Dougie, wiping his chin with his shirttail, looked up.
“No, I think I can handle it,” Wendell said. “Long as I have this.” He waved the shotgun. “I’ll be back in a bit,” he said, and disappeared into the night.
So now Timmy was prepared to kill me and Lawrence, my father, Bob Spooner, and Betty and Hank Wrigley. There was no way he could leave any of us behind, not once he’d brought off his parade surprise.
Timmy went over to my father, put his hand under his arm, and hauled him over to the stall. “Stand back there,” he ordered me and Lawrence. “Dougie, cover them.”
Dougie grabbed a shotgun and held it on us as Timmy opened the gate and shoved my father in with us. His crutches were back on the floor where he’d fallen, and he limped over to us.
I hugged him.
“I was worried,” Dad said. “You’d been gone a long time.”
“Yeah, well, we’re sort of in a situation,” I said. “You hurt?”
“Uh, I don’t think so,” Dad said.
“How’s your ankle?”
“Not too bad.” He glanced back into the open area of the barn, took in the van, the blue drum in the back, the device perched atop it. “Is that what I think it is?” he asked.
Lawrence and I both nodded.
“Timmy,” Lawrence said, “just where do you plan to be twenty-four hours from now?”
“Huh?”
“Tomorrow night. You’re not planning on still being here, are you? Living in this farmhouse?”
Charlene gave him a sly, questioning look. Dougie, not capable of that, just looked, as did Timmy.
“I mean, come on,” Lawrence said. “You’re going to kill all of us, kill God knows how many at the parade, you think people aren’t going to be looking for you? I don’t think something this big is going to be left for Chief Orville Thorne to figure out.” Lawrence glanced at me, did something with his eyebrows that seemed to say “No disrespect intended to your new stepbrother.”
Lawrence continued. “This county, this town, it’s going to be swarming with every law official imaginable, from Homeland Security to the Mounties. What happens when they find no one at Denny’s Cabins? No. One. Not even the owner. You think you can pretend not to know what happened to all of us? We’re just over the fucking hill.”
“Maybe,” said Charlene slowly, “I should start packing a few things.”
“Yeah,” Timmy agreed, nodding. “We might want to go away for a while.”
“A while?” said Lawrence. “How about forever? Don’t you have some like-minded brethren, committed to the same whacko causes, who’ll hide you for a while?”
“Jesus, Timmy,” said Dougie. “You don’t think we could get caught for this, do you?”
“Look,” Timmy said, working up some courage, “we do what we have to do. We’re fighting for ideals that are bigger than just us, okay? We’re sticking with this, we’re not going to turn back now. But yeah, Charlene, you might want to throw a few things together.”
“I want to take my Hot Wheels collection,” Dougie said.
“What’s going on?”
We all turned our attention to the open doorway. There stood Jeffrey, in slippers and a pair of striped pajamas, his hair all tousled.
“Why’s everybody out here?” he said. “What’s everybody doing?”
“Get back to bed!” Timmy shouted. That prompted Jeffrey to look over Timmy’s way, and then his eyes landed on me, and Lawrence, and Dad.
“What are they doing in there?” Jeffrey said. He smiled at Lawrence. “Hi,” he said, and made a small wave.
“Hi, Jeffrey,” Lawrence said. “How’s it going?”
“Okay,” he said, quietly. He could tell something was going on. Something bad. “Why are they all locked up?” he asked his grandfather.
“Jeffrey, go back to the house. Charlene, take him back to the house.”
“But I don’t get it. Why are they there? Did they try to steal something?”
Timmy pounced on that. “That’s right. They were trying to steal some tools. These are actually very bad men.”
“That’s not true, Jeffrey,” I said.
“Jeffrey?” It was May, just outside the barn. “Jeffrey, are you in there?”
The boy looked back as his mother, wearing a long pink housecoat, stepped inside. It took her a second to take in the scene. Dougie, Charlene, Timmy, the three of us in the stall. The white van in the middle of the barn.
“What the hell is going on here?” she asked.
Timmy said, “May, take your boy and put him to bed. You know he’s not ever supposed to be out here. You too, for that matter.”
Jeffrey said, “Grandpa, these aren’t bad men! They’re good men! Even that one!” He pointed at Lawrence.
Timmy shook his head in anger. “Jeffrey, I’ve had just about enough—”
“He was really nice to me! He isn’t mean like you!”
Timmy grabbed the boy by the arm and started shaking him. “Why, you little shit, I oughta—”