I remembered Mr. Samson telling me that the Sword was not made by human hands.
“That didn’t turn out too good, did it?” I asked.
“It is certainly not the first time we have disappointed heaven,” Bennacio answered.
17
I stopped just outside of a little town in the Shenandoah Valley called Edinburg to pee and to find Bennacio something other than a corn dog to eat. The rain had slackened to a gray mist and the temperature had dropped at least ten degrees. I had left Knoxville with just the clothes on my back, no jacket, no umbrella, and both would probably come in handy, especially in Nova Scotia, which I pictured as rainy and windswept and desolate.
I wondered if the Tuttles were looking for me back in Knoxville or if they even cared to look for me. I thought about missing school and about Amy Pouchard, and all of that—the Tuttles and Amy and school—felt to me like it had happened to somebody else, like the memories weren’t my memories but the hijacked memories of another kid. It was as if I left more than the little I had back in Knoxville. Somehow, I had left the me that made me me.
We ducked into a McDonald’s and Bennacio ordered a Big Mac and a Coke. He asked for some plasticware, and I wondered how he planned to eat a Big Mac with a plastic fork. I ordered a large Coke to keep me awake on the road and a fish sandwich. I waited in the car with the food while Bennacio used the pay phone outside the restaurant. He talked for about five minutes. His gait was thrown off by his wound and he moved slowly, as if each step cost him something.
He sat down, closed the door, and said, “Lock the doors, Kropp.”
I was about to ask him why, when the back doors opened and two big men slid into the backseat.
“Too late,” Bennacio said.
Something sharp pressed into the side of my neck. A voice behind me whispered, “Drive.”
I backed out of the space using the rearview, where I could see the side of someone’s square-shaped head and the large hand pressing the black dagger against my neck. The skin over every inch of my body was tingling. The other guy was sitting back in his seat, looking like he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Turn right.”
I pulled out of the parking lot and turned right, away from the on-ramp.
“Where am I going?” I asked.
“Where do you think?” the guy behind me cracked. I guessed he was saying I was going to my grave or to hell, probably to hell for all the people dead because of me.
Bennacio said, “Think carefully about what you are doing. I do not wish to kill you.”
“Shut up,” the man sitting behind him said.
“There is still time,” Bennacio said. “If you repent now, heaven may still receive you.”
The guy holding the dagger to my throat laughed.
“Whatever Mogart has offered you—is it worth the price of your immortal soul?” Bennacio asked calmly. He might have been talking about the weather.
The guy behind me said something to his buddy. It sounded like French. His buddy grunted and said, “Repos!”
“Think of your wives, your children,” Bennacio said. “Would you have them widowed, fatherless? If you do not value your own lives, can you not consider theirs?”
“Speak again and the fat kid dies,” the guy behind me said. I glanced into the rearview mirror and saw his hand was shaking slightly. Bennacio was getting to him. I thought about what Mogart told me, about the will of most men being weak. I also was thinking that just because a guy has an oversized head and a big body, you shouldn’t call him fat.
We drove a few miles until we passed a sign that said “George Washington National Forest.” I was directed onto this access road marked “Rangers Only” that narrowed to a skinny one-lane, winding deep into the woods.
“Here,” the guy with the dagger to my throat said. “Stop here.”
“I will kill you both,” Bennacio said, still in that weird, calm voice. “First you with the knife. I will turn your own hand upon your throat and use it to sever your head from your body.” He nodded to the guy behind him. “Then you I shall gut as a hog in a slaughterhouse, and I shall spread your steaming entrails on the ground for the carrion to feast upon.”
This guy said something to the guy behind me. I don’t know what he said, but it sounded pretty urgent. “Fou!” the guy with the dagger hissed back.
“You guys oughtta listen to Bennacio,” I said. “He’s a knight and those guys never lie.”
“Get out,” the guy with the dagger said.
“Ave Maria, gratia plena . . .” Bennacio began to pray. The guy behind him got out of the car, opened Bennacio’s door, and yanked him out.
“Get out,” the man behind me said. I got out. They dragged us into the trees. Dominus tecum. Bendicta tu in milieribus. . . . The ground was carpeted with pine needles and dead leaves, and there was a mist in the air and no sound, not even a bird singing. I looked over to Bennacio, now on his knees, with his arms hanging loosely at his sides. Et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. His eyes were half closed. The man standing before the kneeling Bennacio was heavy and broad-shouldered, with short-cropped black hair and a jutting brow. My guy was slighter and shorter, though I probably had at least ten pounds on him. He had shaggy blond hair and an ugly scar running from beneath his right eye, down his cheek, to his jawline.
I got a good look at the dagger too. It was about two feet long, black, double-bladed, with the image of a dragon’s head carved into its hilt. It looked like a miniature version of the swords Bennacio and the other knights used in Samson Towers. All these guys must go the same outfitters.
Santa Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae.
“I want to pray too,” I said. I don’t know why I said that, but Bennacio was praying and he seemed like the kind of guy who always did just the right thing in a crisis. I went to my knees, bowed my head, and started the Hail Mary, only in English, but when I got to the “pray for us sinners” part I stopped because I heard a scream and a loud snap like the sound of a branch breaking. That’s it, I thought. Bennacio’s bought it.
Then I looked to my right and saw Bennacio coming in a blur for the guy in front of me. The man raised his dagger.
He was moving in slow motion, though. Bennacio wasn’t.
Bennacio grabbed his wrist and I heard another snapping sound, not quite as loud as the first, and with his other hand Bennacio grabbed the guy by his shaggy hair while he forced the dagger back toward his throat. I didn’t want to see what was going to happen next, so I stood up and kind of stumbled through the trees and undergrowth, passing the bigger man, who lay twisting on the ground. I heard a soft thud behind me and I knew without looking that Bennacio had kept the first part of the promise he made in the car. Then I heard the pleading tone in the bigger man’s voice as Bennacio walked back to him, and I knew he was going to keep the second part too.