Then I rounded a corner and looked into the faces of Rueben Vickers, Henri Devos, and Jo Anne. Henri was standing next to Jo Anne, his arm around her waist, his face gleeful. Darrel stepped from behind a rock and pressed the muzzle of his Luger behind my ear. “Let the rifle fall to the ground, asshole,” he said.
“Jo?” I said.
She didn’t answer.
“You want your brains on her shirt?” Darrel said.
I let the M1 drop. He peeled the bandolier off my waist. “Jo?” I repeated.
“How does it feel, former instructor at the University of Southwestern Louisiana?” Henri said. He wore an electric-blue backpack and lugged boots and hiking knickers with white socks pulled up on his shins.
“Jo, say something.”
“What’s to say?” she replied. “You never listen. That’s always been our problem, you just never get it.”
Chapter Thirty
“PICK UP THE Garand,” Mr. Vickers said. “I’ll carry the Luger.”
“It’s called an M1,” Darrel said.
“I was in the army,” his father said. “I know what it’s called.”
“Okay, Dad.”
Darrel told me to stand back, then handed the Luger to his father. He leaned over to pick up Saber’s rifle. Then he hesitated, staring down at it.
“What are you waiting on?” Mr. Vickers said.
“It moved.”
“It did what?”
Darrel put one hand on the stock, then jumped back. “It came alive. Just like a snake.”
His father shook his head. He slapped his son on the ear with the flat of his hand, then gave him the Luger and picked up the M1 and balanced it on his shoulder. “I don’t know how I got involved with you pissants. I really don’t.”
Darrel stood stiff as a post as he watched his father walk down the trail.
I walked ahead of them down the trail, numb and sick at heart at Jo Anne’s behavior.
Most of the bus community, which was far more numerous than the original group, had stayed in the shadows, leaderless and without direction, their expressions disjointed, as though their messiah had deserted them and they did not know who they were or why they were there. I could smell weed and see a kid shooting up with an eyedropper. A half-dozen girls dressed in white had clasped hands and were dancing barefoot in a circle, stoned out of their heads.
Jimmy Doyle’s body still lay curled on its side, like a broken worm. Mrs. Lowry had disappeared. Marvin Fogel was flinging logs on the bonfire, crushing the remains of the burned hitchhiker, as though the intensity of his work would extricate him from the chaos taking place around him.
Stoney was nowhere in sight. Neither were Spud and Cotton and Maisie. The tape that had bound their wrists lay on the ground.
“Looks like your friends bagged ass,” Darrel said.
I looked over my shoulder. Henri was walking slowly behind us, his right arm locked around Jo Anne. She refused to look at me.
“How’s it feel to get sold out?” Darrel said.
I didn’t reply.
“She’s a prick-teaser, man,” he said. “That’s why I dumped her.”
“You dumped her?”