The Country I Lived In by Boston Teran

Author:Boston Teran [Teran, Boston]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-56703-60-0
Published: 2014-01-05T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 28

John walked out into the street. The man in the suit approached Mia. He was at first polite, wanting to engage her in conversation but she excused herself. He reached out toward her and she snaked back, but he was too quick and lunged and got hold of her shoulder and blouse. She struck at his arm and the material tore and he pulled her around.

She had not screamed, she had not panicked. She demanded he goddamn let her go. He answered by shoving her toward the sedan. She saw over her shoulder John was fast approaching.

Those in the car must have also, because the passenger door shot open and a man in slacks and a white shirt stepped into the sunlight. He was shouting, trying to warn his accomplice, but too late.

John brought the barrel of that Browning across the back of the man’s skull with absolute force. He was stunned. His legs momentarily buckled. He lost his grip on Mia and she broke loose.

“Go to the car,” John shouted. “Pull it out into the street.”

She sprinted away, her shoes cloppiting over the stone roadway.

John yanked the man’s coat down by the collar and clumped it, binding his arms. John started walking backwards using the man as a shield.

People along the street had taken notice. A woman returning from Mass screamed up toward open windows for someone to call the police, while her children ran. An old man slunk down behind a parked truck. A boy on a bicycle came speeding down the hill to see a shotgun being passed out the sedan window to the man in slacks and a white shirt. As he pumped a round into the chamber the bicycle shimmied wildly as the boy tried to get out of the way.

Mia had peeled out into the roadway, cutting the wheel and braking. The engine idled like a great beast and she leaned around and stretched up out of the seat and yelled for John to come on.

What was shaping up on that narrow causeway in broad daylight is what the late Sergeant Joe Mueller used to call during the war “a funeral director’s delight.”

The man with the shotgun took one decided step forward and anchored that gun on his shoulder. The man in the suit between him and his target meant goddamn little and he knew it and tried to break free. John hunched down, keeping his head and chest square against the man’s back.

The enormity of the blast echoed up that tight quarter of buildings. Birds struck from the rooftops toward the hills. Screeching formations of them everywhere against a flat blue sky. The shot had driven the man and John backwards and they tumbled over each other and into the gutter. The man had been torn apart and his suit was a smoking ruin.

John was on his knees when he returned fire.

The man with the shotgun was hit in the stomach. A jet of blood sprayed across the cobblestones. The man’s legs went out from under him.

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