Riders In The Sky Part 15

"Oh, some plan-look in every p.i.s.sant town and holler in the universe for a guy who clearly doesn't want to be found." She inhales, sighs. "Case you hadn't noticed, it's getting on toward the end of the year."

He nods; he's noticed.

"So I'm thinking, tomorrow we find a place that'll feed us Thanksgiving dinner until we're nearly dead. Then, on Friday, we check those islands out there," and she waves vaguely eastward. "I mean, how many of them can there be?"

"You believe Reed's dream then?"

She looks at him as if he ought to know better. "I believe yours, right?"

A shrug-okay, you win.

"I'm just hoping he isn't somewhere in the Caribbean, you know what I mean?"

That thought had occurred to him once, but he doesn't think so now, and tells her so. The only explanation he has is that it doesn't feel right, Casey being somewhere that far away. It just doesn't... feel right. Not, he realizes sourly, that he's been exactly one hundred percent on the mark thus far. If he had been, they wouldn't be here now, watching a battle on TV and drinking mint juleps.

He almost laughs.

A group of men come in, boisterous, name tags on their suit jackets, swarming the bar, convincing the bartender that the game, whatever it is, is on another channel. The battle is quickly replaced by a commercial, but the noise level remains high, and Lisse slips closer, one hand fussing at her hair, twirling a strand around a finger. Nothing coy; just a habit.

"You didn't tell them about you," she says.

"Nope."

She b.u.mps him with her shoulder. "You afraid they'll run off?"

"They'll think I'm nuts."

"Oh, for ..." She takes a long drink, makes a face, and pushes her gla.s.s away. "John, they have been on the road for nearly three years, looking for a man they know did something special. Something kind of like what you did. What in G.o.d's name makes you think they're gonna think you're nuts?"

He doesn't answer.

He can't answer.

Even now, all this time later, he wakes up in the middle of the night and sees his young son on the back of a huge palomino, a little kid in a cowboy suit who isn't a kid at all, trying to ride him down. Trample him. Kill him. That the boy was adopted doesn't make much of a difference in the middle of the night-Joey is his son, and his son tried to kill him.

"I've been thinking something else," she says, briefly leaning her head against his shoulder.

"Spare me."

"Hush."

"You're thinking in threes, I'll bet."

She nods, and winces when one of the name tag men yells at the jazz trio to shut it down, are they drunk and blind, can't they see there's an important game going on?

"If Casey is one, and I'm another, and we're talking about Death and Famine ... who's the third?"

She hesitates before answering, "I've got a better one for you: If there's three, and it's what we think it is, who's the fourth?"

7.

"Lady Harp?"

"Yes, dear?"

"Do we really have to go?"

"Yes, dear, I'm afraid we do."

"But I like it here. The school's neat, and Star's got a boyfriend, and Momma, she even goes out again."

"I know, dear, but we have to go."

They stand outside a small Missouri cottage, the girl scowling, the woman searching the stars for something to guide her.

"I like it here," Moonbow says softly.

Beatrice Harp can't respond to that. She likes it here, too. After all the driving, all the hunting for something to which she could not put a name, it was nice to settle down for a while, to pretend all was well, that once the new smallpox had run its course, all, in fact, would be well.

If it hadn't been for the fighting, she might have actually come to believe it.

But whatever it was that had driven her and her late husband to help a young man fight his demons in the desert, whatever that had been had returned, and she could no more ignore it than she could ignore the way the moon looked bloated and ready to burst.

"Tomorrow's Thanksgiving," Moonbow says miserably. "We should at least have Thanksgiving dinner."

"We will."

"At a diner or something, right?"

"I don't know. But we'll have that dinner if it means so much to you."

The girl shrugs. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but Lady Harp should at least give them a chance to find out.

A movement at the front door turns them around.

"Momma?"

In the doorway Jude Levin stands in her nightgown, her veil still on, her hands twisting the fabric as if trying to keep it on and yank it off at the same time.

"Momma?"

"There's a man," says Jude anxiously. "I couldn't sleep, every time I closed my eyes I saw a man."

Beatrice keeps her gaze on the stars. She wonders which man Jude is talking about-the one who seems so awfully big and awfully dark, or the one who rides the horse whose hooves give off tiny fire.

8.

"Cora, please, I'm begging you-go to sleep."

"Aren't you the least bit curious about this guy? For all we know he could be a pervert or something."

"Come on, you think he's a pervert?"

"Well... no."

"Then go to sleep."

"He never answered my questions."

"He was trying to feed you a decent meal, Cora. The first decent meal we've had in I don't know how long. And these beds are the nicest beds we've slept in for months. You looking a gift horse in the mouth?"

"I'm looking, Reed, to find out what the h.e.l.l's going on here."

"Cora."

"Okay, okay."

"Don't okay. Lie down. Sleep."

"Okay, okay, I'm lying down. You happy now? I'm lying down."

"But you're not sleeping."

"Well, how can I sleep? You're talking all the time."

"Cora-"

"For G.o.d's sake, Reed, how many times do I have to say I'm sorry?"

"But-"

"Shut up, Reed. Just... shut up."

9.

Sheriff Vale Oakman likes to visit the harbor at night. Water slapping softly against hulls and pilings, lights from nearby houses reflected in the water, the hollow sound of his shoes on the planks of a pier. The smell of salt and fish, brine and oil, damp wood and old paint. A boat moves cautiously around the Hook into the bay, running lights like the lights of a large Christmas tree. From across the water, at the base of the hill, he hears music, splashing, and someone laughing, wonders who'd be so stupid, or drunk, to be swimming this late at night, this late in the season.

He makes his way past the fancy boats whose owners are preparing to put them in dry dock; he listens to a radio in a houseboat, not quite m.u.f.fling the sounds of someone having a d.a.m.n good time in bed; he hunches his shoulders against a gust of wind that slips through cracks in his leather jacket, ruffles the heavy fur collar, makes his nose run.

There is a small gap then, one that requires that he leave the long boardwalk and take a few steps across a rock-and-sand beach raked clear of debris. The next pier belongs to the working men. The fishermen. The charters. The boats not nearly as sleek or large or smelling of money. Five minutes, taking his time, and he reaches the berth for the Lucky Deuce, a boat he figures has about two more seasons in her before she sinks to the bottom before she leaves the bay.

Rick Jordan sits on a b.u.t.terfly cleat near the bow, Ronnie Hull standing beside him, both in fleece-lined denim jackets and baseball caps, Rick smoking a cigarette, Ronnie with a beer in her hand.

"Very romantic," Oakman says with a smile.

Ronnie looks at him, startled, not smiling at all, not pleased to be interrupted. "I suppose you came all this way just to tell me you've arrested the Teagues, right? For all that c.r.a.p they're doing to my father and the paper?"

The sheriff shakes his head. "Sorry, Ronnie."

She looks away across the water; he doesn't exist for her any longer.

"What's up, Sheriff?" Rick says.

"Want to remind you it's your time in the Tower. Four days, starting Monday."

Rick stares evenly at him. "You came all this way just to tell me that?"

The boat in the bay sounds a horn and is answered by one on sh.o.r.e, half a mile up.

"I like the walk," Oakman answers truthfully. "Cool, clear night, all those stars, a shooting star or two. Nothing better, right?"

"Except," Rick says sourly around his cigarette, "if you're stuck in the d.a.m.n Tower."

The bay that's formed by Camoret's southern hook is usually fairly calm unless the weather is particularly fierce. The Hook itself is higher than the rest of the island by several hundred feet and is heavily wooded. A south wind generally blows straight across, and what slips down the steep hillside is weakened by the trees it has to pa.s.s. The houses there, in several tiers formed by several narrow roads, are large. Expensive. Each on at least a two-acre plot. A splendid view of the mile-wide bay, the white beaches below, the docks that moor the boats and yachts that belong to the houses.

No one lives along the top of the ridge. Even if the land were wide enough to hold a house, building there would invite certain disaster from hurricanes and winter storms, but there's a watch tower there, in the middle, a steel-and-wood lattice beneath a round metal cabin open on all sides from waist-high to the eaves of the conical roof. The volunteers who work there in six-hour shifts are hired and paid by the town, not the state, to look for fire and to track storms when the alert has gone out. Not half bad in spring and summer, a b.i.t.c.h of a job when even the Gulf Stream can't blunt the worst of the cold.

At the start of every season, it's the sheriff's job to round up the volunteers and set the rotation. In late autumn, in winter, that meant the fishermen, and the shopkeepers who close down until spring-those, that is, who don't flee the island for someplace warmer. And anyone else who happens to feel the pull of civic duty and the chance of adventure.

Rick snaps his cigarette into the water. "I'll be there," he says at last.

"Good. Thanks."

"No problem."