Kitts spat on Ramirez, who laid there, delirious from the blow.
“I told you I’d kill you, you motherfucker,” he said again, raising his arm.
Sirens in the distance.
Kitts stopped and stared past the corpse of the fake Caroline into the black night beyond the front door. He knew he had a minute or two before the troopers got here. Ramirez was crawling away from him now, would get to his weapon before Kitts could get to him, and while the two of them continued their mano-a-mano, the troopers would be storming the porch.
To hell with this.
Kitts dropped the poker and lurched away like Quasimodo. He felt as much as heard the shot from Ramirez’s pistol hit the door facing as he passed into the kitchen. His hand fumbled with the back door knob before he realized it was locked. He heard Ramirez lifting himself off the floor, bellowing his rage in great gasping breaths, and finally Kitts had the deadbolt released and the door opened. He was out of the house and tripping through the night for the Trinity River again as Ramirez appeared in the doorway behind him, an avenging shadow. Kitts heard the troopers’ cars grind to a halt on the shale driveway around the front of the house, saw the eerie reflections of their red and blue lights in his peripheral vision. But he didn’t allow himself the luxury of looking back.
Ramirez took aim at the black figure loping toward the river and fired two shots that missed. Troopers were coming through the house to the kitchen and around from the front with hounds.
“Sonofabitch murdered my wife! He’s going for the river. I want him dead, you understand me? Let the dogs have him first. When they get tired, you can shoot him.”
“But Warden, if he surrenders—” began one of the younger officers.
He was cut off as his sergeant stepped in front of him. “We understand, sir.” Turning back to the rookie, the sergeant said, “This man won’t give himself up, Bob. He ain’t the kind to. Understand?”
Whether he understood or not, the rookie nodded. They fanned out, and Ramirez led them toward the river.
Reaching the riverbank, Kitts heard the pursuers coming. Mostly he heard the dogs baying, but that was soon drowned out by the rushing water. The pain in his side warned him against attempting to swim, but the hounds urged him to it. He waded into the river for a few feet, then dove in, letting the current take him. A few random gunshots splashed the water nearby, and then the sounds of his pursuers began to fall off behind him.
He began to swim, and each stroke was like a knife reopening his wound. He’d beaten the posse, knew they wouldn’t catch him now. The river was just too fast. But he also knew, as his strokes became heavier, his stomach like the blood sac of a tic on a dog, he’d misjudged the water’s temperature.
Who’d’ve thought to worry about cold water at this time of year in Texas? he wondered uselessly.
His limbs were growing more numb. Whether from the cold water or the shock his body had finally registered from the bullet wound, he didn’t know. He also knew it didn’t matter.
“Goddammit!” he cursed at the stars shining down on him. He trod water as best he could while the Trinity carried him on, casting his eyes around for the bank. But as he raised his head to look for a reflection of any kind to gauge the distance, the river took a dive. Kitts rolled down with the whitecaps and went under. His wind-whipped lungs begged for air. He panicked and fought his way to the surface. Kitts spat the cold water out and gasped air again. His side stabbed him with pain like a bitter punch line.
“No, goddammit!”
The Trinity carried him along roughly. Kitts remembered the cardboard armor still duct-taped to his arms and legs.
Why didn’t you throw it away, you retard?
It was soaked and weighing down his tired limbs.
Jesus, worse than Stu, stupid fuck.
He struggled to stay afloat, trying to remove the soaked cardboard from his arms. When the deadwood hit his forehead
crack
he fell backward in the water, forcing the air from his lungs. Stunned by the blow, Kitts went under again. His old-man reflexes betrayed him. His lungs demanded air, but only found the cold water of the Trinity. His limbs faltered next, weighing him down as real panic set in, but he thrashed toward the graying light of the surface. Struggling demanded energy and energy demanded air, and the river in his lungs made him cough and gag, drawing in more water.
For thirty seconds, maybe more, seizures hit him as Kitts willed his lungs to create oxygen from water. The pain in his side was nothing compared to the burning desire for air and the certain knowledge his brain would live as long as it could—God’s final, sick joke—knowing his body was dying, aware of every moment slipping away from him. Kitts cursed God, Ramirez, Stu, Death itself. Convulsions for air rocked him again. He clawed at the prism of light flickering ever further away on the Trinity’s surface. Slices of the moon taunted him like reflections off a blade.
Sinking, his fighting feeble now, he saw the faces of children shimmering in the water. Every child he’d ever touched in secret. Millicent from behind the convenience store. Four-eyed Brad, behind the stacks in the library. Jimmy Schulenberg under the Little League grandstand. Others whose names he didn’t even remember. They watched him from above, each pair of empty eyes, as he slowly descended.
He expected them to laugh at him, to smile at least, finally seeing justice served, the natural order of things restored. But their pale faces, rippling in the river, simply stared—vacuous, silent witnesses. So Kitts cursed them too, railed at them for not reveling in his death as he’d reveled in their fear, for failing to appreciate the universe returning itself to balance through his death.
As his body burned the last of the sugar in his bloodstream, movement ceased. Kitts could no longer hear the roaring river. Instead, he listened to the dull, slowing throb of the blood in his ears. At least the pain in his side was gone. Kitts felt nothing now, nothing in his bones, not even the iron chill of the river. His brain measured his last moments by the lazy thump of his heart, slower, slower . . . slower. A dimming circle of darkness closed in from the sides of his vision. The children with their staring eyes were gone, replaced by
a catfish swimming close, brushing him with its whiskers
a grain of dirt hanging suspended in the water
a lone bubble of precious air escaping his motionless lips
until they too washed out of existence, melding into the gray curtain of the Trinity. The river itself, and the life it carried, seemed to be moving away from him even as it bore him down.
He could hear nothing now. Feel nothing.
Silence.
Death.
Kitts stared down. The black circle at last enveloped his vision. Yet still his brain functioned, aware of its own solitude in the void. Of its own, absolute aloneness in death. God’s final, sick joke.
He planned to spit river water in God’s eye when he saw Him. But his last conscious thought took even that small measure of satisfaction away.
Ya won’t be seeing Him, Kitts, his brain said in Stu’s Czech accent. Then oblivion swallowed him whole.
Chapter 19
“What do you think ghosts are?” asked Elizabeth. When the old man had suggested they talk of Old Suzie and ghosts, Michael hadn’t looked too enthusiastic. A long silence had followed as Elizabeth glanced at Michael and Michael glanced at Elizabeth and they both looked at Rocky, who stared back, waiting for one of them to begin. So Elizabeth had.
“Well,” said the old man, “I don’t rightly know. Some folks think they’re the spirits of the departed hanging around because they either don’t know they’re dead or they don’t want to admit it. Others say they’re just recordings on the fabric of time.”
“What does that mean?” Michael asked, perplexed.
“Well,” the old man said, rubbing his chin, “you see, all living things create an electromagnetic field. Your brain runs on electricity. Thoughts fire off, travel around your brain. When you burn your finger, your s
kin sends an electrical impulse to your brain and you register pain, so you pull your finger away from what burned it.”
“We learned about that in life science class,” Elizabeth said. “Electro-something-mical reactions and all that stuff.”
“But what does that have to do with ghosts?” asked Michael.
“I’m getting to that. You see, electricity is energy. Like fire, another form of energy. You ever see any pictures of Japan after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs?”
“The what bombs?” the children asked in unison.
The old man just looked at them. “You mean to tell me they don’t teach you about World War II anymore?”
Michael said, “Ohhhhhhhhhh. That’s when the U.S. and those other countries fought the Germans.”
“Right.”
“To free the Jews.”
“Um . . . well, that happened, yes. But not just to free—oh, never mind. But the Allies—that’s what the U.S. and their friends were called, by the way—didn’t just fight the Germans. They also fought the Japanese.”
“Oh,” said Michael, still a little confused. “Yeah, they make great anime.”
Again Rocky stared a moment, reflecting Michael’s expression. “Anyway, to end the war, the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Japan. Do you know what atomic bombs are?”
“No. I guess we haven’t gotten to those in history yet,” offered Elizabeth.
“Yes, well, the atomic bomb was the most terrible weapon devised for its time. When an A-bomb exploded, everything for miles around was leveled. And the people were vaporized.”
“Vaporized?” Michael sounded like he was pronouncing the word for the first time. “Like with lasers?”
“Sort of. They disappeared. They left only one thing behind.”
Michael and Elizabeth leaned forward, wrapping themselves around the old man’s words.
“Shadows.”
The children’s eyes grew wider.
“You can still see them today in the cities. Shadows burned right into the concrete by the energy of the bombs. Prone, screaming, totally surprised, disbelieving of their own deaths. Impressions from their present on ours, like there was no time in between.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes and pictured what he described, making a mental note to go back through her history files and search the Web for photos. She wondered how they’d compare to what she’d created in her head.
“And you think that’s what ghosts are?” she asked after a moment. “Leftover images?”
“That’s one way to describe them,” he said, nodding. “Or maybe they really are just people that don’t realize they’re dead yet trying to go on with their normal lives. Waking up every morning, making their breakfast, doing their daily business, and going to bed every night. Or maybe they’re just people who know they’re dead and don’t want to be. Maybe they don’t want to go to the afterlife because they know what’s waitin for ’em. Nobody really knows for sure. What do you think they are?”
“I think they’re evil,” offered Michael, glancing at the hidden corners of the parlor.
“Evil?” Rocky asked. “Why?”
“Because they scare people,” said Michael. “They wait till it’s dark and everyone’s asleep and then they wake up and walk around the house and creak! on the stairs and scrip-scrape! in the attic and scare you. If they weren’t evil, they wouldn’t try to scare you like that.” His voice confirmed he’d just delivered an indisputable fact.
“Is that so?” asked the old man.
“Yep.”
Rocky nodded a dubious acknowledgment. “What do you think, Elizabeth?”
She glanced at Michael from beneath her eyelashes, then looked away. She didn’t want to disappoint him. “I dunno.”
“Sure you do. You know what you think, anyway. What do you think of Old Suzie then?”
Oh, great. Michael will hate me for this. “I think she wasn’t so bad. Just a lonely old woman trying to find something happy in life when there wasn’t very much happy in it for her. I dunno.”
“But she was a witch!” Michael exclaimed.
“How do you know that?” asked Rocky.
“Well—because—that’s what everybody says.”
“Uh-huh.” The old man turned to Elizabeth, asking, “So what do you think Old Suzie’s ghost is like? If there is one, you understand. Not that I’ve ever seen her ghost, let’s just be clear on that.”
Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders.
“Come on, you can do better than that,” prompted the old man.
She rolled her eyes the way kids do when they have to do something for an adult but they want the adult to know they don’t want to do it. “I dunno. I guess she has a nice ghost.”
“A nice ghost?” Michael was staring at her, trying to comprehend blasphemy.
“Yeah. I mean, if she was looking for happiness in life, maybe she’s looking for happiness in death too.”
Rocky seemed to consider that, the sides of his mouth curling up a bit.
Michael looked dumbfounded. “What’re you talkin about?”
“I think she disagrees with you about what ghosts are really like,” said the old man. Elizabeth was looking at the floor, the ceiling, anywhere but Michael’s face. “I think she thinks ghosts can be good too, not just evil. Is that about right, Elizabeth?”
She shrugged her shoulders, sure she had disappointed Michael. “I guess,” she muttered.
“So, if ghosts are good,” said Michael, “how come everyone thinks they’re evil?”
The old man rubbed the grizzle on his chin. “Well, that’s a good question. Not all ghosts are good, mind you.”
“A-ha! There, see?”
“But Michael, some are. Some are good, some are bad. Just like people. I mean, think about it. Ghosts are just used-to-be people, after all.”
“But Suzie was good,” said Elizabeth. “Basically, I mean. People just thought bad of her.”
The old man smiled openly at that. “That’s a great point. Kinda like when you first came into this house, you were scared. Then, after we talked for a while—after you got to know the house, you might say—you weren’t afraid of it anymore, were you?”
Elizabeth looked around the parlor, over her shoulder to the kitchen with the cockroaches, at the stairs leading to the second floor’s unexplored rooms and whatever hid in them. “No,” she said timidly. “I guess not. Not really.” But Elizabeth seemed not entirely convinced.
“Do all bad people become bad ghosts? Why don’t all good people just automatically go to Heaven?”
The old man leaned back in his chair, stretching out. “Now that’s a big load of questions in a little bit of words!” He brushed off the knees of his coveralls and the dust hung in the firelight. “No, to answer your first question, Michael, I doubt all bad people become bad ghosts. Some see the error of their ways, I imagine. Again, kinda like living people do in life. And some good people lose it when they die—just go off the deep end. Become bad ghosts. As to your other question, I can’t answer that.”
“I always thought of God as Gandalf,” said Elizabeth out of nowhere.
Rocky raised an eyebrow. “Gandalf?”
“He’s a crazy old wizard in an old 3V adventure,” said Michael. “He wears long robes and has a long, white beard and gets mad at people too easily, but he also has a lot of patience with them in the end. All in all, he’s pretty cool. He does magic.”
The old man laughed and said, “Well, that’s about as good a description as any, I suppose.”
“Gandalf isn’t crazy,” Elizabeth said.
“She likes to pretend she’s a heroine in her own 3V game,” Michael explained, “named Elsbyth.”
“Michael!”
The boy retreated.
“Elsbyth?” wondered the old man.
Elizabeth flitted her eyes at Rocky, a little embarrassed at having to explain her fantasy. “She’s who I’d most like to be,” she said simply. “I feel like I can do anything whe
n I’m her.”
“Is Old Suzie’s ghost here?” asked Michael, trying to change the subject.
“Not at the moment,” the old man said, casting his eyes about for Michael’s benefit. “Would you like me to call her?”
“No.” The word was quick, precise, and entirely audible.
Rocky said, “Well, just let me know. Maybe I can dig her up for you.”
Michael swallowed hard and Elizabeth elbowed him in the side to tell him it was all right, it was just a joke. Michael smiled sheepishly with a look on his face that said, Yeah, I know, I was in on it all the time. I was just playing along, y’know, pretending to be scared.
“I would’ve liked to have known her,” said Elizabeth.
The words died on the walls, and then there was silence. A breeze, fresh from the north, passed from the front to the back of the house. It sounded like someone settling down to rest after a long, work-filled day.
“I think you do know her,” said the old man.
Michael looked from one to the other, uncomprehending again. Elizabeth was playing with a leaf on the floor, crunching it between two fingers, folding it, then unfolding it and staring at the new leaf lines lit by the crackling glow of the fire. Rocky was sitting back in his armchair, face hidden again.
“If Suzie was such a good person,” Michael finally asked, “then why didn’t she go to Heaven?”
Elizabeth was silently grateful for the question. She’d been wondering it herself. Good ghosts didn’t make any sense. Good spirits should go to Heaven automatically. Right?
“Oh yeah, your second question. Well now, that’s a poser,” said the old man. “Maybe to get into Heaven she had to find in death what she couldn’t in life, like Elizabeth said. Still looking for that happiness before moving on. But we’re not even sure Suzie’s ghost is here. Are we?”
Elizabeth looked up. “I’m sure.”
Rocky leaned forward so she could see his eyes. “Really? And what makes you think that?”
She shrugged. “I just know.”
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