'I did. The doctor is coming. I promise it.'
'No. Something else. You have to promise me. When you find him, you have to let me be there for the end. I have a right. I've been through too much not to see the end.'
'You hate him that much?'
'I don't hate him. You don't understand. He wants it. He wants me to be there.'
'Jesus.' Kern looked astounded at Trautman and the others. 'Jesus.'
'I shot him and all at once I didn't hate him anymore. I just was sorry.'
'Well of course.'
'No, not because he shot me, too. It wouldn't have made a difference if he shot me or not. I still would have been sorry. You have to promise to let me be there at the end. I owe it to him. I have to be with him at the end.'
'Jesus.'
'Promise me.'
'All right.'
'Don't lie. I know you're thinking I'm so badly hurt that I can't be moved up to that field.'
'I'm not lying,' Kern said. 'I have to go.' He stood, motioned to his men at the side of the house, and they joined him, spread out, starting nervously up the street toward the playground and the field beyond.
Except for Trautman.
'No, not you, Trautman,' Teasle said. 'You want to stay out of it yet, don't you? But don't you think you ought to see? Don't you think you ought to be there and see how he finally maneuvers himself?'
When Trautman now spoke at last, his voice was as dry as the wood in the courthouse must have been when it caught, tinder for the fire. 'How bad are you?'
'I don't feel a thing. No. I'm wrong again. The concrete is very soft.'
'Oh.' Another full billowing ca-whump lit up the sky over there. Trautman watched it blankly. The second gas station.
'Score another point for your boy,' Teasle said. 'My yes, your school really trained him well. There's no question.'
Trautman looked at the firemen hosing the flames of the courthouse and the police station, at the jagged hole in Teasle's stomach, and his eyes flickered. He pumped his shotgun, injecting a shell into the firing chamber before he started up the lawn toward the back of the house.
'What did you do that for?' Teasle said. But he already knew. 'Wait.'
No answer. Trautman's back was receding through the reflection of the flames toward the few shadows that were left at the side of the house.
'Wait,' Teasle said, panic in his voice. 'You can't do that!' he shouted. 'That's not yours to do!'
Like Kern before him, Trautman was gone.
'Dammit wait!' Teasle shouted. He rolled on his stomach, pawing the sidewalk. 'I have to be there! It has to be me!'
He groped to his hands and knees, coughing, blood dripping from his stomach onto the sidewalk. The two policemen grabbed him, pushing him down.
'You've got to rest,' the one said. 'Take it easy.'
'Leave me alone! I mean it!'
They were struggling to control him. He was thrashing.
'I have a right! I started this!'
'Better let him go. If he tries fighting us anymore he'll rip himself wide open.'
'Look at his blood on me. How much more can he have inside him?'
Enough, Teasle was thinking. Enough. He groped again to his hands and knees, drew up one leg, then the other, concentrating to stand. He had the salt taste of blood in his mouth. I started this, Trautman, he was thinking. He's mine. Not yours. He wants it to be me.
He braced himself, rose, walked a step, then listed, contending for his balance. If he fell, he was certain he would never be able to raise himself again. He had to hold himself steady, balancing as he wove up the lawn toward the house. I know it, Trautman, he was thinking. He wants it to be me. Not you. Me.
In agony, Rambo crawled through the brambles toward the shed. The firelight extended weakly onto it, and he saw how one wall leaned inward, the roof on an angle, but he could not see in through the half-open door, stark black in there. He crawled, but he seemed to be taking a very long while to go a short space, and then he found he was just doing the motions of a crawl, not getting anywhere. He worked harder, slowly managing some distance toward the shed.
But when he came to the black entrance, he refused. In there it was too much like the hole where he had been held prisoner in the war, dark, compressed, constricting. It reminded him strangely of the shower stall Teasle had made him go into, and of the cell Teasle had wanted to lock him in. They had been brightly lit, that was true, but the repulsion had been the same. Everything he was running from, he thought, and how could he have been so tired as to consider making a fight from in there.
