4
By the time James and
Dodds reached the alley that ran behind the Griff house, they could
hear shouts and screams even above the rain.
“He’s there,” Dodds
said, pulling his Navy Colt from his holster. “You said you weren’t
going to shoot him,” James said, panic filling his chest.
“Son, I said I’d try
not to shoot him. But I didn’t say I’d be foolish. He’ll be armed
and so will I.” He nodded to a small garage to their left. “You
could always go in there and stay till it’s over.”
“I want to go with
you. I want to talk to him.”
“All right,” Dodds
said, “c’mon, then.”
They went up the
alley. Even the cinders were squishy underfoot. A hundred feet away
they saw Septemus come into the alley, Eloise Griff pulled close to
him, the Winchester not far from her head.
Dodds shouted, “Stop
right there, Ryan.”
Dodds and James
started running toward the man and the little girl.
Around the corner of
the barn came Mrs. Griff and her husband.
Griff was crudely
bandaged; blood soaked through several places in his shirt and
trousers. He looked as if he were about ready to collapse.
Mrs. Griff was
slowly, painfully pleading with Ryan to let her little girl
go.
When Dodds and James
reached them, Dodds walked as close to Ryan as Septemus would let
him.
Ryan put the muzzle
of the Winchester directly against Eloise’s head. “I’m going to
kill her, Sheriff. Stand back.”
James stared at the
man who’d once been his uncle. This impostor bore no resemblance.
“Uncle Septemus,” he said.
As if recognizing his
presence for the first time, Septemus glanced over at him and shook
his head. For a brief moment there, he did resemble the old
Septemus. Concern filled his eyes. “You shouldn’t have come, James.
I shouldn’t have brought you along. It was a mistake. You shouldn’t
have anything to do with this.”
“Uncle Septemus, you
can’t kill that little girl,” James said, stepping up closer to
Dodds.
All of them stood
there in the rain, cold now and soaking but unable to take their
eyes from the man and the girl.
“I know what I have
to do, James. I have to make things right. I’m sorry, this is the
only way I can do it.” Septemus pulled the girl tighter to him.
“Now stand back, James. Stand back.”
“Please, Sheriff,
talk to him,” Mrs. Griff said. One could hear how hard she was
working at keeping herself sane, fighting against the impulse to be
hysterical.
“Ryan,” Dodds said,
advancing another step or two. “Hand me the Winchester and let the
little girl go.”
“Don’t make me shoot
you, Sheriff,” Septemus said. “I’ve got nothing against you. This
is between Griff and me.”
Griff hobbled up
closer himself. “Just take me, Ryan. Just take me and let Eloise
walk away.”
Dodds, seeing that
Ryan was momentarily watching Griff talk, took another step.
Ryan lowered the
Winchester and shot him in the shoulder.
Dodds flailed, pieces
of his shirt and his shoulder exploding. He went over backward and
lay in a puddle in the middle of the alley.
Mrs. Griff went to
him much as she’d done with her husband. She had his head up
against her forearm. Dodds’s eyes were open and he was saying
something to Mrs. Griff in a slow, small voice. James couldn’t hear
them. Now all he could hear was the rain; the rain.
As James turned back
to Septemus, he noticed the Navy Colt that Dodds had dropped.
Impulsively, he bent
and picked it up.
Septemus watched
him.
When James turned
back to his uncle, he held the Navy Colt.
“You go on, now,
James,” Septemus said. “You go to the depot and get a train back to
Council Bluffs.”
“I want you to let
the little girl go,” James said.
He stood ten feet
from his uncle, the Colt in his hand.
“Put the gun down,”
Septemus said.
“Uncle Septemus, you
can’t see yourself. You can’t know how you look and sound. I know
how much you loved Clarice but this isn’t right. Not with this
little girl.”
Septemus looked down
at Eloise a moment. His grip seemed to loosen.
“Please, Uncle
Septemus,” James said. “Please, let her go.”
To his right, James
could see the Griff woman saying a silent prayer that Septemus
would just let the girl walk away.
Septemus’s grip let
up considerably now.
James could see
Eloise start to slip away.
“No!” Septemus
shouted.
It was as if some
spell had come over him suddenly. He was no longer James’s uncle
but the crazed, ugly man he’d been a few minutes ago; the one that
he’d been back at the cabin where he’d killed Dennis
Kittredge.
He grabbed the girl
and jerked her back to him and slammed the Winchester against her
temple once again.
James started walking
toward Septemus, the Colt level in his hand. He wasn’t even sure he
could fire it properly. At this point he didn’t care. Now that he
knew how insane Septemus had become, all James could think of was
freeing the little girl. He loved the man who’d been his uncle too
much to do anything else.
“Let her go, Uncle
Septemus,” James said, advancing.
“I’ll shoot you,
James,” Septemus said. “Don’t think I won’t.” Two, three, four more
steps.
“Let her go, Uncle
Septemus.”
“You heard me,
James.”
Five, six, seven more
steps.
“Let her go, Uncle
Septemus.”
“Please, James;
please don’t come any closer.”
Septemus pulled the
Winchester from the little girl and leveled it directly at
James.
James dived then, not
knowing if his uncle would fire or not; dived directly for the
little girl.
He slammed into them
hard enough that Septemus’s grip on the girl’s shoulder was
broken.
“Run!” James shouted
to her.
Eloise ran, stumbling
across the cinders and puddles.
Her mother ran out to
swoop her up.
By now, James was
flat on the ground.
Septemus had run into
the darkness of the barn. He stood in the shadows, holding the
Winchester at his side.
James got to his
feet, picking up the Colt again. He felt an idiotic happiness that
Septemus was still alive.
Dodds saw what James
was about to do. Still lying on the ground, Dodds raised a hand and
said, “Don’t you go in there, son. Wait till some deputies get
here.”
But James didn’t
listen.
He went through the
barn door. Rain dripped and plopped off the door into the silver
puddles.
Septemus stood in the
shadows.
He said, “I’m glad I
didn’t kill that little girl.”
He started crying
then.
James had never heard
sounds so terrible.
After he had sobbed
for a time, Septemus raised his head and said, “Do you love me,
James?”
“You know I do, Uncle
Septemus.”
“Then will you help
me?”
“I’ll do anything you
want me to, Uncle Septemus.”
“You know what
they’ll do to me. The trial and all. It won’t be good for anybody.
You know what something like that would do to your mother.”
“She loves you, too,
Uncle Septemus. She knows how Clarice’s death affected you.”
“Raise that Colt,
James.”
“What?”
“Raise that Colt and
shoot me.”
“Uncle
Septemus-”
Septemus shook his
head. “It’ll be better for everybody, James. You can see what all
this has done to me. I’m not a killer, James, yet I’ve killed two
men and I almost killed a little girl. I don’t want to live
anymore, James, yet I’m not sure I can take my own life because I’m
afraid I’d be damned to hell.”
“Uncle Septemus, I
couldn’t do that. I couldn’t.”
“I can hear her,
James. Clarice, I mean. I want to be with her again. I want to hold
her in my arms and sing to her and tell her how much I love her.”
Then his eyes in the gloom took on the clarity of the insane; that
terrible vivid truth that only they can see. “Take the Colt, James.
And do it. You’ll be helping everybody.”
“I can’t.”
“Just raise it up to
my chest, James.”
“I don’t want to,
Uncle Septemus.”
“It’s your duty,
James. I was wrong about you helping me kill the others. But this
time I’m not wrong, James. You need to grow and take the
responsibility for the whole family, James.”
“He’s right, son;
it’ll be better this way.”
From the door, Dodds
hobbled inside. The blood on his shoulder was faded from the rain.
His scratchy, wavery voice told how weak the gunshot had left
him.
When Ryan saw him, he
said, “I’m sorry I shot you, Sheriff.”
“I know, Mr. Ryan. I
don’t hold you accountable. Not really.” Dodds looked at James.
“I’m going to get some deputies, son, so we can take Mr. Ryan into
custody and so I can get somebody to do something about my
shoulder. But I want to tell you something.”
James shook his head.
“I don’t want to do it, sir.”
Dodds said, “He’s
right about it, son. It’ll be better for everybody. He can’t help
the way he is now and about the only thing we can do for him is to
get him out of his misery.” Dodds nodded to the door. “I’m going to
walk out of here and I won’t have any idea what happens. If your
uncle gets shot and you tell me it was self-defense, then I’m just
going to have to take your word for it, won’t I, son?”
Dodds looked at
Septemus then. “I’m sorry about your little girl, Mr. Ryan.”
He left the
barn.
They stood alone
facing each other. In the stall in the back they could hear the
horse get restless with nightfall.
Somewhere beyond the
rain there would be stars and the vast darkness of night. James
just wanted to be a boy and sit in his bedroom window and dream
idly about all the mysteries of the universe.
He did not want to be
standing in a barn smelling of hay and horseshit and oil and facing
his uncle in this way.
“You’ve got to help
me, James,” Septemus said, and fell to crying once more.
But this time he let
the Winchester fall from his hands and he came over to James and
embraced him.
James had never heard
or felt this kind of grief before. His uncle’s sobbing was too
painful for either of them to abide for long.
“Help me, James; help
me,” Uncle Septemus said, leaning back from the boy.
Septemus took the
barrel of the Colt and raised it to his chest and said, “Please
help me, James. Please help me.”
“Uncle
Septemus-”
“Please,
James.”
James shot twice, the
first shot not seeming to do anything, Septemus just hovering
there, his face that of a stranger again.
With the second shot,
however, Septemus fell to the ground on his back.
He looked up at
James. “Thank you, James. You did your duty.”
Then it was James who
began to cry, wild with grief and fear, filled with disbelief that
he might have done such a thing.
“Uncle Septemus!” he
cried.
But it was too
late.
Septemus’s eyes had
closed. In death he was himself again, the lines of his face
softer, gentleness joining the intelligence of his brow.
“Uncle Septemus!”
James cried out again.
But only the horse in
the back was there to hear.
James rose then and
went to the barn door and looked out through the rain. In the
distance he could hear the slapping footsteps of men running. In
the gloom their shouts were ugly and harsh. The deputies.
He felt so many
things, and yet he felt nothing. He thought of his mother and
Marietta and Liz; he thought of his dead cousin Clarice and the
sound of the gunshot back there at the cabin where Kittredge had
died; and he thought finally of Septemus, of the terrible things
that can happen to human beings and of the terrible things those
very same human beings are then capable of visiting on
others.
If this was being a
man, perhaps he didn’t want to be a man. Maybe it was better to be
a dreamy boy, passing by Marietta’s house on a night of fireflies
and banjos, her idle flirtations making him happier than he’d ever
been before.
But something had
changed in him now; and no matter how much he yearned to be the boy
he’d been, he knew he could never be that boy again. He possessed
some terrible knowledge now, some insight that would stay with him
forever like a curse.
Then the men were
there, the deputies, and the air was filled with the harsh barking
curses of men who tried to convince themselves and each other that
they were in control of things.