Still, I don’t go down.
The stubborn in me.
When he raises the gun again, and before the other two are on me, I take it away from him, even as dazed as I am, and step inside the reach of the one with the bat and drive the butt end of the Colt into the middle of his face, feeling his nose break even behind the ski mask he’s wearing.
The pain behind my knees is worse now than what I’m feeling from the blow to the side of my head. Still, I manage to keep moving forward until a couple of them behind me, or all of them behind me, have my arms pinned, and somebody is taking the gun out of my hand and somebody else is kicking my feet out from underneath me.
Then I am on the ground, face down in the gravel and dirt, and then somebody is kicking me in the ribs with what feels like a steel-toed boot, and the pain I feel takes me back to the side of the road next to the wrecked Porsche.
I’m bracing myself to get kicked again when I hear somebody growl, “Enough!”
I would bet my life in that moment that the voice belongs to Roof Crockett.
“The fuck it is,” a voice I don’t recognize says.
“For now, it is,” Roof Crockett says from behind his own mask, his voice muffled but not enough to disguise it, at least not from me.
“Your daddy know you’re here?” I say from the ground, barely able to get the words out with at least two of them sitting on me, one to either side of my rib cage, enough weight to make me stop trying to get out from underneath.
“Whatever you think you know,” he says, “know this, 109. You’re getting off just this one time with a warning.”
“Warning… about… what?” I manage.
“To stay out of everybody’s damn business except your own,” he says.
I take one more kick then, to my other side, and a minute or so later I see them running toward a truck of their own, now visible through the fog. I roll over, despite the pain that I really am feeling almost everywhere now, trying to get a glimpse of the license plate, just to prove to myself to whom it belongs.
Some of them are trying to climb into the back when I see Bumper jumping up at them, snarling instead of barking, teeth bared, as if she knows what they just did to me.
One of the masked men kicks at her, but somehow she jumps higher as I hear the engine kick over.
I hear one of them yell, “Fuuuuck.The mutt just bit me.”
“Bumper…” I call out. “Noooo.”
The truck pulls off the side of the driveway, spitting gravel.
My dog is running alongside it now, still barking.
I try to call out to her again, but it’s as if my voice is getting weaker.
“Bumper… let them go.”
But then she is sprinting alongside the truck and then, at the last second, cutting in front of it as if she wants to somehow cut them off.
I can see her clearly in the headlights then as the truck runs over her.
THIRTY-SIX
THERE’S NO THOUGHT in the moment, none, of dragging myself up into my truck and going after them, maybe even chasing them down.
No.
My only thought is getting to Bumper.
Getting to her unless it’s too late.
Despite the blows I’ve taken to my ribs and the side of my head and behind my knees, I get to my feet, wobbly at first, nearly going back down when I take my first step. Then I limp toward where I see my dog in the middle of our road.
