Ravens (27 page)

Then she heard Shaw say, “Let them go.”

Romeo, confused: “What?”

“Put the gun down.”

“There’s a
price,
” Romeo insisted. “The price was posted.”

“It’s paid,” said Shaw. “Now we need mercy. Let’s get her to the hospital.”

He helped Dad to his feet, and told Tara, “I’ll drive.” Everyone climbed into the car. Tara turned to look back at Romeo —
one long look into his eyes. Then Shaw started the engine and they roared off.

Shaw
pushed 70 mph on the dirt of Honeygal Road, but when he hit Rt. 341 he cranked it to 90. The tires sang on the turns. He
tossed his cell phone back to Patsy and said, “Call the hospital. Tell them to be ready for us.”

He came barreling down 341 and approached a red light with traffic idling before it. He veered, and lurched up onto the curb
and skirted around the line of bleating cars, shooting through the intersection. Every second was precious. Clio’s life dangled
by a thread, and all that kept her in this world was Tara, Tara talking her through the valley of death. Shaw pounded the
horn and slammed the accelerator, and the blocks ticked away. He turned left at Community Road and right on Altama, following
the H sign.

A time to punish and a time to forgive.

He took a left at Shrine Road and swept into the ER bay. Nurses were already waiting. They wheeled Clio away on a gurney and
allowed Tara to come with them.

Shaw checked the clock on the dashboard. Only fourteen minutes since they’d left the creekside. So she ought to have a chance.

He and the Boatwrights went to the waiting room, and sat, and in half an hour Clio’s mother came running in, nearly incoherent
from fear. Some attendant escorted her into the ER.

Nurses and orderlies kept coming around to gawk at Shaw and the Boatwrights. One even got up the courage to say, “You’re the
jackpot people, aren’t you?”

Patsy nodded.

The nurse said to her, “The spirit of the Lord is upon you.”

The receptionist murmured, “Amen.”

Romeo
was trudging through the white heat. Green Swamp Road had looked cool and shady on the map, but in the event it turned out
to be just a straight track of brutal sun and whining katydids forever. And his brain felt swollen, full up with that look
that Tara had cast him.

The sun took up most of the eastern sky. Round his head was a halo of gnats. After a few miles he thought he could walk no
farther, so he sat down beside the road.

A long time passed.

I should get up and move out of the sun, he thought.

After sudden wealth there’s a rush of demons. Always. Flocks of demons. Wheeling. And he among them. The beast, circling.
And who to oppose him, that girl? But she had hollowed herself out, and taken in the suffering around her; and now she was
ready to fight him.

An ancient bronze Cadillac eased up beside him. The window was lowered ceremoniously and an old black man asked, “Would you
care for a ride?”

“I would,” he said. “Thank you.”

He got into the car. The man said, “Which way you headed for?”

“Brunswick?”

“All the way to town? Would a been a long walk.”

“Yes sir. I had given up.”

“Get yourself a drink, son. Reach in the cooler back there.”

Romeo thanked him, reached over the seat back and opened a Styrofoam ice chest. There were a few cans of soda floating in
an inch of murky water. Romeo took a can of Shasta Creme Soda.

The man said, “I got them sodas for my grandkids.”

“Would you thank them for me?”

“Sure. How come you ain’t got no car?”

“Well. I went to a party with a girl. In her car? But she went off with somebody else.”

“Oh. Well, I know that feeling. You feel bad?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t doubt. How long you been going with this girl?”

“I wasn’t going with her. I was supposed to kill her. But everything got fucked up, because I was afraid, and they knew it.
Now I don’t know what to do.”

They didn’t say another word till they got to town.

As they drove, Romeo kept seeing that one thing: that look of Tara’s.

Well, OK, he thought. You’re so good with suffering, I’ll give you as much as you can stand.

Shaw
and the Boatwrights waited in the hospital for two full hours. Finally Clio’s mother came out from the ER and told them Clio
was going to be OK.

Patsy embraced her; they both laughed. Patsy told her how Shaw had raced here so heroically. The woman took Shaw’s hands into
her own, and kissed them, saying, “When I saw you on TV, I knew you were a good man.” Her eyes brimmed with tears.

Jase said, “I never seen no one go faster
ever
. Not even Dale Jr.!”

Everyone laughed. Clio’s mother said, “Sir, you are a saint.”

They went outside. Already there was a crush of TV crews and reporters:

“Shaw! Why are you here?”

“Shaw! Is it true you saved a girl from killing herself?”

“Shaw! How did you know about her?”

“How did you locate her?”

“Shaw!”

“Shaw! Is it true that the voice of God led you to her?”

Burris
went on duty at three o’clock. As was his custom, he pulled up behind the stand of oleander on Rt. 17, and lay in wait for
speeders. But he felt drained and whittled-down, and his thoughts were ugly. He recalled his meeting with Mitch Boatwright,
and what a fool he’d been. He considered the patch of frizzled hair on his forehead and wondered why he didn’t just give up
and shave the thing off. Then he wondered why the hell was he thinking about the hair on his forehead? All he ever thought
about were stupid things. Did Nell love him, would the Chief ever respect him, should he shave his head, etc. Why couldn’t
he think about things substantial, spiritual, weighty?

Well, maybe because he was only a joke.

Possibly he was only a joke that the Chief was telling at Trudy’s Café — some long pointless story about a clown cop who thought
he’d find some dignity in the world but the world kept knocking him down and pissing on him.
You, dignity? Deppity Dawg?
And at the end of the story everybody was laughing their jawbones loose, everybody in town.

He sat in the cruiser. The traffic swam by. He sat there for an hour, and caught no one because he pursued no one.

However, at 4:57 p.m., Rose Whittle dispatched him to a possible burglary in progress at the Jane Macon Elementary School.
It was late in the day and he found the school empty, except for an old black lady, a secretary, working in the office. She
said she’d heard noises. He accompanied her to check the classrooms, and then the bathrooms. They found nothing. And they
were about to quit; they were on their way back to the office, walking through the big gym, when Burris heard whispers. Off
to the left. Where the bleachers were. He went and peered beneath them. Eyes. Two pair.

“Come out of there.”

Two little girls scurried away. He jogged after them, but he had that big gut to haul, in addition to all the bouncing and
clanging cop paraphernalia on his duty belt, and he was aware of how he must look, with his bald head and the shades and the
cop shoes. He wasn’t really trying to catch anyone.

But one of the girls turned out to be so chubby and slow that he caught up to her anyway. He tapped her shoulder and she crumpled
on the floor and started weeping.

Oh, what a fearless crimestopper am I.

The other one got clean away.

He helped the chubby one up and marched her to the office. He sat her in a chair and folded his arms and scowled at her. He
wanted to comfort her but knew it was his duty to be cold and mean — for at least a little while.

“What’s your name?”

“Kyra.”

“How old are you?”

“Ten.”

“What did you think you were doing here?”

“Following Shylana.”

“Is Shylana your boss or something?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because she left you holding the bag.”

Kyra wept.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be following Shylana around. Maybe she’s leading you to bad places.”

He asked the old secretary for a tissue and passed it to the girl. It wasn’t much help. Every time Kyra looked at him, she’d
cry with more vehemence. Because of the uniform, of course. Wear a police uniform, and everywhere you went, people got emotional.
Children, lovers, hardened criminals. They’d see the badge and the shiny shoes and they’d start bawling their heads off.

But then a funny thing happened. Shylana appeared.

She marched right into the office and sat down next to Kyra and glared up at Burris. She didn’t say her name, but who else
could it be? She was very tiny but she was beautiful. Her face was delicate and her eyes enormous. She said, “This was
my
idea. So leave her alone.”

Burris asked, “What was your idea?”

Shylana didn’t answer.

Said Burris, “I mean, what’re you doing in school after hours anyway?”

She glared.

She reminded him of Nell. From a long time ago, from fourth grade. Burris had been in love with her even then, when they used
to take the bus on Thursday afternoons to Baptist Bible study — which they both hated. He’d sit behind her and tell dumb jokes
and she’d laugh her wild laugh. Once, the bus driver had told her to pipe down but she’d ignored him. When he’d complained
a second time, she’d said: “You’re not my father. You’re not my teacher. You don’t get a
vote
, mister.” Skewering him with her powerful eyes. And fifty years later, here it was again, the same unrepentant alien gaze,
from tiny Shylana. As Burris sternly admonished her: “Your principal could get a juvenile warrant, you know that? Then you’ll
have to go before Judge Parr and he could send you to the juvenile home — you hear me, Shylana?”

Streams of tears broke from her eyes. Two thin cascades, running straight down her face. Yet she kept glaring at him; her
gaze didn’t falter. Burris was upended by admiration for this girl who’d come back to share her friend’s punishment and who
wouldn’t be cowed by the cop with the gun and the gut and the patch of snaky hair in the middle of his forehead.

He stopped lecturing. They just studied each other.

Then abruptly Shylana confessed, “We came to look at my picture.”

“What picture?”

Shylana shook her head. “Picture I made.”

“Could I see this picture, Shylana?”

She got up and started walking. He followed her out of the gym and down the dark school corridor, and Kyra and the old secretary
came behind them. Shylana went into a classroom, and pointed to a watercolor on the wall. It was a portrait of a schoolbus.
The bottom of this bus bellied down in a way that made it seem alive, and gave life to everything around it. Shylana had chosen
to make the sun itself the color of grape juice, which made the bus look extra-stunningly yellow. Good God. It was the old
school bus from his childhood, with its creaking seats and blown shock absorbers, with sunshine roaring out from its Bluebird
heart.

He wondered, how is this possible: such sunniness, after so many years? His eyes were filled with prismatic tears. He told
Shylana it was the best picture of a schoolbus he’d ever seen. He wanted to say it was the best picture of anything he’d ever
seen, but he was afraid that might have sounded insincere. He murmured something about needing to use the little boys’ room,
and the old woman pointed the way. He went down and pushed through the door. It was truly a ‘little boys’ room, with dwarf
urinals and dwarf sinks. He leaned against a sink, and got down on his haunches, and looked at himself in the mirror. All
I’ve ever wanted was a lot of sunshine, and here it is, suddenly, knocking me down. What’s happening to me?

After he collected himself, he drove Shylana and Kyra home. He left Kyra off first, then took Shylana to her grandmother.
Before he drove away, she gave him a kiss on the cheek.

He said, “Shylana, you remind me of someone. A little girl. A long time ago I was in love with her.”

“Really? Did you marry her?”

“No.”

“Why not?”