64
There was a gunshot from inside the camper. Kate cried out, and ran several steps forward, then stopped. Who had the gun? Who was shooting?
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
Mistie began to cry.
A man who had been tinkering on his Harley-Davidson raced over, wiping his face with an oily towel. “That was a shot!” he said. “Who’s shootin’?”
Kate said nothing. She listened, but there were no more shots. “Stay there,” she ordered Mistie, and slowly approached the cinder block step.
“I wouldn’t do that, lady!” said the motorcycle man. “That Petinske fella can be mean as a badger when he’s drunk.”
Neighbors were gathering out on the circular drive, most in various stages of dress. “Somebody call 911!” said a woman. “That was a gunshot, I heard it!”
“I called already!” said a voice from the doorway of a Wilderness RV. “On their way. Ya’ll back up, what you got, a death wish?”
“Tony!” screamed Kate.
“Back up, woman, he can come out like a bull any minute!” said the motorcycle man. “We know how he can get!”
“Tony’s in there!”
The motorcycle man grabbed Kate by the arm and tried to pull her backward but she twisted free. “Let go! Tony’s in there!”
He threw up his hands in resignation. “Go get him, then, be my guest.”
The camper door opened, slowly. At first there were small tendrils of smoke curling out from inside, and then Tony was in the opening, stepping down onto the cinder block step, then down onto the ground, a revolver in her hand.
“Got him good,” Tony said simply. There was blood on her hands.
“Tony, what?” Kate took a step forward, and stopped as Tony began swinging the revolver back and forth. “Was it your father?”
Tony’s lip curled, a half-smile that chilled the back of Kate’s neck. “Oh, yeah, it was Burton Petinske. That’s who it was.” She looked past Kate to the gathering of neighbors, and waved the gun at them. “What the hell you lookin’ at? Fuck off! I’ve killed two today, and I’m just getting started!”
The neighbors flew away from each other like leaves on a winter wind. Some went back to their campers. Others moved behind cars, but continued to watch the spectacle.
“Tony, they’ve called the police,” said Kate. “It’s over.”
Tony looked at the barrel of the gun, smiled, and then pointed it at Kate. “Men and women,” she laughed sourly. “None of them are any good, are they? Mamas, Daddies, they’re all fucked up. You’re right that it ain’t a gender thing. But that don’t leave a whole hell of a lot, does it?”
“Not everyone’s like that,” said Kate. “Not everything” “You want it in the head or in the chest? I hear new niggers don’t want to fuck up their pretty faces when they die, so they would rather have it the chest.”
“God, Tony, don’t talk like this.”
“We’re all goin’ down, teacher. ‘Course, Baby Doll, she’s okay. Hey!” Tony turned to the neighbors behind their various cars. “Listen to me, whatever happens, don’t let this little kid go back to her Mama or Daddy. They’re messin’ her up real bad. You hear me? I’m giving a deposition here. It’s the truth. You promise me?”
None of the neighbors said a thing. Nobody moved.
Tony shook the gun at one car. “You promise me?”
A little old lady with loose dentures said, “I promise you.”
Tony nodded. Then she said, “Mistie, you’ll be okay.”
Kate looked beside her. Mistie was not there. “Mistie?” she said.
Tony whipped about, staring at the faces of the neighbors, and in the shadows of the scrub trees. “Mistie! Don’t you be hiding now!”
Mistie did not answer.
Then Kate noticed the camper door, wide open and the smoke billowing out, harder, faster.
“She went inside?” Kate screamed. Both Kate and Tony ran for the door, but Tony knocked Kate back and Kate landed with a twist of her bad leg. She cried out.
“I’ll get her,” said Tony, “just stay the fuck back!” She disappeared into the camper.
From behind, a wailing of sirens, the lightning flashes of police lights. Neighbors in the drive hurried out of the way as four cruisers forced their way into the driveway and bucked to a halt. Police heads popped up from both sides of the cars, all holding weapons, all pointing them at Kate and the burning camper.
“Put your hands up and walk this way, slowly!” one uniformed man called.
“Tony’s inside, and Mistie!” shouted Kate. “Save them, they’re in the fire! Hurry!”
“Hands up, now!”
Kate put her hands up. She noticed her unshaved pits. Fuck it!
“Forget me!” screamed Kate. Her food stomped the ground. “Goddamn it, get Mistie and Tony!”
One policeman rushed up and snatched Kate’s raised arms. He twisted them abruptly and painfully behind her back. Another police went to the camper door and kicked it open wider. He coughed in the onslaught of smoke.
“Get out here, now!” he called inside.
New sirens, higher pitched. Red lights instead of blue. A fire engine roaring up beside the police cars.
Suddenly, Tony appeared at the camper door. Her hair was singed, her face blackened. Her voice, raspy with the damage to her lungs. “I can’t find her!” she wailed. And then she put one hand to her face and sobbed, while the revolver dangled by her side. “I can’t find Mistie! She’s dead in there! She’s dead ‘cause of me!”
“Get down here, now!” said the police by the camper. “That place is an inferno, you don’t want to….”
“Yes, I do!” said Tony. She threw the revolver as hard as she could throw it. It flipped end over end and landed at the flat tire of Burton’s woodie wagon. And then, Tony turned, entered the camper and slammed the door shut.
“Damn it!” shouted the cop. He leapt onto the block porch and tried the handle. Tony had locked it.
“Tony!” screamed Kate.
“Stupid ass girl,” said the motorcycle guy.
“Mistie!” Kate twisted in the grasp of the policeman, and he jerked her arms up behind her, driving a vicious shard of pain through her back. “Get in there!”
Suddenly, the camper windows blew out at nearly the very same moment, like a firework set on a timer by a master technician. Firemen in full uniform were off their vehicle, scurrying like yellow jackets, hooking a hose to the hydrant at the side of the drive.
Kate dropped to her knees. The police officer yanked her back up. One officer snatched up the revolver Tony had tossed, then said to Kate, “You looking for a kid? She’s under there.” He pointed beneath the woodie wagon and shook his head. “Bob, get that kid out from under there. You’re better with children than I am.”
Bob, a young officer with a neatly starched uniform, coaxed Mistie out from under the wagon. She was clutching a handful of dead grass and staring at the ground.
“What’s your name?” Bob asked her. But she didn’t say a word.
She was put into a separate cruiser from Kate. And they were driven away from the fire and the neighbors and the burning camper trailer and its cinder block step.
65
They got to ride home in an airplane. Mistie had never been in an airplane before. It wasn’t really big but the seats were soft and there was a window to look out at the clouds. Mistie had on a new dress, one a police lady had given her back before they’d flown out of Texas. It was pink and frilly, and Mistie knew that Tessa didn’t have a dress that pretty. It was a dress that Mistie could wear in a pageant if her Mama let her be in a pageant.
The teacher had handcuffs on. She sat across the aisle from Mistie on her own soft seat and watched out the window. Beside her was the policewoman who had given Mistie the pretty dress.
Not long after the plane took off, one lady came up the aisle and asked Mistie what she’d like to have to eat. Mistie shrugged. She said, “Are you going to put us in jail? Valerie had a bad liver.”
“Honey, children don’t go to jail,” said the lady. Mistie was glad. The lady gave her a hamburger with pickles, French fries, a big Coke with a straw, and some banana pudding. Mistie took off the pickles and put them in the little pocket on the back of the seat in front of her.
“Mistie,” said the teacher after Mistie was done eating.
“Don’t talk,” said the policewoman beside her.
“I have to tell Mistie something.”
“You aren’t supposed to talk to her. You’re in deep trouble, lady. I’d keep my mouth shut.”
“I want to tell her I know I won’t be a teacher anymore,” said the teacher. “But I’ll tell them everything I know. I’ll make them hear me tell the truth. Too many kids are growing up without good mothers. Without good fathers. It’s the doom of our society.”
The police lady said, “Be quiet or I’ll have to gag you.”
“I want to tell Mistie that it can be made right. I’ll do everything I can to make it right.”
“Bob!” called the police lady. “I need a gag down here!”
The teacher turned and smiled at Mistie. She didn’t look scared. She looked happy. She looked like Princess Silverlace when the bad knights had been banished from the kingdom and the good music was playing at the end of the show.
Mistie smiled back.