The hammer snapped dryly on the empty sixth chamber. Then something happened that I didn't understand. As he crumpled sideways to the earth, breaking the stalks of cane down around him, he yelled out in pain for the first time.
I walked across the rows to where he lay on his back, his crossed eyes opening and closing with shock. He kept trying to expel a bloody clot from his mouth with the tip of his tongue. My last round had hit him in the chin and exited just above the jawbone. His left arm was twisted in the sleeve like a piece of discarded rope. He had taken another round in the side, with no exit wound that I could see, and blood was leaking out of his shirt into the dirt. Then I saw his right hand quivering uncontrollably above the feathered shaft of the aluminum arrow that had discharged from his crossbow when he fell. The flanged point had sliced down into the thigh and emerged gleaming and red through the kneecap.
I knelt beside him, loosened his belt, and brushed the dirt out of his eyes with my fingers.
'Where's Buchalter?' I said.
He swallowed with a clicking sound and tried to speak, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. I turned his head with my hands so his mouth could drain.
'Where did Buchalter go, Chuck?' I said. 'Don't try to protect this guy. He
deserted you.'
'I don't know,' he said. His voice was weak and devoid of all defense. 'Get the arrow out.'
'I can't do it. You might hemorrhage. I'm going to call an ambulance.'
His crossed eyes tried to focus on mine. They were luminous and black with pain and fear. His tongue came out of his mouth and went back in again.
'What is it?' I said.
'I need a priest. I ain't gonna make it.'
'We'll get you one.'
'You gotta listen, man…'
'Say it.'
'I didn't have nothing against y'all. I done it for the money.'
'For the money?' I said as much to myself as to him.
'Tell your old lady I'm sorry. It wasn't personal. Oh God, I ain't gonna make it.'
'Give me Buchalter, Chuck.'
But his eyes had already focused inward on a vision whose intensity and dimension probably only he could appreciate. In the distance I heard someone start a high-powered automobile engine and roar southward, away from the drawbridge, down the bayou road in the rain.
* * *
chapter twelve
The next morning I went down to the sheriffs office and got my badge back.
Chuck, whose full name was Charles Arthur Sitwell, made it through the night and was in the intensive care unit at Iberia General, his body wired to machines, an oxygen tube taped to his nose, an IV needle inserted in a swollen vein inside his right forearm. The lower half of his face was swathed in bandages and plaster, with only a small hole, the size of a quarter, for his mouth. I pulled a chair close to his bed while Clete stood behind me.
'Did Father Melancon visit you, Chuck?' I said.
He didn't answer. His eyelids were blue and had a metallic shine to them.
'Didn't a priest come see you?' I asked.
He blinked his eyes.
'Look, partner, if you got on the square with the Man Upstairs, why not get on the square with us?' I said.
Still, he didn't answer.