Shakespeare's Champion

"Can you get up?" he whispered. I saw the finger marks on his throat for the first time. They'd choked him, enough to almost cost him his voice. I wanted to tell him no, I couldn't move, but found myself nodding instead. That was a mistake. Pain rocketed through my head. I had to lie still a moment, before I rolled over on my stomach, pushed up to my knees. My arm, sliced by Darcy's knife, was bleeding. I touched my hair, which felt - funny. There was blood on my hand when I took it down. I'd hit a shelf with my head when I'd gone sideways, I remembered slowly. Maybe I had a concussion. As if to confirm that suspicion, I vomited. When the spasm was over, I felt like I would welcome dying. But Jack needed me to get up.

I gripped the nearest upright, a corner bar for the shelves, and tried to gain my feet while Jack stayed alert for another attack. Finally I was standing, though I could feel myself swaying from side to side; or maybe I was still and the warehouse was swaying? Earthquake?

"You're really hurt," Jack rasped, and I could hear a little fear even in his strained voice.

I felt weak and shaken. I was letting him down.

"Go," I said.

"Right," he whispered, the sarcasm diminished by his voice level.

"You can move. I'm not sure I can," I faltered. I hated the wavering of my voice. "They won't kill me. How many more are there?"

"Two in the store, and the old man."

What old man?

"Bobo won't hurt me," I reassured Jack, thinking he was counting Bobo as one of the adversaries.

"No, I don't think he will. I think he didn't know any of this. I hope to God he's calling the police."

That was funny. Speaking of old men, it sure looked to me as if Howell Sr., uncrowned king of Shakespeare, was standing right over there by the door.

"Look," I said to Jack, amazed.

Jack turned, and old Mr. Winthrop raised a hand. To my bewilderment, it held a gun. I opened my mouth to yell something, I don't know what, when two strong arms wrapped around the old man and lifted him from the ground.

"No, Grandfather," Bobo said. The expression on the wizened old rat terrier's face had to be seen to be believed. Howell Sr. struggled and wriggled in his grandson's grasp, but it was a futile effort. If I'd had any inclination toward humor, it would have been funny. Bobo walked through the storeroom and out onto the loading dock carrying the old man, who called him names I'd never heard an elderly person use.

Bobo's face was tragic. He didn't look at me, at Jack. He was alone with the bitterest betrayal of his short life.

I didn't care where he was taking his grandfather, because the measure of that betrayal was unfolding itself to me. Howell Sr. had used his own son's business as a cover for his little hate group. Howell Sr. was the reason his son, Jack's employer, had kept secrets from Jack. Howell must have suspected his father's involvement from the first. So he hadn't contacted police, or ATF agents, or the FBI. He'd hired Jack.

And here we were, thanks to old man Winthrop, bleeding and maybe dying in a damn storeroom.

"Where's Mookie?" I asked Jack. "The woman with the rifle."

"She went in the store after Darcy," Jack whispered. The jacket hung open over his bare bloody chest. He'd laid down the oar in favor of Mookie's knife, the knife I'd used to slash his bonds.

"Tom David," I said.

Jack was puzzled for a minute. Then his face cleared. "I don't know. He may be in the store, too."

"Naw, I'm here," said a taut voice from a few feet away. "I'm out of the fight."

I staggered over in the direction of the voice despite Jack's telling me not to. I didn't seem to have much control over my actions. Tom David was lying on the floor to the right of the door. The left leg of his jeans was soaked with red. Now I knew where Mookie's second shot had gone. The policeman's face was absolutely white. His eyes shone brilliant blue.

"I am sorry," he said.

I stared down at him.

"You can call the police, it'll be safe. I'm the only one."

I nodded, and nearly threw up again.

"I don't hold with what they did to Jared, and I wouldn't have hurt you," he said wearily, and closed his eyes.

"Did you kill Darnell?" I asked.

He opened his eyes at that. "I was there."

"Who did it?"

"Darcy and Jim. The old man. Paulie who works over there," and he moved his head infinitesimally in the direction of the Home Supply store. "Len. Bay Hodding, Bob's dad. He ain't here tonight. Wedding anniversary." And Tom David grinned a horrible grin. Those blue eyes were now not so bright. "Who cares, anyway? Nigger. Now, Del Packard... that was Darcy. I regret it." And his face relaxed. Looking down at the pool of blood beneath my feet, I thought Tom David Meicklejohn had closed his mean eyes forever.

But the policeman's final testimony had taken valuable time, and in that time things once again had happened without my awareness or participation.

I was alone.

The bright storeroom, with its long stretches of shelves and dark shadows, was empty except for the silent bodies of the fallen and dead. I felt like an actor onstage after the play is over.

Then, from the store, I heard a scream.

I shuffled toward the door. The clear pane set at eye level had gone dark. The store lights had been shut off. As my hand closed around the knob, I realized that when I opened it, I would be silhouetted against the storeroom lights. I switched them off. Then I opened the door and propelled myself through it, and seconds later heard the distinctive clunk! of its falling shut.

There was a whoosh of sound over my head, a heavy impact. Then silence. I reached up cautiously. A hunting arrow protruded from the wooden doorframe. My skin crawled. Darcy was an avid bowhunter. He and Jim had discussed it morning after morning this fall.

I had to get away from the door. He'd be coming. I pulled myself forward on my elbows, trying to hug the floor as closely as possible. It was all too easy, and I cursed myself for a fool in thinking my venturing into this trap could help anyone.

I tried to summon up the floor plan, see it in my head. I felt hopeless when I thought of how familiar it was to Darcy.

"I got your yellow friend," he called to me. "She's de-ad. Got an arrow in her he-ad." He was singing. He was having a good time.

I didn't believe it. Mookie had screamed; at least, I was almost certain it had been her. You can't scream if an arrow goes through your head. But I knew my reasoning, like my sense of balance and my judgment, was very shaky just now. If only I knew where Jack was, I thought, I'd just curl up somewhere and go to sleep. That sounded good. I laid my head on the rough indoor-outdoor carpet and began to drift.

"I'm com-ing," Darcy crooned. Darcy, who had beaten a young man to death for being black. Darcy, who had crushed his friend's throat.

He sounded so close I knew I shouldn't move. I didn't feel sleepy anymore. I felt close to death. I thought of the high-tech bows I'd seen dangling from the ceiling on my trips to the store, the ones that looked so lethal they would've scared Robin Hood... Wow, was I drifting...

A foot fell on the carpet an inch from my face. His next step would be on me. Act or die.

Galvanized, I shrieked and scrambled up, grabbing what I could, hoping for an arm. I locked my arms and legs around Darcy Orchard like a lover, holding him as tightly as I'd ever held Jack or Marshall, squeezing till tears ran from my eyes. I was riding his back.

He was so big and strong, and not wounded. He didn't go down even with my full weight wrapped around him. I'd scared the shit out of him, and it took him seconds to recover, but only seconds. He heaved and bucked, and I heard the clatter of something falling, and I thought it might be the bow.

But he had an arrow in his hand, and he began stabbing backward with it, though not with the full force or range of his arm since I embraced him. He jabbed my thigh the first time, and he could tell where to go after that, and he scored my ribs a dozen times. Scars on scars, I thought through the terrible pain. I wanted to let go. But it seemed I couldn't, couldn't get the message to my fingers to relax. Death grip, I thought. Death grip.

The lights came on. The glare seemed to shoot a lance through my eyes, made me so sick I nearly fainted, but I was shocked into alertness by something so awful I could only believe it because it was this night, this bloody night. Behind one of the counters that held a display of knives, I glimpsed Mookie fixed to the wall by an arrow through her chest. Her head sagged to one side and her eyes were open.

Then past Darcy's shoulder I saw someone running toward us, toward Darcy and me locked in our little dance. It was Jack, with a rifle in his hands. We were too close, he couldn't shoot, I thought. As if we had one mind Jack reversed the rifle and clubbed Darcy in the head with the stock. Darcy howled and lurched, wanting to go for Jack, but I would not let go, would not would not would not...

Blackness.

"Wake up, honey. I have to check you." No.

"Open your eyes, Lily. It's me, Carrie." No. "Lily!"

I slitted my eyes. "That's better." Blinding light. "Don't moan. It's just - necessary."

Back to sleep. Nice period of darkness and silence. Then, "Wake up, Lily!"

The next day was agony. My head ached, a condition that bore no more relationship to a normal headache than a stomachache bore to appendicitis. My ribs were notched and gouged and the skin above them a bloody mess stitched together like a crazy quilt. The wound in my thigh, though not serious, added its own note to my symphony of pain, as did the slice in my arm.

I was in a private room, courtesy of Howell Winthrop, Jr., Carrie told me when I demanded to go home. When I realized someone else was paying for it, I decided to rest while I could. He was paying for Jack's room next door, too. Jack came in during that horrible morning, when even the medication that made me mentally dull could not smother the hurt.

When I saw him in the doorway, tears began oozing from the corners of my eyes, running down the side of my face to soak my pillow.

"I didn't mean to have that effect on you," he said. His voice was husky, but stronger.

I raised a hand, and he shuffled slowly to the bed and wrapped his own around it. His hand felt warm and hard and steady.

"You should sit," I said, and my own voice sounded distant and thick.

"Got you drugged, huh?"

"Yes." Nodding hurt more than speaking. "How'd they get you, Jack?"

"They found the bug," he said simply. "Jim spilled a Coke in the lounge, and in the process of mopping up the mess, he found it. Jim called old Mr. Winthrop. He advised them to watch from concealment and see who came to extract the tape; and that was me. They had to consult with each other for a while. They decided they could find out who hired me if they put me through the wringer. Cleve and Jim thought all along it was Howell, but the others voted for something federal. They thought Mookie was federal, too. They thought about going to get her, bring her along to join the party. Said she'd been in the store too much to be natural. Lucky for me they didn't. Why did you think of calling her? Who the hell is she?"

I tried to explain Mookie to him without revealing any of her secrets. I am not sure I managed, but Jack knew I worked for her, that she had a personal stake in uncovering our fledgling white supremacy group, and that I had known she could shoot. Jack held my hand for some time, rubbing it gently as he thought, and then suddenly he said, "When he knocked you down, when you hit the shelf and the floor - and I swear to God, Lily, you bounced - I thought he'd killed you."

"You went crazy," I observed.

He smiled a little. "Yes, I did. When you could stand, and you could walk - sort of - I knew you'd be okay. Probably. And after a look at Tom David, I knew he wasn't a threat to you..."

"So you left."

"Hunting." He was not apologetic. He'd had to pursue the man who had degraded him. I, of all people, could understand that.

"Who's dead?" Carrie had refused to talk about it.

"Tom David. Jim Box."

"That's all?"

"I wanted Darcy to die, but I didn't hit him that final time that would have settled it. His jaw is broken, though. The cops were there by then, for one thing." Jack sank into the chair, and thoughtfully punched the button to lower my bed so I could see him more easily.

"How come?"

"Bobo called them, when he went into the store after all the shooting started. And he was trying to find his grandfather. The old man had armed himself, and Bobo managed to track him down just in time."

I remembered Bobo's face as he'd lifted his grandfather and carried him off. A few more tears oozed down my face. I wanted to know what would happen to old Mr. Winthrop, but it could wait. Roasting in hell came to mind as fitting. "Mookie's alive?" I had belatedly realized her name was not on the dead list.

Jack closed his eyes. "She's just hanging on. She wants to talk to you."

"Oh, no." I felt so washed out, and washed up, I couldn't stand the thought of one more confession. "She's really not going to make it?"

"The arrow went right through. You saw."

"I was hoping I made it up." I looked away, at the curtained window.

Jack kept holding my hand, waiting for me to make up my mind.

"So Cleve didn't die?" I was stalling.

"He has a fractured skull. Much worse than your concussion."

"Not possible. Okay, get a nurse or two to load me in a chair."

After a lip-biting interval, I was being pushed into Mookie's room. There were blinking machines, and a constant low hum, and Mookie was hooked into more tubes than I had ever imagined a human being could be. Her color was ashen, and her lips had lost color. Lanette was in the corner of the room, her hands over her face, rocking back and forth in a straight chair. Her firstborn child was dying, and she had already lost her second. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">