Joyland

"You can't wait…in a situation like that… that's what I was always told… " Her words came in chunks because her teeth were chattering. "Just aim… and squeeze before you can… you know… second-guess yourself…it was supposed to go between his eyes, but… the wind… I guess the wind… "

She shot out a hand and gripped my shoulder hard enough to hurt. Her eyes were huge.

"Did I hit you, too, Dev? There's a gash in your forehead and blood on your shirt!"

"You didn't hit me. He pistol-whipped me a little, that's all.

Annie, there's nothing in here to write w-"

But there was: a ballpoint at the very back of the glove compartment. Printed on the barrel, faded but still legible, was LET'S GO KROGERING! I won't say that pen saved Annie and Mike Ross serious police trouble, but I know it saved them a lot of questions about what had brought Annie to Joyland on such a dark and stormy night.

I passed her the pen and a business card from my wallet, blank side up. Earlier, sitting in my car and terribly afraid that my failure to buy a new battery was going to get Annie and Mike killed, I'd thought I could go back into the house and call her… only I didn't have her number. Now I told her to write it down. "And below the number, write Call if plans change."

While she did, I started the van's engine and turned the heater on full blast. She returned the card. I tucked it into my wallet, shoved the wallet back into my pocket, and tossed the pen into the glove compartment. I took her in my arms and kissed her cold cheek. Her trembling didn't stop, but it eased.

"You saved my life," I said. "Now let's make sure nothing happens to you or Mike because you did. Listen very carefully."

She listened.

40

Six days later, Indian summer came back to Heaven's Bay for a brief final fling. It was perfect weather for a noon meal at the end of the Ross boardwalk, only we couldn't go there. Newsmen and photographers had it staked out. They could do that because, unlike the two acres surrounding the big green Victorian, the beach was public property. The story of how Annie had taken out Lane Hardy (known then and forever after as The Carny Killer) with one shot had gone nationwide.

Not that the stories were bad. Quite the opposite. The Wilmington paper had led with:

DAUGHTER OF EVANGELIST BUDDY ROSS BAGS CARNY KILLER.

The New York Post was more succinct:

HERO MOM!

It helped that there were file photos from Annie's salad days where she looked not just gorgeous but smoking hot. Inside View, the most popular of the supermarket tabloids back then, put out an extra edition. They had unearthed a photo of Annie at seventeen, taken after a shooting competition at Camp Perry. Clad in tight jeans, an NRA tee-shirt, and cowboy boots, she was standing with an antique Purdey shotgun broken over one arm and holding up a blue ribbon in her free hand.

Next to the smiling girl was a mug-shot of Lane Hardy at twentyone, after an arrest in San Diego-under his real name, which was Leonard Hopgood-for indecent exposure. The two pix made a terrific contrast. The headline:

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

Being a minor hero myself, I got some mention in the North Carolina papers, but in the tabloids I was hardly mentioned.

Not sexy enough, I guess.

Mike thought having a HERO MOM was cool. Annie loathed the whole circus and couldn't wait for the press to move on to the next big thing. She'd gotten all the newspaper coverage she wanted in the days when she had been the holy man's wild child, famous for dancing on the bars in various Greenwich Village dives. So she gave no interviews, and we had our farewell picnic in the kitchen. There were actually five of us, because Milo was under the table, hoping for scraps, and Jesus-on the face of Mike's kite-was propped in the extra chair.

Their bags were in the hall. When the meal was done, I would drive them to Wilmington International. A private jet, laid on by Buddy Ross Ministries, Inc., would fly them back to Chicago and out of my life. The Heaven's Bay police department (not to mention the North Carolina State Police and maybe even the FBI) would undoubtedly have more questions for her, and she'd probably be back at some point to testify before a grand jury, but she'd be fine. She was the HERO MOM, and thanks to that promotional pen from Kroger's in the back of the van's glove compartment, there would never be a photo of Mike in the Post below a headline reading:

PSYCHIC SAVIOR!