John Cheever: Bullet Park

Nailles put his foot on the strut of the saw and gave a steady draw to the starting cord. The cylinders made a putting sound and then, as the transmission caught, the chain began its howling. The lancet door was paneled but the interstices were made of thin wood and the chain splintered and cut through them. He made a diagonal slash across the door and broke it easily with his shoulders. Hammer was sitting in a front pew, crying. The red gasoline tank was beside him. Nailles lifted his son off the altar and carried him out into the rain. It was pouring. Water seemed to crowd into the light. The rain fell with such force that it stripped the leaves off the trees and the air smelled of bilge. It was the cold rain that brought Tony around. "Daddy," he mumbled, "Daddy. Who was that man in the sweater? What did he want?"

"Are you hurt? I mean are you seriously hurt? Do you think we ought to go to the hospital?"

"No I'm all right. I have a headache and my eyes hurt but I'd rather go home."

The papers carried the story. "Chain saw balks bizarre homicide. Eliot Nailles, of Chestnut Lane, Bullet Park, New York, cut his way through the locked door of Christ's Church early last evening with a chain saw and succeeded in saving the life of his son, Anthony. Paul Hammer, also of Bullet Park, confessed to attempted homicide and was remanded to the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Hammer confessed to having kidnapped the young man from a dinner party given by Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Lewellen of Marlborough Circle. He carried Nailles to the church with the object of immolating him in the chancel. He intended, he claimed, to awaken the world."

Tony went back to school on Monday and Nailles-drugged-went off to work and everything was as wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful as it had been.

JOHN CHEEVER was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1912 and went to school at Thayer Academy in South Braintree. BULLET PARK is his third novel. He has published five collections of stories, among them The Enormous Radio and The Housebreaker of Shady Hill. His first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, won the 1958 National Book Award. In 1965 he received the Howells Medal for Fiction from the National Academy of Arts and Letters.