Rock Island Line by David Rhodes (i am reading a book TXT) 📕

“Shoot him!” cried Marty and Al together.

“Never mind that. I don’t have any bullets. God, was he scared! Get him!”

Running with the box under his arm slowed July down considerably. He lost more of his lead when four or five teenagers tried to stop him, figuring him to be a thief. Down an alley, back onto the street. He could hear their footsteps gaining on him, but there was nothing he could do. He heard them gasping for breath right behind him, then felt them grabbing hold of his shoulders. He dodged to the right, freeing himself for a moment, and continued running. But he couldn’t get away and they forced him down into a basement staircase. Frantically, he tried the door at the bottom, but it was locked. His three assailants were coming down, one of them saying, “Stay back, stay back, he’s mine. I’ll take ’im. Boy, is he scared!”

The realization that July was frightened—terrified of them—brought Earl such joy that he wanted to laugh out loud. His desire to beat July to a pulp so completely overcame him that his whole body seemed to be shaking and throbbing as he came down the steps. But he didn’t comprehend the extent to which July was afraid, or how badly he wanted to get up the stairs and out onto the street again. July was so afraid of being beaten to death at the bottom of the steps and left there by the locked door that, without a thought, he opened the box, picked up the only thing he could find and with a broken brick in each hand ran up the stairs.

Earl was hit three times in the face and once in the chest. He sank down and felt feet clambering over him, and, shaking with the ecstatic memory of July’s fear, feeling the trapped laughter swinging around him, he passed out. Al was hit once, ripping his nose open, and came out of the stairwell with Marty breathing down his neck, running. July, with his cat beside him, came up onto the street, let the bricks fall, turned and ran with Butch in the opposite direction as though the Lords of Death were after them, Butch running with his tail flat out behind him, right down the middle of the deserted street.

Once back in their room, July sat for a long time in his chair staring at the table in front of him, where lay the remains of his successful game of solitaire.

Even after he’d caught his breath and the adrenaline had melted back down the sides of its pot, he remained wrapped in thought. How could he accept his own cowardliness? The memory of the uncontrollable fear—if there had been a cliff there instead of a locked door, he would’ve gone over, like a herd of stupid sheep—made him utterly ashamed of himself, and in his own eyes he was the lowest of the low. All honor cast to the winds. Coward, coward, coward! he silently screamed at himself. What would his visitor of earlier that night have thought of him if he had known that there was such an emotion in him? Clearly, ifhe had known, he never would have come. July wished for a second chance. He pictured what he would do. Standing up against the fence with the flashlight in his face, he pulled out his gun and coolly, gloriously, let the bullets fly in all directions, was hit once in the arm, then the leg, sank down on his knees, let loose another two shots, killing them, and was taken away in an ambulance with police sirens.

No, it hadn’t been like that. It could never be like that. He’d had his one chance and had muffed it. Coward, coward, coward. Weak, weak, weak.

Butch jumped up on his lap and raised him partially out of his thoughts. “Ho, ho,” he said, pointing his finger into Butch’s fur. “There you have it—mugged. How’d ja like that, huh?” Butch looked at his finger in contempt. “Ho, ho, I saw how scared you were—‘After that cat, boys. After him!’” Butch looked as if it were all beneath him. That’s fine for you, thought July—being afraid doesn’t mean anything to you; you’re just a cat.

He fed him the last of the food in the can, and tossed it out the door because it was beginning to smell.

The next morning found him frightened again. He’d not stopped to think before going to sleep that he’d have to either return to the same place to pick up his papers, where he couldn’t avoid meeting with the very people who had threatened him—the reasons for which he partially understood and partially didn’t—or give up his job. He lay under the blankets and didn’t want to get up. But after he’d thought about it and seen that those were the only alternatives he had, he went off to the pickup, leaving Butch behind in his box.

Al and Marty, who had run off down the street leaving Earl momentarily to die from loss of blood maybe, had come back just as he was regaining consciousness. Marty, to explain how he happened to be without a mark on him, ventured, “As soon as I could hear the bullets whizzing by my head, I knew it was no healthy place.”

“He got me with a glass-studded blackjack,” added Al, at the same time calling attention to his nose. They came up onto thestreet, Earl carefully feeling his face for swelling and stinging cuts. “That kid’s nothing to fool with,” said Al, but tentatively, unsure what the drift of the following conversation would be.

Within the myriad images going through Earl’s memory of the evening, one became clearer than all the rest—the face of July with the flashlight on it, filled with fear. The full power of the image almost caused him to lose consciousness again because it made him feel so good. And as he was walking down the street