The Third Hill North of Town

by Noah Bly

  “WHO GIVES A RAT’S ASS WHERE WE ARE?” Bonnor Tucker roared back at the trooper. “THE TWO LITTLE ASSHOLES OUT THERE KILLED RONNIE BUCKLEY, SO DON’T PULL ANY JURISDICTION BULLSHIT ON ME! THEY FUCKING BELONG IN MY JAIL!”

  Mary Hunter’s lips were thin as she sized up the situation.

  “I will not permit that vile man to take the boys,” she whispered to Sam, tilting her head in Bonnor Tucker’s direction. “If he gets them alone again their lives won’t be worth a plug nickel.”

  Her eyes were glinting in the firelight from the Cadillac, and for the first time that evening Sam felt hope stir inside him. He didn’t know if Mary’s mojo could do any good for Elijah at this point, but the menace exuding from her was a welcome sight nonetheless.

  Please, Lord, Sam prayed. Please don’t let anybody start shooting until she’s had her say.

  “MAYBE YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE LET THEM OUT OF YOUR JAIL IN THE FIRST PLACE, DIPSTICK!” retorted the Missouri trooper, out-shouting Bonnor. “NOW WILL YOU PLEASE SHUT THE HELL UP AND LET ME DO MY JOB?”

  Elijah Hunter and Jon Tate had released each other but were still sitting side by side near Julianna’s body. Neither of them was particularly interested in the heated exchange between the two policemen; the shock of Julianna’s death and everything else that had happened on the hilltop had left both boys numb to anything so tame as a shouting match. Elijah took one of Julianna Dapper’s limp hands again in his own and held it against his cheek. Her fingers were already growing cold.

  “I’m so sorry, Julianna,” he whispered, looking down at her still, pale face. He couldn’t believe how much it hurt to lose her; he felt like he might cry for days. He glanced at Jon and saw tear tracks running through the grime on the older boy’s face; Jon met his eyes, then bowed his head and ran a hand through his hair, sighing. Elijah’s throat constricted and he shut his eyes, wishing he could just as easily shut his ears, too, against all the noise surrounding them.

  Bonnor Tucker and the other lawmen ceased bickering at last; Bonnor had apparently lost the battle of wills because it was the first Missouri trooper’s voice that now addressed them across the field.

  “ALL OF YOU LAY FACEDOWN ON THE GROUND! I’M GONNA COUNT TO THREE AND WHOEVER ISN’T KISSING THE FUCKING DIRT WHEN I GET TO THREE IS GONNA GET SHOT, SO YOU BETTER LAY THE FUCK DOWN RIGHT NOW!”

  “Great,” Elijah Hunter murmured wearily to Jon. “Another cop that likes to count to three.”

  “Everybody do what he says,” Mary Hunter said calmly, taking charge. “Elijah and Jon, move as slowly as you can. Make absolutely sure to keep your hands in plain sight, every single second, understand?”

  “ONE!”

  Elijah let go of Julianna’s hand with an effort and sighed. It no longer felt wrong to surrender; if he and Jon tried to put up a fight or run away at this point, it would only get more people hurt. Besides this, he knew his mother’s tone all too well and he wasn’t about to argue with her. (He may have become braver in the last two days than he’d once imagined possible, but he doubted he’d ever be brave enough for that.) He began to stretch out on the ground beside Jon, but as the trooper yelled “TWO,” Bonnor Tucker’s distinctive voice interrupted the proceedings yet again:

  “THE NIGGER’S GOT A GUN IN HIS BELT!”

  Elijah froze on all fours, suddenly terrified not for himself but for his father, who did indeed have both of the revolvers Jon and Elijah had stolen earlier from the jailhouse. But Samuel was already facedown on the ground with the revolvers tucked securely beneath him; his empty hands were raised high above his head. Why was Bonnor just now making a stink about the weapons if he had seen them before Sam laid down?

  “WHICH ONE OF THEM?” demanded the first Missouri trooper.

  “WHICH ONE WHAT?” Bonnor roared back.

  “WHICH ONE HAS THE GUN, DUMBASS?”

  “THE KID, YOU STUPID SHIT! THE NIGGER KID!” Bonnor raged. “HE’S GOT IT UNDER HIS SHIRT!”

  Elijah’s jaw dropped, not understanding, but beside him Jon Tate began to swear.

  After Bonnor Tucker had lost the war of words with his colleagues, things had become painfully clear. The two teenagers who had made a fool of him and killed Ronnie Buckley were slipping away from him, and if he didn’t act quickly he would soon be sent back to the Maddox jailhouse with nothing but his own dick in his hands as a consolation prize. He’d be the permanent laughingstock of Creighton County; he’d be called “Boner Toucher” until the day he died.

  “HE’S GONNA TRY SOMETHING!” he now screamed, determined to prevent such a fate, no matter the cost. “HE PULLED THIS SAME SHIT WHEN RONNIE AND ME ARRESTED HIM!”

  No, I didn’t, Elijah thought numbly, unsure as to whether he should continue lying down or stay where he was.

  “YOU’RE A LYING SACK OF SHIT, BONER!” Jon Tate yelled. Jon, like Samuel, was facedown on the ground with his hands in the air, but his head was raised and he was glaring with hatred at the headlights of Bonnor Tucker’s car. “ELIJAH DOESN’T HAVE A GUN, AND YOU KNOW IT!”

  “FUCK YOU!” Bonnor screamed back. “WHAT I KNOW IS THAT YOU TWO LITTLE COCKSUCKERS LIKE TO KILL PEOPLE THE SECOND THEIR BACKS ARE TURNED!”

  “Hush, Jon!” admonished Mary Hunter, also from a prone position. “Elijah, don’t move an inch! Don’t even blink till I tell you!”

  Elijah was the only one by Julianna’s body who wasn’t stretched out on the ground; he wanted to lie down with the rest of them so he wouldn’t feel quite as vulnerable. Emotional and physical exhaustion was making it impossible to think, and he glanced down at Julianna again, envying the peaceful expression on her face. The flickering firelight on her dress almost made it look as if she were still breathing. He hoped it was quieter wherever she was than on that hilltop; he desperately wanted to go to sleep himself, but everybody kept yelling at him.

  “MY SON IS UNARMED, AND HE’S GOING TO LAY DOWN JUST LIKE YOU TOLD HIM!” Mary hollered to the first Missouri trooper. “PLEASE, PLEASE DON’T LET THAT STUPID MAN SHOOT HIM!”

  “Can you tell if the kid has a gun?” This same Missouri trooper called softly to his compatriot by the Volkswagen. “I don’t think he’s got one.”

  The second trooper shook his head. “I think Boner’s full of shit,” he called back, snorting.

  “ARE YOU SURE YOU SAW A GUN, BONNOR?” yelled Walling, the Iowa trooper on Bonnor’s other side. “I DON’T SEE ANYTHING!”

  “ARE YOU ALL RETARDED?” Bonnor yelled back. “I ALREADY TOLD YOU IT’S UNDER HIS SHIRT! YOU CAN’T SEE IT, BUT TRUST ME, THE FUCKING THING IS THERE!”

  The Missouri trooper’s temper was beginning to fray.

  “I DON’T CARE IF HE’S GOT A GODDAMN ATOM BOMB TIED TO HIS SHORT HAIRS!” he bellowed at Bonnor. “AS LONG AS HE LAYS DOWN ON THE GROUND AND KEEPS HIS HANDS UP, WHAT THE FUCK DOES IT MATTER?” He waited for a response but Bonnor remained gratifyingly silent. The trooper took a few deep breaths to regain his equilibrium, then turned back to Mary Hunter.

  “NOBODY’S GONNA SHOOT YOUR KID, LADY! JUST HAVE HIM LAY DOWN NICE AND SLOW, AND EVERYTHING’S GONNA BE PEACHY, OKAY?”

  Mary glanced at Sam for a moment and waited for him to nod, then she whispered to their son to do as he’d been told. Elijah obeyed immediately and started to lower himself into a spread-eagled position, keeping his hands as far from his waist as he could. Jon Tate hissed at him to slow down, and Mary nearly smiled in spite of herself. Elijah was already moving like a turtle; if he moved any slower he’d be at a standstill.

  “HE’S REACHING FOR HIS GUN!” Bonnor roared.

  Jon Tate had listened to Bonnor’s accusations about Elijah with growing distress, not believing what he was hearing. That the trollish deputy from Creighton County was mean enough to pull the trigger was a given, of course, but that he’d actually think he could get away with committing murder in front of an audience boggled the mind. Jon heard the Missouri trooper who was in charge tell Elijah’s mother that no one was going to shoot her son; he then heard Ma
ry Hunter tell Elijah to lie down. The younger boy began to obey, moving too quickly for Jon’s liking; Jon snapped at him to slow down, unable to remain silent.

  “HE’S REACHING FOR HIS GUN!” Bonnor bawled as Elijah lowered himself to the ground incrementally.

  Jon couldn’t bear it any longer: Julianna’s death was bad enough but losing Elijah was unthinkable; he felt certain Bonnor was going to pull the trigger any second. He sprung up and flung himself on top of Elijah, dragging him to the ground and shielding him with his own body.

  And Bonnor Tucker, who had been praying for just this kind of precipitous, foolish move, pulled the trigger.

  Coincidence had saved some of Its best material for last.

  The daughter of one of Bonnor Tucker’s neighbors in Maddox was a seven-year-old tomboy called Candace Perona-Schonhorst who loved to play with toy soldiers. She was especially fond of the tiny green riflemen, and owned hundreds of them; she liked to line them all up on the porch railing of her home and shoot them down one after another with rubber bands, often engaging in this activity for hours at a time until the skin of her right index finger was bloody from the friction of the rubber skimming across it.

  Candace Perona-Schonhorst was equally enthralled by real guns.

  The day before Bonnor fired his shotgun in that Missouri cornfield, he was sitting on his front porch during his lunch break, cleaning his weapons—which he did as ostentatiously as possible, savoring the wary looks from passersby. Candace was out playing in her own yard at the time, and she skipped across the grass to watch Bonnor oil and fondle both his shotgun and his revolver. Bonnor pretended to ignore her, of course, but he enjoyed having the small girl as a spectator for this almost daily ritual of his, mistakenly believing she was admiring him and not only his weapons.

  He had just set the shotgun down after cleaning it and was moving on to the revolver when a cheeky carful of Maddox’s teenagers drove past the house and screamed “BONER TOUCHER!” through their open windows. Bonnor instantly leapt to his feet and raced to the road with his revolver to put the fear of God in the disrespectful miscreants, but they had the good sense to not stick around and wait for his arrival. He was gone from the porch for just forty seconds or so, and his back was only turned away from his home for no more than twenty of these.

  Twenty seconds, however, was more than long enough for Candace Perona-Schonhorst to discover a perfect hiding place for three of her tiny plastic riflemen.

  Bonnor was a very good shot, and by all rights the large, lethal buckshot in the shells should have ripped through Jon Tate’s back and burrowed straight into Elijah Hunter afterward. But sadly—at least from Bonnor’s perspective—it was not to be: The small, clever fingers of seven-year-old Candace had done their work well, and the three tiny toy rifleman she had jammed deep into the barrel of the shotgun caused the weapon to explode in Bonnor’s face instead.

  “FUCK!!” Bonnor wailed, dropping the ruined weapon and clutching his face in agony. The stock of the shotgun had slammed into his cheek with enough force to fracture the bone beneath his right eye, and he was blinded in that same eye by a microscopic bit of shrapnel. He reeled away from his squad car and fell into the ditch, still howling.

  “FUCK!!” he shrieked again.

  “HOLD YOUR FIRE!” roared the first Missouri trooper. “NO ONE ELSE DO A GODDAMN THING UNTIL I SAY SO!”

  “Are you all right, Bonnor?” Iowa Trooper Walling called.

  “NO, I’M NOT FUCKING ALL RIGHT!” Bonnor squealed, spitting out a broken molar.

  “What just happened?” Jon Tate whispered to Elijah, who was still beneath him. From where they were, Jon could see Bonnor thrashing around in the ditch, but he didn’t dare raise his head to investigate further. He was in no hurry to move, anyway; the side of his face was pressed against Elijah’s back, and each and every inhalation Elijah took felt to Jon like a holy blessing, as did the frantic pounding of his own heart.

  “Beats me,” Elijah murmured in answer to Jon’s question, resting his head on the earth and feeling strangely at peace. “But I don’t think Boner liked it very much.”

  “Yeah,” Jon agreed. “He sounds kinda upset.”

  “FUCK!” cried Bonnor Tucker.

  Epilogue

  Julianna Dapper and her son, Gabriel, were buried in the Lone Rock Cemetery in Hatfield, Missouri, right next to the graves of Eben, Emma, Seth, and Michael Larson—and just a few yards away from Ben Taylor. There was already a headstone there for Julianna, of course, but rather than attempt to sort out precisely whose remains were buried beneath each of the old stones, it was determined by a county judge that none of the Larsons’ graves should be disturbed, and a new stone should be made for Julianna, as well as Gabriel. No one who had been made privy to Julianna’s account of what had really taken place at the Larson farm on the night of the Pawnee fire was thrilled by this ruling, however, and Mary Taylor even went so far as to threaten to dig up Rufus Tarwater with her bare hands from beneath Eben Larson’s weathered tombstone and toss his “filthy, murdering bones in the trash.” After being informed that very little of Rufus would still be “tossable” after thirty-nine years in the earth, Mary was only slightly mollified.

  “His damn dust is as bad as the rest of him,” she had snapped at the judge before at last giving up. “No part of that man has any business being left next to those good people.”

  The graveside funeral for Julianna and Gabriel was attended by Elijah Hunter, Jon Tate, Mary Taylor, Sam and Mary Hunter, Dr. Edgar Reilly, and Jon Tate’s parents, Earl and Marline, who had flown out to Missouri to be with their son through all the legal proceedings. The sky was cloudless, and the aromas of freshly dug earth and roses mingled with the less pleasant bouquet of cow dung from a pasture bordering the cemetery. The minister of the Lone Rock Church asked if anyone would like to say a few words about either Julianna or Gabriel, and Elijah tried to say something about Julianna but was unable to speak. Jon tried to come to his rescue but fell mute himself after only a sentence or two, so in the end it was Edgar Reilly who felt called upon to offer a short eulogy.

  “I never knew Julianna when she was sane,” Edgar said, furtively removing a lemon drop from beneath his tongue so he could speak clearly. “And I only really knew Gabriel when he was under a terrific strain. I’m sure neither of them would have chosen to be remembered in this manner, and I’m sorry I didn’t know them when they were . . . more themselves. But regardless of their mental states at the end, their deaths are a terrible tragedy.”

  Edgar’s voice abruptly roughened and he paused. It was another blistering summer morning and he was perspiring heavily, though not nearly as much from the heat as from his smarting conscience. He glanced over at the iron fence surrounding the cemetery, and at the small, whitewashed Lone Rock church nearby, where Julianna and her family had once been parishioners. Edgar’s gaze at last fell on the two sad boys standing by Julianna’s open grave, and he spoke directly to them when he resumed.

  “There are many, many things I wish I had handled differently in all of this,” he said quietly. “I am sorrier than I can say for everything you boys have gone through, and as I told the authorities, you are not to blame for any of the awful things that happened. My only consolation is that if Julianna hadn’t escaped from my care, she may never have found the peace she so desperately needed. Nor would she have met the two of you, and I believe she was very lucky to have you with her on her strange odyssey. It comforts me to know she spent her last days on earth with people who were kind to her, and cared for her, and did everything in their power to keep her safe. Thank God for you boys.”

  “Amen,” Mary Taylor murmured, and Mary Hunter reached out and briefly took Edgar’s hand in her own as he fell silent again.

  Over the past few days Elijah and Jon had gotten to know Edgar a little. At first they’d found him a little pompous, and overfond of giving unsolicited advice, but they’d gradually warmed to him, especially after learning everything he had don
e to get them out of trouble. The FBI had completed its investigation, and Edgar’s testimony had proven crucial in proving their innocence. He had insisted that everything that had happened was Julianna’s doing, and consistent with her pathology. That Lloyd Eagleton had finally awakened from his coma and confirmed that Julianna had indeed been driving the Edsel when it had run over him was also pivotal, as was Mary Taylor’s account of what had passed between Julianna and her supposed “captors” after Julianna was shot.

  Moreover, Cecil and Sarah Towpath—the elderly couple who had first reported Julianna’s kidnapping—were sought out, and soon confessed to exaggerating their account of the incident. The FBI also had an equally fruitful telephone conversation with Sal Cavetti, the perpetually stoned poet who had accused the boys of raping Julianna, in which Sal was told by the lead investigator to “Cut the bullshit, freak, or I’ll drive out there myself and kick you in the ass so hard your goddamn balls will pop off.” The hastily updated testimonies of the Towpaths and Sal in hand, there remained only one felony indictment against the boys: The assault on Deputy Bonnor Tucker at the Maddox jailhouse. Mary Hunter paid the stubborn deputy a short visit, and thirty minutes later—after the district attorney received an urgent phone call from a gibbering Bonnor Tucker—the FBI’s two most wanted criminals were no longer wanted for much of anything. Jon still faced prosecution for stealing cash from his employer, but as Jon’s parents promised to take him back to Tipton to make amends (and, unknown to the police, to tend to Becky Westman’s pregnancy), both boys were free to attend the funeral for Julianna and Gabriel on the following morning.

  And after that, to part company and go home.

  They stood side by side as Julianna’s casket was lowered into the earth. As they listened to the minister’s benediction the reality of what was going to happen in the next few minutes began to sink in. Jon would get into his parents’ rental car—along with Edgar Reilly, who was hitching a ride—and head south to the Kansas City airport, and Elijah would join Sam and Mary in their pickup and depart immediately for the east.