by John Inman
And so began a day neither man would ever forget.
A day one of them would barely survive.
Chapter Twelve
WHILE WYETH jumped into the shower and did everything he needed to do before heading off to the library, Deeze raced back to his apartment to feed the cat and dress for work. After a hurried clean-up, he donned his school clothes, gathered up a supply of children’s jigsaw puzzles he had ordered from Amazon more than a month earlier that finally came in, and carted it all out to his car. Deeze was used to spending his own money for school supplies for his classroom. Sometimes, that was the quickest way to get them. He wasn’t the only teacher on the planet supplying his students from his own pocket, so he didn’t think anything about it. It was simply part of the job. Besides, he knew the kids would love the puzzles he’d bought. And that was incentive enough for Deeze to spend a few bucks of his hard-earned money.
He drove off under an overcast sky, the puzzles and other school supplies stacked in the back seat of his Honda Civic. As he drove, he hummed a little song. He drove by rote along the same streets he traveled every morning, his mind taken up not with the traffic around him but the night behind. The night he had spent in Wyeth’s arms. Thinking back, he remembered everything he and Wyeth had talked about. And the new commitments they had made.
The commitment of actually living together. Of being truly lovers!
Deeze imagined he could still smell Wy’s musk on his skin, but he had showered, so that was probably imagination. Or maybe Wyeth’s sweet scent had burrowed its way into his genetic memory, and it was there inside his head all the time whether Wy was present or not. Deeze smiled at that thought. It pleased him to think a part of Wy had embedded itself somewhere deep inside his chromosomes, not unlike the way the man had settled inside his heart. Deeze knew he had never been this much in love in his life. He risked closing his eyes for a moment to cast a quick thank-you skyward to whichever fate had coaxed Wy’s dog into his path by the lagoon all those months ago.
Opening his eyes again so he wouldn’t drive through a light pole, he punched the radio, and out popped Adele, singing her lovely head off, filling the car with her perfect voice. Deeze sang along, fucking up her rendition of “Set Fire to the Rain” considerably in the process, but Adele didn’t seem to mind.
Strangely, during the chorus, the first drops of rain Deeze had seen in months splattered his windshield. He smiled, immediately thinking how cool it would be to walk with Wyeth along the bay, talking quietly, cuddled beneath Wyeth’s umbrella, watching the whitecaps slap the shore while Chaucer scampered in the downpour, barking at the sea gulls.
Still smiling, he parked in his space by the cathedral, gathered up his school supplies from the back seat, and ducked through the rain to his classroom door. There, he took an inordinately long time to fish out his key, and by the time he opened the classroom door, he was laughing at himself for being soaked to the skin.
“I really should buy an umbrella of my own,” he chuckled to himself, dripping his way through the door.
WYETH HAD a pretty standard morning. In essence, all he did was kill time, vamp to the music of the library’s rhythm, and wait to be reunited with Deeze at the end of the day. He unpacked several boxes of new additions to the history section on the second floor and shelved them in their proper alphabetical spots. He removed tags and time cards from a dolly filled with older books. The books would be retired and sold at the monthly book sale, which not only raised additional funds for the library but helped clear out discarded stock as well. In this fashion, Wyeth dragged his way to lunchtime. Amazed to see raindrops on the shoulders of patrons bustling through the front doors, he dug the umbrella from his locker in the employees’ lounge and popped it open to see if it still worked before he left for his customary noontime stroll.
The girl who had a crush on him appeared out of nowhere and wagged a finger in his face. “It’s bad luck to open an umbrella inside,” she chided in a flirty voice.
Wyeth shot her a wink and said, “I won’t tell the gods if you won’t.”
The wink left her mesmerized for the rest of the afternoon.
Forgetting the girl immediately, Wyeth took his customary walk around the bay with Chaucer and a book, sitting once again by the lagoon where he had first met Deeze. The memories of that meeting ran so rampant through his head that he sat on the same bench, with his book forgotten in his hand, while Chaucer slumbered peacefully beneath him, safely out of the rain, undoubtedly grateful he wasn’t being dragged around the city at a gallop. Hunkered under his umbrella, Wyeth watched the koi skimming below the raindrop-spotted surface of the tiny lagoon. He thought of Deeze the night before, holding him in his arms and whispering in his ear. Saying it was time they started looking for a place to live together. To be proper lovers. To commit themselves completely to each other.
While the rain peppered down, pattering on the umbrella above his head, Wyeth watched a sailboat skim across the bay toward the Coronado Bridge, its sails puffed up fat, listing in the breeze. As he stared, a rush of emotion coursed through him. His vision blurred with tears. He remembered the sincerity in Deeze’s voice when he spoke the words Wyeth would never forget. He remembered how Deeze’s arms had tightened across his back, holding him close, claiming ownership, declaring his love by nothing more than pressing his heart to Wyeth’s chest and muttering gentle words in his ear.
But most of all, Wyeth remembered how he had once doubted Deeze. How he had once waited, day after day after day, for Deeze to come to his senses and realize he could do better than court this skinny, pale librarian with the inferiority complex and a fear of being hurt. Wyeth remembered the time he had spent waiting to be dumped. The weeks he had wasted waiting for his heart to be broken, as it had been broken so many times before.
He stared down at Chaucer—who was gazing up, squinting into the rain—and tried to cover the poor animal a little better with the umbrella. Chaucer thumped his tail in appreciation, peering up into Wyeth’s face with limitless love, not even really minding that he was getting wet.
“We’re a family now,” Wyeth said, causing Chaucer to perk up his ears. “He loves us, and we’re all going to live together from now on. Please don’t kill his cat.”
Chaucer looked so confused, Wyeth laughed.
“Come on, boy,” he said, still smiling. “Lunch hour’s over. Let’s get you home and dried off.”
TWO HOURS into his afternoon shift, Wyeth ducked behind a shelf of art books, ignoring the one or two random guys who were always there, perusing the volumes for pictures of naked women—painted, drawn, photographed, or sculpted, it made not a whit of difference to them. But who was he to judge? Wyeth thought back to his own adolescence, tirelessly digging through old copies of National Geographic for the occasional photograph of a naked Amazon tribesman or a Masai warrior clad in nothing but a leopard skin and a spear.
Oh, the heady days of his youth!
He chuckled inwardly, and gazed up to see Agnes Mulroney bearing down on him across the broad expanse of the library’s reading area like a torpedo heading straight for its unsuspecting target.
Wyeth started to smile and wave, then he truly looked at the woman. She was slumped over her walker, desperately determined, pushing it wearily before her in fits and starts. The chemo was taking a toll. Just since he’d seen her yesterday, she looked older and more beaten down by age and illness. Peering closer, he realized it wasn’t only her illness that was twisting her face into a semblance of pain. It was something more. It took him a moment to place what that something was.
It was fear. The woman was scared to death.
As she drew nearer, he heard the squeak and rattle of the walker over the patter of her house-slippered feet. She was in her primrosed housecoat again, but the snood was gone. She had obviously been to the beauty shop she went to every Monday morning. Her hair was finger waved across her head in crisp, sharp ridges, not unlike a corrugated tin roof. Sprayed to within an
inch of its life, it didn’t seem to have absorbed so much as a drop of rainwater. But then Wyeth glanced at the windows high above his head and saw the rain had stopped. Agnes halted twenty feet short of where Wyeth still stared at her from behind the shelf of art books. She stood there, eyes wide and frightened, her grizzled old hand clutching at the collar of her robe. Only when she swayed on her feet did Wyeth spring into action.
“Agnes!” he exclaimed, rushing toward her. When he was a few feet nearer, he grabbed a chair from one of the reading tables and dragged it to her, the chair legs making a horrendous screeching sound as they screamed across the tile. Everyone within fifty feet lifted their heads to see what was going on.
She ignored the chair, clamping her fingers around Wyeth’s wrist, causing him to wince. He saw now that there were tears in her eyes.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong? Do you need to go to the hospital?”
“A TV set!” she bellowed. “You must have one. Where is it?”
Confused, Wyeth pointed to a doorway leading to the employees’ lounge. “Over there,” he said. “Why?”
She released his hand and headed for the door he’d indicated, her squeaking, rattling walker once again annihilating the serene silence of the library’s vast reading room. Again, heads jerked up, more than one face frowning at the racket. When an old homeless guy started to gripe about the noise Agnes was making, Wyeth shot him such a look of fury that the poor man clapped his mouth shut like a mailbox. Cowed, he stuck his head back in his book as if he had suddenly decided maybe the sound of Agnes’s walker wasn’t as annoying as he thought it was.
Wyeth trailed along behind Agnes, even more confused than he was before. “Agnes, stop! What is it? Tell me what’s wrong!”
She ignored him but kept leading him toward the door he’d indicated.
By the time they were inside the employees’ lounge, Wyeth was surprised to see several library employees sitting rapt, huddled around the TV in the corner.
Agnes saw them and pointed. “There!” she said, her eyes fierce. Turning back to Wyeth, her old face softened. She reached up and laid a withered hand to his cheek. “Try not to worry,” she said softly. “They haven’t given any details yet. We’ll just have to wait.”
“Wait? Wait for what?” Wyeth asked, tearing his eyes from Agnes’s harried face to the television that was the focus of everyone’s attention. Only then did he spot the Breaking News logo plastered across the top of the screen and the two words printed at the bottom in bold red font: Active Shooter.
Between the two banners, the news crew carried a live feed of a church and the scattered complex of buildings surrounding it. The coverage came from a news helicopter hovering high above the scene. A long line of police cars and a row of ambulances were lined up in front of the church. Crowds had already gathered, held back by dozens of police officers, arms raised, clearly urging calm.
Wyeth stared at the compound. The layout. The three prefab buildings erected to the left of the old church.
His breath caught. He recognized the place immediately. It was Deeze’s school!
Only then did Wyeth hear the voice of the announcer. “The shooter has been taken into custody, the police tell us. The danger is over. It looks like there are casualties, though. We won’t be sure of the number until the police release more details.”
A second announcer, a woman this time, wormed her way into the broadcast. She sounded sad, her voice stricken. “The shooting took place around the preschool at the back of St. Luke’s church. Here’s a helicopter shot of the premises. Oh dear.” She spoke to the reporter in the helicopter. “Are we seeing what I think we’re seeing, Dave?”
“I’m afraid so, Kimberly,” Dave said from high above the city streets, his voice blunted by the whapping of helicopter rotors and the rush of wind. “And there may be more casualties inside the building. We just don’t know.”
Wyeth stepped closer, peering intently at the screen. He saw it then. While the cameraman in the helicopter panned a wide shot over the grounds, the camera suddenly zoomed in, affording a shaky shot of a prone body lying in the rain-soaked grass of the school lawn. A few feet away lay another, face up, arms flung wide. Too far away to recognize their facial features, the bodies appeared to be those of adults, not children. Both lay perfectly still. They were clearly dead.
“Oh God, no,” Wyeth muttered, his heart hammering.
Agnes dropped into a chair. Squeezing her eyes shut, she began to weep.
“Poor Deeze,” she sobbed. “Poor Deeze.” Dropping her hands into her lap, she gazed up into Wyeth’s stricken face. A hint of her old determination surfaced in the lines of her face, but still it clearly hurt her to wrench the words from her throat. “Those bodies…. They weren’t….” She sucked in a breath of air, clearly trying to calm herself. “I’m sure he’s all right,” she finally uttered, her old fingers pawing at Wyeth’s shirt now, trying to get his attention. “He has to be, honey. He has to be.”
A look of disbelieving fury burned through Wyeth. A tear slid along his cheek, and he angrily wiped it away. Clenching his fist, he jerked away from Agnes’s touch as if he couldn’t bear to be touched by anyone. He balled his hand into a fist and struck himself in the chest. Once, twice, three times.
When the pain of the blows finally reached him, he yelled, “No!” at the top of his voice, startling everyone in the lounge.
Agnes, sobbing silently, reached out and stroked his arm.
Chapter Thirteen
FOR DEEZE, the day had been going just fine.
He sat at his desk, reading the day’s newspaper and quietly turning the pages so the rattle of newsprint wouldn’t wake anyone. His students, back from the cafeteria, were spending the rest of their lunch hour as they always did—heads down, napping. Some at their own little desks, others curled up side by side on the interlocking rubber tiles of the play area in the corner of the classroom.
Two boys in the back, one of which was little Jakey Armbrewster—naturally—were snorting back and forth in quiet laughter until Deeze chucked a wad of paper at them to get them to shut up. A few minutes later, both boys were sound asleep.
Deeze grinned. Sometimes the little scamps weren’t as rebellious as they thought they were.
Relaxing and killing time, he stared through the classroom windows. The rain had stopped, but the day was still gloomy under a pewter sky. The foliage in the courtyard was glistening, washed clean by the unexpected downpour. Shimmering puddles, reflecting the glowering sky above, still stood on the sidewalk that wove its way around the church to the school grounds on the other side of the compound, where grades one through eight were taught.
Still staring mindlessly, fighting back sleep himself, Deeze suddenly spotted movement inside the copse of pepper trees that graced the grounds. A flash of color. A spark of light, reflecting off metal.
Curious, he rose from his desk and stepped silently toward the window, weaving his way in and out among his dozing students.
Pressing his forehead to the window pane and looking out, Deeze spotted the gun barrel almost immediately. It protruded from around a tree trunk, but from the opposite side of the tree where he couldn’t see the person holding it. Before the reality of what he was seeing truly registered in his mind, the tip of the gun barrel exploded with sharp little pops, which didn’t sound like much of anything, really, other than tiny claps of indeterminate noise, rather like the tip of a blind man’s cane rapping at the edge of a curb. The windows at either side of Deeze exploded inward with a horrendous crash, sending sprays of glass shards shooting through the air, sprinkling the heads of the kids closest to him.
Every child in the classroom jumped. Some giggled, confused and half-asleep, while others grew big, frightened eyes, their mouths forming Os of burgeoning horror. All of them looked to Deeze for guidance. Innocent, helpless, terrified.
Deeze dove for the nearest kids and scraped them from their seats, dragging them to the floor.
A girl, one of the ones he had raked from her desk, wailed in pain when a sliver of glass from the shattered window pierced her knee. Deeze desperately shushed her, pulling her into his arms.
Over her head, Deeze cried again, “Get down, everybody!” and most of the students obeyed. The ones still at their desks dropped to the floor and covered their heads with their hands. The ones napping on the floor in the play area crawled off in one direction or another, disoriented and scared to death. Many were crying now. Tiny mewlings of terror filled the room.
Deeze released the girl, and with broken bits of glass digging at his palms, he crawled as quickly as he could to the far end of the room, where the windows ended at the door. Once there, he reached up and switched off the light so it would be harder for the shooter to see into the classroom. That done, he risked reaching up one more time and flicking the lock on the door, securing them inside.
There was no other escape route from the room. Anyone trying to get out—or in—was restricted to the one door and the bank of windows on the left side of the classroom. By the same token, the left side of the classroom was also the shooter’s only avenue of attack.
Deeze scrambled about on hands and knees, grabbing kids left and right and dragging them toward the corner of the room farthest from the windows, the corner where his massive oak desk stood. There, he strained to slide the heavy desk, angling it so it afforded as much protection to his students as possible. He wasn’t sure if it would stop bullets, but maybe it would shield the children enough to keep them safe until the police arrived. Surely the cops were on the way. Someone must have reported the shooting.
Horrible thoughts tore through Deeze’s mind. Horrific memories. Unforgettable names and dates. Body counts. Endless lists of injured students. Columbine, 1999, Sandy Hook, 2012, Roseberg, 2015.
