Flying Crows by Jim Lehrer

with me at all times—now and forever.”
    Unfortunately, Roger of Holden also heard it.
    In a flash he disappeared, back between HISTORY (MISSOURI) and FICTION (A–L).
    Josh flinched at the familiar sound of a ball bat hitting a human head— once, twice, three times—and Sister Hilda screaming, “No! Stop that!”
    Josh stood up and ran into the stacks.
    Birdie, his pants down around his ankles, was sitting against a bookshelf, his head being hammered from side to side by Roger’s bat.
    Sister Hilda, her stockings and underclothes also down around her shoes, was pulling at Roger from behind, sobbing, yelling, begging for the whacking of Birdie to stop.
    Josh stepped forward to help her and immediately caught a blow alongside his own head that knocked him out cold.

    â€œI had heard that before, but when he pointed his gun at me I had
forgotten it. And it remained mostly forgotten. I figured I had no
choice but to do what he wanted. It probably wouldn’t be long
before Grandmama saw what was happening through a window and came
running out with a stick or a rock and some hot words.
    â€œI peed my pants. I couldn’t help it. It went down my leg and all over the
front of my pants, which were brown cotton and tight and had been my
cousin’s before they were mine.”
    Lawrence of Sedalia let out a screaming, whooping, hysterical laugh. Another patient yelled, “The pee was scared right out of ya, little boy Josh, is
that it?” It was the first break in the quiet that had held for the last few minutes. And after a couple of the bushwhackers gave the room some stern
looks, quiet quickly returned.
    Josh continued.
    â€œI was humiliated and ashamed, but nobody but the bushwhacker could
have seen what I did and I wasn’t even sure he had. If he saw, he didn’t say
anything or seem to mind. How could he? I reached forward and let the
bushwhacker grab my right hand. He jerked his right foot out of the stirrup,
I replaced it with mine, and with a quick pull and a jump I was sitting up on
the saddle behind him.
    â€œI didn’t want to touch him but I had to grab on to something to keep
from falling off, so I took a handful of his coat in each of my hands and hung
on. I could feel his back, his body, or least his black coat, through my wet
pants, and I didn’t mind that I might be getting him wet with my pee.”
    â€œHooray for Josh’s wet pants!” a patient yelled. “Three cheers for Josh’s
wet pants!” And, not unlike a school cheerleading squad, just about everyone in the auditorium, including even a couple of the bushwhackers, stood
and screamed, “Hip, hip, hooray!” three times. Like Lawrence of Sedalia’s
outbursts of fear and laughter, that was part of the regular ritual of the performance.
    When the cheering stopped, Josh went on.
    â€œI tried to hold my breath to keep from smelling the bushwhacker but I
couldn’t do it for long. The first odor that hit me was the whiskey he’d been
talking about having just drunk at the El Dorado Hotel. It was something I
was most familiar with because of being a lot with my Uncle Luther, a big
drinker. But the bushwhacker’s stench was more mixed than that. Whiffs of
spit and rotten food and gunpowder and people’s dried sweat and what I
imagined to be people’s blood and guts also lodged in my nose and eased
up into my brain and down into my throat. I figured if he didn’t shoot me I
was going to die anyhow of smell poisoning, that was for sure. So I was actually happy to have added some odor of pee to the occasion.”
    Again led by Lawrence of Sedalia, a few of the patients broke into loud,
piercing laughter; others stomped their feet and rattled their chairs. When
they didn’t stop after a couple of minutes, Amos the Ass stood with the Somerset Slugger up over his head. That got the auditorium quiet again.
    Josh moved right up to the edge of the