One Breath Away (10 page)

Beth is crying now and Mr. Ellery is trying to shush her by patting her on the shoulder. He looks uncomfortable and with a yank of his head he signals that I should come over, but I have a feeling that would just make things worse, so instead I lay my head on my jeans and turn my face away from him, pretending I don’t see.

Chapter 26:
Holly

T
he doctor comes in, checks the skin grafts on my arms as well as the graft site, a long stretch of skin taken from my thigh. For many weeks the pain has been so overwhelming I didn’t have the energy to really think about how I look. But now I can’t help looking at my damaged skin and wondering what it will be like when I’m completely healed. “It will take some time for us to be sure that the surgeries are a success, but the grafts seem like they are healing nicely, Holly,” she tells me. “Our bigger concern right now is your secondary infection and why it’s so slow to respond to antibiotics.”

I nod. Infection has always been the greatest concern. “What about my hands?” I ask. This is my biggest worry. Not the fevers or my face and arms, but my hands. They, for some reason, weren’t burned quite as badly in the fire, but still received second-degree burns. Without full use of my hands I won’t be able to return to my job cutting hair. To some it may not seem that great of a profession, but I love it. I love the way a client will smile shyly with satisfaction in looking at their new haircut or new hair color. I love the up-dos that I get to do on brides-to-be and for teenagers getting ready for prom, transforming them for their special day. I may not have stuck around the farm any longer than I had to, but I did learn something growing up in my parents’ house. How to work hard. And I do. The money isn’t fabulous, but I do well enough to take care of Augie and P.J.

“Stick with your therapy,” the doctor reassures me, “and I see no reason for you to not recover full use of your hands.” I sink back against my pillows, suddenly very tired but relieved. “You’re from Iowa, right?” the doctor asks as she gets up to leave. My mother and I both nod. “There’s something about a school in Iowa and a gunman on the news.”

“Oh, my, that’s terrible,” my mother exclaims as a nurse peeks her head into the room.

“Ready to lotion up?” The nurse holds up the tube of lotion that she rubs on my skin grafts in order to avoid the drying and cracking of the skin.

“Bring it on,” I say. I’m ready to get well and get out of here. The sooner, the better.

Chapter 27:
Mrs. Oliver

M
rs. Oliver didn’t quite know what to say to the man with the gun after his declaration that he would shoot one student for every time she guessed his identity incorrectly. She didn’t really think he actually would shoot a child, but how could she be sure? He was growing very distracted, checking the screen on his phone every few minutes. It was the exact phone that she had Cal buy for her. You could talk, purchase something online and send an email all at the same time.

Once again, Mrs. Oliver surveyed her students; most continued to do remarkably well. Even Austin, who couldn’t go thirty seconds without getting up and out of his seat, was staying put. And Natalie’s coloring was finally returning to normal, her face so wan that Mrs. Oliver was sure she was going to faint. She wished the man would let them read books or draw, something that would relax them a little bit, put them more at ease, help pass the time.

What worried Mrs. Oliver most, besides, of course, any of the children getting hurt or worse, was how the children would feel about coming back to school once this was all over. Broken Branch School, her classroom, was meant to be a place where students felt welcomed and safe. A second home to many, and if you really watched and listened, for some students it was a more nurturing, caring environment than their own homes. Take Andrew Pippin, for example. Mrs. Oliver couldn’t prove it, but she was sure the boy was being pushed around by his stepfather. There were the bruises, always explained away, but there was something else. An anxiousness in Andrew’s eyes as the end of the school day loomed. Andrew would fidget even more, become more disruptive, all the while his eyes flicking to the clock on the wall as three-twenty drew closer.

Andrew would lose that sense of safety now. All the children would. All the hard work she invested in creating a warm welcoming environment, destroyed by this terrible man. The more she thought about it, the more indignant she became. Would the children have nightmares about school? Would they begin to shake and sweat upon arriving on school grounds? Would their stomachs clench and churn as they walked up the stairs and down the hallway to the classroom? Post-traumatic stress syndrome they called it, now a proven psychological disorder. Her heart would break if this was all the children would one day be able to recall of their third-grade year.
“What was your third-grade teacher’s name?”
people would ask and they would respond,
“I don’t remember her name, but I sure remember the day a man with a gun came into our classroom!”

“A gun?”
the person would exclaim.
“What did your teacher do?”

Her former students would shake their heads sadly, hands stuffed in their pockets and say,
“Not a damn thing.”

Mrs. Oliver knew she was getting up there in age, had responded more times than she cared to admit to the question of when she was finally going to retire and begin to enjoy life. She knew some days she struggled to keep up with her students, that more than once she caught herself dozing at her desk. There was the time during Jillie Quinn’s presentation on penguins she caught herself softly snoring. Thankfully P. J. Thwaite was the only one who noticed and he discreetly whispered that his grandfather drank four cups of coffee on Sunday mornings right before church in order to avoid the same thing happening to him.

There was no way Mrs. Oliver was going out this way. She was not going to retire this June being remembered as the teacher who had done nothing. She didn’t want her students’ last memories of their school, before it closed down forever and they moved on to other schools in nearby towns, to be ones of terror. She would rather die first. In the rafters of her brain she could hear Cal trying to reason with her.
“Now, Evie,”
he would say soothingly, and she could almost feel his hand on her arm.
“Do you really think it would be better for the children to see their teacher getting shot?”

He was right, of course, he nearly always was, but taking action didn’t necessarily mean death. She took a mental inventory of the possible weapons she had at her disposal—scissors, stapler, thumbtacks. There must be a way she could immobilize the man, long enough, at least, to get the children to safety.

The man looked up from his phone, catching Mrs. Oliver looking at him. “What?” he asked. “You don’t have a cell phone?”

She decided to play dumb. Not something she was proud of but thought perhaps her perceived dimness might help them all later on.

“My husband doesn’t believe in them,” she answered demurely.

“What? Like it’s the Easter bunny or something?” he asked. Several heads snapped up and her students looked to her in confusion.

She glared at the man. He didn’t need to puncture every last bit of their innocence in one fell swoop. The man didn’t seem to notice and returned his attention to his phone. In fact, Mrs. Oliver thought of herself as very technologically savvy. She spent hours learning the newest programs and she was the one her colleagues went to for help with creating spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations. Cal actually very much believed in cell phones and insisted that Mrs. Oliver get one for her own safety. It was sitting in the zippered pocket of her black leather purse, which was tucked inside her lower left-hand drawer of her desk. If there was some way to get to her phone she could tell the police that he was right there in her classroom waving his gun around. She would bide her time. She could be a very patient woman.

Chapter 28:
Meg

C
hief McKinney and I watch as a
reserve officer drives away with Gail and her husband. “What’s next?” I ask.

He looks levelly at me. “What’s next is I ask you if you’re
okay?”

“What?” I ask in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Your daughter goes to this school.”

“Yes, but she’s not there now. She’s with Tim….”

“Can you handle this, Meg? Will you be able to possibly deal
with your daughter’s classmates, her teachers, getting shot?” McKinney asks.

I don’t miss a beat. “Dammit, Chief, you know better than to
ask me that. I’ve been to the homes of half of the kids that attend the school
for one reason or another and have been nothing but professional.”

“Ah, Meg, I know. I just had to ask. We’re really on our own on
this one.”

“None of the tac team can make it?” I ask.

“No, the highways are shit. I’ve tried to call the folks in
Waterloo and Cedar Falls in hopes that they can send some officers over to help
with crowd control. The roads are terrible, though. It could be hours before
more help arrives. Ice storms to the south of us, blizzards to the north. We’ll
have to make do with the personnel we have. In the meantime, we follow the
lockdown plan we have in place. We need to get a handle on exactly who’s inside
that building. Teachers, students, lunch ladies. I’ve got Donna trying to get
ahold of a current enrollment list with emergency contacts, so we can check off
names as students come out and make sure they get handed off to the right
adult.”

I nod at the crowd. “If those kids don’t come out soon, I think
some of them will try and go in after them.”

“That can’t happen.” McKinney’s voice is like granite. He
shakes his head. “Dammit, if these people don’t let us do our job and something
happens to anyone… What the hell?” he says, looking at something over my
shoulder that has caught his attention, his mustache drooping even lower letting
me know that the sight isn’t a pleasant one. A group of men. Farmers, I
conclude, by their mud-brown Carhartt overalls, feed store caps and shotguns.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” McKinney says between clenched teeth.

Chapter 29:
Will

W
ill watched the Vinson brothers emerge from their truck with their shotguns and trek through the snow toward the crowd of parents and he opened his door to join them.

“Hey, boys,” Will said by way of greeting. The two brothers whirled around.

“Mornin’, Will,” Neal said, tipping his chin to the older man. “Something else, what’s going on in there,” he added, and yanked his neck toward the school. Neal and his brother Ned were two years apart but looked nearly identical. They both had long, horsey faces set atop narrow shoulders. They were also known for their hair-trigger tempers. Rumor had it that Ned shot his prize Angus bull for butting him to the ground. The nine-thousand-dollar bull bleeding all over the paddock. Ned’s version was that the bull had bovine tuberculosis and needed to be put down before infecting the entire herd.

“What’s with the shotguns?” Will asked innocently, even though he knew that the brothers had the same thing in mind that he initially had when he left home.

“Thought it best to be prepared for whatever it was we ended up finding out here,” Neal answered before hawking something thick and wet into the snow behind them.

“It looks like Chief McKinney and his men have things well under control,” Will responded, even though the crowd was becoming louder and more unruly.

“Well, that’s why we’re here,” Neal added, “to see what the story is.”

“I think it might be a good idea for you to put those shotguns back into your truck,” Will advised. “It looks like McKinney brought in some reinforcements from other towns. I’d hate for someone to get hurt if there’s no need.”

“Your grandkids in there?” Ned asked Will.

“They are,” Will acquiesced.

“And you’re willing to just stand by and let some crazy man hold them hostage?”

Will shrugged. “I don’t think we know anything for certain as of yet. Could all be a big misunderstanding, could be some nine-year-old with a cap gun.”

“Come on, Ned,” Neal said impatiently. “I’m getting cold. Let’s go talk to McKinney. Find out what’s happening.” From the opposite corner of the parking lot another group of men, shotguns in hand and shoulders hunched against the wind, worked their way toward McKinney and the brothers. “Good Lord,” Will said, throwing his hands up in defeat. “Hope you don’t get yourselves shot,” he muttered under his breath. He spied Verna Fraise in the crowd and made his way over to her side. Verna and Marlys had been best friends for years. Verna almost made the trip to Arizona with Marlys instead of Will. “She’s your daughter, Will,” Marlys had said incredulously when Will had broached the idea of not accompanying her.

“I know Holly’s my daughter. But she hasn’t spoken to me in fifteen years. I just don’t know if this would be the best time for me to show my face.”

“Will, your daughter has just been in a horrible accident. Do you think she is really going to give a rat’s ass whether or not she’s spoken to you in the past fifteen years?” Will raised his eyebrows in surprise. Marlys rarely cursed. “No, she will not. She will just be so happy to know that her father cared enough to come to her in her time of need.”

Will knew Marlys was right. In all honesty, he wanted to go and see Holly but was afraid of what he might find when he got there. Burns were terrible things. When he was stationed in Vietnam he had seen the charred remains of the Vietcong’s rampages on villages. The burned homes, the smoking corpses and, worse, the townspeople who did not die in the fires, the survivors who begged to be relieved of their pain. Will didn’t want to think about his only daughter enduring that kind of agony.

“You haven’t seen Todd around here, have you?” Will asked Verna as he came to her side.

She shook her head no. “What in the world is going on in there?”

“Don’t know, but as soon as I can get to Chief McKinney I’m going to find out,” Will assured her.

“How’s Holly doing?” Verna asked, not taking her eyes off the entrance of the school.

“Same,” Will responded. He found this a safe answer that didn’t invite further questions. He didn’t have the energy to go into detail about Holly’s infections and treatments this morning. He just wanted to get his grandchildren out of the school and safely back to the farm. Then this evening they could call their mother and tell her of their adventure. He could imagine P.J.’s excitement, his words tumbling out so quickly that he would be hard to understand, and Augie would try to be so cool and nonchalant. “No big deal,” she would say.

“Will, have you seen Ray around here?” Verna asked casually, but there was something in her voice that caused Will to look carefully at her face.

“No, I haven’t seen Ray in weeks. Why, is there something wrong?”

“You know that Darlene and Ray are separated?” Verna rubbed her gloved hands up and down her arms, trying to warm them. Darlene Cragg was Verna’s daughter. Her grandchildren, Beth and Natalie, were in the same classes as Augie and P.J.

“Yeah, Jim mentioned it last time I saw him. How’s Darlene doing?” Will leaned forward on his toes, trying to see over the head of a man standing in front of him.

“You’d think that she’d be doing much better now that she is out of that house.” Verna made an impatient noise with her tongue and shook her head. “But Ray is just making her life miserable. Doesn’t give her a moment’s peace and quiet. Always is calling her. One minute begging her to come back home to him, next minute cursing her out, saying he’s going get the girls from her if it’s the last thing he ever does.”

Will looked around to see if anyone was listening to their conversation but everyone was focused on the school and Chief McKinney, who looked like he was about ready to give the crowd a tongue lashing. He bent his head close to Verna’s and whispered, “You thinking that Ray might have something to do with this?”

“I don’t know. He is capable of terrible things.” Verna’s lower lip trembled and Will rocked back and forth on his heels in discomfort. He wished that Marlys was here to bolster her old friend. He had no words, encouraging or otherwise, to offer.

“Looks like Chief McKinney is trying to come this way,” Will observed, glad for the diversion. “You really should tell him of your concerns about Ray.”

Verna sniffed and passed a gloved hand over her eyes. “Looks like the chief has his hands full with the vigilantes over there.” Verna nodded toward the Vinson brothers and three others who felt the need to arm themselves. “Idiots,” Verna huffed under her breath. Again Will thought about the shotgun sitting on the front seat of his truck and, despite the cold wind, felt his face warm with self-reproach.