The Glass Castle_ A Memoir - Jeannette Walls [40]
“Guess what?” Billy shouted. “I raped you!”
I turned around and saw him standing there by the car, looking hurt and angry but not as tall as usual. I searched my mind for a cutting comeback, but since I didn’t know what. “rape” meant, all I could think to say was. “Big deal!”
At home I looked up the word in the dictionary. Then I looked up the words that explained it, and though I still couldn’t figure it out completely, I knew it wasn’t good. Usually, when I didn’t understand a word, I’d ask Dad about it, and we’d read over the definition together and discuss it. I didn’t want to do that now. I had a hunch it would cause problems.
The next day Lori, Brian, and I were sitting at one of the spool tables in the depot, playing five-card draw and keeping an eye on Maureen while Mom and Dad spent some downtime at the Owl Club. We heard Billy Deel outside, calling my name. Lori looked at me, and I shook my head. We went back to our card game, but Billy kept on, so Lori went out on the porch, which was the old platform where people used to board the train, and told Billy to go away. She came back in and said. “He’s got a gun.”
Lori picked up Maureen. One of the windows shattered, and then Billy appeared framed in it. He used the butt of his rifle to knock out the remaining pieces of glass, then pointed the barrel inside.
“It’s just a BB gun,” Brian said.
“I told you you’d be sorry,” Billy said to me and pulled the trigger. It felt like a wasp had stung me in the ribs. Billy started firing at us all, working the pump action quickly back and forth before each shot. Brian pushed over the spool table and we all crouched behind it.
The BBs pinged off the tabletop. Maureen was howling. I turned to Lori, who was the oldest and in charge. She was biting her lower lip, thinking. She handed Maureen to me and took off running across the room. Billy got her once or twice—Brian stood up to try to draw the fire—but she made it upstairs to the second floor. Then she came down again. She had Dad’s pistol, and she pointed it dead at Billy.
“That’s just a toy,” Billy said, but his voice was a little shaky.
“It’s real, all right!” I shouted. “It’s my dad’s gun!”
“If it is,” he said. “she ain’t got the cojones to use it.”
“Try me,” Lori told him.
“Go on, then,” Billy said. “Shoot me and see what happens.”
Lori wasn’t as good a shot as me, but she pointed the gun in Billy’s general direction and pulled the trigger. I squeezed my eyes shut at the explosion, and when I opened them, Billy had disappeared.
We all ran outside, wondering if Billy’s blood-soaked body would be lying on the ground, but he had ducked under the window. When he saw us, he hightailed it down the street along the tracks. He got about fifty yards away and started shooting at us again with his BB gun. I yanked the pistol out of Lori’s hand, aimed low, and pulled the trigger. I was too carried away to hold the gun the way Dad had taught me, and the recoil nearly pulled my shoulder out of its socket. The dirt kicked up a few feet in front of Billy. He jumped what seemed about three feet up in the air and broke into a dead run down the tracks.
We all started laughing, but it seemed funny only for a second or two, and then we stood there looking at one another in silence. I realized my hand was shaking so bad I could hardly hold the gun.
A little while later, a squad car pulled up outside the depot, and Mom and Dad got out. Their faces were grave. An officer got out also and walked alongside them to the door. We kids were all sitting inside on the benches wearing polite, respectful expressions. The officer looked at each of us individually, as if counting us. I clasped my hands in my lap to show I was well behaved.
Dad squatted in front of us, one knee to the floor, his arms folded across the other knee, cowboy-style. “So what happened here?” he asked.
“It was self-defense,” I piped up. Dad had always said that self-defense was a justifiable reason for shooting someone.
“I see,” Dad said.
The policeman told us that some of the neighbors had reported