“Harry! Harry, what’re you doing?” Mason cried as his brother started up the steps.
Harry stopped to stare down, offended: “What am I doin’? I’m killin’ the little fuck I caught screwin’ my girlfriend in my tent! Do you know what that does to a man!? No, ya don’t. ’Cause you’ve never been a man. Now you stay down here like a good boy, or I’ll shoot your funny ears off!”
Then he stomped on up the stairs. “Sharpie, you fuck!” he called, hissing like a rattlesnake. “I’m comin’ for ya! Fuckin’ better run, Sharpie, ’cause I’m the fuckin’ Term-in-a-tor! I’m gonna shoot your dick off and stuff it in your mouth!”
Then he tripped and the pistol fell from his hand, clattered on the landing. He picked it up with his left hand, his not-gun hand.
Mason ran to the bottom of the stairs. “Listen, Harry—”
Harry spun around on the landing, pointing the pistoclass="underline" “No, you listen. You promised Mother you’d look after me. And you didn’t. See what happens when you don’t keep a promise, Mason? You pay! Now you stay there, got me? This ain’t none of your business.”
That’s not what she said, Mason wanted to argue, but arguing would have been madness. Instead, as Mason dashed up the stairs after Harry, he did what he should have done the second he saw Sharpie at the door: he pulled out his cell phone. He fat-fingered the keypad as he tripped up the steps: 011, 912, 921, finally: “Berkeley Police Department Emergency Services... Slow down, sir... What’s the address again?... Is this a medical or police emergency?... How many intruders, sir?... One of them is armed? Your name again, please—”
BATTERY LOW, the little screen broke in. And then it closed its eye with perfect timing as a gunshot cracked from the reading room, echoing through the whole building. Mason jumped and so did his phone, right out of his hand.
He now stood in the grand old former lobby. He turned to the high-ceilinged reading room to see Sharpie dashing out from the Japanese-Spanish section, clutching his side as he scurried behind the double row of long reading tables. He ran into the far corner, into the modern world and US history section. Harry came out from between the Chinese DVDs and nonfiction, awkwardly clutching the little gun in his big hands. His fingers would barely fit in the trigger guard. No wonder Sharpie was still alive.
“Oopsie! Sorry, Mase!” Harry waved the .22 in the air. “I forgot my silencer! Next time!” Then he disappeared behind the first row of the 910s, the travel books: “Sharpie, you little shit!”
He moved in on Sharpie, winding from shelf row to shelf row. He fired again, then again, aiming through gaps in the shelves. The first bullet banged off metal. The second bullet, fired from the 920s, the biographies, broke the spine of Deirdre Bair’s Al Capone biography. As the book shuddered and slumped over, the bullet ripped out the other side and sent a Gandhi biography sprawling to the floor.
Sharpie scurried back and forth crying and whimpering at the far end. Harry seemed to take a teasing pleasure in the hunt. As he drew closer, he swept row after row of books to the floor, as though that would give him better aim; books that Mason had spent a good part of yesterday reshelving, straightening, until they were lined up like the proudest soldiers in the best army on parade. All that work... all the care Mason took... now this!
Mason followed, staying back a couple rows. The pattern was clear now. Harry was losing the point of his anger, which was congealing into a ball of rage firing in all directions. This was Harry all over: he’d never be happy until everyone else was drowning in the same lake of misery.
Mason had no plan either, only a dismal fear and a deeper despair. He’d lost his job now. What else was left to lose? At that moment another emotion appeared — spontaneously, it seemed.
“Harry!” Mason suddenly shouted. “Harry, stop it!”
His own voice scared him. It startled Harry too, because he spun around and stared back at Mason through a gap in the shelves. He put a finger to his lips and took aim right at Mason.
“I told you to shush!”
Crack! went the pistol. Zip! went the bullet as it split the pinna of Mason’s ear. Warm liquid ran between his fingers and down his arm.
“Awwww! I shot Mason’s poor widdle ear! Keep it up and you’re gonna say goodbye to the other one!”
But as Harry spun back to his quarry, he fumbled his gun again and accidentally kicked it out from the shelves into the middle of the room. As he stepped out and kneeled to retrieve it, Sharpie made a break. But he’d lost a lot of blood and as he crossed the reading room back the way he came, he slipped on it, fell hard on his wounded side, with a sad cry.
Now Harry rose to his full height. He marched down on Sharpie with high stalking steps, as though stepping over trip wires. Sharpie was going nowhere. And weak little Mason, what would he do? What he always did. Shake like a leaf.
But, as he had been about so much else, Harry was wrong. Mason was staring at his bloody hand, watching it turn into a bloody fist as he fully remembered their mother’s last words.
And they weren’t “Take care of Harry.”
They were “Have Harry put away.”
That was the promise Mason had failed to keep. His fear and confusion turned inside out like a sock, into purpose and rage. Even though he was already as good as fired, he’d defend Sharpie and this library, this island in the world for both of them, to the last. He was nowhere near Harry’s size, but he had an idea to make himself look bigger.
As Harry reached the far end of the first row of reading tables, Mason jumped from floor to chair to tabletop. He dashed and leaped over the tabletops, avoiding the fixed study lamps, heading right for Harry, who stood a few steps from where Sharpie lay helpless and bleeding.
Swaying about, Harry took aim with both hands: “Fuck my girl, will ya—”
“Harry!” Mason shouted.
Harry spun around as Mason sprang off the table through the air. The pistol cracked again as Mason slammed down onto his brother and they crashed together into a bare wall. Mason took a hard punch in the shoulder. His ears exploded, a jolt shook his whole body. The air sputtering out in a rosy mist from his right lung choked off his scream as he hit the floor.
Mason opened his eyes as Harry slammed down flat and hard inches away. A tooth flew out when his face bounced on the floor. He’d been tackled, knocked flat, by a someone Mason had never seen before, a stoutly built woman with bushy hair. She’d hit Harry like a falling bookshelf.
“What’s going on here? Are you all right?”
Harry tried to get up, but she cracked him a good one with a hammy forearm. “Oof!” His head bounced on the floor again.
“Stay put!”
But he wouldn’t listen, so she thumped him once more. Harry surrendered in blubbering tears.
Good hit, Mason wanted to say. Anxious cries swirled in with galloping footsteps. He also wanted to ask if Sharpie was all right, but by then he was shutting down as Harry sputtered in fury, his face reflected in the sheet of blood spreading between them.
“Fuck!” Harry spat out another bloody tooth. “How come this shit always happens to me?”
Mason awoke thinking he was lying at the bottom of an aquarium. He was tightly wrapped and braced, a rubber mask glued to his face, his ears still ringing. As he rattled in place in his cocoon, the ceiling, seen through watery light, slid overhead. Blurred faces swam by, then swam away. But for a ball of pain in his shoulder, he felt serene, detached.