Peter Abrahams: Bullet Point

More cruisers arrived. An amplified voice spoke from one of them, but the sound seemed to come from way above. “Hands up high.”

Wyatt raised his hands.

Doc’s body was found in the tiny bathroom at the back of the silver trailer. And then came something too awful to think about, although for a long time after, Wyatt could think of nothing else: Greer’s body was in Bert Torrance’s secret bedroom closet hidey-hole in the foreclosed house in Silver City. Wyatt came away with only one sure thing, a sure thing that didn’t help, actually hollowed him out all the more: He’d been right to love her.

Wyatt faced a number of felony charges, including aiding and abetting the escape of an inmate from a state prison and harboring a fugitive, but after a month’s deliberation and consultation with a prominent attorney hired by the Mannions, the DA decided not to bring the case. They made a deal that Wyatt would join the Army as soon as he turned seventeen. He probably would have done that anyway: he had no other ideas; and inside he felt he deserved much worse.

One funny thing-this was in the period before Wyatt went away to boot camp-he now got a lot more respect from Rusty. Rusty took him fishing on the river whenever he was home. Wyatt had never been particularly interested in fishing, but Rusty really knew what he was doing and Wyatt began to enjoy it. Sometimes they all went, Linda and Cammy, too. Cammy liked fishing, as long as the fish got thrown back. Linda just liked sitting beside Wyatt, not talking much, but making sure of things, like he wasn’t hungry or thirsty, and was wearing sunblock.

“This family excels at fishing,” Cammy said.

“Excels?” said Wyatt. How would she ever have friends, talking like that?

“It means doing real, real good,” Cammy said.