Before My Eyes (25 page)

I urge myself, “Swim, swim, Claire. Toward the light. Swim.”

I crawl next to Max's mother. My hands are slick and raw with sweat, dirt, and blood, someone else's blood, her blood, Mrs. Cooper's. Now “swim” means help in another way. Now “swim” means save
her
life. She's bleeding and moaning. I have nothing to help her with. I don't have a Band-Aid. Part of me knows how irrational that thought is. She doesn't need a Band-aid. She's shot. Blood from her leg zigzags across her suit. Her nice pink suit. The bullet has struck a major vein, maybe an artery. I yank off my T-shirt—wrap it tight around her leg like a tourniquet, something I learned in first aid. She reaches for my hand.

Barkley shuffles toward us, the gun pointed at me, straight at my head.

Mrs. Cooper is holding on to me, as if I can save her, or myself, pleading, “Don't leave.” Screams roar around us, seize me, but I can hear her as if only us—a mother, a daughter—exist. I want my own mother more than I have ever wanted her in my life.

“Don't worry,” I say. “I'm not leaving you alone.”

Max

Monday, Labor Day, 10:05
A.M.

The number-two pencils spin to the grass. Pots of flowers are trampled and broken. For a second, I don't know what's going on. I hear a pop and another and another. I smell something, turn my head, and think: flowers. It's only dying flowers. The crowd surges out of the white tent. A car careens into another car with a deafening smash. Barkley raises his arm higher. He pushes the sleeves of his hooded gray sweatshirt up, carefully, like I've seen him do a hundred times this past summer. Trish shoves Peter down underneath one of the tables, flat on the ground, like they are already dead.

I'm screaming at my mother. My face is wet. I touch my cheek. Red. My blood? My pink shirt and her pink suit are splattered with blood. My mother is down on the ground, writhing, turning, screaming. And then I see her—she's taken off her T-shirt, she's in her Speedo and shorts—and she's tying her shirt around my mother's leg.

Now Barkley's aiming at them again. I'm shouting his name. It's like the only name that I can say out loud. “Bark!”

I don't see King, or my father. Everything is slowing, everything is exploding—

Next to me, Jackson's father is lying facedown. Shot in the head. I want him to get up, but he isn't moving. More shots and—

The two old people, the two my mother hugged, crash down over their granddaughter, shielding her, or are they all—

*   *   *

I don't know why everything has slowed down. Why I can't move. Why I am thinking: run, get out of the tent, dive out of the tent, and I can't move.

Barkley trudges toward my mother and Claire, a grin cut into his face, eyes unblinking, arm straight out as if the gun is leading him, not him leading the gun—

“Hey, Bark,” I shout with a jolt like I'm just calling for him, like we're somewhere else, at the Snack Shack. “Hey, Bark.”

He swivels—the gun pointed at me.

I'm going to die. It's him and me. Why the hell is he grinning? He has a gun. What is there to smile about? In less than sixty seconds, he's shot twenty or thirty bullets into the tent. He's aiming to shoot again, except something's wrong. He's fumbling in his pocket. More bullets. He's ramming another cartridge into the gun with clumsy fingers.

From out of the corner of my eye, I spot my father. He's screaming, “Run!” Barkley sinks the second cartridge in place.

“Run!” My father is three or four feet from me, that's all. But so is Barkley, who aims level at my eyes. At that instant, my father bounds from the left, not thinking that he's over fifty, that he can't strike that hard anymore, not thinking or debating, and strikes him. Barkley rears at him, off-balance. The gun drops to his side. I duck my head—and with all my strength, everything in me, everything that every coach and teacher, everything that my mother and father ever said was in me—rush forward and head him in the stomach. Knock him back. Smash up into his lungs and heart. Nail the gun out of his hand, and send it swerving—only an arm's length away. I'm dizzy and sick to my stomach.

Barkley lunges for the gun. I taste blood at the back of my throat. But I rush him again, more of a stumble. My father jumps up, blood on his face, and side-tackles Barkley with more force than I've ever seen him use. Barkley's on his knees, but his long arms reach for the gun. He wraps his fingers around it—only for Peter to stomp on his hand with his massive yellow work boot. The gun flies out. Sunglasses clatter off his face and are also crushed by Peter. Barkley howls. But his intent is clear—he wants his gun back.

Only Claire is quicker. She throws herself toward the gun. It slips from her hand, spins away.

I scream, “Barkley!” He glances at me. In the breath of two syllables, Claire grabs the gun again. This time she gets it with both hands. She stands up, clutching the gun aloft. Barkley grins at her, that sick grin, as if she knows him, as if she is on his side. The gun quivers in her hand. Barkley crawls toward her and my father leaps on his back and flattens him to the ground. Peter bears down on legs. Trish kicks him in the side. Sirens swirl around us. Claire screams for her sister, for her father, and the loudest, for her mother. The gun quivers in her hand. A dozen police cars race right up to the entrance of the tent.

I'm having a hard time keeping my head up. The room skews off its base. I'm going to be sick. Bile sears my throat. And now, Barkley is whimpering. His sleeves flop around his face. My father is pounding Barkley's shoulders and head, my father's face a volcanic red. The police have to tear him off Barkley, throwing him on the ground, separating them. Barkley lifts his sweatshirt up like he's on fire. He scratches the white flab of his chest and sides like he's infested. A female cop wrenches his arms back with one swift yank and handcuffs him, and he doesn't say a word.

I'm afraid that Claire is going to shoot off the gun, and the police must think so, too. They circle around her, their hands on their guns, ready to be drawn.

One muscle-bound cop demands the gun. “Just put it down on the ground between us.”

And she sinks her arm with a twitch and a pulse of breath. The cop jerks forward and screams, “The gun!” She kneels and her fingers unfurl, as if having lost function, and the gun slides to his feet with a thud.

Quickly examining the weapon, the cop says, “Shit. The bastard went through an entire 33-round assault clip, and was ready to go through another.” He removes the second cartridge. The cop's hands are gripping the gun in one hand and the clip in the other. If he could crush the clip in his hand, he would. If he could bend metal, he would. If he could turn into Superman and have the bullets bounce off him, harmless to all, he would. A second, older officer relieves him of the weapon and the ready clip shaking in his hand.

Sounds pop in and out of my brain. I have to get up. I try, but I can't get up.

My father stumbles over to my mother, who is shouting my name. I can't respond. Her hand reaches for mine even as two paramedics are helping her. They are saying that the shirt, Claire's shirt, probably saved her life. Barkley is being shoved out of the tent in handcuffs. He drags his feet and tilts his bald head to look directly at us. He's grinning. I want to punch him in the face, and more. I look to where he's looking: Claire. I want to shoot that grin off his face, except I can't move.

“Claire,” he shouts, and it's like all the babble in my brain drops silent. “I am Brent. He is I. I am he.”

“I don't understand,” she says, standing just a few inches from me.

“He is I. I am he. Perhaps a new poem, Claire?”

What is he talking about? He's Brent? And where is King? I don't have the strength to call for my dog.

All I can see: brown eyes. Large and questioning and full of hurt. Her father rushes up to her, going on about being out in the playground, about swings, grabbing her toward him. Her mother, with a cane, follows, pushing forward, not letting anyone stop her. Her little sister looks scared at the overturned tables and chairs and pencils strewn across the floor until Claire kneels and scoops her into her arms. “Don't look,” I want to scream, but can't.

The muscled cop snatches Barkley and propels him forward, out of the tent. All around is more chaos: ambulances, police, hurt bodies, blood. Peter and Trish are going from person to person, offering water and hugs.

“You're a hero,” some lady is harping above me, and another is agreeing. “A hero. You and your father are heroes. Aren't they heroes?” Suddenly, they are crying, too. I don't know why they are sobbing.

“King? King?” I want to scream, but my voice is lost, like it's been kicked out of me. Why are Claire's mother and father leading her away? I want to take her in my arms and tell her it's over. I want to kiss her. I want to tell her I'm sorry about the other night. I wanted to kiss her back, really kiss her, but I couldn't, not with her mother so near. I want to kiss her now and never stop. Why is she leaving? And why are my father's arms around me, damp and heavy, and why is he crying and shouting my name?

And why can't I move? Why did Barkley do this? Why? The world is darkening and dimming. I am afraid of the dark. My sight fails. I see a flash of white, and a whiteness beyond the tent.
Why?
Why are there only questions and no answers?

Claire

Tuesday, noon

Late yesterday, the heat finally broke. Gusts of wind and thunder and rain were followed by severe storm warnings. The world spun a shadowy, sickly green. Hail came down. A tornado threatened. Tree limbs broke. Leaves were shed. The first, violent colors of autumn were strewn on the ground: yellows, oranges, and blood-reds.

I waited for the storm to end on our couch, wrapped in my richly purple handmade blanket. We lost our electricity in the early evening, and it was a good thing. I wouldn't talk to any news crews. I couldn't watch any more news or spend any more time online. In the dark, I couldn't do anything but curl up on the couch, hollowed out, an emotional zombie.

And now, the morning is over. I'm still here—on the couch. It's lunchtime, and I haven't eaten anything since yesterday's breakfast, but I can't eat. My mother sits down next to me and rests her good arm around me. I expect her to tell me something about the psychology, or biology, or neurology behind what happened. Before her stroke, she would have loaded me up with facts and figures on what the news is calling “paranoid schizophrenia.” She gave me some insights, but I want more. She strokes my hair. All she offers is, “We are all fragile.”

She smells like clean laundry. I don't care if I'm going to be doing most of the cooking and food-shopping and house-cleaning. I don't care. She's alive. She's here. And I'm here, too.

Izzy—Elizabeth—I don't want to call her Izzy anymore—the girl who was killed was named Isabelle, and “Izzy” reminds me of her. Elizabeth sits at my feet lining up all her stuffed animals for cookies and milk. My mother brushes my hair, long strokes, until it feathers down my back. I lean into her like I would a nest. It's like all of us are afraid to be out of one another's sight.

Debbi Cooper was struck in the right leg but is doing fine, or so Max's father told my father. I may have helped save her life by tying a tourniquet around her leg with my T-shirt. Joe Jacobs, who was there to play tennis at the park, is dead. Herman and Ann Amico, married fifty-one years, and their granddaughter, Isabelle, dead. One police officer, the one with a face full of freckles, Tim O'Ryan, is in critical condition but expected to pull through, and I pray he does. I pray a jumble of prayers, a mix of prayers and poetry, of psalms and Emily Dickinson, of “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” to “Because I could not stop for Death— / He kindly stopped for me,” to words whose meanings I've lost to incoherence. I'm rocked by a sea swell greater than any other.

*   *   *

Late last night, the police barreled up to my house and confiscated my laptop. I explained that I hardly had any messages from Barkley or Brent. They said that it is very common for cyber-stalkers to start with online contact and quickly go to the telephone. They don't want to have a written trail. I said it wasn't like that, but then, I didn't know at all what it was like. They took my laptop for evidence.

All I know is that I never want to hear his voice in my head again.

My father promised that they would get me a tablet before I went to college, but that seems very far off. He's gone back off to work. “Let's pretend it's like any other Tuesday,” he said. I didn't say to him that I will never have another ordinary Monday, or Tuesday, or any other day. I can't even think of tomorrow. I can't think of anything except what happened. I'm cold. I dig into the corner of the couch, grab my notebook. My hands hurt. I can't feel the ends of my fingertips. I can't believe what happened, really happened. I'm shaking, but I grab a pen and write this as fast as I can:

A white tent,

An oasis

on a steamy Labor Day.

Then, a flash of steel.

A gun.

He has a gun—

I thought they meant the

freckle-faced policeman.

The white tent cut through

with screams

Shots.

He has a gun!

My words are lost, or stolen.

A body drops.

Thirty seconds before

the tent, cool and safe.

Now, ripped with shots,

screams, sweat—

No, this isn't sweat.

It's blood. Blood rippling

down. Blood,

everywhere.

Blood. A body

drops.

I throw the pen across the room, fold my arms around myself, shivering, fingers numb, teeth grinding, a knot burning in the back of my throat. This is my poem. My work. This is what is important to me, I realize: that I can write a poem like this. That no one will stop me. He tried to take this from me. He had that gun pointed at my head. He tried to destroy what matters most to me—my ability to think, to imagine, to write. I reread the poem, over and over and over, the words, the sounds, their rhythms, rescuing me.