“Where’s Agent Rigo?” Santayana asks.
“He sent me,” says Cooper. “To gather up everyone and get them inside. We’ve got bigger problems right now, you know that.” Cooper takes a few steps closer to the porch, his hands still raised. Once his back is to Fran and the boy, he’s says quietly, but tersely, in a clipped whisper, to Santayana: “We’re in this together, remember? Just let me take the boy somewhere safe. There’s a place we can hide while all this plays out. After that, we can take him out of here.”
Santayana considers this. While she does, Cooper says: “But we have to get out of the streets. Now.”
Pop pop pop pop pop. Getting closer.
Santayana holsters her gun.
Cooper turns back to his party and claps his hands once. “All right. Let’s go. Come on.” Then he shouts and motions to the people watching from their windows. “Everyone—follow Dawes.” Some of them come outside, hustling, while others just stare dumbly, paralyzed, or close the curtains again. Cooper turns back to Santayana. “I’m going to gather everyone in the chapel. It’s in the center of town at the end of the main street. I need to get everyone safe while we deal with Dietrich. After that, we’ll sort this other business out. All right?”
“All right,” says Santayana.
The group of them starts to walk away down the street, Dawes hobbling, leaning on Fran, the four of them trailing a caravan of frightened citizens. Cooper says to Dawes, “You okay?”
“I can walk. It hurts.”
Cooper pulls out a ring of keys. “Take these. Take everyone to the chapel.” She nods. “Grab anyone else that you see,” he says. “As many as will fit inside. Once you get to the chapel, ring the bells.” Then he lowers his voice, almost whispering. “Then you lock that fucking door behind you.”
“What about you?”
“Just lock that door. I’ll get there.”
She nods.
“You did good,” he says.
“I know,” she says.
Cooper turns to Fran. Says in a hoarse whisper, “Keep him safe. That’s all you need to worry about.”
“Cooper—” It all comes now, undammed, in a sob. “I remember.”
He tugs her close and kisses her hair. “Just keep him safe.”
Pop pop pop.
He turns back to Dawes.
“Now give me the gun,” he says.
Dawes hesitates. Then she understands. “Cooper, that’s suicide.”
“Just give me the gun.”
She hands it to him. He opens the cylinder, checks it again, snaps it shut.
“You saved me the bullet,” he says.
“I’m sorry that’s all I have for you.”
“Well, if I’m lucky,” he says, “I’ll only need one.”
34.
BUSTER FORD HEARS THE SHOOTING and he knows it’s coming closer. He sits in his living room, cradling his Bible, thinking about the fences. How, after all these years here—and he’s been here eight years, the full eight, it’s hard to believe, but eight years already, how time flies—you stop noticing them. You stop noticing how the fences rise and cut into the endless horizon, claiming their portion of the sky. You stop mentally noting how their mottled shadows stretch across the dirt every day at dusk, like a net thrown over the town. He’s always wondered about the utility of the fences, because you’re ostensibly free to leave at any time.
Of course, the fences are supposedly there to keep people out, too. But apparently that hasn’t worked out too well.
Pop pop pop.
He cradles the Bible. He’s thought of leaving the town, many times. His memory is more intact than most. He remembers almost his entire childhood. He’s in his early sixties now, so a natural erosion has kicked in, on top of what they took away. But he grew up in Pennsylvania, he knows that, just outside Lancaster. His father slowing to steer the car around an Amish carriage as it clip-clopped along at the side of the highway. He remembers the candies he used to get as a kid at the Amish market on weekends and how, later, as a teen, he’d watch the Amish girls in their bonnets, how pretty they looked. He remembers one girl, in particular, he’d see every weekend at her family’s booth, who was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. He tried to talk to her once, but he wasn’t sure what to say. His friends made crude jokes about those Amish women. He never made those jokes.
His memories get a bit blurry after that; that must have been when his life went astray. But he knows, if he ever does leave the Blinds, he’ll head to Lancaster, and look for that woman.
Pop pop.
The bungalow has too few rooms for him to hide in, he knows that, too. He could run, but there’s the problem of the fences. You can only run so far. Besides, he’s old, and no longer much for running.
The silences after the shots are the worst part. Then more shots, sharp reports, getting closer. Like the knock of a census-taker, stopping at every door on the block, approaching yours.
He sits in the living room with his Bible and summons all his energy and tries to remember. If only I could know what it is that I did. How I ended up here. Inside these fences.
He hears more gunfire like insistent knocking, louder still, until he realizes that the knocker has found his door.
When Bette hears the rapid staccato of shots, far away at first but getting closer, she moves to rise from Wayne’s couch. She thinks that she will run. Or find the sheriff. Or find the agents. The ones who are supposed to take her home.
Wayne reaches out and stills her with his hand. She sits again. He’s holding his pencil in his other hand, over the half-completed sketch.
She looks at this bowed, gnarled man, with his wild silver hair, his burrowed eyes, and waits for him to do something more. He doesn’t. He’s still.
He’s listening.
Pop pop pop.
Cooper watches them walk away down the road, the ragged caravan, toward the refuge of the chapel. Santayana and her agents trail behind, at a distance, almost like shepherds, keeping watch.
Then he walks quickly in the other direction.
He could try to get the drop on Dietrich. Hide somewhere, like a hunter, wait on Dietrich, try to surprise him, but Dietrich’s armed to the teeth and an expert shot to boot—he proved that on the night of the coydogs. And Cooper’s bum shoulder is barking and even on a good day he can’t reliably knock a can off a fence at twenty yards. So taking on Dietrich, with one bullet?
Dawes was right. That’s suicide. And as much as the notion has held a certain appeal to him in the past, he’s not much interested in that particular ending today.
He walks briskly away from the distant sound of the echoing shots.
Never carried a loaded gun, not for eight years on the job. Never had use for one.
He turns onto the next block.
Pop pop pop pop pop, he hears it again, and tries not to think about what each resonant barrage means. How Dietrich is roaming freely, stalking the town, murderous, fatal, like a sickness. How the town is dying slowly around him, plague-struck, helpless. No apparent rescue on the horizon.
Cooper mounts a set of stairs.