He jerked his head inside the window, almost guillotining himself. I let Doyle slide to the ground. He had wet his pants and was making a sound like someone sucking air and water through a garden hose. I eased the revolver out of his hand. The girls were at the windows again, their faces filled with dismay and disillusion, like they had aged years within a few minutes. “You okay, Doyle?” I said.
“What’s it look like?”
“Who tore up Moon Child?”
“She tripped and fell. I think she tied her shoestrings together.” His cheeks were unshaved and as gritty as emery paper. He started laughing and couldn’t stop.
I saw Jo Anne out of the corner of my eye. “Give me that goddamn gun,” she said.
I removed the shells from the cylinder and sprinkled them on Doyle’s stomach. “Here,” I said. “End of problem.”
“You call this the end of the problem?” she said.
The sun was blood red between two mountains that seemed to teeter on the edge of the earth, as though the earth were not round but flat and precipitous and all of creation were about to slide into infinity. “Why did you bring Henri Devos back into our lives, Jo Anne?” I said.
“You’ve still got your mind on Henri?” she asked. “You tried to make a guy blow your face off, for God’s sake.”
The bus had started. Two boys naked to the waist, with skeletal rib bones and hair a foot long, picked up Doyle and dragged him through the side door. I watched the bus lumber across the field, the dust rising like wisps of smoke from the tires. Stoney’s face was pressed against the back window, out of shape, like a plumber’s helper, his arms pinned behind him by people I couldn’t see, his mouth forming words I couldn’t read.
* * *
I DROVE HOME BY myself, without saying good night to Jo Anne. My trip back to the Lowry farm was probably the loneliest of my life. The sky was black, the constellations cold and white from one horizon to the other, but I found no joy in them and certainly no light. Up on the hill, the Lowry house was lit as brightly as an amusement park, although I could see no cars parked close by.
“Mama Bear wants to see you topside,” Spud said. He was sitting on his bunk in his skivvies, buffing his dress shoes.
“Mrs. Lowry?”
“In the flesh. Powder and perfume. I thought I was gonna pass out.”
“She wants to see me tonight?”
“Want me to write it on the wall?”
“I don’t need this,” I said.
“Think about it. She’s probably got the Grand Canyon under her dress.” He looked up. “Sorry. I got a dirty mind.”
I trudged up the slope and knocked on the door. She pulled it open slowly. “Ah, my darling boy is back. And so dressed up.”
“I was going to take Jo Anne to dinner. It didn’t work out. You and Mr. Lowry wanted to see me?”
“No, it was me who wanted to see you. Come in,” she said. She was wearing a dark purple Oriental silk dress with green flowers on it. Her skin was flushed, her dull-red hair tied up with a bandana, like a factory girl’s. “You think I’m going to bite you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Sit on the couch. Don’t talk until I tell you to. When I’m finished, you can be on your way. Or hang around.” Her eyes crinkled.
“Is Mr. Lowry here?”
“Of course not.” She pushed me on the couch.
“Mr. Lowry has already talked to me, Mrs. Lowry.”
“And he probably left you more confused than ever. You’re an intelligent young man. So I’m going to tell you things I don’t tell other people.”
I knew there was no way out of her house unless I listened. She sat down next to me with one leg folded under the other. She stroked my cheek.
“Mrs. Lowry, this is embarrassing,” I said.