Charlaine Harris: Shakespeare’s Landlord

Nothing moved. I didn’t hear anything but the faint sound of a car cruising by in the street. Even that died away. But as quiet as it was, I knew there were people near. I could feel the hair standing up on the nape of my neck. So I slowly rose to my feet, nearly moved away to the safety of my house, wondered if I would make it.

I extended my hand to the knob on the camper. It was in the camper that Pardon’s body had been concealed; if any evidence remained, it would be in that little space.

The Yorks hadn’t been due home until night. But they’d come home earlier, the day Pardon had died. I knew it.

And then I turned the knob. The door popped open with a click, and just as I took in a breath of triumph, a huge shape launched itself at me from the black interior.

I didn’t have a chance to defend myself. In ferocious silence, I was being beaten, and I needed all my breath to fend off the blows, to keep the fists from killing me. I knew only one person was there, but it was a person possessed of a demon, a man who seemed to have more than two hands.

I had to fight back or I would die, but the frequency and pain of the blows left me scant brainpower. I formed a fist and struck the first thing I could see, some ribs, not an effective blow, but a start, a gesture. I was weakening and soon I would be down on the ground, and it would be all over if I fell. It was almost a miracle I’d managed to keep on my feet as long as this.

Then I caught a glimpse of exposed neck and drove the edge of my hand in as hard as I could. My attacker gave a grunt and faltered, and I thrust-kicked with all my strength, not really caring where it landed as long as it sank into him. He staggered, and I could take a deep breath, and then a voice behind me said, “Stop right there.”

Who? Who should stop? My attacker was in no doubt, and he threw himself at the source of the command, again moving so quickly and with so much determination that the speaker and I were unprepared.

The struggle came into the light, moving toward the center of the parking area, and I could see T. L. York and Claude rolling on the ground, struggling for a gun that I thought must be in Claude’s hand. Their hands and legs were so confused and I was so dazed by the suddenness of all this that for a second I stood staring blankly, as if I had no stake in the outcome. I was weak enough to be shaking, but I had to move, to help-whom?

“Lily!” Claude said, in what he maybe intended as a shout, and that decided me. Only the innocent one would want my help.

I circled them, looking for my chance. It came when T. L. rolled on top of Claude, still gripping both Claude’s wrists. I leaped in to straddle them, grabbed T. L. by his hair with one hand and cupped his chin with the other, and pulled back hard, almost hearing the faint echo of Marshall’s voice adjuring me to be careful practicing this in class, since a wrong move could cause serious injury.

Well, this was serious-injury time. I twisted his head and pulled up. You have to follow your head. The rest of his body had to come up, too, or his neck would break. With a howl, he let go of Claude and raked backward, trying to get me off him, but I had my fingers sunk in his still-thick hair. In agony, he reared back, but my legs were locked on either side of him, I was gripping him with my knees, and the only way he could get rid of me was to do what he did next-fall backward on top of me. I wrapped my legs around him as he left the ground and heaved back, and I never loosened my grip on his head. I began squeezing with my strong legs, my ankles crossed over his gut, and he rolled from side to side trying to dislodge me.

“Hold still, goddamn it!” said a voice I could hardly recognize as Claude’s, and again I didn’t know if he meant me or T. L. I didn’t have a lot of options, since I couldn’t breathe and I could tell only my own rage was keeping me attached to him.

Then the gun went off. It was deafening. T. L. screamed, and since my grip had loosened at the shock of the sound, he could roll off me and continue to scream. Suddenly, I could breathe. I didn’t feel like getting up, though. It was enough to lie on the filthy concrete and look up at the moths circling in the light.

I wasn’t in the hospital, but I was under house arrest.

The chief of police had confined me to my own home for a week. He had coaxed Mrs. Hofstettler into calling all my clients and explaining (as if they hadn’t heard) that I’d been a little hurt and had to recuperate. I told Mrs. Hofstettler, via Claude, to tell them I didn’t expect to get paid, since I wasn’t going to work. I don’t know if she passed the message along. Everyone sent me a check but the Winthrops, which figured. However, Bobo came by to bring me a fruit basket he said was from his mother. I was sure he’d bought it himself.

Marshall really had gone out of town; he wasn’t just avoiding me. He called me from Memphis to tell me his father had had a heart attack and he and the rest of his family were just circling the hospital room in a holding pattern, waiting to see what would happen. I assured him several times that I would be all right, and after I’d detailed my wounds to him and explained what I was doing for their treatment, he seemed satisfied I would live. He called me every other day. I was stunned to receive flowers with his name on the card. He was eloquently silent when I told him Claude was with me one night when he called.

Mrs. Rossiter brought the damn dog by to see me. Claude told her I was asleep.

Carrie Thrush paid me a house call.

“You should be in the hospital,” she said sternly.

“No,” I said. “My insurance won’t cover enough of it.”

She didn’t say any more after that, since she wouldn’t question me about my finances, but all the medicine she gave me was in sample boxes.

Claude came every day. He had gone with me in the ambulance to the hospital, following the one carrying T. L.

He had shot T. L. in the leg.

“I wanted to hit him in the head with the pistol butt,” he said when we were waiting for the doctor in a white cubicle that night. I was glad to listen to him talking, so I wouldn’t moan and disgrace myself. “I’ve never shot anyone before-at least to actually hit them.”

“Um-hum,” I said, concentrating fiercely on his voice.

“But I was sure I would hit you instead, and I didn’t want to beat up my ally.”

“Good.”

“So I had to shoot him.” His big hand came up to touch my shoulder, stroke it. That hurt like hell. But I didn’t say anything.

“Why were you there?” I asked after a long pause.

“I’d been staking out the camper for the last week.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said, thinking that all my inspiration had been for nothing. Claude had been there mentally before me.

“No, I thought that someone else had killed Pardon, not T. L. I thought the Yorks didn’t want to tell anybody Pardon’s body had been in their camper, but I didn’t think they had put him there.”

“The curtains,” I said.

“Curtains? What curtains?”

But by then the doctor had come in and told Claude he had to step outside. It was the emergency room doctor, who’d just finished sending T. L. up to the operating room. His eyebrows flew up when he saw my scars, but for once I didn’t care.

“Your X rays,” he said.

“Mmm?”

“You have no broken bones,” he said, as if that was the most amazing thing he’d ever heard. “But many of your muscles are badly strained. You are very thoroughly bruised. But I can tell you’re a workout buff; underneath all that, you’re physically fit. Normally, I’d put you in the hospital, just for a night or two, just as a precaution. What do you think?” He observed me closely from behind glasses that reflected the glaring overhead light. His ponytail was caught up neatly in an elastic band at the nape of his neck.