the workbench light she stood gamely outside, but huddled beneath her umbrella, she somehow appeared smaller than usual.
“I’m here,” he called, managing in those two short words to include overtones of, I’ve been right here under your nose, where else would I be, why would anybody suspect I might be somewhere else, trotting into her view a few steps behind Lint. When his mother saw him, the furrows at her brow relaxed and made him five years old. “I’m with Lint,” he said, as if she couldn’t see that for herself.
“So I noticed,” she said, and drew herself erect with perhaps more self-control than necessary. “This seems to be a night for all my menfolk to go scooting off to worry me half to death.” Then, as Lint made a major production of shaking himself dry, she went on more gently, “I’ve been calling you two for ages.”
“I didn’t know where he was,” said Charlie, who knew perfectly well that an age, for his mother, could be half a minute or half a day. He busied himself with an old bath towel from under the garage workbench, first drying his head, then applying the towel to Lint.
“Of course,” said his mother, and bent to pat the dog. “Poor little scalawag, I didn’t think about how all that thunder felt to his ears. It’s a wonder he didn’t crawl under a house somewhere. Where was he?”
“Just right down the street,” he said, hoping she didn’t reflect that the creek was also down the street, and so was the other side of town, and so were Dallas and Mars. “I got nearly as wet as he did. See?” He made a display of his obvious condition. “I didn’t know I was gonna get this wet.”
“Charlie, fish in the sea don’t get that wet,” she scoffed. “You might let me know next time before you run off like that in the worst thunderstorm we’ve had in years. Now get yourself into my kitchen and out of those soggy things, and be glad your father can’t see you looking like a drowned rag-picker.”
Charlie produced a puddle on the kitchen linoleum by simply standing there, and put on dry clothes as his mother brought them. Meanwhile she continued to vent aloud all the worries she had collected during the short time when she understood that her only son was missing, at night, with a knockdown-and-dragout lightning extrav
aganza directly overhead. In her relief she allowed herself to believe that Charlie had remained at home for all but a few moments, catching the frightened terrier after a brief search, while rain soaked them both like a pair of sponges.
By the time he took the first slurp from his cup of hot chocolate, Charlie liked his mother’s version of his absence so well he saw no reason to improve it. There were things to be said for another boy’s rescue, but the truth would have filled a five-gallon bucket with questions Charlie didn’t want to answer. Besides, he could name folks who might argue that more glory would have resulted from not saving Jackie Rhett’s ample bacon.
And had Jackie really been in danger? The answer might never be known, and the least dependable source of missing facts would be Jackie himself. Maybe that little yellow flash and bang had been only a firecracker; maybe the big flash had been one too. And whatever Jackie might claim, he hadn’t trapped himself down there on purpose. Charlie wondered what his father would make of it all, and entertained a hope that Jackie had run away.
That hope died an hour later when his mother answered the telephone. From dramatizing a Captain America comic book at his desk by supplying the pow and bam noises, Charlie began to turn the pages very, very quietly. He learned from his mother’s replies that Coleman Hardin was curious as to their son’s whereabouts. “He’s in his room,” she said, and listened for a moment. Then, “I caught him chasing after the dog in the rain like a ninny, but they’re both fine. Will you be home soon?”
The answer made her gasp. “Hospital! Are you hurt?” Charlie’s blood froze, but regained its warmth when she went on. “The same boy? That’s just awful . . . Oh. But I thought all gunshot wounds were serious . . . And then you’ll be home, hon?”
Her wait was longer this time. Then, “Oh my lordy, you might’ve been killed. A gang of counterfeiters with guns is hardly a problem to leave with my husband . . . You didn’t!” Now she laughed aloud. “Well, I’m glad it was only a tire . . . No, he’s been playing in the garage by himself this evening. I’m sure he was with the Fischer boy this afternoon, I suppose you can ask him if you’re home before bedtime.”
From all this, it seemed likely to Charlie that he would be answering questions about the Ice House and his encounter with the crazy man, and he quickly decided that this had been a very long day. When Willa Hardin finally replaced the telephone in its cradle, she noticed that the light was off in Charlie’s room. Opening his door, she called to him softly—twice—then assumed he was asleep and breathed a little prayer of thanks for a son who slept so full of carefree innocence.
Charlie awoke to find his father’s fingers tousling his hair while early morning light bathed his room. Coleman Hardin sat on the edge of Charlie’s bed, still wearing his suit from the previous night. In quick succession, a hundred details freight-trained through Charlie’s memory and his first impulse begged him to find some illness he could claim. But his dad looked as if he needed sleep, and the squeeze on Charlie’s shoulder was gentle, and those things made a difference. “You and Aaron had a busy day yesterday, son,” said his dad, and Charlie nodded.
“You know old Mr. Yansen?” To this, Charlie shook his head with evident puzzlement. His dad tried again. “Immigrant; owns the little grocery down on Sixth.”
“Oh. Ice House,” Charlie said, stifling a yawn. He waited for his father to continue. Finally he sensed that his father already knew a great deal, and was giving Charlie a chance to confirm it. “Yessir. I was, uh, gonna tell you.” His dad lifted an eyebrow and Charlie added, “Later, though.”
“Someday after I retire, you mean.”
“Before that. Old guy scared us plumb to splinters about jail and stuff when all we did was find some money that looked funny. We just wanted to see what it was good for.”
His dad issued the ghost of a smile. “That’s what they call it sometimes; funny money. Not funny at all, though; the official word is counterfeit, and passing it is a federal crime. Mr. Yansen could have put you in serious—well, never mind, he didn’t, and you boys gave him some story about finding it, and the man who attacked you to get it back was one of the gang that printed it.”
“We didn’t swipe it,” Charlie objected. “We really did find it.”
“In the house where it was printed,” said his dad, sighing.
“We never!” Suddenly Charlie was supremely glad that he hadn’t clambered down those few steps into the basement. “Nossir, we never once went in that ol’ house. Right outside it, though. Main thing we did was knock on their door to ask if what we found was real.”
Now his dad managed a chuckle. “At the haunted bank, I suppose.”
It seemed as if the old grocer had perfect recall of yesterday’s conversations, and Charlie felt that his dignity lacked support. “Aw, we didn’t think it really had ghosts and stuff, even if we figured it might be a bank, but nobody ever came to the door, so we all went to the Ice House to ask Mr. What’shisname.”
“All?”
“Me and Aaron and Lint. Dad, you never saw a dog stand up for a guy the way he did.”
“Wonders never cease. And Mr. Bridger followed you.”
“I dunno who he was, but he stunk and he acted crazy, and he tried to kick the slats out of my dog,” Charlie said, indignant.
“We have Mr. Yansen’s word on that,” said his dad. “Pretty much as you say. Did you follow Bridger?”
“Huh! Follow a crazy man? Not hardly, I never saw him again. After the Ice House guy bawled us out we ran home. Then Mom sent me to Checker Front and I saw Jackie. I told him a lot of stuff about the fake money, mostly baloney like the stuff he’s always telling.”
His dad nodded to himself and thought for a moment before, “You told him a lot of bull,” he said, with that familiar accusing eyebrow trick.
“All the time, Dad. He tells us a lotta bull, we tell him a lotta bull,” Charlie said. “You know Jackie Rhett?”
“Better than you think, sonny boy. It’ll suit me if you avoid young Master Rhett after this. You won’t see him for a while in any case, Charlie; he got his rump nicked by a bullet last night.” Charlie’s open-mouthed silent “oh” was genuine, and satisfactory to his dad. “He was lucky at that. He’ll recover at home, but he won’t sleep on his back for a while, I’m afraid.”
Charlie suspected his dad was squelching a smile when he looked away, and to direct the discussion elsewhere he said, “Did the nutty guy shoot him?”
“Bridger? No, it seems that Mr. Bridger was on his way out of the house to make my acquaintance, even though he didn’t know it yet. Another man did the shooting, Charlie, we think it was a really bad egg named Pinero. We have the name from Bridger, and that poor fool is behind bars.” His dad vented a yawn that equaled three of Charlie’s. “We’ll know if it’s Pinero soon; whoever it was, he used up all his luck getting away to a creek in full flood.”
Charlie considered the little yellow flashbang from the storm grating, which had evidently been a sure-enough gunshot, and recalled the much larger one. “Did somebody shoot him?”
Charlie’s dad considered the question briefly, dry-washing his face with both hands, then shrugged. “That’s probably what the morning paper will say, because I fired a riot gun for the first time in my life and woke up everybody in town, I’m sorry to say, but all I did was blow Bridger’s front tire to kingdom come.” Charlie’s father looked away at nothing for a long moment, then nodded again. “It must’ve changed his mind about trying to run; when I killed his tire he just eased out of the car and lay down on his face in the mud.”
“You say the other guy got away,” Charlie prodded.
His father’s denial began with a headshake. “Not very far.” More slowly: “Couple of hours ago, while Shoal Creek was settling down about dawn, an officer spotted him tangled in some bushes. Not much doubt he had tried to escape down that storm sewer because he was weighted down by the kind of engravings counterfeiters use.”
Charlie sat up, and needed t
wo tries to say it: “Alive?”
The reply was soft, almost respectful. “Not after a few hours face down in water, son. I don’t suppose it matters whether he drowned or cracked his head open or whatnot.” Now Charlie and his dad were face to face, and each of them appeared to have aged. “Charlie, you’ve been in that old storm sewer.” This was spoken without heat or scorn.
Charlie dropped his gaze. “Yessir.” Measuring the next words as if they cost him a dollar apiece: “Lots of times.”
When the only response was a sigh and a glance toward the ceiling, Charlie said, “How could you tell?”
More to himself than to Charlie: “Confounded nuisance. I mean to have bars welded across it.” Then, putting a hand on his son’s shoulder: “For any boy of mine it’s bait, Charlie. It has to be irresistible to a daredevil, and I know my son. Muttonhead.”
Then Charlie gripped his father, and it was returned, in a hug more fierce than any in his memory. Finally he said, “I’m not gonna do it again, Dad. Not ever. We were just dumb.”
His dad stood up and grinned back at him. “You and who?”
“Me and Lint,” said Charlie, but he was blushing.
“And you’re worried that I’ll start asking whether young Fischer took any part in this.” Charlie’s nod was silent. “Maybe you ought to worry a little, son. Get a small taste of what your parents go through about three hundred and sixty-five times a year.” But he didn’t ask about Aaron.
“I get it. Thanks, Dad,” said Charlie, reaching for his blue jeans. “Really. You know what? I’m glad all this stuff happened. Last time you and me talked this long together was, uh, maybe not ever.”
“Only a few minutes,” said Hardin, glancing at his wristwatch.