He examined it closely, from brass base to lead tip. “Gods, it’s heavy! Long, too! I bet if you shot someone with one of these, he’d stay down.”
“Yes. A shell’s a dangerous thing. But it can be pretty, too. Would you like to see a trick I can do with this one?”
“Sure.”
I took it back and began to dance it from knuckle to knuckle, my fingers rising and falling in waves. Young Bill watched, wide-eyed. “How does thee do it?”
“The same way anyone does anything,” I said. “Practice.”
“Will you show me the trick?”
“If you watch close, you may see it for yourself,” I said. “Here it is… and here it isn’t.” I palmed the shell so fast it disappeared, thinking of Susan Delgado, as I supposed I always would when I did this trick. “Now here it is again.”
The shell danced fast… then slow… then fast again.
“Follow it with your eyes, Bill, and see if you can make out how I get it to disappear. Don’t take your eyes off it.” I dropped my voice to a lulling murmur. “Watch… and watch… and watch. Does it make you sleepy?”
“A little,” he said. His eyes slipped slowly closed, then the lids rose again. “I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“Did you not? Watch it go. Watch it slow. See it disappear and then… see it as it speeds up again.”
Back and forth the shell went. The wind blew, as lulling to me as my voice was to him.
“Sleep if you want, Bill. Listen to the wind and sleep. But listen to my voice, too.”
“I hear you, gunslinger.” His eyes closed again and this time didn’t reopen. His hands were clasped limply in his lap. “I hear you very well.”
“You can still see the shell, can’t you? Even with your eyes closed.”
“Yes… but it’s bigger now. It flashes like gold.”
“Do you say so?”
“Yes…”
“Go deeper, Bill, but hear my voice.”
“I hear.”
“I want you to turn your mind back to last night. Your mind and your eyes and your ears. Will you do that?”
A frown creased his brow. “I don’t want to.”
“It’s safe. All that’s happened, and besides, I’m with you.”
“You’re with me. And you have guns.”
“So I do. Nothing will happen to you as long as you can hear my voice, because we’re together. I’ll keep thee safe. Do you understand that?”
“Yes.”
“Your da’ told you to sleep out under the stars, didn’t he?”
“Aye. It was to be a warm night.”
“But that wasn’t the real reason, was it?”
“No. It was because of Elrod. Once he twirled the bunkhouse cat by her tail, and she never came back. Sometimes he pulls me around by my hair and sings ‘The Boy Who Loved Jenny.’ My da’ can’t stop him, because Elrod’s bigger. Also, he has a knife in his boot. He could cut with it. But he couldn’t cut the beast, could he?” His clasped hands twitched. “Elrod’s dead and I’m glad. I’m sorry about all the others… and my da’, I don’t know what I’ll do wi’out my da’… but I’m glad about Elrod. He won’t tease me nummore. He won’t scare me nummore. I seen it, aye.”
So he did know more than the top of his mind had let him remember.
“Now you’re out on the graze.”
“On the graze.”
“Wrapped up in your blanket and shinnie.”
“Shaddie.”
“Your blanket and shaddie. You’re awake, maybe looking up at the stars, at Old Star and Old Mother-”
“No, no, asleep,” Bill said. “But the screams wake me up. The screams from the bunkhouse. And the sounds of fighting. Things are breaking. And something’s roaring. ”
“What do you do, Bill?”
“I go down. I’m afraid to, but my da’… my da’s in there. I look in the window at the far end. It’s greasepaper, but I can see through it well enough. More than I want to see. Because I see… I see… mister, can I wake up?”
“Not yet. Remember that I’m with you.”
“Have you drawn your guns, mister?” He was shivering.
“I have. To protect you. What do you see?”
“Blood. And a beast.”
“What kind, can you tell?”
“A bear. One so tall its head reaches the ceiling. It goes up the middle of the bunkhouse… between the cots, ye ken, and on its back legs… and it grabs the men… it grabs the men and pulls them to pieces with its great long claws.” Tears began to escape his closed lids and roll down his cheeks. “The last one was Elrod. He ran for the back door… where the woodpile is just outside, ye ken… and when he understood it would have him before he could open the door and dash out, he turned around to fight. He had his knife. He went to stab it…”
Slowly, as if underwater, the boy’s right hand rose from his lap. It was curled into a fist. He made a stabbing motion with it.
“The bear grabbed his arm and tore it off his shoulder. Elrod screamed. He sounded like a horse I saw one time, after it stepped in a gompa hole and broke its leg. The thing… it hit Elrod in the face with ’is own arm. The blood flew. There was gristle that flapped and wound around the skin like strings. Elrod fell against the door and started to slide down. The bear grabbed him and lifted him up and bit into his neck and there was a sound… mister, it bit Elrod’s head right off his neck. I want to wake up now. Please. ”
“Soon. What did you do then?”
“I ran. I meant to go to the big house, but sai Jefferson… he… he…”
“He what?”
“He shot at me! I don’t think he meant to. I think he just saw me out of the corner of his eye and thought… I heard the bullet go by me. Wishhh! That’s how close it was. So I ran for the corral instead. I went between the poles. While I was crossing, I heard two more shots. Then there was more screaming. I didn’t look to see, but I knew it was sai Jefferson screaming that time.”
This part we knew from the tracks and leavings: how the thing had come charging out of the bunkhouse, how it had grabbed away the four-shot pistol and bent the barrel, how it had unzipped the rancher’s guts and thrown him into the bunkhouse with his proddies. The shot Jefferson had thrown at Young Bill had saved the boy’s life. If not for that, he would have run straight to the big house and been slaughtered with the Jefferson womenfolk.
“You go into the old hostelry where we found you.”
“Aye, so I do. And hide under the tack. But then I hear it… coming.”
He had gone back to the now way of remembering, and his words came more slowly. They were broken by bursts of weeping. I knew it was hurting him, remembering terrible things always hurts, but I pressed on. I had to, for what happened in that abandoned hostelry was the important part, and Young Bill was the only one who had been there. Twice he tried to come back to the then way of remembering, the ago. This was a sign that he was trying to struggle free of his trance, so I took him deeper. In the end I got it all.
The terror he’d felt as the grunting, snuffling thing approached. The way the sounds had changed, blurring into the snarls of a cat. Once it had roared, Young Bill said, and when he heard that sound, he’d let loose water in his trousers. He hadn’t been able to hold it. He waited for the cat to come in, knowing it would scent him where he lay-from the urine-only the cat didn’t. There was silence… silence… and then more screaming.
“At first it’s the cat screaming, then it changes into a human screaming. High to begin with, it’s like a woman, but then it starts to go down until it’s a man. It screams and screams. It makes me want to scream. I thought-”
“Think,” I said. “You think, Bill, because it’s happening now. Only I’m here to protect you. My guns are drawn.”
“I think my head will split open. Then it stops… and it comes in.”
“It walks up the middle to the other door, doesn’t it?”
He shook his head. “Not walks. Shuffles. Staggers. Like it’s hurt. It goes right past me. He. Now it’s he. He almost falls down, but grabs one of the stall doors and stays up. Then he goes on. He goes on a little better now.”
“Stronger?”
“Aye.”
“Do you see his face?” I thought I already knew the answer to that.
“No, only his feet, through the tack. The moon’s up, and I see them very well.”