Buck curses under his breath. “Just stay calm, Saint Bonnelyn. Slow ’er down. We’ll be okay.”
I fight my urge to shrink in my seat. The determination in Buck’s voice is all that keeps my hands firmly in place on the wheel and my foot steady. We both know that Buck doesn’t have time for us to be stopped, questioned—’specially with a backseat full of giggle juice.
“Okay, okay,” I say to myself, letting up on the throttle.
The car approaches. Closer. Closer.
It whizzes past and, as suspected, I catch a glimpse of the word Police plastered ’cross the car’s side.
I flick my attention to the rearview mirror, seeing red lights peek through a space between the crates. The taillights keep going.
“Thank God,” I say between my teeth, and I press my wrist against my chest to stop the line of sweat creeping down my neckline.
“Ya did it.” Exhaustion pours from Buck’s voice. He wheezes, coughs.
Instinctively, I reach for him, forgetting that he ever made me uncomfortable. The paleness of his skin can only mean one thing: he’s running out of time. “Buck, I need you to help get me to Doc Peterson.”
He looks at me, but his gaze is adrift.
“Buck,” I say firmly, even though I’m on the verge of crumbling. “We’re a team now, right? Which way do I turn?” I risk shaking his arm.
He stirs and peers out the window, sweat falling on either side of his droopy eyes. “Go right.”
Hand over hand, I make a brisk turn. And the ones that follow.
“Talk to me, Buck. Keep talking to me. What happened back there?”
“They got spooked,” he manages to say. “Took too long.” His eyes begin to roll back in his head. I shake him, his head rocking forward, and I thank the Lord Jesus when Doc’s comes into view.
Blanche is out front with Raymond, both casually yet tensely leaning against the brick exterior. She sees us and her hand grips Raymond’s wrist.
I slam on the brakes in front of Doc’s, jump from the car. Blanche and Raymond are already at the passenger side, helping Buck.
“What took you so long?” she seethes.
Her attack surprises me. My mouth falls open.
“Stop it, Blanche. She got him here, didn’t she?” Raymond says. He hoists Buck over his shoulder. Buck cries out in pain.
Blanche is frantic—her eyes, her speech, everything. “Clyde was here minutes ago. Minutes!”
“Just help me,” Raymond demands.
I race for the door, holding it open for him and Blanche to carry Buck through. Blood covers my hands.
Trailing behind, Mary and a handful of nurses scatter like ants. Noticeably missing is Clyde—the boy in the shadows, with the captivating eyes, who fought off an attack, helped me get Buck in the car, raced here to warn everyone we were coming, but is now nowhere to be seen.
Doc Peterson ushers us into a sterile-looking room. Raymond carefully places Buck on a table, looks up at the doctor expectantly. But Doc Peterson is staring at me and doesn’t seem pleased. “Out,” he demands, already reaching for the door.
11
Trembling, I sneak into the house and feverishly scrub the blood from my hands under a slow trickle of water, as not to stir my family. I force myself to sleep, each dream soaked in red. I wake with a metallic scent somehow stuck in my nose.
At the breakfast table, Ma hasn’t asked me a single question ’bout why I’m only stirring my oatmeal ’round and ’round. She simply watches me as she folds laundry, creating a stack of neat clothes beside me on the table.
Buster rushes into the kitchen, and I clutch at my heart. Part of me thought he was the police, coming to take me away. In the midst of folding a shirt, Ma reaches for the chair he’s knocked, but she’s too slow to catch it and it cracks against the ground. I watched it falling, the entire time, but still I jump from the gunshot-sounding bang.
“Shh,” Ma chastises. “Your little sister is still asleep.”
Buster drops into another chair at the table and, with his good hand, unfolds a newspaper, painfully slow to lessen the noise. He grins mischievously, like I bet my daddy would’ve done. I wasn’t double-digits yet when Daddy passed away during surgery in the Great War, so the resemblance could be all in my head.
I hope my sky-high nerves from last night are also all in my head.
“Can I see a page or two of that paper?” I ask my brother.
“Bonnelyn, this here newspaper is fact, not one of your fairy tales.”
“Buster.” Ma slumps down into her own chair. “Give your sister the paper.”
He sighs, removing the sports section, and pushes the remaining pages ’cross our small table.
I discreetly tap my foot and flip from page to page, only fake-reading the headlines. That is, ’til I come to the one that has my fingers crinkling the thin paper: an article proclaiming how hooligans caused a disturbance in Dallas last night.
The gory details—’bout the blood, the screams, the chaos, the gunshot, the speculation of bootlegging alcohol—are all there. What’s not written in black and white is a solid idea of the hooligans’ identities. There are varying accounts of our appearances. I steady my foot, feeling relief. For me, at least. This here newspaper can’t tell me a thing ’bout how Buck’s doing, and all I want to do is hide away in my fairy tales.
I step outside. The mercifully cooler air greets me before I escape to a familiar corner of the library, book in hand, with the musty smell of a story written long ago. I tuck my legs under me and breathe out a slow breath, eager to lose myself in the calamities of Jane Eyre’s life instead of my own.
It ain’t long before I hear footsteps. I fear it’s Roy, but he’s still sleeping. Like usual, I’ll see him at the house in the afternoon, after I’ve had time to get my nerves in check. No, the fast-paced gait coming toward me is Blanche’s. I quickly lower my head, puff out my cheeks, not sure what to expect from her.
“Bonnelyn.”
I narrow my eyes, concentrating harder on my page.
“Bonnelyn,” she repeats, far louder than the whisper she’s supposed to use in here, and this time she crouches down to my level.
My shoulders rise, fall. “What do you want, Blanche?”
“So, last night…”
“Yes?” I snap my book closed, the sound echoing throughout the library.
“I shouldn’t have been so hard on you. I was just worried ’bout…”
Finally, I look at her. There may not be tears in her eyes, but there’s moisture there. And … sincerity.
“I was worried ’bout Buck,” Blanche finishes. She lowers herself from a crouch to a cross-legged position and takes my hands. “I ought to thank you, though. Buck says he probably wouldn’t have made it without you there. He was babbling ’bout how you two are a team. You ain’t moving in on my man, are ya?”
I scrunch my brows. “Your man?”
She smiles coyly. “Thought I could sneak that in without you noticing. That dope may mean more to me than”—she scratches her head, drops her gaze—“maybe Blanche has let on.”
“Blanche Caldwell is goofy ’bout somebody? Never thought I’d live to see the day.”