Ned saw movement as someone ran past the shot-up window. He fired twice, flipped the cylinder open and slapped the eject rod. He quickly reloaded from a handful of loose shells in his pocket.
The house was silent.
For the moment, the gunfight was over.
Chapter Sixty
A solid wall of sound reached us when the shooting increased, sounding like hunters around a dove field.
I grabbed Hootie’s collar so he wouldn’t run down there, and watched Harold jump out of the window. I thought Mr. John was going to shoot him, but when Harold ran at him, he jammed the butt of that pump into Harold’s chest so hard it looked like he’d run into a tree. He hit the ground just as a woman in jeans ran from the back and sprinted toward the woods. Mr. John cranked off two quick shots that missed.
“Shit-a-monkey! What the hell was that all about?” Pepper asked when everything quieted down. “Were they trying to shoot that girl?”
My heart was beating so hard I could barely breathe. I sucked in a good dose from my puffer and waited for my lungs to ease. “Maybe she shot at them first.”
“Girls don’t shoot at the laws.”
“I think that one did.”
“We’d better get back home.”
I thought for a minute. “We can’t.”
“Well, why not?”
I pointed toward the bare trees below. “Because we can still see her running and they can’t. We’ll have to tell ’em where she’s gone.”
“We’ll lose her in a minute when she gets into them woods.”
I pointed to a tall pecan tree on the ridge with us. “Not if I climb up there. I can see all the way to the river from the top.”
“You’ll fall out and kill yourself.”
“It’ll be better than another whippin’ if I do. It’s the only thing we can do to help.”
Pepper made up her mind. “I’ll give you a boost to that lowest limb.”
We ran over to the tree. Hootie had already forgotten all the excitement down at the house. He must have thought we’d treed something, because he started running circles around the big pecan.
Pepper hooked her fingers together and I stepped in, like we’d done a thousand times before. I pushed off with the other leg, she lifted, and for a second I was floating. I grabbed the lowest limb and pulled myself up.
From there it was easy to shinny up higher, using those big limbs like rungs on a ladder. Because the leaves had all been beaten off by the sleet days before, I could see clear to the river.
“See her!?” Pepper called up.
“Nope. I’ve lost her.”
My heart was pounding out of my chest from the fear of being up so high, and for all the excitement down below. I wrapped my arms around the trunk and held on. Grandpa taught me that to be a good hunter, you didn’t watch for something shaped like a deer, a bird, or a squirrel. You watch for movement. That’s what gives game away every time and it was what kept my attention on that little mama quail trying to lead me from her nest back in the summer.
With that in mind, I stared past the house at nothing. It wasn’t no time until I saw a squirrel moving out of the corner of my eye. It was in the big tree in Donny Wayne’s front yard. Birds flickered through the woods farther on.
After a minute, I shifted my focus to another tree way on the other side of the pasture, and fixed on it again. More birds, an old mama cow walking along the fence line, and then I saw a familiar sight. A covey of quail exploded past the little strip of woods between Donny Wayne’s pasture and the field on the other side.
“See anything?”
Instead of answering, I kept my eyes hard on where the quail flushed. Like magic, there she was, slipping through the trees along the fence row leading to the river. I recognized the river bend where she was headed, because that’s where Grandpa used to take me and Pepper out on a long, wide sandstone ledge just above the waterline to splash in potholes when we were little.
“I know where she’s going!”
“Where?” Far below, Pepper’s white face was tiny.
“I’ll tell you when I get down.” I worked my way from one limb to the other, and believe me, it’s harder than going up. I was making good time until the last one, when my foot slipped. I grabbed for a nearby branch, and missed.
The last thing I remembered was seeing the trunk flash past.
Chapter Sixty-one
Harold was in cuffs and Donny Wayne was cussing and bleeding from a bullet wound that broke his collarbone. “One of y’all shot me, Ned. You didn’t have no call for that. I’s just puttin’ up kinfolk, that’s all.”
“You was shootin’ at us,” Ned snapped.
“I was shootin’, but I wasn’t tryin’ to hit y’all, just shootin’ to give Kendal some runnin’ room.”
“You knew what Kendal done.” Ned rolled up the blackened and partially burned dish towel Kendal had dropped and pressed it against Donny Wayne’s shoulder. “And you knew what she was.”
“Kendal’s kin, that’s all. We kept our shame quiet, them that knowed, and that weren’t many. It ain’t something you talk about, because she’s cursed.”
“Is it a he or a she?”
“She’s both, you know, that’s what morphodite means.”
“No, we don’t know, and the word is hermaphrodite.” Cody yanked Donny Wayne’s belt from his loops and used it to hold the compress in place.
Donny Wayne hissed at the pain. “I don’t give a damn how to say it. It was one of them family secrets only a few of us knew. Her business ain’t natural down there. It looks different with both parts all mixed up. That’s enough to drive somebody crazy, and I reckon it did.”
They paused for a moment, stunned by the shocking idea.
“Are y’all gonna take me to the hospital?”
“We’ll get around to it,” Ned told him. “What else can you tell us about Kendal?”
“I could talk all day about that crazy bastard. For years George raised him as a boy, up to when he sent Kendal to the crazy house, but Kendal figured the best way to hide when he got back was as a female. It was easy, since she’s slight.”
“You keep switching back and for between he and she.”
Donny Wayne snickered with hateful confusion. “See what we’ve had to deal with all these years?”
“So you knew her when she got back? She’s been gone a long time.”
“Of course we did, when she showed up here at the house. I ain’t sure I’d-a recognized her on the street, but it’s her sure enough. I looked.”
Hands shaking from adrenaline, Ned ran a palm over his forehead. “She’s been killing people and cutting off their heads. Don’t tell me you didn’t know that?”
“I know what they say she did, and I wanted to tell you. That’s why I passed you a couple of times today, but I couldn’t find the words.”
“Barbara is Kendal and she’s been doing the killin’ would have worked for a start.”
“Well, hell. I done told you she’s crazy. She’d-a killed all of us if she knew we’d let it slip out.”
Working quickly so he could go after Kendal, Cody stuffed a second compress under the belt crossing Donny Wayne’s shoulder blade. “Tell me, you knew what was going on at the Exchange when me and John almost got killed in there.”
“I knew Kendal was gone to settle up with George and Alvin for what they done to her when she was a kid. She wanted to pay them back.”
“This is making my head hurt,” Cody said. “Why kill all the others?”
“Because they’d wronged her, too…shamed her I guess you could say. Kendal is damaged in more ways than one, and she wants to pay everyone back who’s hurt her or talked her into letting them look at her business over the years.
“It don’t matter how, whether they teased her for being kind of sissified when she was a boy-kid, or played mean tricks, or called the boy-kid a squat-to-pee, because he’d do that out in the woods or in the outhouse, so no one could see how he
was made. Or like Josh, who married the girl Kendal wanted.
“She has thoughts all mixed up in her head about what people have done to her, and the kind of life she’s missed, and the way George mistreated her when she was little.”
John stuffed Harold in the backseat of his car and joined them. “Why take folks’ heads?”
“I’m-a tellin’ you, she…is…crazy!” Cold sweat broke out on Donny Wayne’s forehead as shock began to set in. “You know George had all them trophy animal heads on his walls? Kendal wanted to do the same. She kept telling me she was going to learn how to mount deer heads and she figured to do the same with people. She wanted her own trophies to pay folks back.
“It’s pitiful, ain’t it? She hated George Hart enough to kill him, but in that way, she wanted to be like him. Now, can y’all get me to the goddamn doctor?”
Ned was about to answer when he suddenly heard Pepper’s voice calling. He stepped away from the house. “What’n hell?”
The kids came down the ridge a couple of hundred yards away, followed by the dog, but they staggered slowly downhill with Top leaning on Pepper’s shoulder, his left arm dangling.
Ned’s heart nearly stopped. “Oh, lordy! Cody, get up there. Top must have been hit by a stray bullet!”
“What are they doing here!?” Cody shouted and raced toward the ridge.
They stopped seconds later when he met them and Cody snatched Top up. He frantically searched for blood. “What happened?”
Pepper was breathing hard. “He fell out of a tree and broke his arm.”
“And you brought him all the way out here?” Cody asked, incredulous.
She pointed behind her. “No, he fell out of that tree.”
Cody scooped the boy up and hurried toward the cars. “What was he doing up there?”
Pepper ran easily beside him. “We came to watch y’all arrest Harold, and when we got there, we saw all the shooting and saw somebody run from the back of the house.”
“What’s the matter?” Ned called. “Is he hurt bad?”
“Pepper says he broke his arm falling out of that tree over yonder.” Cody reached the house and sat Top on the hood of Ned’s sedan to examine his arm. “These crazy kids followed us out here and saw it all from the top of the ridge.”
Ned turned to Pepper. She shrank back. “What’n hell was he doing in a tree way out here?”
She explained everything while Cody stripped his own belt from his waist. He strapped the boy’s broken arm to his chest. “Top, is that all that’s hurt?”
Though his eyes watered at the pain, Top didn’t cry. “Yessir. It’s broke pretty good, though.”
“I’m gonna beat the whey out of you two when we get home,” Ned said.
“I know it, Grandpa. But you need to catch that woman that shot at you first. I saw her get away. That’s why I was in the tree, to see where she’s going for you. She’s heading for the river, where the bathtubs are.”
Ned and Cody exchanged looks. They knew exactly where Top was talking about. Ned grabbed Harold’s shoulder and pulled him out of the car. “John! Cuff Harold to my bumper and we’ll leave him here. We’ll take Donny Wayne with us and hope he don’t bleed to death. Call it in and tell O.C. to send a car here to pick him up. Then you drive us like hell to the river.”
Cody saw the bandage on his thumb was leaking blood. “What about the kids?”
Ned paused in indecision. “Put them in the car with you. Now let’s go. Kendal’s-a tryin’ to get across into Oklahoma, and I don’t intend to let her do it.”
“We saw a woman run off. Who’s trying to get away, Grandpa?” Pepper asked as she followed Cody. He carried Top in his arms.
“Kendal Bowden, whatever that is.”
Chapter Sixty-two
Cody had the gas pedal to the floor and they followed John’s car through the bottoms, ignoring the cloud of dust he threw up.
For once, Pepper didn’t have anything to say. Though Top’s broken arm hurt, he didn’t complain. He sat quietly with Hootie between them while tears rolled down his cheeks.
It didn’t take any time to get to the river. Near the sandstone ledge and the steep river bank, John slammed on his brakes in the middle of the dirt road. He and Ned jumped out of the car before the El Camino stopped only a foot from their bumper.
Cody killed the engine and pointed his finger. “You kids stay in here! I mean it, and hold that dog!”
They had no intention of getting out. Pump shotgun in hand, John warily trotted along the dirt road ahead of the cars, scanning from side to side and searching for footprints leading to the steep riverbank. On the other side of the road, a plowed field shimmered under a cool sun.
Pistol in hand, Ned went the opposite direction, watching the tree line for movement. “She’s probably already down to the river!”
The .45 in his undamaged hand, Cody dodged between the cars and slipped down the bank to search the tangled drifts fifteen feet below the edge. An overhanging limb slapped his hat off, but he ignored it, working carefully through the trees and overgrown vegetation.
The river gurgled fifty yards away, running high. An occasional branch or bobbing log swept past. Cody trotted across the sandstone ledge, until he was close to the muddy water. He knelt behind a jutting outcrop and turned back toward the bank to carefully scan the trees lining the Texas shore.
He suddenly realized their mistake when he saw the cars. They’d left the kids unprotected up on the road.
Then he saw Kendal’s blue bandana when she appeared beside John’s car.
Chapter Sixty-three
My arm was throbbing deep and it hurt like thunder. Pepper sat beside me, scared to death of what was going to happen. Hootie kept whining between us, wanting to get out, but Pepper had a good hold on his collar and wouldn’t let go. We knew she wouldn’t be blowing bubbles this time and my butt still remembered the whipping I got after we got back from the Cotton Exchange.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw Grandpa through the glass, watching the trees across the field.
Mr. John was about a hundred yards in front, walking back in our direction with his shotgun across one shoulder.
Feeling queasy, I closed my eyes for a second.
“Shit,” Pepper said.
When I opened them, Kendal was standing on the driver’s side of Mr. John’s car.
“Time to pay up,” we heard her say. Then she shot Donny Wayne with her pistol.
I saw him fall over in the seat.
“That’s for your part too, you son-of-a-bitch!”
She shot him again, turned and walked toward us as slow as you please, like Mr. John wasn’t hollering and running toward us with the shotgun at his shoulder. I knew he couldn’t shoot, because I was staring right down that big open barrel and it would get on us if he pulled the trigger. With the shotgun still aimed in our direction, he darted into the field and stumbled through the rows to get a better angle.
Grandpa shouted behind us, but I knew it was the same for him. We were too close.
As calm as if she were on an afternoon stroll, Kendal walked over to the El Camino’s open window. She gave us a sad little smile that would have been pretty on any other woman, but her coarse features made it more scary than nice. I swallowed at the light in her disturbed eyes. I wanted to be brave, but I barely held back a whimper. Hootie growled low in his chest and I felt the rumble.
“Girl, don’t you never let anyone touch you the wrong way, like they did me. You understand? I’m only different on the outside and them others that knew treated me…they kept wanting to look and some did more and…well…it’s their fault. I’ve done for them all, but it don’t change nothing, nor what they did.”
I might have felt sorry for her, but deep down I knew from that evil light in her eyes she was plumb crazy and had been long before they took her off. We could hear Grandpa and Mr. John yelling for Kendal to get away from us.
Pepper was scared and her voice trembled. “Donny Wayne
was just settin’ there. He helped you get away.”
Kendal casually raised her pistol and shot once in Mr. John’s direction without aiming and then again toward Grandpa the same way. The sound hammered our ears in the tiny space. I turned to see over my shoulder and saw Grandpa fall heavily toward the tall, dry weeds beside the road.
“Family secrets be damned. He just had to see and feel like the rest of them.” Kendal might have said more, but Hootie had all he could take. He snarled and lunged at the open window, causing Kendal to jerk upright.
A loud gunshot from the river made her head snap back. The concussion felt like we were slammed by a fist, because Uncle Cody wasn’t that far away.
The bullet cut across her scalp like a sharp butcher knife and her bandana fluttered away like a dying bluebird. She wasn’t bald, but her hair was barely half an inch long and stuck up all over. Blood sprayed, but she kept her feet.
Laying half on the bank, Uncle Cody stuck his arm over the edge and shot again, but the second one completely missed. That one didn’t hurt so much, because our ears were already ringing so loud.
She fired again in Uncle Cody’s direction and sand exploded into his face. He fell back out of sight.
Pepper and I were sitting smack dab in the middle of a gunfight.
When she turned to throw another shot toward Grandpa, I heard him cuss. That’s when I saw the blood pumping from her scalp in a thin, high-pressure spray. The big .45 nicked an artery in her head. The left side of her face and shoulder was already bright red. I don’t know how she was still on her feet,
I heard Pepper gasp at the sight while she held tight to Hootie, who was roaring and trying to fight his way free to attack Kendal. She forgot us then, darted between the cars, and flew feet first over the river bank like someone jumping into a swimming pool.
Mr. John finally got the angle he wanted and fired like he was shooting at a covey rise. I heard the shot hiss through the air and then she disappeared just as Pepper lost her grip and Hootie launched himself through the window.
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