I just stood there shaking. Everything had happened so fast that I wasn’t sure what had just happened. I wasn’t even sure what I’d done until I felt a heavy weight in my left hand. I looked down at the revolver and dropped it into the dirt and felt even more dizzy when I saw smoke drift out of the barrel. I was sure I was gonna fall over so I went down to both knees as a foul taste came up in my throat. I saw Ma was now laying across Uncle Ray.
Some kind of wailing I’d never heard before came from inside her, then she looked around scared to death and ran a couple of steps over to me. Ma grabbed Uncle Ray’s gun and it seemed like she didn’t know what to do with it, but needed to keep it as she kept looking at the crowds. She finally eased it into a robe pocket just before she pulled me up gentle and looked me over. It looked like she wanted to say something but couldn’t get nothing out. Then she looked again at all of the faces staring at us. There wasn’t a sound in Shady Hollow but for the sounds of our breathing.
Ma turned back to me and then looked over Amanda Lynn while trying to take in quick deep breaths. Then she pointed at an old Chevrolet sitting about twenty yards from us in a weedy field between Goldie’s Pawn and the old burned-down horse livery.
“Take. Take. That car. Now.”
The way Ma couldn’t talk right made me shake even more than I was doing. Then I wondered if maybe she was talking right but I just wasn’t hearing things right. I looked over my shoulder at Amanda Lynn and she flew toward me and grabbed me around the waist from behind. I could feel her shaking, too.
“Why’d Mr. Charles—” I started to ask Amanda Lynn.
Ma got right up close to my face and talked in a rush like her mouth worked right again but she was still all out of breath. “There may be more of them here and they’re gonna try to kill you. You have to leave. Now!”
I stared at Ma and then pulled Amanda Lynn around where I could see her. Her eyes looked wide as quart jars. She’d quit screaming but her face had gone a sick-looking shade and she didn’t even look like the girl she just was a minute or two before. “Why’d he do such a thing? Why’d he—?” I asked her.
She couldn’t speak so I tried to read her wide eyes, but I’d never seen them like that and couldn’t make a word out of them. I couldn’t tell nothing about her except she was terrified.
I turned back to Ma when Ma said, “She can’t go.”
I got all choked up and fought back the bad tastes in my throat and my eyes filled up with water. “What’s happening, Ma?”
Ma turned from me and kept scanning the crowds. She turned back. “You have to go. Right now, Ben. Right now.”
“It just don’t make no—”
Ma grabbed my hands and barely got out, “They found us and more will come. You have to go!”
“We been hiding from somebody?”
She peered down and then stared straight into my eyes as best she could even though it looked like she was falling apart. “I’ve been hiding you,” she said.
“From who?”
“I have to get your brothers.”
“I ain’t leaving without you all.”
She squeezed my wrists hard. “You’re gonna do exactly what I say.”
“But why do I have to… What ain’t you saying?”
Ma shook her head and the far edges of her eyebrows sunk down like there were lead sinkers tied to them. Then all of us turned to look when we heard men yelling coming from down the street. Their voices broke the dead quiet of the crowds.
Ma turned back to me. “I’ll find you and explain things. I’ll find you when—”
“I can’t leave—”
“We all may be in danger. You have to—”
“Can’t the elders protect us?”
“Not from this,” she said.
As I was trying to make sense of what she’d just said, we all noticed how the people were starting to mill closer to us. Ma pulled out a roll of money from her bosom, shoved it as far down into my back pocket as it would go, and then grabbed my hand and put a car key in my palm with her fingers cold and wet as a drip from an icicle.
She turned me toward the old rusted-out Chevrolet. It didn’t have any plates on it. “Take it,” she said, pushing me toward the car.
“Whose is it?”
“Take it!”
Ma started pushing and pulling me harder and I figured it was her customer’s as Ma and Uncle Ray didn’t have a car.
I had Amanda Lynn’s hand in mine and was pulling her with me. Ma stopped and grabbed both of our arms and jerked us apart.
All of a sudden a shotgun blast came from a block away that made us jump and sent my heart racing even more. People were trying to run but it looked like none of them knew which direction to head. I just stared at Ma because I didn’t know what to do.
She grabbed me hard by the arm and with her other hand, she pulled the revolver out of her robe, holding it by the very end of the checkered grip. It was then that I noted the blood on it. Ma looked as scared of that gun as she did at whatever frightened her in the crowd. She tried to hand it to me but I wouldn’t take it. She finally pushed the barrel of it way down into my front pant’s pocket. It was clear to me that she thought I was gonna need that gun again. I was so scared at that point that I didn’t think I could even hold on to it, and I didn’t never ever want to have to fire a gun again. That made me scared even worse. Ma giving me that gun had told me whatever was happening wasn’t over.
Another shotgun blast echoed off the buildings and mountains and this time it sounded closer.
“Go!” Ma started pulling me again to the car as we all started running with our heads way down in our shoulders.
I had Amanda Lynn in one hand again and the car key in the other. I was all tensed up and it felt like my legs were so heavy that I was trying to run upstream through rapids.
“Go to where?” I yelled.
“Head toward the mines. Don’t tell nobody your real name. And don’t come back until I find you. I’ll find you. You can’t ever come back here unless I tell you it’s safe. Not ever.”
“Ma…”
We were almost to the car when I stopped. All of us were trembling from the head down to the ground.
Ma grabbed me hard by both shoulders and stood up as tall as she could, then she kissed my cheek real fast and put an arm around Amanda Lynn, who now didn’t even look like she was breathing.
“I’ll make sure she gets home. I’ll take care of her. You know I’ll take care of her. Now go!”
“But why was he looking to just kill—”
I was looking at Amanda Lynn, begging for some answer, for her to just say something, and then at Ma, when another blast came. This time I found out that the yelling and the gunshots had come from three elders who were trying to part the crowds. Elder Bertrand Puckett had stuck his shotgun straight up in the air and fired it. The other two elders were carrying their double-barrels at the ready.
I looked over at Uncle Ray still laying there in a heap with his legs tangled up underneath him. His eyes were still wide-open, the front of his white shirt was red and the dirt around him had turned into a dark maroon color.
Ma