Page 16 of What is Found

The younger guy spat a question to which the burly guy snarled something in reply and then all three men were growling at one another.

But the boy...the boy, still clutching his rifle in an uncertain grip and without looking up, slipped backa small, nearly infinitesimal step. Then he slid back another step and then another.

“The kid,” Davila said. “What did you?—”

“Matvey!” The boy’s voice was high, almost shrill, but clear as a bell. “Matvey!”

Growling what sounded like a curse, the burly guy rounded on the kid at the same moment that Parviz jabbed his Glock at John.“No!”the driver snarled. “I say you notalk?—”

“Matvey!” John shouted. “Matvey,vniz!”

CHAPTER 4

Startled,the boy obeyed and dropped into a crouch. This had the effect of pulling the boy’s rifle off-target, away from him and Davila?—

“Davila!Down, get down!”John didn’t look to see if his partner obeyed because he was already moving, snapping both hands at once, zipping rocks the size of baseballs in crossbody fast balls: one at Matvey’s owner and the other at the young guy on Parviz’s left.

The rock from his left hand caught the younger guy a knockout blow, square in the nose, and so hard the crunch was audible, a brittle sound like eggshells underfoot. Any harder, and he might have drilled the guy a third eye. Blood gushed in a huge spume as the guy dropped his rifle, staggered back a single step before his knees folded and he went done, out cold.

Matvey’s owner wasn’t quite so lucky, both because he was tall, and his head was turned. One second, he was rearing back to hit the kid and thenext there was a loudcrackas the rock slammed into the man’s skull. The big guy let out a loudhunhas a jump of blood spurted from his left ear. He pitched forward, already unconscious, to slam face-down onto the road.

By then, John was already moving. Launching himself at the boy, he ducked under the kid’s rifle, grabbed the barrel with his left hand, and pushed up just as there was a suddenbang.

The sound was monstrous, but he didn’t release the rifle because he couldn’t be sure about the boy, that the discharge had been an accident, something done because the boy was startled. As the old song went, it was worthing remembering that a smile was just a smile. So, he held on as the barrel shuddered under his palm, grateful that the rifle wasn’t on full auto, then wrenched the weapon from the boy’s hands.

At the same moment, a part of his brain registered that Davila wasn’t there...where is he, what happened, did he...but then, ears still ringing, he was pivoting right, arms cocked, hands wrapped around the rifle’s barrel, ready to smash that ball right out of the park?—

And found himself staring at the wrong end of a Glock.

“Don’t,” Parviz said.

ICE AND STONE

SEPTEMBER 2001

CHAPTER 1

September 11 was a Tuesday.

School let out a half hour after the first plane hit. Jumping on their bikes, he and his brother blistered home, chugging up steep hills and whizzing so fast on the downslope side past farms and pastures nestled between limestone bluffs that all those horses and longhorns were a blur of rust-red, the color of dried blood. As they went along, he got a very bad feeling. Other than cars picking kids up from school and blocky yellow school buses stuffed with students lumbering down dusty yellow ranch roads lined with gnarly live oak, there was no one around: no other cars, no sixteen-wheelers on their way to San Antonio, no farmers on tractors or balers. Not even old Mr. Pembury, who always took a morning turn round his dude ranch on Chester, his silver-dapple quarter horse. The only activity at all was a couple ofhigh-up planes, sketching white contrails on blue sky.

He and his brother missed the South Tower collapse by five minutes. Although KTSA out of San Antonio was still yammering from the kitchen radio, both his parents had tuned to CNN in the family room. He and his brother stepped in just in time to hear Aaron Brown say,Good Lord, as the North Tower imploded.

That was a day that seemed on permanent rewind. CNN must’ve shown both towers folding like horizontal accordions, falling in on themselves floor by floor in a sort of reverse mushroom cloud of debris and dust, at least a dozen times in three hours. Each time, he felt a mingled thrill of awe and terror. The collapses were like something out of a movie. Like when the Mother Ship rose above Devil’s Tower: that kind ofoh-my-Godmoment. Except, of course, this was reality, Greg.

By noon, there was talk of an invasion.Terrorists, everyone said.Damn ragheads. Every man who owned a weapon lit out for the public range or berms on public land or the more remote reaches of the Hill Country with no one to care but the rattlers and scorpions and the coyotes. Over at the high school, where his brother was a senior, the coaches for both the boys’ and girls’ rifle clubs broke out weapons for the teams. There was a run on the ammo shops on the stretch of highway south between town and San Antonio. By nightfall, those shelves were empty ofeverything, even cleaned out of those pissant .22 ball breech caps farmers used on crows.

Good thing I make my own ammo,his dad said that night after reeling back from Milt’s Rifle Ranch. He’d reeked of burnt gunpowder, hot brass, and God knew how many cans of Lone Star.I want to see anyone try something here. Just gimme an excuse.

His father wasn’t the only one itching for a fight. By Friday of that week, people started calling the day9/11. Like what you dialed for an honest-to-God, hair-on-fire emergency, and you needed an ambulance yesterday.

For these men and his dad—and for his brother—if there ever was a time to wake up and get into the fight, 9/11 was it.

CHAPTER 2

His brother,a senior in high school, was allowed to tag along with their father to the range on Wednesday, the day after 9/11. His brother could have easily shot with the rest of the school’s rifle team, but shooting with their father, he said to the boy who wasn’t yet John Worthy, was better.You can shoot anything. There are military guys out there, with weapons you see only on TV or in a video game. You can get your hands on anything.

Whenheasked to come along, his dad said no and spelled out why:You’re not strong enough or grown enough. This isn’t a kid’s game. We’re not playing around here; we’re not plinking; we’re not shooting pissant .22s. We’re talking about defending the country, defending the house, taking care of your mother. Any gun worth a damn that I got is too much for you.

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