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I didn't believe it. Mookie had screamed; at least, I was almost certain it had been her. You can't scream if an arrow goes through your head. But I knew my reasoning, like my sense of balance and my judgment, was very shaky just now. If only I knew where Jack was, I thought, I'd just curl up somewhere and go to sleep. That sounded good. I laid my head on the rough indoor-outdoor carpet and began to drift.
"I'm com-ing," Darcy crooned. Darcy, who had beaten a young man to death for being black. Darcy, who had crushed his friend's throat.
He sounded so close I knew I shouldn't move. I didn't feel sleepy anymore. I felt close to death. I thought of the high-tech bows I'd seen dangling from the ceiling on my trips to the store, the ones that looked so lethal they would've scared Robin Hood... Wow, was I drifting...
A foot fell on the carpet an inch from my face. His next step would be on me. Act or die.
Galvanized, I shrieked and scrambled up, grabbing what I could, hoping for an arm. I locked my arms and legs around Darcy Orchard like a lover, holding him as tightly as I'd ever held Jack or Marshall, squeezing till tears ran from my eyes. I was riding his back.
He was so big and strong, and not wounded. He didn't go down even with my full weight wrapped around him. I'd scared the shit out of him, and it took him seconds to recover, but only seconds. He heaved and bucked, and I heard the clatter of something falling, and I thought it might be the bow.
But he had an arrow in his hand, and he began stabbing backward with it, though not with the full force or range of his arm since I embraced him. He jabbed my thigh the first time, and he could tell where to go after that, and he scored my ribs a dozen times. Scars on scars, I thought through the terrible pain. I wanted to let go. But it seemed I couldn't, couldn't get the message to my fingers to relax. Death grip, I thought. Death grip.
The lights came on. The glare seemed to shoot a lance through my eyes, made me so sick I nearly fainted, but I was shocked into alertness by something so awful I could only believe it because it was this night, this bloody night. Behind one of the counters that held a display of knives, I glimpsed Mookie fixed to the wall by an arrow through her chest. Her head sagged to one side and her eyes were open.
Then past Darcy's shoulder I saw someone ru
Blackness.
"Wake up, honey. I have to check you." No.
"Open your eyes, Lily. It's me, Carrie." No. "Lily!"
I slitted my eyes. "That's better." Blinding light. "Don't moan. It's just—necessary."
Back to sleep. Nice period of darkness and silence. Then, "Wake up, Lily!"
The next day was agony. My head ached, a condition that bore no more relationship to a normal headache than a stomachache bore to appendicitis. My ribs were notched and gouged and the skin above them a bloody mess stitched together like a crazy quilt. The wound in my thigh, though not serious, added its own note to my symphony of pain, as did the slice in my arm.
I was in a private room, courtesy of Howell Winthrop, Jr., Carrie told me when I demanded to go home. When I realized someone else was paying for it, I decided to rest while I could. He was paying for Jack's room next door, too. Jack came in during that horrible morning, when even the medication that made me mentally dull could not smother the hurt.
When I saw him in the doorway, tears began oozing from the corners of my eyes, ru
"I didn't mean to have that effect on you," he said. His voice was husky, but stronger.
I raised a hand, and he shuffled slowly to the bed and wrapped his own around it. His hand felt warm and hard and steady.
"You should sit," I said, and my own voice sounded distant and thick.
"Got you drugged, huh?"
"Yes." Nodding hurt more than speaking. "How'd they get you, Jack?"
"They found the bug," he said simply. "Jim spilled a Coke in the lounge, and in the process of mopping up the mess, he found it. Jim called old Mr. Winthrop. He advised them to watch from concealment and see who came to extract the tape; and that was me. They had to consult with each other for a while. They decided they could find out who hired me if they put me through the wringer. Cleve and Jim thought all along it was Howell, but the others voted for something federal. They thought Mookie was federal, too. They thought about going to get her, bring her along to join the party. Said she'd been in the store too much to be natural. Lucky for me they didn't. Why did you think of calling her? Who the hell is she?"
I tried to explain Mookie to him without revealing any of her secrets. I am not sure I managed, but Jack knew I worked for her, that she had a personal stake in uncovering our fledgling white supremacy group, and that I had known she could shoot. Jack held my hand for some time, rubbing it gently as he thought, and then suddenly he said, "When he knocked you down, when you hit the shelf and the floor—and I swear to God, Lily, you bounced—I thought he'd killed you."
"You went crazy," I observed.
He smiled a little. "Yes, I did. When you could stand, and you could walk—sort of—I knew you'd be okay. Probably. And after a look at Tom David, I knew he wasn't a threat to you..."
"So you left."
"Hunting." He was not apologetic. He'd had to pursue the man who had degraded him. I, of all people, could understand that.
"Who's dead?" Carrie had refused to talk about it.
"Tom David. Jim Box."
"That's all?"
"I wanted Darcy to die, but I didn't hit him that final time that would have settled it. His jaw is broken, though. The cops were there by then, for one thing." Jack sank into the chair, and thoughtfully punched the button to lower my bed so I could see him more easily.
"How come?"
"Bobo called them, when he went into the store after all the shooting started. And he was trying to find his grandfather. The old man had armed himself, and Bobo managed to track him down just in time."
I remembered Bobo's face as he'd lifted his grandfather and carried him off. A few more tears oozed down my face. I wanted to know what would happen to old Mr. Winthrop, but it could wait. Roasting in hell came to mind as fitting. "Mookie's alive?" I had belatedly realized her name was not on the dead list.
Jack closed his eyes. "She's just hanging on. She wants to talk to you."
"Oh, no." I felt so washed out, and washed up, I couldn't stand the thought of one more confession. "She's really not going to make it?"
"The arrow went right through. You saw."
"I was hoping I made it up." I looked away, at the curtained window.
Jack kept holding my hand, waiting for me to make up my mind.
"So Cleve didn't die?" I was stalling.
"He has a fractured skull. Much worse than your concussion."
"Not possible. Okay, get a nurse or two to load me in a chair."
After a lip-biting interval, I was being pushed into Mookie's room. There were blinking machines, and a constant low hum, and Mookie was hooked into more tubes than I had ever imagined a human being could be. Her color was ashen, and her lips had lost color. Lanette was in the corner of the room, her hands over her face, rocking back and forth in a straight chair. Her firstborn child was dying, and she had already lost her second.
The nurse went to stand out of earshot, and I raised my hand, with great effort, to touch Mookie Preston, that odd and lonely and brave woman.