Graves' Retreat (25 page)

    What he saw startled him. Clinton Edmonds had gathered himself up enough to lunge at Neely.

    Sensing the older man, Neely turned around, giving Les the chance he had wanted.

    Grabbing the straight-backed chair that matched the desk, Les jumped at Neely just as the gunman turned his attention to Clinton Edmonds.

    Les smashed the chair across the back of Neely’s head, slamming Neely into the wall.

    “Watch out!” Clinton Edmonds shouted.

    Dazed as he was, Neely still had time to whirl around and begin firing again, this time with a gun he’d ripped from his belt.

    As he dove back behind the desk, Les grabbed a heavy paperweight. Hiding once more, he hefted the round metal paperweight bearing a painting of the Iowa flag. He knew he would have only one chance. Neely’s heavy footsteps could be heard advancing toward him, the floor creaking, Neely’s cursing and breathing ragged.

    Les moved. He came out from behind the desk and hurled the paperweight much as he would a fast ball. This time he wasn’t aiming at home plate. He was aiming right for Neely’s forehead.

    Neely managed to get off two more shots before the paperweight caught him just above the right eye. This time he did not stay on his feet. He fired once more, wildly, and then fell backward into the counter running along the tellers’ cages.

    Les, realizing that his arm was gushing blood now, made a leap, grabbing Neely and hurling him to the floor. Several times he smashed his fist into Neely’s face and then he reached down and took Neely’s gun from his hand.

    Les found Neely’s nose with the butt of the gun and smashed it once, clean, across the bridge. The sound of bone snapping was loud as another gunshot.

    Then, exhausted from his own loss of blood, Les fell to the right of Neely, unconscious.

    

    

    In the morning, they came by train and by cart and on horseback. There were farmers and merchants and schoolteachers and children and red people and white people and black people. There were even Amish in their severe black garb.

    They lined the main street of Cedar Rapids on both sides. Hundreds hung out of office windows above. Red, white and blue bunting had enveloped the entire town.

    The parade started way past the tracks on the east side and planned to march in the sunny, cloudless day all the way across the river. There were a dozen bands in uniforms that sported flags and plumes and hats as fancy as an Austrian guard’s. The music they raised must have had the angels smiling and tapping their feet.

    At noon a man in a hot-air balloon was set to perform the unthinkable-hanging from the balloon at two thousand feet from a trapeze bar.

    And then there were the floats-dozens of them colored every tint and hint of the spectrum, some with patriotic themes, some recalling the days when the town had been a frontier outpost, some looking to the future when electricity and telephones would be everywhere.

    One float was especially remarkable, for it recalled the Civil War, in which Iowa had lost nearly thirteen thousand young men in less than four years. The float, sponsored by a maker of baby carriages, sported a banner that read no color line here, and behind it were pushed twenty carriages filled with infants half of whom were black and half of whom were white.

    All the noise and pageantry then wound back eastward to the stadium…

    

    

    He was in and out of consciousness. The bullet in his arm had shattered bone as well as muscle and he had bled a great deal before the police had gotten him here to the hospital.

    There was sunlight in his bright room with the colorful linoleum floor and the white drapes. The third time he came awake, he heard voices in the hall, one of which he recognized as Byron Fuller’s and one of which as May’s.

    Then he slipped back into his dreams.

    She came in twenty minutes later when he was just struggling back to wakefulness.

    She wore a yellow dress with the vast flowered hat she cherished for special occasions. She came over to the bed and took his hand. “Hello.”

    He nodded silently, dry-mouthed.

    “They tell me you’re going to be all right.” She smiled, even though he could see she’d been crying.

    He touched his right arm. It was lost beneath a bundle of bandages. “I guess I won’t be all right as a pitcher.”

    “There are other things to be.”

    He laughed, a sad resonance in the sound. “So far I haven’t been very good at having my dreams come true.”

    She said, “Maybe you’ve had the wrong dreams.”

    He looked away from her, out the window at the blue sky. “I really loved T.Z., May. I don’t think he was ever happy a moment in his life.”

    “I wish I could have known him.”

    He turned back to her. “No, no, you wouldn’t have understood him. I wish I could pretty him up for you but-he wasn’t unlike Neely in a lot of ways.”

    “Neely hung himself in his cell around dawn.”

    And for just a moment-past his rage-came a feeling of pity for Neely.

    She said, “Byron Fuller is in the corridor. He’d like to see you.”

    “Have the police been here?”

    “There won’t be any police. Byron said that he talked to Clinton Edmonds for an hour this morning and Edmonds has decided not to press any charges. As far as they're concerned, you were trying to save their money.”

    He smiled. “The thing is, that’s just what I was trying to do. I was just afraid-”

    She silenced him by leaning in and kissing him. “They don’t want you to leave, Les.”

    “But-”

    “Byron said he wanted me to tell you that, so you wouldn’t be afraid when he came in.”

    Les let her hand touch his face. He closed his eyes. He thought of his father and brother and the ends they’d come to. He felt that perhaps he deserved no better end himself. But despite himself, his two years in Cedar Rapids had shown him that a different kind of life was possible. That there were people who could love him and that he would not always have to hate his past or himself.

    Then he took May’s hand and guided her gently down to his face and kissed her in a careful, reverent way that brought tears to both their eyes.

    Then he said, “I guess I shouldn’t keep Byron waiting anymore, should I?”

    And May, touching his face again, said, “No, I guess you shouldn’t.”

    She went and got Byron.

    

    

    Ed Gorman has been called "one of suspense fiction's best storytellers" by
Ellery Queen
, and "one of the most original voices in today's crime fiction" by the
San Diego Union
.

    Gorman has been published in magazines as various as
Redbook, Ellery Queen, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction,
and
Poetry Today
.

    He has won numerous prizes, including the Shamus, the Spur, and the International Fiction Writer's award. He's been nominated for the Edgar, the Anthony, the Golden Dagger, and the Bram Stoker awards. Former
Los Angeles Times
critic Charles Champlin noted that "Ed Gorman is a powerful storyteller."

    Gorman's work has been taken by the Literary Guild, the Mystery Guild, Doubleday Book Club, and the Science Fiction Book Club.