All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky

47

The bullet hit Strangler, I knew that, but all he did was grunt and shift a bit, and then he was walking again. Blood was running down his side. His mouth was twisted up and there was spittle on his lips.

Bad Tiger looked at Strangler like he’d just discovered that a martian had landed at the carnival. He was so startled, he backed up a step.

He fired again.

This time I heard the bullet slam into something behind us. I turned my head and saw one of the teddy bears at a booth topple over, bleeding white cotton stuffing.

Strangler was less than three feet away from Bad Tiger now. He made a noise in his throat like a dog growling over a bone. People had started to understand what was happening. A lady screamed. There were yells from the spinning ride. The guy that worked the ride lever said, “Hey now, hey now,” and he made a quick retreat around the other side of the ride. I hoped he was going to get some law.

Bad Tiger yelled and pulled the trigger.

The gun barked.

Strangler staggered, but he still didn’t go down.

Bad Tiger took one more step back, and that was when it happened.

He stepped right in between the whirling seats of a ride, but he was there for less than the blink of an eye. The next seat swinging around caught him solid, and I got to tell you, it was an amazing and a horrible sight.

It lifted him so quick it was hard to believe it was happening. It was like he had learned to fly.

He was tossed like a Raggedy Ann doll. It flung him up, and he fell back down. But he didn’t hit the ground. He was struck again by another seat and bounced into a pole. That bounced him back into another spinning seat, and that one caught him in such a way that he was knocked across the lot at a height of about thirty feet. He went like he had been shot out of a cannon.

We watched with amazement as he crashed into a popcorn stand and it exploded in a rain of white puffy corn and a running man. Oily butter leaked yellow over the ground. Bad Tiger’s suit soaked it up like a fresh biscuit.

Bad Tiger didn’t move. He was facedown and one arm was twisted behind his back like he was trying to scratch a hard-to-reach spot low down.

“Oh,” Tony said. “Oh my.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Oh my.”

Dazed, we walked over to Strangler. He was holding his hand against his left side. There was a bloody spot on the right side of his bare chest as well. But Strangler, he was still standing.

A crowd gathered around Bad Tiger, but then they just stood there looking at him. One man stepped forward and nudged Bad Tiger’s body with the toe of his shoe, like he was trying to wake him up.

Someone else yelled, “Get a doctor!”

Strangler said, “I can tell you from here. Ain’t no need to check his pulse.”