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Dana lifted an arm like she was going to beat on the glass, but I stopped her.
“No good,” I swore. “Something bigger. Heavier. We need to nail this in one stroke. ”
She caught on quick.
“By the cannon,” she said, and left me. A moment later she whispered through the fog. “Help me, goddammit. ”
I had thought all the cannonballs in the pyramids were welded together, but I’ve been wrong before. Dana had found a stray shell and was trying to lift it. They’re smaller than you might expect, only about the size of a toy bowling ball, but a whole lot heavier than they look.
I worked my fingers under one end while Dana worked her fingers under the other, and between us we shimmied it over to the window. Off in the not-too-distant distance, the digging man slid off the road into the grass, either missing the sidewalk or not knowing it was there. He might have been tracking us by acoustics, in which case he was in for a mighty damp surprise before reaching us.
A splash declared that he’d found the creek, and the ensuing clatter as he worked his way up the short banks told us we were running out of time.
“One,” I said, and swung my arms out.
Dana worked with me. “Two,” she declared, helping me pick up the pace.
“Three!” We said it together, not bothering to keep it down.
We released the cannonball, and it pitched forward by the weight of its own inertia, plunging through the glass. Immediately, a ferociously loud alarm sounded—a violent clanging that matched my concept of a firehouse bell.
“Now what?” Dana shouted over the din.
I grabbed her wrist, and my grip slid down to catch on her hand. For what felt like the one millionth time that evening, without any destination in mind, we ran.
14
Aftermath
By the time the police arrived, Dana and I were inside the visitors’ center, hiding behind the big, circular desk area that the rangers sit at during the day. I’d initially climbed over the counter because I thought maybe I’d find a weapon, or something, but there was no such luck to be had. The most exciting thing we found behind the counter was a Playboy magazine stuffed inside a historical journal.
The cops arrived within three minutes of us busting out the window, swarming the joint. We stood up and threw our hands in the air as soon as we heard them. Dana started crying.
We were interviewed, collectively and separately, for several hours. Jamie had showed up back at Ted’s, where he’d called the authorities as promised; but it took them hearing the formal alarm before they’d sent anybody out.
I was worried about Benny for a while. He seemed to have vanished, and I was hard-pressed to tell anyone where he’d run off to, apart from a general direction where he might have gone. Someone with a flashlight found him about an hour later. He’d face-planted into a tree back in the far side of the park and knocked himself out cold.
After the ambulance had finished with him, he held an ice pack against his forehead and sat down next to me and Jamie. We sat on the steps of the visitors’ center beside the big cannons and, between us, got most of the story out of our heads and into the cops’ notebooks.
Thirty-five minutes after I called home, Lu and Dave arrived at the battlefield. You just have to know the local geography to know how impressive that little feat was. To make it from the top of Signal Mountain to north Georgia in that sort of time, well, they’re lucky all the cops were down where we were and not running speed traps along the way.
I would have felt warm and fuzzy about their concern if they hadn’t been so quiet once they got here.
Screaming I could have dealt with. Yelling would have been a relief. Instead, they kept their collective cool and chatted with the cops, confirming my address and other assorted contact information.
Both of them were dressed, though rumpled. Lu’s socks didn’t match, and Dave wore a determinedly ugly plaid thing tossed over a red T-shirt that said JOE’S CRAB SHACK.
Dana wandered off with someone in a uniform, and I didn’t see her again for the rest of the night.
Looking up at Lu and Dave, I wondered if I was going to be okay.
Dave shot Jamie and Benny the sort of glare that is usually reserved for incoming suitors, and the guys dived off in opposite directions as if on cue. My aunt and uncle sat down on either side of me, replacing them.
For the moment, all the cops were off doing other things—milling around in that sort of way that implied that I wasn’t allowed to go yet, but they were finished talking to me for the time being.
“So,” Lu opened the floor. “Dancing, eh?”
“I didn’t tell you I was dancing,” I pointed out. “I just said I was going to be out late. ”
