In the too many years I’ve been working on this novel, I’ve had to edit and refine and cut. I save some of the versions as I cut them and rearrange them and move them, all in the effort to come up with a story others will want to read.

CHAPTER NINETEEN- MONDAY, APRIL 7, 1969

The sky beyond the dashboard was all I could see; the wires between the evenly set telephone poles vanishing in the noonday glare. Bright. Too bright.  I looked down. I was sitting on my father’s deputy’s jacket, spread out on the passenger side of the front seat. The fluffy blanket my mother had selected as mine for nap time was between me and the passenger door, set upon my latest batch of kindergarten art, too much yellow and green. My father’s gun belt, tooled black leather, was in the very middle of the seat, coiled under the holster. A buckskin strap held the pistol in place. My father was wearing his blue suit coat. The darker one. Shiny. Sharkskin. Shimmering.

“No, Betty, Wendall can handle it ‘til I get there.” My father’s voice. Calm, deep.

            “You have a time on that, Joe?” The radio only slightly distorted the dispatcher’s cartoony voice.  

“Three minutes. Over.” My father looked at me, hit the toggle switches that activated the siren and the red light. He put the mic in front of me. “Say ten-four, Betty Boop, Jody?”

            “Ten-four. Over and out,” my five-year-old’s voice said. My father put his right arm across my chest as we pulled to a stop. Main Street. I took the mic from my father, put it back into its holder, and turned up the AM radio. A country western song was playing. It was a woman’s voice, quite emotional, strained, a quarter of a beat behind the beat. The squawking from the police radio became syllables rather than words.   

            The car moved forward, the engine revving as we went up the first hill. “Too many of you Korean War babies, Jody. Half day kindergarten? You’d think they’d hire more bus drivers. Your momma getting a license’ll help.  Especially since we have two of you ‘precious gifts from God…’ now.” My father chuckled. He had used his preacher’s voice. I could tell, partially by seeing the tops of familiar trees, partially by the varying pressure of my back against the seat back, partially by the sound of the engine, the shifting of the gears, that we were over the first, steep rise and headed into the saddle area. We would go up the slight rise and then drop down the steeper, longer hill. We would turn right five seconds after hitting the bottom of that hill. 

“How’re you liking school… Jody? Makin’ friends?”

            “Yes. Danny and Frankie and…”

            “Shit!” My father turned hard to the right. My body jerked up against his.

Impact.

The large hand that instantly covered my face and chest wasn’t enough to prevent me from flying forward. My two hands weren’t enough to keep my head from hitting the dashboard. I bounced back and onto the seat, more sideways than upright. Another impact. Not as violent. The car was rocking, awkwardly, more sideways than forward. I didn’t scream.

Everything was white, everything was up, tilted, sideways. Wrong.

I could see the shimmer of the blue suit. My father was pinned between the seat, the steering wheel, and the crushed-in driver’s side door. He turned toward me. He couldn’t reach me. I couldn’t reach him. I wiped at my forehead and looked at my right hand. Small. A child’s hand. The palm, thumb, and three fingers were covered in blood. Red.  

“No! Oh! No!” That was my father. I was silent.

Silent. Seconds. The siren was quieter. Weaker. There was a sound of breathing. Heavy breathing. My father’s. I took a breath as if I had been under water. There were holes in the blackness. Then brightness. So bright. The red bubblegum dispenser light from the roof was spinning, hanging by a wire over the spiderweb pattern on the windshield. One, two, three, red; one, two, three, red…

            There was a steel guitar solo, on the radio. The police radio broke through. The woman’s voice again. “Joe. The scene. Where are you?”

My father was leaning toward me as far as he could. “Jody,” he said. “Jody.” There were tears in his eyes. Blue; almost impossibly blue. I looked away and beyond him. there was a shadow, a man, in the brightness. Help.

            No. Tap, tap, tap. Metal against glass. I could see the end of a rifle barrel. The sight was a few degrees to the right of straight up. It was aimed straight at me. There was a fourth tap.

            My father rolled the window partway down with his left hand. “Tom?”

I caught a glimpse of the man outside the car, the shadow, the ghost, as the barrel pulled back. Margaret and Tommy Baker’s father’s shadowed face appeared, half of his head above the window. “Stuck, huh, DeFreines?” My father groaned. Mr. Baker looked directly at me. “Radio still work?”

            “Tom, I can’t reach the mic.”

            “You. Little Nip…” Tom Baker was smiling, nodding toward the microphone.

            “He’s hurt.”

            “Yeah. Bleeding. Should’a had him in the back. Bad fathering, Joe.”

            I could see my hand removing the mic and stretching it across my father. Tom Baker put it up to his mouth and pushed the button. “You bastards, you took my kids, my… life.” Tom Baker jerked the microphone. Once. Twice. The cord let loose, whipped past my father’s face, and hit Tom Baker’s. “Fuck!”

My father turned his right shoulder to block my view of Tom Baker, his of me. “You’re right, Tom. Let’s just…”

“No. Way too late.”

A distant siren got louder, quickly overwhelming the radio. Mr. Baker leaned back and was lost in the brightness, the glare. I looked at my father’s service weapon in its holster.  

            The rifle barrel came out of the glare. Quickly. My father’s left hand stretched toward the barrel just as quickly. “No!” Pop. The gunshot and a sound that had to be glass, shattering, behind me. My father screamed. Once. Pop. Scream.

A scream of a siren was very close. Another red light was spinning in the brightness. “Sunny, high of seventy-eight,” the voice on the radio said. “Night and morning low clouds along the coast.”

I could see Mr. Baker’s face clearly as he leaned in the window. There were tears, but he was angry, determined, struggling to free the rifle barrel from my father’s bloodied left hand. “Everything, Joe. You took everything!”

            Pop. It was louder than the first two.

            Mr. Baker’s look of surprise changed into acknowledgement. He was almost smiling as his image was dissolved, as he fell back into the glare.

My father, with a prolonged grunting and violent shaking and twisting of his body, freed himself from the steering wheel just enough to reach for me with his right hand. One side of his face was splattered. Red.

There were two other gunshots. There was another shadow of a face in the window. “You all right, Gunny?”

One, two, three, red; one, two, three, red; one, two, three… blackness.