“David!” Marinville called. “We’re clear!”
The voice that returned was tinged with doubt: “My dad, too?”
“I’m under the bunk,” Ralph called. “Son, you be careful. If-” His voice trembled, then firmed. “If it gets on you, hold onto the gun and try to shoot up into its belly.” He poked his head out from under the bunk, suddenly alarmed. “Is the gun even loaded? Are you sure?”
‘Yeah, I’m sure.” He paused. “Is it still in front of the door?”
“Yes!” Mary called.
The coyote had taken a step closer, in fact. Its head was down, its growl as steady as the idle of an outboard motor. Every time the boy spoke from his side of the door, its ears twitched attentively.
“Okay, I’m on my knees,” the boy said. Mary could hear the nerves in his voice more clearly now. She
had an idea he might be approaching the outer edges of his control.
“I’m going to start counting again. Make sure you’re as far back as you can be when I get to five. I … I don’t want to hurt anyone by accident.”
“Remember to shoot uphill,” the vet said. “Not a lot, but a little. Okay?”
“Because it’ll jump. Right. I’ll remember. One… two…”
Outside, the wind dropped briefly. In the quiet, Mary could hear two things with great clarity: the rumbling growl of the coyote, and her own heartbeat in her ears.
Her life was in the hands of an eleven-year-old with a gun. If David shot and missed or froze up and didn’t shoot at all, the coyote would likely kill him. And then, when the psycho cop came back, they would all die.
“… three . . .“ The quiver which had crept into the boy’s voice made him sound eerily like his father.
…. . four . . . five.”
The doorknob turned.
For Johnny Marinville it was like being tumbled back intoVietnam again, where mortal things happened at a zany speed that always surprised you. He hadn’t held out much hope for the kid, thought he was apt to spray bullets wildly everywhere but into Bosco’s hide, but the kid was all they had. Like Mary, he had decided that if they weren’t out of here when the cop came back, they were through.
And the kid surprised him.
To begin with, he didn’t throw the door open, so it would hit the wall and then bounce back, obscuring his line of fire; he seemed to toss it open. He was on his knees, and dressed again, but his cheeks were still green with Irish Spring soap and his eyes were very wide. The door was still swinging open when he clamped his right hand over his left on the butt of the gun, which looked to Johnny like a .45. A big gun for a kid. He held it at chest- level, the barrel tilted upward at a slight angle. His face was solemn, even studious.
The coyote, perhaps not expecting the door to open in spite of the voice which had been coming from behind it, took half a step backward, then tensed on its haunches and sprang at the boy with a snarl. It was, Johnny thought, the little backward flinch that sealed its doom; it gave the boy all the time he needed to settle himself. He fired g twice, allowing the gun to kick and then return to its original aiming point before pulling the trigger a second time. The reports were deafening in the enclosed space.
Then the coyote, which had gone airborne after the first shot and before the second, hit David and knocked him backward.
His father screamed and scrambled out from under his bunk. The kid appeared to be fighting with the animal on the landing beyond the doorway, but Johnny found it almost impossible to believe the coyote could have much fight left in it; he had heard the slugs go home, and both the hardwood floor and the desk were painted with the animal’s blood.
“David! David! Shoot it in the guts!” his father screamed, dancing up and down in his anxiety.
Instead of shooting, the kid fought free of the coyote, as if it were a coat he had somehow gotten tangled in. He scooted away on his butt, looking bewildered. The front of his shirt was matted with blood and fur. He got the wall against his back and used it to posh his way onto his feet. He looked at the gun as he did it, seemingly amazed to see it was still there at the end of his arm.
“I’m okay, Dad, settle down. I got it, it never even nipped me.” He ran his hand over his chest and then down the arm holding the gun, as if confirming this to himself, as well.
Then he looked at the coyote. It was still alive, panting harshly and rapidly with its head hung over the first stair riser. Where its chest had been there was now a wide bloody dent.
David dropped to one knee beside it and put the barrel of the .45 against the dangling head. He then
turned his own head away. Johnny saw the kid’s eyes clenched shut, and his heart went out to the boy.
He had never enjoyed his own kids much-they had a tiresome way of upsetting you for the first twenty years and trying to upstage you for the second twenty-but one like this wouldn’t be so bad to have around, maybe. He had some game, as the basketball players said.
I’d even get down on my knees with him at bedtime, Johnny thought. Shit. Anybody would. Look at the results.
Still wearing that stressful expression-the look of a child who knows he must eat his liver before he can go out and play-David pulled the trigger a third time. The report was just as loud but not quite as sharp, somehow. The coyote’s body jumped. A fan of red droplets as fine as lace appeared below the stairwell’s railing. That harsh panting sound quit. The kid opened his eyes and looked down at what he had done.
“Thank you, God,” he said in a small, dull voice. “It was awful, though. Really awful.”
“You did a good job, boy,” Billingsley said.
David got up and walked slowly into the holding area. He looked at his father. Ralph held his arms out.
David went over to him, starting to cry again, and let his father hold him in a clumsy embrace that had bars running through the middle of it.
“I was afraid for you, guy,” Ralph said. “That’s why I told you to go away. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, Daddy.” David was crying harder now, and Johnny realized even before the kid went on that these tears weren’t about the fleabag, no, not these~ “Pie was on a huh-huhhook downstairs. Other people, t-t-too. I took her down. I couldn’t take the other ones down, they were grub-grownups, but I took Pie down. I s-sang . . . sang to h-h-”
He tried to say more, but the words were swallowed in hysterical, exhausted sobs. He pressed his face between the bars while his father stroked his back and told him to hush, just hush, he was sure David had done everything for Kirsten that he could, that he had done fine.
Johnny let them have a full minute of this by his watch-the kid deserved that much just for opening the goddamn door when he knew there was a wild dog on the other side waiting for him to do it-and then spoke the kid’s name. David didn’t look around, so he said it a second time, louder. The boy did look around then. His eyes were red-rimmed and streaming.
“Listen, kiddo, I know you’ve been through a lot,” Johnny said, “and if we get out of this thing alive, I’ll be the first one to write you a commendation for the Silver Star. But right now we have to get gone.
Entragian could be on his way back. If he was close by, he probably heard the gunshots. If you’ve got a key, now’s the time to try it out.”
David pulled a thick ring of keys out of his pocket and found the one which looked like the one Entragian had used. He put it in the lock of his father’s cell. Nothing happened.
Mary cried out in frustration and slammed the heel of her hand against the bars of her own cell.
“Other way,” Johnny said. “Turn it around.”
David turned the key over and slid it into the lock-slot again. This time there was a loud click-almost a thud- and the cell door popped open.
“Yes!” Mary cried. “Oh, yes!”
Ralph stepped out and swept his son into his arms, this time with no bars between them.
And when David kissed the puffy place on the left side of his father’s face, Ralph Carver cried out in pain and laughed at the same time. Johnny thought it one of the most extraordinary sounds he had ever heard in his life, and one you could never convey in a book; the quality of it, like the expression on Ralph Carver’s face as he looked into his son’s face, would always be just out of reach.