Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow (best pdf ebook reader txt) 📕

Mimi was back in bed when they got home. Alan took a shower and scrubbed at his feet, then padded silently around the shuttered bedroom, dressing in the dark. Mimi made a sleepful noise.

“I’m making dinner,” he said. “Want some?”

“Can you bring it up here?” she said.

“Yeah, sure,” he said.

“I just can’t face—” She waved a hand at the door, then let it flop back down to the bed.

“It’s all right, babe,” he said.

He and Brad ate dinner in silence in the kitchen, boiled hot dogs with cheese and sliced baby tomatoes from the garden and lemonade from scratch. Bradley ate seven. Mimi had three bites out of the one that he brought up to her room, and when he went up to collect her plate, she was asleep and had the covers wrapped snugly around her. He took a spare sheet and a blanket out of the linen closet and brought it downstairs and made up the living room sofa. In moments, he was sleeping.

This night, he was keenly aware of what had roused him from sleep. It was a scream, at the back of the house. A scared, drunken scream that was half a roar.

He was at the back door in a moment, still scrubbing at his eyes with his fists, and Bennett was there already.

He opened the door and hit the switch that turned on the garden lights, the back porch lights, the garage lights in the coach house. It was bright enough to dazzle him, but he’d squinted in anticipation.

So it only took him a moment to take in the tableau. There was Link, on the ground, splayed out and face down, wearing boxer shorts and nothing else, his face in a vegetable bed in the next door yard. There was Krishna, standing in the doorway, face grim, holding a hammer and advancing on Link.

He shouted, something wordless and alarmed, and Link rolled over and climbed up to his feet and lurched a few steps deeper into the postage-stamp-sized yard, limping badly. Krishna advanced two steps into the yard, hammer held casually at his waist.

Alan, barefoot, ran to the dividing fence and threw himself at it going up it like a cat, landing hard and painfully, feeling something small and important give in his ankle. Krishna nodded cordially at him, then hefted the hammer again.

Krishna took another step toward Alan and then Natalie, moving so fast that she was a blur, streaked out of the back door, leaping onto Krishna’s back. She held there for a minute and he rocked on his heels, but then he swung the hammer back, the claws first.

It took her just above her left eye with a sound like an awl punching through leather and her cry was terrible. She let go and fell over backward, holding her face, screaming.

But it was enough time, enough distraction, and Alan had hold of Krishna’s wrist. Remembering a time a long time ago, he pulled Krishna’s hand to his face, heedless of the shining hammer, and bit down on the base of his thumb as hard as he could, until Krishna loosed the hammer with a shout. It grazed Alan’s temple and then bounced off his collarbone on the way to the ground, and he was momentarily stunned.

And here was Link, gasping with each step, left leg useless, but hauling himself forward anyway, big brawny arms reaching for Krishna, pasting a hard punch on his cheek and then taking hold of his throat and bearing him down to the ground.

Alan looked around. Benny was still on his side of the fence. Mimi’s face poked out from around the door. The sound of another hard punch made him look around as Link shook the ache out of his knuckles and made to lay another on Krishna’s face. He had a forearm across his throat, and Krishna gasped for breath.

“Don’t,” Adam said. Link looked at him, lip stuck out in belligerence.

“Stop me,” he said. “Try it. Fucker took a hammer to my knee.”

Natalie went to him, her hand over her face. “Don’t do it,” she said. She put a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll call the cops.”

Krishna made a choking sound. Link eased up on him a little, and he drew a ragged breath. “Go ahead and call them,” he rasped.

Alan took a slow step back. “Brian, can you bring me the phone, please?”

Link looked at his sister, blood streaming down her face, at Krishna’s misshapen nose and mouth, distorted into a pink, meaty sneer. He clenched each fist in turn.

“No cops,” he said.

Natalie spat. “Why the hell not?” She spat again. Blood was running into her eye, down her cheek, into her mouth.

“The girl, she’s inside. Drunk. She’s only 15.”

Alan watched the brother and sister stare at one another. Blaine handed him the phone. He hit a speed dial.

“I need a taxi to Toronto Western Hospital at 22 Wales Avenue, at Augusta,” he said. He hung up. “Go out front,” he told Natalie. “Get a towel for your face on your way.”

“Andrew—” she said.

“I’ll call the cops,” he said. “I’ll tell them where to find you.”

It was as she turned to go that Krishna made a lunge for the hammer. Billy was already kicking it out of the way, and Link, thrown from his chest, got up on one knee and punched him hard in the kidneys, and he went back down. Natalie was crying again.

“Go,” Alan said, gently. “We’ll be okay.”

She went.

Link’s chest heaved. “I think you need to go to the hospital too, Link,” Alan said. The injured knee was already so swollen that it was visible, like a volleyball, beneath his baggy trousers.

“No,” Link said. “I wait here.”

“You don’t want to be here when the cops arrive,” Alan said.

Krishna, face down in the dirt, spat. “He’s not going to call any cops,” he said. “It’s grown-up stuff, little boy. You should run along.”

Absently, Link punched him in the back of the head. “Shut up,” he said. He was breathing more normally now. He shifted and made a squeaking sound.

“I just heard the cab pull up,” Alan said. “Brian can help you to the front door. You can keep your sister company, get your knee looked at.”

“The girl—” he said.

“Yes. She’ll be sober in the morning, and gone. I’ll see to it,” Adam said. “All right?”

Brian helped him to his feet and toward the door, and Andrew stood warily near Krishna.

“Get up,” he said.

Mimi, in his doorway, across the fence, made a sound that was half a moan.

Krishna lay still for a moment, then slowly struggled to his knees and then his feet.

“Now what?” Krishna said, one hand pressed to his pulped