“Fuck this,” Santayana says. “It’s too hot, and I’m too fucking tired, and while all of this is very entertaining, Cooper, you go get that boy right now or I will personally execute every last shit bag in this fucking town one by one until you—”
But her last words are lost in a war cry, the whole town hears it, like a mournful keening, and those who turn to seek its source see Orson Calhoun striding purposefully, now jogging, now breaking into a run, his hammer held high, catching the sun, and in the few fleet seconds it takes for him to close the ground between the edge of his workshop’s yard and the woman with the gun, Orson enjoys a sudden surge of clarity. About all those hazy half-memories he holds, of all those days spent with his father, in the basement, learning about tools. Of what his father used them for. Of who he used them on. Of a thwack, a cry, a sobbing. Of the rusty smell of the rag he held for his father to wipe down the tools. The stiffness of the sodden rags. All the techniques of the trade, passed on in the flickering subterranean light from father to son. And it brings to Orson not understanding, exactly, but a sudden sort of dread and welcome peace, of who he is and why he’s here and how he came to be this way, a feeling of release that in some more wicked and honest era might be termed a reckoning.
Santayana turns sharply, as per her training, toward the sound of the escalating scream, her pistol seeking a target, but it’s too late for her now, too late, as Orson buries the claw end of the hammer in the front of her skull, and Orson notes how the hammer’s teeth announce their arrival with a heavy wet thunk, and how the woman’s eyes roll back peacefully, before the weight of her body tugs at the smooth wooden handle in his hand and he releases it and she slumps almost gracefully to the ground.
At a distance, Agent Burly sights Orson and puts three quick shots in Orson’s back, solid center. And though Orson turns, and flails like a struck beast, it’s over now, he’s done for, two more quick shots arrive with more certainty, one in the neck and one in the head, and these put Orson down for good. But someone has a shovel now, scavenged from the commissary. Someone has a pickax, similarly obtained. And as the two agents, Burly and Gains, swing their weapons in search of new targets, the crowd seems to collapse upon them, folding inward like a closing fist, until the street becomes a scene of loosed anarchy. The sounds alone are primitive, the thuds and grunts and crackings. The wielder of the shovel wallops Gains from behind and the pale redhead goes down, his wispy hair splashed a deeper red, and as he lays unconscious in the gravel, the shovel’s sharp blade finds him, again and again, as though someone’s driving a spade stubbornly into frozen soil. Three other men from the crowd have swarmed on Burly. The men are unarmed but attack the agent with some long-suppressed and brutal expertise. He’s no match for them and offers only a waning resistance before he crumples. Elsewhere, a posse has toppled the lawn chairs and descended on the file box. Hands tear at it, fingers riffle in a frenzy. The box is upended, files loosed into the air, pages fluttering over the road, before searching patiently for a place to land. Pages settle in widening pools of blood and absorb the blood and are thus obscured.
Rigo watches all this wild-eyed. The folder on Cooper he holds in his hand is dropped and its contents scatter. Rigo fires blindly into the collapsing crowd and Cooper takes this opportunity to tackle him, and Rigo topples easily, as though he’s already conceded, and on the ground Cooper wrests his gun free with barely a struggle, then stands up over him and aims the gun at Rigo in the dirt. Rigo shrivels.
There’s nothing to stop him, Cooper thinks. Certainly no sense that this is not who he is.
This is who he is.
He understands that now.
But he doesn’t kill Rigo.
Instead, he says, “Enough.”
And then, just like that, it’s over.
The street stills.
The frenzy recedes.
Cooper stands at the center of the wreckage, the bloodied sheriff, standing astride Rigo, still clutching the gun.
In the quiet, he counts corpses.
Orson Calhoun. Lyndon Lancaster and Doris Agnew. The five agents: Santayana, Burly and Gains, Corey and Bigelow. Plus whatever carnage Dick Dietrich left in the streets to be discovered. Plus Dietrich himself. Plus William Wayne.
Plus Dean. Plus Gable. Plus Colfax.
Plus Robinson.
Poor Robinson.
He and Dawes are the only true innocents.
Save for the boy.
The boy, still safe in the chapel.
After a moment of accounting, Cooper reaches down and grabs Rigo and hoists him to his feet. Then Cooper turns to Fran and gives her a signal, and she turns and walks back to the red door. She knocks and it opens for her, and she enters the chapel, and moves past the rows of disarrayed chairs and the huddled crowd to find her son at the back of the room, and clutches him for a long moment.
Then she stands and sounds the chapel bells, to signal all clear to the town.
For a time, the only sound in the street is bells.
40.
THE SIX OF THEM take one truck together, so as not to arouse suspicion. They travel in one of the black SUVs left behind by the agents, a six-seater. Fran drives, with Cooper beside her, watching the plains pass. Spiro and Dawes sit behind in the middle seat, Dawes propped against Spiro’s shoulder, her breathing shallow. Her bleeding’s been stanched but none of them knows enough to know how bad her situation is. Behind them, in the last seat, sits Hannibal Cagney and Paul Rigo. Rigo is handcuffed, his head leaning on the window. The six of them drive together for two hours on an empty road without passing another car. Every so often, signs appear to promise them an eventual city.
No one speaks. The tires hum on the road.
Finally, Cooper says, “Here.”
Fran pulls over to the shoulder, the truck rumbling to a halt. Cooper gets out and walks around to the side door where, aided by Hannibal’s prodding, he wrests Rigo from the backseat.
Cooper stands Rigo up, straightens his suit, squares his shoulders, like he’s readying him for a prom date. The sun is just starting to decline in the distance, exhausted.
“Not here,” says Rigo. “This is nowhere.”
“We could drive another hour, it wouldn’t make a difference,” Cooper says.
Rigo raises his manacled wrists. “You’re going to leave me like this, too?”
Cooper turns his back and walks to the passenger side and gets back in the truck.
“You’re stupid to do this,” Rigo calls out. “You think I won’t come after you?”
“I hope you do,” says Cooper, through the open window, and then the truck pulls away.
Later, as Fran drives, she asks, “What do you think he’ll tell Mark Vincent?”
“I don’t think he’ll have a chance to tell him anything,” Cooper says.
“But if he does, do you think they’ll come back again?”
“It’s his son,” Cooper says. “Wouldn’t you come back?”