“Brought it on ourselves,” said Holt. “People like you and me.”
“How so?”
“Didn’t reproduce fast enough. Not enough of us. Too busy building cars and cities to get the numbers up. Need a good bench to play in this league. We made too much of everything but ourselves. Just aren’t enough of us left. By the time I die, Liberty Ridge will be a little island in an ocean of people who won’t understand its value. No concept of the value at all. Price, yes. Any yahoo with a calculator can figure price. But not value. Asians, Latins, Blacks, Arabs. You name ’em. Got nothing against those people, but they didn’t work for this. Isn’t in their blood. Don’t understand this land anymore than I could understand theirs. Say, Vietnam or Culiacán or Kathmandu. They can overrun it easy enough. Can buy it up lot by lot. Suck away the fruits. But they won’t add to it. Only diminish. Only take. Like vampires. Not their fault, though. Human nature to take what’s good.”
Holt stood for a moment and looked out toward the ocean. John saw the proud set of his mouth and the hard, prying squint of his eyes.
“Well, I really didn’t bring you up here for a lecture.”
“Lecture on.”
“I’m bored by my own ideas.”
“I’m not.”
“You’ve spent ten seconds with them. I’ve spent six decades.”
“No, go on. Explain. Why do these new people have to diminish the land? Isn’t that what the Juaneno Indians would say about you?”
“Reasonable question. So far as the Indians go, too bad they couldn’t hold on to it. They got it. They understood. Had a totally different slant than us. But they were outnumbered, out-powered, outfoxed and outbred. Same thing that’s happening to us. Did we diminish it? Fuck yes, and that’ll be the death of it. And us. But look at the Ridge. A little gem in the miserable flood of human progress. Beautiful fruit. Habitat for wildlife, plants, human beings. Clean air and a lake jumping with fish. Rich earth. I didn’t diminish this, proud to say.”
“Then why will the new barbarians diminish it?”
“Already told you. Because they don’t understand it. Land makes people. The land shapes people. Forms them to its purpose. So people need to invest in their heritage. Never abandon it. Work their own dirt—it’s what gave them life, isn’t it? They need to protect and defend it. A land should never be sold. Conquered, maybe, as history proves. What do you think?”
“I think those are words well spoken.”
“I didn’t ask for a critique of my oratory. I asked you what you believe.”
In politics, you should always agree. Wayfarer may couch his pathology in politics, and he may couch his politics in pathology, so you must do the same. Never fawn; and rarely defer. Question his planks; but endorse his platform.
“I believe that what you say is self-evident. What it begs is the smaller personal question of whether to stick it out and watch things rot, or pack it up. I packed it up for Anza three months ago. But I’m not sure it was the right thing to do.”
“I can guarantee you it was the wrong one.”
“I feel the pull of the land, too, Mr. Holt. I grew up here, you know. I used to poach fish out of the lake, camp out in these hills, surf that ocean. Yeah, it was the wrong decision—to go. I knew that, not long after I’d left.”
“Case closed. It’s easy to sound like a racist crackpot sometimes. Hell. Maybe I am.”
“Not at all. I think you’re speaking for the way a lot of people feel but are afraid to admit.”
“Probably. But you’re wrong about either staying put and watching things rot, or heading out. Third option is the winner. That’s to stay put and do something. Work. Fight. Create. Resist. Gather. Whatever you want to call it.”
“That takes a person of capacity and vision. I’m not sure I have either.”
Holt laughed then. “You certainly do. You proved that three days ago when life and death were at stake. Sometimes it takes special pressure to bring one’s vision into focus.”
“Well, that was an extreme circumstance, sir.”
“Without extreme circumstances nothing very interesting gets done.”
“You’re right.”
Holt stared at John then, his pale blue eyes steady behind the thick lenses of his glasses. His look suggested levels of assessment. “What do you want?” he asked.
“Well, sir. I would like to get a trailer set back up for myself.”
“No. Not right now. The long run. For your life. What’s your plan? I’ve watched you for three days now, and I know you’re not stupid. You observe. You consider. You must have some inkling of what you want. How you can get it.”
To get a confidence, give a confidence.
“Mr. Holt, I’ve never thought that way. I’ve always believed in taking a day at a time, trying to improve a little at the things you do. I started writing when I was a kid and I enjoy it. I’d like to keep at it. But I’ve developed the unsettling notion that a lot of life is waiting things out between disasters.”
“Christ, that’s pathetic. It sure can be, if you choose to see it that way. What disaster?”
“A woman I was going to marry.”
“So, what happened to her?”
“She was coming over to my place one night and a drunk ran the light. She died and he broke his nose.”
Holt nodded slowly, gravely. “What was her name?”
“Jillian.”
Jillian is your torch. You can use her to light a path to Wayfarer. She is your Carolyn—the catalyst of your self-pity, the seed of your hate. She is Rebecca.
“Vietnamese?”
“Sir?”
“Was the driver Vietnamese? They can’t drive and they can’t drink.”
“Well, actually, he was.”
“And if he’d stayed back in his rice field, you’d be married to Jillian.”
“That’s correct.”
“That’s what I mean. Guy should have worked his own dirt. What did you do?”
“Do?”
“Do about the driver.”
“He went to prison. I forgave him. I told myself early on that I wouldn’t take vengeance. It was a luxury I didn’t feel I could afford.”
“Regret that?”
“He suffered enough. And no amount of suffering would have brought her back.”
“Noble sentiment. I guess. But he’s walking around now, living his life while she’s dead. He laughs and eats and makes love. She never even moves. That sit comfortably in an alert soul such as your own?”
John looked at Holt then, neither blinking nor wavering his fix on the older man. He thought of Rebecca, of the way she looked sitting at her Journal desk, with the phone crooked into her right ear and her hands flying over the keyboard and the big glass of iced tea sweating onto a coaster beside her. The way she had this little smile all the time, as if she was somehow outside herself and amused by herself, as if Rebecca Harris was an interesting animal to observe. The way she looked at him when he’d stop by her desk for a brief hello, the depth of interest, visible to John, at least, beyond the shining convex surface of her eyes.
“I wanted to kill him. I admit that.”
“Of course you did. It’s natural, and honest. How far did you take your plan?”
John smiled and looked away. “I kept up with his release date. I got the address of his family. I actually sat outside their house one night before he came home, thinking about it.”
“And?”
“I scared myself. I quit.”
Holt laughed now, a low, understanding chuckle. “A true sense of follow-through is tough to come by. It all comes down to what your heart says. If yours wouldn’t let you take him, then you did the right thing not to.”
“There’s the law, too.”
“Always. But it wasn’t written for criminals to hide behind. Don’t forget it. See an awful lot of that these days. It’s the mark of a weak society when pity replaces justice. Everybody gets away with everything.”
“That much is true
, Mr. Holt.”
Holt seemed satisfied that his points had been made. He said nothing for a long while, staring down toward the Big House.
“Well, I wandered again. But back to my original question. What do you want?”
“It would sound kind of silly, compared to all the things you just said.”
“Forget what I just said. I love to pontificate. My great-great-uncle was a tent revivalist. Jealous husband shot him. Anyway. I understand his need to preach. Go ahead.”
John thought a moment.
“Oh, you know, just a regular life, sir. I’d like to find a love and marry her and make a family someday. I don’t aspire to this kind of . . . grandeur, Mr. Holt. I don’t need it, although I can sure appreciate its beauties. What I want is to be left alone to do my work and take care of the people I love. Pretty simple stuff, really.”
“Not the less meaningful for being simple. I respect your desires. I wish you prosperity.”
“Thank you.”
“Ever think of trying something different?”
“What do you mean?”
“Willing to approach the quarry from an unexpected direction?”
“That’s kind of vague, sir.”
Holt smiled. “Yes, it is. Hypothetically, now—would you he willing to try something other than what you’ve done before, in order to get what you want? Change of venue. Say that you had a chance to try different work—work you didn’t know you could do, but turned out to be good at? Say this new work would enable you to find the love that Jillian once was to you. Make you able to begin that family. All by following a path that you didn’t know was there.”
“I’d have to know where the path ended, where the twists and turns were.”
“You would be deliberate, not impulsive.”
“Yes, sir. I would.”
“Until you lost your temper. Like down on that dirt road, looking for the men who burned you out.”
“Well, yes. My patience has its limits.”
“It certainly should.”
“Do you have something in mind?”
“Yes, I do. It’s got to do with a gang of Vietnamese home invaders. I’m going to be waiting where I know they’ll be. It’s a Liberty Ops job in its purest form. Good guys. Bad guys. Good money. Interested?”
“Interested. Why me?”
Holt studied him again with a formidable concentration. “I want you to meet someone.”
John stood outside the bedroom after Holt had gone in and shut the door. He could hear voices, a man’s and a woman’s. The bedroom was on the second floor of the Big House, and the sunlight poured onto the stairway landing. A moment later a nurse came out, introduced herself as Staci and told John that Mr. Holt said it was okay to go in.
The room was spacious and bathed in light diffused through the window blinds. It smelled faintly of roses. Holt sat on a stool beside a hospital bed at the far end, motioning John toward an empty stool beside him. John sat down.
“John, I’d like you to meet my wife, Carolyn. Honey, this is the young man I’ve been telling you about.”
“Why, how do you do?” she asked.
“Very well, Mrs. Holt.”
She regarded John with a dazed, unselfconscious stare. She seemed both present and absent at the same time. John smiled, returning her gaze, noting her plump pink cheeks, the silver-blond hair cut short around her face, the way the left side of her mouth didn’t move as well as the right, the way her left eyelid drooped, just slightly.
Then her deep brown eyes widened and tears welled up into them, spilling onto her cheeks. “Oh dear God,” she whispered, still staring at John.
“Honey, John is going to be staying—”
“—Oh dear God—”
“—For a few days anyway, maybe—”
“—It’s been so long since—”
“—Just to regroup a little after all the—”
“—I didn’t know if I’d ever—”
“—Honey, don’t get too—”
But it was too late because Carolyn Holt had pushed her bed control button and the head of the bed was rising and her eyes were still devoted solely to John’s face and she reached out with both her arms for him, dropping the control to her lap and leaning forward from her waist.
John glanced at Holt and saw nothing but uncertainty. With little to guide him but his own sense of decency, he stood and leaned forward, so her hands could wrap around his neck, and she pulled him down to her. She was strong. He could smell the rose perfume and fresh bedding and the under-current of sweat that comes from a straining, human body.
“Don’t strangle the poor boy, Honey. Remember, he’s the one who saved Valerie from—”
“—Oh, thank you. Thank you. I’ve missed you so much, Patrick. Thank you for coming home to me! Oh, Patrick.”
“John,” said John. “John Menden, Mrs. Holt.”
“Oh, Pat. Patty-cake, Pat-man, Pat Hand, Pat-a-tat-tat!”
John unwrapped her clenching hands from behind his neck and eased her back to the pillows.
“Look at me, Mrs. Holt. I’m not Patrick. I’m John. I’m the one who—”
“—You little dickens, you.”
She smiled at him, a beaming, consuming smile from which her eyes sparkled as they moved up and down John’s body. Then she clenched her fists up under her chin like a little girl, and wiggled.
“We have a lot of catching up to do, Pat. Now you sit back down and start catching me up, all right? First, how are your grades, for heaven’s sake? And that cheerleader you were dating? Those priests haven’t been rapping your knuckles, have they? I think the best lunch box you ever had was the Disneyland one with the submarine ride on it, but of course the thermos was always—”
“—Carolyn,” commanded Holt, “be quiet and listen to me. This man is not your—”
“—You’re distracting us, Vanny. Could you maybe get us some root beer? And get your glasses fixed, too. Look who’s returned from the college of the dead!”
John looked again to Holt, who had risen from his stool to run his hand over Carolyn’s hair and face. In Holt’s eyes, John could see the exasperation, the surprise, and the anger. Holt motioned him away.
“Wait for me outside,” he said.
“Patrick!”
“He has classes to attend, Honey. Let him go. He’ll be back. Don’t worry now, Carolyn. He’ll be back.”
“This is the happiest day of my life.”
“It’s certainly a . . . happy day, Honey.”
John mustered a smile for her, then turned and crossed the expanse of cream-colored carpet. Staci opened the door for him and gave him a pitying look. Carolyn Holt looked past her husband at John, smiling to him as he waved and shut the door.
Holt came out five minutes later. His face was flushed red and the flesh of it looked loose. His hair was mussed. He looked at John with an expression of shame, desperation and seemingly uncontrollable rage. John followed him down the curving marble stairway.
“Fuckin’ Mexicans shot her in a fast food place up in Santa Ana. Fuckin’ punks. Killed Patrick because his hair was blond or some such shit. Left a bullet in Carolyn’s brain.”
Holt stopped halfway down the stairs, turned, and drove a very strong finger into John’s chest. “That’s what happens when people don’t stay where they belong and take care of their own ground. That’s what happens when they sneak into this country, breed like fleas and try to steal away what they haven’t worked for and don’t understand. That’s what happens when two innocent people go out for lunch one afternoon in this fucked up melting pot of a republic we’ve got. And that’s why you stay and fight it out. That’s why you make a stand on the ground that raised you. That’s why you give a fuck. Right, Lane?”
“Right, Mr. Holt.”
Fargo was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, a briefcase on the floor beside him. He stared as John descended.
Behind him stood two young men, one with short blond hair, the oth
er with a 1950’s flat-top grown long on the sides. They were wedge-shaped and huge. The blond wore a tennis shirt and slacks; Flat-top wore a loose fitting suit. Flat-top had a sharply triangular face, giving him the look of a mantis. They stood with legs apart and hands behind their backs, unmoving. Their eyes were hidden behind identical pairs of dark sunglasses.
“Ready?” asked Holt.
“Ready, sir.”
Holt walked across the floor without looking back.
“John, go with Fargo,” he ordered into the echoing caverns of the house. “He’s got some questions you’ll need to answer if I’m going to hire that gun of yours.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
Fargo walked him along the row of Liberty Ops cottages, the two big men behind them. John felt the heat of the sun on his face as he glanced at the closed doors. In the parking spaces were three Liberty Operations patrol cars and two orange-and-black command vans. There were blinds on the windows of the building, drawn against the fierce sunshine, but through the slats of the martial arts room John saw a man mid-air, heading for the mat. In the library were the shapes of bodies bent over tables. In the classroom he saw Thurmond Messinger lecturing to a group of cadets.
John’s nerves were brittle and his heart felt flighty and anxious. Fargo will be the Grand Inquisitor so Holt can be the generous king. But remember, Fargo is Holt’s ears and eyes, his fists. Fargo is Holt, and Holt is Fargo.
“Here, John,” said Fargo. “Up the steps, okay?”
John climbed to the wooden deck surrounding the last Liberty Operations cottage. Fargo pushed open the door and let John in first. He could hear the footfalls of the big boys as he stepped into the air-conditioned cool of the room.
The light was dim because the shades were drawn. The floor was hardwood and there was an industrial desk along one wall, a chair behind and in front of it, and a couch opposite, along the front windows. The desktop was completely empty. John noted a water cooler, two work tables pushed to one wall, and a hallway leading back to what he assumed were restrooms. A surveillance camera hung in one corner. The air conditioner hummed away, though the room was cold.
“Have a seat here in front of the desk, John,” said Fargo. “Partch, Snakey, sit on the couch. Oh, John, this is Partch and that’s Snakey. Friends.”
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