He crumpled the poster up and threw it in the KEEP OUR TOWN CLEAN N GREEN basket on the corner, but on the other side of the street he found another just like it. Farther along he found a third pasted to a corner mailbox. He tore these down, as well. The low men were either closing in or desperate. Maybe both. Ted couldn’t go out at all today — Bobby would have to tell him that. And he’d have to be ready to run. He’d tell him that, too.
Bobby cut through the park, almost running himself in his hurry to get home, and he barely heard the small, gasping cry which came from his left as he passed the baseball fields: ‘Bobby
. . . ‘
He stopped and looked toward the grove of trees where Carol had taken him the day before when he started to bawl. And when the gasping cry came again, he realized it was her.
‘Bobby if it’s you please help me . . . ‘
He turned off the cement path and ducked into the copse of trees. What he saw there made him drop his baseball glove on the ground. It was an Alvin Dark model, that glove, and later it was gone. Someone came along and just kifed it, he supposed, and so what? As that day wore on, his lousy baseball glove was the very least of his concerns.
Carol sat beneath the same elm tree where she had comforted him. Her knees were drawn up to her chest. Her face was ashy gray. Black shock-circles ringed her eyes, giving her a raccoony look. A thread of blood trickled from one of her nostrils. Her left arm lay across her midriff, pulling her shirt tight against the beginning nubs of what would be breasts in another year or two. She held the elbow of that arm cupped in her right hand.
She was wearing shorts and a smock-type blouse with long sleeves — the kind of thing you just slipped on over your head. Later, Bobby would lay much of the blame for what happened on that stupid shirt of hers. She must have worn it to protect against sunburn; it was the only reason he could think of to wear long sleeves on such a murderously hot day. Had she picked it out herself or had Mrs Gerber forced her into it? And did it matter? Yes, Bobby would think when there was time to think. It mattered, you’re damned right it mattered.
But for now the blouse with its long sleeves was peripheral. The only thing he noticed in that first instant was Carol’s upper left arm. It seemed to have not one shoulder but two.
‘Bobby,’ she said, looking at him, with shining dazed eyes. ‘They hurt me.’
She was in shock, of course. He was in shock himself by then, running on instinct. He tried to pick her up and she screamed in pain — dear God, what a sound.
‘I’ll run and get help,’ he said, lowering her back. ‘You just sit there and try not to move.’
She was shaking her head — carefully, so as not to joggle her arm. Her blue eyes were nearly black with pain and terror. ‘No, Bobby, no, don’t leave me here, what if they come back? What if they come back and hurt me worse?’ Parts of what happened on that long hot Thursday were lost to him, lost in the shockwave, but that part always stood clear: Carol looking up at him and saying What if they come back and hurt me worse?
‘But . . . Carol . . . ‘
‘I can walk. If you help me, I can walk.’
Bobby put a tentative arm around her waist, hoping she wouldn’t scream again. That had been bad.
Carol got slowly to her feet, using the trunk of the tree to support her back. Her left arm moved a little as she rose. That grotesque double shoulder bulged and flexed. She moaned but didn’t scream, thank God.
‘You better stop,’ Bobby said.
‘No, I want to get out of here. Help me. Oh God, it hurts.’
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