“I just got here.”
“Remember that little girl who went to phone the police?”
“I told you, I just got here.”
“Well, there was a little girl of about nine or ten or so who we sent to call for help.”
“Ten,” a woman says.
“Ten. Well, she knifed him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” several people say in different ways.
“I thought we needed a bit of, I don’t know, levity here, what with the grim sight of them lying there and waiting for help taking so long. But I guess it was in bad taste.”
“Very.”
While they were saying all this I took my jacket off, rolled it up and put it under the woman’s head.
“Here it comes,” a man says.
We hear an ambulance siren and look in the street. The ambulance and police escort preceding it pass.
“Must be for someone else.”
“I really think one of us should try and get the police now,” I say. “Just to remind them, if the girl called, or to let them know, if she didn’t.”
“Maybe he’s got a point,” the woman who said she trusts the girl says.
“I’ll go,” I say.
“You’ve already done enough damage,” a man says.
“What do you mean? You wouldn’t let me do anything, which is why I’m volunteering to go.”
“You picked up that woman’s head just before. Maybe they didn’t see you, but I did. And in her condition you might have done just enough damage to kill her, when if you hadn’t touched her she might have been saved.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I say we make sure he stays here and we send someone else to call.”
“Send anyone you want, but I’m also phoning for help.” I push through the crowd. I look back. The circle’s together again around the three injured people. I go into one of the stores nearest the crowd and ask the hardware-store man if I can use his phone.
“There’s a public booth a block north of here,” he says.
“I haven’t a dime and this is an emergency.”
“All I get every day are people with no dimes and life-and-death emergencies.”
“Let him use the phone,” a woman at the cash register says.
“I said no.”
“But it’s real important. Can’t you look outside yourself and see?”
“Just keep looking for your register-tape error and don’t butt in.”
“Don’t you talk to me like that.”
“I said shut up,” he says to her.
“And I’m telling you this is as much my store as yours and even more so, as it’s in my name. And I want him to phone for the police for whatever it is that happened out there.”
“I better go somewhere else,” I say.
“You’re damn right,” he says.
“No. Go no other place. Use our phone. It’s mine — in my name — and in the back there, right down that aisle.”
“Use the phone and you’re flattened,” he says, his hand in a tray of wrenches on the counter.
I head for the door. The woman runs after me. “I said you can use the phone.”
“But I don’t want to cause any more trouble and also get killed for it.”
“Trouble between him and me is nothing new. Besides, he’s a blow-hard — all wind and words. So use the phone.”
“No.”
“He’s smart,” the man says. “Here’s a dime, sonny. Now get the hell out of here.” He throws me a dime and I catch it.
“Coward,” she says to me. “Idiot,” she yells at him.
He picks up a wrench and comes over to her. “Don’t be calling me an idiot.”
“All right. I apologize. You’re not an idiot.” He relaxes both arms to his sides and walks away. “You’re a big moron and stupid son of a bitch.”
He rushes at her to hit her with the wrench, or it at least looks like that. She runs. I freeze. But I just about froze before and watched and now three people are near dead out there. The man runs past me after the woman. I grab the hand that holds the wrench. “Get his other arm and we’ll trip him,” I yell at her. He hits me on the back with his other arm or hand. I fall. He lifts the wrench over my head and yells “Meddler, meddler,” and comes down on my shoulder with it and then my neck. Both times it seemed he aimed for my head. Something in me broke both times. He lifts the wrench again.
“Don’t,” she yells.
He turns to her. I start to crawl to the door. He comes after me. “Leave him,” she yells.
He turns to her. I’m still crawling. He steps over to me with the wrench raised.
“Stop,” she yells.
He rushes her and hits her across the face with the wrench at the same moment she sticks a chisel in him. I don’t see where she got him. Somewhere high up. They both fall. They don’t make sounds. I crawl out of the store to the crowd. The ambulance and police still haven’t come. I grab a man’s ankle and shake it. He turns. “Oh my gosh,” he says. “What happened?”
“In there.” I can’t point. “The hardware. Two people are hurt. Maybe dead. The man hit me twice with a wrench and then the woman with a wrench, but she much worse than me. She stabbed him to protect me and herself. Take care of her. Then me. The man should come third. Or rather, call the police, for I never could. Help for all six of us. I’m sure that girl never called. They would have been here by now.”
“He wants us to phone for help,” he says to the crowd.
“You go,” a woman says to him. “He told you.”
“I haven’t any change.”
“Use the phone in the hardware store,” I say. “In back. Straight down the middle aisle.”
“You don’t need a dime?”
“Maybe you do. I thought it wasn’t a pay phone, but maybe it is. But they must also have a regular business phone that doesn’t take dimes.”
“I better take a dime just in case.”
“Two,” I say.
“Two dimes then.”
“Two ambulances. For the trio in the street and the couple in the store and me.”
“The stabbed man doesn’t need help anymore.”
“The one in the street?”
“Maybe the one in the store also,” a woman says.
“That would mean only four people need help,” the man says.
“We’ll still need two ambulances if they’re the triple kind,” I say.
“The lady doesn’t seem to need help either,” a man says. “The one in the street, I mean. She doesn’t seem to be breathing.”
“Check,” I say. “No, just go in the hardware store and call the police. Don’t tell them how many ambulances we’ll need. The ones I’m thinking of they might be out of. Just say six people are seriously hurt. Also, if some of you would turn me over now and put something under my head. A jacket. But gently. Rolled up, and not the jacket that’s under the head of the woman in the street.”
“I wouldn’t touch him,” a man says. “You might do more damage than not.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m uncomfortable, in pain, and know what I need. I give you permission.”
“For his own good I wouldn’t touch him. His shoulder seems broken. So does something with his neck the way he’s keeping it.”
“Wait for the ambulances,” several people say in different ways.
“Phone,” I say to the man.
“I don’t want to go in the store. The man with the wrench might be up and ready to clip the first one to come in. For all we know, you could have been the one who provoked him into using the wrench, and he might think the next person to come in his store is the same.”
“I didn’t provoke him. I only went in to call.”
“Maybe you’re right. The courts will decide if it has to come to that. But I’m not going in there. Anyone know where the nearest phone booth is?”
“Three blocks south on this avenue,” someone says.
“One block north,” I say.