sidestepped, and before I could stop myself, I was at the cliff edge, my arms flailing to keep myself from plunging into the abyss. But to no avail.
To this day, I have nightmares about that fall, about the black pit opening below me, ready, in those awful dreams, to grind my bones with its ragged teeth. But to my amazement, I fell only a few feet. I found myself sprawled on a small jut of rock, a little stone tongue sticking out, almost invisible in the shadow of the cliff wall.
I drew myself up, my head not quite level with the top of the quarry, and pressed myself against the wall, into the dark of the shadow there. DiMarco appeared above me, standing at the quarry edge. That long leather strap, instrument of so much pain, hung loose at his side. Without thinking, I reached up out of the shadow, grabbed the strap, and pulled on it with all my might. DiMarco must have been caught completely by surprise, because he yielded without a sound, his body rushing past me in its fall to the depths below.
No death is insignificant, and I believe now that no death should be celebrated. But for a moment, just a moment after killing Vincent DiMarco, the man who’d brought only misery into my life and the lives of so many other kids, I felt a kind of elation.
Then the full realization of my crime hit me, and my legs went weak. I leaned against the quarry wall for support. I’d wanted DiMarco dead, had fantasized killing him dozens of times. But that had been imagining. This was real. This was cold-blooded murder.
A hand touched my shoulder and I jerked as from a jolt of electricity. But it was only Mose, standing above me at the quarry’s edge.
He signed, You okay?
“Where did you come from?”
You weren’t in the quiet room, he signed. We went looking for you.
“You and Albert?”
And Volz We split up. He knelt at the lip of the quarry and peered down. I saw him go over but I don’t see him now.
“Maybe he’s not dead.”
Two hundred feet onto hard rock. He’s dead, Mose signed.
The full weight of my crime settled on my shoulders. I’d killed a man. It wouldn’t matter the circumstances. I could tell them exactly what had happened, but it would be the word of a known troublemaker, a known liar. I had no idea if Minnesota had a death penalty, but if it did, I was sure I’d get the chair.
Mose signed, Let’s go.
He helped me up from the small jut of rock that had saved my life, and I walked away. But not all of me.
CHAPTER TEN
“WHERE WERE YOU?” Albert asked.
“Faria’s dead,” I said. Then I said, “DiMarco, too.”
Albert’s eyes went huge. “How?”
“He just died.”
“DiMarco just died?”
“No, Faria. I killed DiMarco.”
We had found Albert and Volz standing in the old parade ground. They’d looked all over hell and gone and had been worried sick about me.
Once again, all the strength drained from my legs, and I had to sit down on the grass. Mose signed to them what had happened, and Albert interpreted for Volz.
Volz knelt and looked into my face. “Vincent killed Billy Red Sleeve?”
I nodded, still feeling sick and empty.
“He would have done the same to you, Odie, if you had not killed him.”
I looked up into the kind face, the understanding eyes. “I wanted him dead. I stood there and I was happy he was dead.”
Albert said, “We can’t stay here.”
“We just tell them the truth,” Volz said.
“Who’s going to believe a kid like Odie?” Albert said. Which had been my thinking exactly.
“We show them Billy’s body.”
Mose signed to me, Know where Billy is?
I shook my head, and Albert said to Volz, “He doesn’t know what DiMarco did with Billy.”
The German rubbed his chin with his four and a half fingers and squinted in the moonlight. “Maybe you’re right. But it won’t look good, you just running off.”
“No choice,” Albert said.
Mose signed, Run where?
“If we hit the roads, they’ll find us in a heartbeat,” Albert said.
“Maybe you could catch a railcar,” Volz said. “Ride it far away.”
“They’ll put the word out and every railroad bull between Sioux Falls and Saint Paul will be watching for us,” Albert said.
We knew about bulls. A kid named Benji Iron Cloud had run away a year earlier. He’d hopped a freight train and been caught by a bull, a private railroad cop, who’d beat him half to death before