by Catie Rhodes
“Thank you all for coming out tonight, and thank you for your votes.” Dean played his good ol’ boy accent to the hilt, drawling over his constants and dropping the endings of some words. “I only hope I can prove myself worthy of your confidence—” The crowd interrupted him with wild cheers.
Dean and I exchanged a glance. My heart swelled at the joy in his face. I gave him an impulsive kiss on the cheek, and his constituents hollered even louder.
A dark murmur roiled though the back of the crowd. I squinted into the blinding lights, unable to see what made them switch gears. Dean and I exchanged a worried glance. One woman screamed, then another.
“Stop right there,” Memaw shouted, her words ending in a hacking cough. Gunfire boomed, and the first screams sullied the night.
People ran every which way, their movements like a slow motion film. Deputy Brittany rose from her seat so fast the metal chair fell over, clanging on the wood. She unholstered her pistol and ran to the edge of the stage, squinting her eyes, just as blind as I was. She held her weapon in both hands but didn’t raise it. I didn’t blame her. Though most folks were running for their lives, she’d have never wanted to fire into a crowd of mostly innocent people.
“Memaw? You all right?” I pushed my way to the edge of the stage to look for Memaw, Dean right next to me. He threw one arm out and tried to shove me behind him. I elbowed him aside. Didn’t he understand my grandmother might be hurt? “Memaw?”
Dean, who really was stronger than me, managed to shove me behind him. As he did, a voice came from directly below us.
“Die, witch!” The gun went off again and footsteps smacked against the concrete as whoever did the shooting retreated into the darkness.
Brittany Watson jumped off the stage and disappeared into the darkness screaming, “Backup! I need backup! Deputy Fitzgerald? Where are you?”
Deputy Fitzgerald came from around the side of the stage and ran after Brittany.
Dean stared at me, his eyes wide and brimming with tears. One shaking hand went to a spot on his chest, and he slowly sank to his knees. I dropped next to him, putting my hand over his.
“Help us,” I hollered to nobody in particular, still wondering where Memaw was.
Blood soaked through Dean’s uniform shirt fast, too fast. Wade Hill could save him, same as he saved me on the side of the road. This time I wasn’t too late.
Everything in me went into overdrive. I needed Wade to save Dean. I leapt to my feet and ran to the edge of the stage. “Wade Hill, I need you. Please help me.” My screams ate at the tender lining of my throat with jagged teeth, leaving it raw and burning.
Wade came right away, as though he’d been near all along. He climbed onto the stage as though it was no more than an inconveniently large step.
“Come on. We have to save Dean.” I held my arm out to him, willing him to hurry.
The bright stage lights against the inky night made Wade Hill’s dark eyes unreadable. His still face betrayed no emotion, and his silence chilled me. He pulled me against him, clapping one heavy arm over me. “Just stay here with me. It’ll be all right.”
“He’s bleeding to death,” I twisted in his embrace and yelled into his face, grabbing his arm dragging him with me. He resisted at first, tugging against me, but I turned and yelled, “Memaw says we always help others when they need it, even if we don’t want to. You’re going to help me help Dean.”
He winced and followed willingly, head hanging low. I couldn’t believe he’d be willing to let Dean bleed to death because they didn’t get along. I glanced back, making sure he was still following, and was struck again by the way he slumped and took slow steps. How could helping someone be such a bad thing? We pushed through the semi-circle of people fanned helplessly around Dr. Longstreet and Dean.
“Move!” I yelled at Dr. Longstreet’s back. He turned, eyes widening, and scrambled out of the way.
Wade and I knelt in the puddle of blood spreading around Dean. I put my hands over the bubbling wound on his chest. The black opal against my breastbone began to warm.
“I’m here.” I choked on the words. “I’m gonna save you.” I reached for the power of the black opal, finding its burning light with no problem and latching onto it. The stone heated on my chest, much faster than when it reached out to me. I turned to Wade. “Do it.”
He blinked once, the movement maddeningly slow. “You sure?”
“Yes!” The warm spot began to sting. I tried to brush away the discomfort, but it stayed. Ignoring it, I focused on Dean’s fluttering eyes. He had seconds left. What was Wade’s problem? I nudged him with my elbow.
The spot on my chest where the black opal rested throbbed and ached. I thought I smelled something burning. Maybe my own skin. I reached under my shirt with trembling fingers and found the black opal pendant. Its intent leaked into me, as clear as my own thoughts. It wanted to save Dean, the great-grandson of its previous owner. I closed my fist around the burning stone and used the other hand to grip Wade’s wrist.
He jumped and cried out when the magic poured into him. A hot summer wind rushed over us, and Wade’s skin began to glow from inside. He repeated his words with more force. I concentrated on pumping the black opal’s power into Wade, shaking with the effort it took.
Wade put his hands on Dean, his lips already moving. This time I caught a few of the words, especially when he said, “Live.”
“Stay back, folks,” Dr. Longstreet shouted. I half turned to see a bank of legs standing around us, recognizing both Rainey and Hannah’s fancy high-heeled shoes, along with Hooty’s shiny dress shoes. They were blocking the view of us from anybody still hanging around.
When I brought my attention back to Dean, I saw the blood running out of his chest had slowed to a trickle. I pushed his shirt open, horrified at the hole there. Wade put his hand over the hole, and said his words again, closing his eyes. A vein pulsed in his neck, and he spoke the words again. The bullet came to the surface of Dean’s skin and pushed its way out. It rolled off his skin and clattered to the wood floor of the stage. Someone behind me gasped. I stared at the wound. Blood no longer even trickled from it. Either Dean was dead or we’d done it, saved him. Wade pushed to his feet, shoved his way to the edge of the stage, and fell to his hands and knees to vomit noisily over the side. He stayed in his crouch, shivering all over and rocking back and forth. The pulsing magic slowed its circuit through me and finally faded. Without it to bolster me, a heavy tide of exhaustion rolled in. I slumped and had to hold myself up with one shaking arm.
“I’ll take over.” Dr. Longstreet’s voice came from right next to me. “We need to get him to the hospital immediately. Get more blood in him.”
I felt hands under my arms, pulling me away so the emergency workers could get to Dean. Brittany deposited me next to Wade, who still rocked back and forth at the edge of the stage. She paused for a second, her face so full of pity I thought for a second Dean had died. Then her cousin, Roland, the medic, gave me a thumbs up and a wink. Fatigue pressed down on me, a heavier weight than I’d ever felt. The black opal had helped me, but that much magic flowing through me had taken its toll on both Wade and me. I’d have to worry about Brittany later. I turned to Wade.
“Headache.” He rubbed at his temples and neck, his face so pale his dark beard created a sharp contrast against his face.
“We did it. We saved him.” I squeezed his hand. “Thank you. I can never thank you enough.”
Wade said nothing. At first, I thought it was because he was out of breath, too. But, even after his breathing slowed back to normal, he still didn’t speak.
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Probably not. Look, I need to tell you something.”
A few feet away, the EMS workers put Dean into the ambulance and drove away, sirens wailing for the entire block and a half to the hospital. The action died down quickly. I realized I never knew who did the shooting. Rainey Bruce approached us, her face streaked wi
th tears.
“I’m so sorry, Peri Jean.” She hugged me.
Sorry for what? Isn’t Dean alive?
“Who did it?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice had all the inflection of a robot.
I couldn’t speak. I glanced at Wade, looking for an explanation.
“Peri Jean, there’s no easy way to say this.” Wade put one hand over his mouth, wiping at his beard. “Your grandmother was shot, too.”
I jumped to my feet and swayed, nearly falling to the ground. My nerves stretched to the brink, pulling me in a dozen different directions. Rainey grabbed my elbow and held me up. I took in her tear-streaked face, asking for confirmation. She nodded.
“How? Why?” My mind rejected the information. If I asked enough questions, surely I could make Wade’s words untrue. I knew the folly of my thinking, but I couldn’t stop myself.
“The shooter had the gun pointed at you,” Wade said. “Your grandmother grabbed her arm and got in front of her.”
Rainey took a long shuddering breath. “This is so awful,” she sobbed.
Then it hit home. Memaw had been shot just like Dean. Maybe she needed help. Wade and I could help her. I’d use the last of my strength to save her.
“Where is she?”
“King took her to the hospital.” Wade’s voice still had an odd, toneless quality.
“Come on, then. We have to get over there.”
Wade simply stared at me, his shoulders rounded, the expression in his eyes battle weary.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“Shot in the head. Point blank range. Too much damage to—” He choked on his words and put his hands over his face and sobbed.
Anguish kindled and mounted into an inferno in a matter of seconds. Someone wailed in the background. One look at Rainey Bruce’s face told me the howler was me. I took off running, leaving Wade and Rainey on the courthouse square.
By the time I reached the hospital, my breath came in harsh gasps from battling the suffocating humidity. Sweat beaded and ran down my body, tickling as it went. I slammed into the emergency room, looking for Memaw. Wade shouldn’t be far behind me. He was wrong. There had to be a way to fix Memaw. Together, we could fix her the same way we fixed Dean. King sat in one of the orange chairs, his gray head bowed and his hands clasped between his knees. He raised his head at the sound of my footfalls. Our eyes met, and I saw the answer in their dull depths.
“No.” I howled the word, letting it drag out until I ran out of breath. King stared at me, face expressionless, neither shocked nor impressed at my show.
“Dead on arrival.” His voice was gritty and dry like he’d been crying. One glance at the tear streaks on his cheeks told the story. “I tried to get in front of her. Didn’t realize what was happening in time.”
I sank to my knees in front of him, shaking my head. I wailed my disbelief and beat my fists on the floor as my world sank into the abyss. No more Memaw. The cooking and crochet lessons, the talks about life and God, the private jokes—all gone in a flash. I cried harder than I ever remembered crying, chest straining with the effort of it, head pounding from the force of it.
“Ma’am? You can’t do that in here,” a voice said from behind me. “We have a chapel if you’d like to—”
“You say one more word, you heartless bitch, and I’ll cold cock you myself.” King’s voice remained light and calm, but I didn’t doubt him.
“I’m calling the sheriff,” she said.
King grabbed me by one arm and dragged me out of the room. My tear-blurred eyes roved over a sea of horrified faces. Many held sympathy, but all I saw were the people who’d made fun of me all my life. Once outside, King lit a cigarette and jammed it between my lips.
“Straighten up. Get a-hold of yourself. Quit acting like a fucking baby.” He tried to force me to stand up straight. I curled in on myself, trying to get away from him. He held my wrist in an iron grip and gave me a hard shake.
“You think you were the only person who loved that old lady?” he shouted, his voice nearly lost in the roar of blood rushing in my ears. “Hell, there wasn’t a dry eye in that emergency room, ‘cept maybe that mean bitch who run us off. She’s cold as a dildo’s been in the freezer for a month.”
I glared at him through my tears. He hadn’t loved Memaw like I had and couldn’t possibility understand. “It’s my fault she’s dead. Wade said the shooter pointed the gun at me.”
“There is no way Miss Leticia could have stood watching you be shot and die in front of her. Any parent would have done the same.” He gripped my shoulder, probably getting ready to shake me some more, but I jerked away from him.
“But my grandmother’s dead,” I sank on the ground and choked back the ache in my throat. “I wasn’t…ready.” A black hole of pain opened up in my chest, sucking bits and pieces of me into it. The parts of me it left behind bled and screamed in blind pain. My face burned, and I wanted to puke. I wanted to take back all the awful choices I’d made. But I couldn’t.
“You’re never ready.” He knelt next to me. I couldn’t let myself focus on the sadness in his voice. I wanted to be mad at King, to pound him with my fists and yell in his face. I had the energy to do none of it. I felt devoid of even the gumption to keep breathing.
A flicker of light, too bright for this nasty old parking lot, drew my gaze. A young couple approached the electric doors and passed through them as though they weren’t even there. The girl wore a full skirt which fluffed out like it had a petticoat underneath. The boy wore khaki pants short enough to show his white socks and loafers. The couple might have been going to a costume party featuring the nifty fifties as its theme, but they weren’t. They were my grandparents, so young I barely recognized them.
The last I’d seen of my grandfather’s ghost, he’d been a middle-aged man, broad shouldered, face weathered by sun and circumstance. All those scars of living had dropped away. His unlined skin glowed under his bryl-creamed pompadour, his spade sideburns cutting an angle down his jawbones. They stopped a few feet from me, hands clasped. I stilled the same way I would have if I’d crossed paths with a deer and wanted to watch it a few moments before it ran off. I drank in Memaw, staring at her dark eyes and her Liz Taylor haircut. She’d been so beautiful before life wore her down, and she was so again, her face full of light as she smiled up at my grandfather, barely sparing a glance at me.
“Well, I’ll be,” King whispered beside me. I took in the wonder on his face and guessed he could see them, too.
Memaw turned to me, smiling at me more like we were old friends who’d gone to school together than grandmother and granddaughter. She’d changed and was ready to move on down a new road, one with no cancer or pain or loss to make it rocky. She motioned me to get up and approach her. I did, taking slow, small steps, fearful of popping the bubble of this encounter. Her love covered me, hugging me without touching me. She leaned close and opened her hand. Inside was a butterfly. It moved its wings and rose into the black night. Memaw winked and gave my grandfather’s hand a tug. He nodded and waved to me. Sobs shook my body, and I clasped my arms around my chest and watched them walk out of the parking lot and down the street. Finally, they disappeared with a little pop of light.
“I don’t have anybody left,” I whispered.
“Your grandma was sort of one of us.” King put his hands on his hips, heaved out a sigh, and spoke as though he was giving me his last penny. “In her honor, if you ever need my help, ask.”
Corman came to stand next to me. “I second what Daddy said. You come to us if you need us. No strings attached.”
Wade put one arm around me and yanked me against him. He smelled sour and sick, but I hugged him anyway. Hannah slammed out the door, tears streaking down her face.
“Oh, thank God, you’re all right.” She ran at me and threw her arms around me, holding me so tight it hurt. She pulled back and stared at my face. “Is it true about Memaw?”
I said nothing but felt m
y lips tremble.
Hannah threw back her head and cried loud whooping sobs like a child who’d fallen off the swing set. It was then I let myself sift through what I knew about the last moments of Memaw’s life. I hadn’t seen anything, but I heard enough.
The shooter screamed Die, witch. It was my fault. Whatever time Memaw had left was cut short by me being me. Die, witch. I did nothing but get the people I loved hurt and killed. Die, witch. I recognized whose voice had hollered “Die, witch” and knew I’d never wash all the guilt off me. My throat closed, and I put my hands over my face and rocked back and forth. Every single bit of tonight was on me.
Dr. Longstreet came out of the hospital, still wearing the suit he had on when Dean got shot. Bloodstains covered it. Seeing me bent over, he rushed to me, taking my arm and learning over me. “What’s happening? What hurts?”
My heart hurts, doctor. Beating me upside the head with a hammer might fix it.
“The shooter was Julie Woodson.” Speaking made me realize my lips had gone numb, and the inside of my mouth felt like old cotton.
“I, ah, was listening to the police scanner on my phone.” Hannah held up the device. “The sheriff’s deputies have her surrounded at the antique store. They’re trying to get her to come out and surrender.”
“I never realized it would come to this. My memaw’s dead because of me.” The sobs returned, clawing my throat raw, burning my eyes, and leaving nothing behind but the worst pain I’d ever felt. I cried myself out faster this time, maybe because I knew it wouldn’t help ever, and turned to Dr. Longstreet.
“Dean?”
“Tough sumbitch is gonna live,” Dr. Longstreet said. “Don’t tell me what the two of you did to him. Might ruin my belief in medical science. All he needed was a blood transfusion and a little patching. Got an intern taking care of it. But that bullet should have killed him.”