He heard the scrape of a belt buckle across the rock at his back. Jubal crawled up beside him and stared a long time into the valley, saying not a word.
“You ever want to go back, Cork?”
“Back?”
“To when everything wasn’t so complicated.”
“Moot issue, Jubal. You can’t go back. As far as I know, in life there’s only forward.”
Jubal was silent again. In the hills above them and to the left, a coyote howled. It seemed a forlorn sound, although Cork knew that under other circumstances he might have heard it differently.
“Back in Chicago, is there anyone special?” Jubal asked.
“Yeah. A woman named Jo.”
“Is it serious?”
“It’s headed that way.”
“Me, I’ve had more women than I can remember. They all kind of blend together.” Jubal’s eyes fixed on the white house at the center of the darkness. “Except for one.” He turned back and glanced at the Jeep. “That Willie. Man, he’s amazing.”
“He always has been,” Cork said.
“He’s getting famous. And you, you’re doing exactly what you always wanted to do. It’s funny.”
“What’s funny?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I always figured I was the one most likely to succeed.”
“You’ve failed?”
“Hell,” Jubal said. “I’m a washed-up football player. I’ve got no prospects at all on the horizon. That stuff I told you about, talking to the Dallas Cowboys, that’s bullshit. Nobody’s interested in me. You want to know the truth? Right now, I’m just a construction worker. A big, dumb ladder monkey.”
Cork didn’t know what to say to that, so he just looked at the moon. Jubal looked there, too.
“Winona had a vision once,” he said. “She saw me on a mountaintop, holding the moon and the sun in my hands, the stars singing around my head. She told me I was destined for greatness.” Jubal stood and reached skyward as if to take all the heavens in his hands. Then he held them out, empty, and shook his head. “So much for visions.”
They heard the Jeep door close, and in another minute, Willie joined them atop the rock.
“Sun’s up in an hour,” he said. Sunsupinour.
“Any coffee left in that thermos, Cork?” Jubal asked.
They shared coffee from the same cup and listened to the birds that had begun to chatter, and watched the eastern sky above the distant mountains turn amethyst then amber, and waited for signs of life to come from the ranch house in the valley so that Willie’s plan could be set in motion.
This was what Willie had proposed.
Every morning the McMurphys rose around six. They had breakfast. Then the three brothers headed south down the valley to tend to their marijuana grows. They would come back around noon, have lunch, and work the orchards the rest of the day. When the McMurphy brothers left after breakfast, Beckett, who was a freshman in high school, would ride an ATV to the main road, where a bus picked him up and took him to school in John Day. Which left only the two women at the house. And that, Willie had suggested, was when they would make their move.
Lights began to wink on in the house a few minutes after six. The sun was still below the mountains to the east, and the valley lay in the blue of their shadow. Cork took turns with his companions, staring through a pair of field glasses that Willie had brought, watching the fruit ranch for activity.
By seven, the sun was above the mountains and the valley was beginning to warm. Willie had the field glasses, and he said, “They’re leaving.”
Cork squinted and could just barely make out small figures moving in the yard between the house and what looked to be the barn. They went to a brown pickup, got in, and a moment later, across the mile of dry, high desert that separated them, Cork heard the distant sound of an engine growling to life. The pickup pulled out of the yard and down a lane that ran between the trees of the orchard. Outside the orchard, where the lane met the dirt road that came in over the hills from the main highway, they turned south. The pickup kicked up a little rooster tail of dust as it went, and Cork finally lost sight of it as it disappeared behind the broad chest of the hills where he and the others lay watching.
“How long before the kid takes off?” Jubal asked.
“Beckett should be leaving any time now,” Willie replied.
But Beckett didn’t leave. They waited nearly an hour, and there was no more movement at the fruit ranch below.
“What the hell’s going on?” Jubal finally asked, tense and impatient. “Where’s the kid?”
Cork said, “Sick maybe. Or maybe it’s spring break for schools in Oregon. Or maybe he’s just playing hooky. Whatever it is, we need to rethink our plan.”
“Hell,” Jubal said. “It’s just the kid and his mother with Winona now. We can’t handle a kid and a woman, we’re in trouble.”
Cork said, “If there’s a rifle in that house and he’s been taught how to use it, he can give us plenty of trouble. I don’t want any blood shed over this.”
Willie said, “What should we do?”
“If we drive down, they’ll see us coming for sure. I’d rather catch them by surprise.” Cork looked at Willie. “Can you handle the Jeep?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then Jubal and I are going to hoof it down there, sneak through the orchards to the house. When you reconnoitered here last week, Willie, did you see a dog?”
“Yes, but he always went with the men.”
“Let’s hope he went with them today.”
“We get down there, then what?” Jubal said.
“We find Winona and talk to her. And then we bring her out. Willie, you keep those field glasses glued to your eyes. When you see us leave the house with Winona, you come down there fast.”
“And if that kid goes for a rifle?” Jubal said.
“We talk to him.”
“You got a lot of faith in talk.”
“Talk doesn’t kill people, Jubal.”
Jubal eyed him a long moment, then laughed. “Shoot, we got nothing to lose. Let’s find Winona.”
CHAPTER 22
C ork and Jubal left the rocks and followed the road, which dropped into the valley in a series of lazy switchbacks. All those curves worried Cork. He hoped Willie’s assurance that he could handle the Jeep hadn’t been just cavalier or wishful thinking.
There was a white rail fence around the orchards, badly in need of whitewash, rotted in many places, completely collapsed in others. Cork and Jubal stepped over a fallen section and slipped among the rows of fruit trees. There were buds but no blossoms yet, and Cork couldn’t tell what kind of fruit they might bear. He and Jubal moved quickly until they came to the place where the trees gave way to the yard. They paused, and Cork studied the house. It was a classic, old ranch house, two stories, with a long front porch and a widow’s walk. White curtains framed the windows, but beyond that, the interior was invisible. Cork thought it would be best to slip in through the back door. He tapped Jubal’s arm and signaled that way, but Jubal’s eyes weren’t on Cork. They were riveted to the front of the house. When Cork looked there, he saw what had captured his friend’s attention. Winona was crossing the porch and descending the front steps.
There was no mistaking her. Her hair was shorter, and she seemed thinner, but even from fifty yards away, it was easy to see that she was every bit as graceful and lovely as Cork remembered.
She crossed the yard and entered the barn.
Without waiting for Cork, Jubal began to lope among the trees, following a course that would circle to the back of the barn. Cork was right on his heels. When the barn was between them and the house, they broke from cover. They raced to a back door, which had an old latch. Jubal lifted the latch, and when he swung the door wide, a bright corridor of sunlight cut through the dark of the barn’s interior. Jubal stepped into that sunlit corridor, and his shadow, huge and black and menacing, fell on the dirt before him.
�
�Oh!” came a small cry from inside.
And then Cork was in the barn, too, standing next to Jubal and looking into the beautiful, stupefied face of Winona Crane.
Even after all the years, Cork found himself responding much as he had when he was a kid. Something melted in him, then formed into a solid longing. Winona Crane was the first girl he’d ever really loved, and although what he felt now was different, shaped by his age and experience, it was also very familiar.
But Winona wasn’t even looking at Cork. She stared at Jubal, stared with an open mouth, stared as if she were seeing a ghost, or a dream, something that had to be unreal. Her eyes were almond-colored with a glint of fire from the sun. Her hair was black, but dull-looking, in need of a wash. She wore an old flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled to her elbows and jeans so faded they were colored with only the memory of blue, and she had on dirty tennis shoes.
What was most noticeable to Cork, however, was a discoloration along her left jawline just below her ear, the pale yellow of an old bruise.
Jubal spoke first. “Hello, Winona.” There was something like reverence in his voice.
“It… how… you…” she stammered.
Jubal took a tentative step toward her, but she retreated and looked away. “You can’t be here,” she said.
“I am here.” Jubal took another step. “And I’m not leaving without you.”
“If they come back…” she began.
Cork said, “We’ll be gone before they come back.”
Winona finally seemed to notice him. “How did you find me?”
“Willie,” Cork said.
“Willie? He’s here?”
“He’s waiting for us in the hills. Winona, we have to go.”
But she didn’t move. Her eyes settled again on Jubal, and a sad smile crossed her lips. “I’ve thought about you every day.”
Jubal walked to her carefully, as if approaching a skittish wild animal, and slowly reached out and took her hand. “Nothing’s felt right since you left me. Nothing’s worked out the way I thought it would. I need you, Winona. And you need me. Remember what Henry Meloux said about us?”
“Two halves of a broken stone,” she answered.
Jubal put his arms around her, huge arms bulked by pressing iron, and held her gently.
“We need to go,” Cork said.
Winona eased from Jubal’s embrace. “I can’t.”
“You’re coming,” Jubal said.
“My life’s… different, Jubal. You don’t know me.”
“My life’s different, too, Winona. No moon, no stars like you promised. No mountaintop. Just emptiness. Just wanting.”
“Look at me.” There were tears in her eyes. “I wouldn’t be any good for you now.”
“Without you, I won’t be good for anything. Please, Winona. Come with me.”
The barn door opened at Winona’s back, and two figures stepped inside, a woman and the kid Cork figured was Beckett. Beckett held the rifle Cork had hoped would not come into play.
“What’s going on?” It was the woman who spoke. “Who are these men, Nona?”
Winona turned. “Friends, Petra. Just old friends.”
The woman was tall and painfully thin, with blond hair full of wild curls. She wore an old print dress, the kind people then called a “granny.” Her feet were bare. She was, Cork guessed, in her late thirties. Beckett, a boy nearly as tall as she, with hair that was the color of wet creek sand and that hung nearly to his shoulders, stood beside her. He held the rifle with the barrel pointed in the direction of Jubal and Winona. He worried Cork, not because he looked menacing but because he looked scared. A scared kid with a loaded rifle was pretty much the circumstance Cork had feared most.
“What are they doing here?” Petra demanded.
“They want me to go with them.”
Petra looked horrified at that thought. “You can’t go.” She sounded as desperate in her desire to have Winona stay as Jubal in his desire to have her leave. “What’ll I do if you go?”
“Go with me,” Winona said.
“She’s not going nowhere,” Beckett said. His voice broke as he stammered. “And neither is Nona. You all just get out of here. Just go.” He waved the barrel toward the door.
“We’re not leaving without Winona,” Jubal said. He spoke with a firmness, a certainty Cork hadn’t heard since they’d reconnected. It was the voice of the old Jubal.
“Me and this rifle say different.”
Cork’s eyes shifted between Jubal’s face and the face of the kid. He saw fearlessness in one and nothing but fear in the other, and between them nothing but disaster. “Corcoran O’Connor,” he said stepping forward. “Chicago Police Department. Son, I want you to put that rifle down. Put it down now.”
“Chicago? What are you doing here?” Beckett asked.
“We came to bring our friend home, that’s all. If you try to stop us, it will be kidnapping. There’ll be cops all over this place. Is that what you want?”
Beckett looked at Winona, looked at her like a kid with no clue. “Do you want to go?”
Winona thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, Beckett. Yes, I do.”
His eyes jumped from Cork to Jubal and back. “I think we need to talk to Uncle Cole about this.”
Jubal said, “I’m going out through that door right now, and I’m taking my friend. You can shoot me, or you can move aside and let me pass.”
Jubal stepped in front of Winona and Cork and began to walk forward. The kid’s eyes grew wide, owl-like, and he leveled the barrel at Jubal’s chest. Cork knew this was not the way to play it, but Jubal had made his move, and anything Cork did would only confuse the kid more and maybe push him over the line.
Beckett retreated a step, then another. And then, more by accident than by design, stood with his back against the frame of the barn door, his body blocking their way. He could no longer simply step aside and let them pass. Unless he folded completely now, they would have to go through him. Blood pounded in Cork’s temples, and his gut seemed to empty and then draw taut as he readied for the chaos of what he was afraid was about to come.
Suddenly Winona stepped from behind the shield of Jubal’s body and put a hand on his arm to hold him back.
“Beck,” she said gently. “These are my friends, and all they want is to take me home. That’s all I want, too. Just to go home. Please.”
She walked ahead, slowly, and to Cork she became a being of enigmatic contradiction. Her body seemed such a frail thing, slender and delicate, yet there was an unquestionable power in her spirit, in her measured step, even in the very gentleness of her voice. She closed the gap between herself and the end of the rifle, and her eyes never left the face of the boy in the doorway.
“Please, Beck,” she said, reaching out as she neared him. “Let me go home.” She put her fingers against the rifle barrel and eased it aside.
The moment the rifle was no longer pointed at them, Jubal sprang. In three long strides, done in the blink of an eye, he was on the kid, yanking the firearm from his hands and shoving him roughly out the door. Petra screamed, and Winona said, “Oh, Jubal, you didn’t have to do that.”
Through the open door, Cork saw the kid scramble to his feet and take off at a run. A moment later, he heard the sound of a small engine kick over and come to life. The ATV, he figured. And he knew the kid was going for his father and his uncles.
Jubal lifted the rifle to his shoulder.
Cork raced forward and tried to yank the firearm from Jubal’s grip. “Let him go, Jubal,” he barked.
Jubal shoved him away as the ATV shot down the lane between the trees and was gone. He turned on Cork, his face gone red with rage, and there was murder in his eyes. When they were kids, such a look would have shriveled Cork’s heart. But he’d patrolled the streets of South Side Chicago long enough to have been glared at by men bigger and meaner and more heartless than Jubal Little could ever be. Still, Jubal was the one with the rifle, and Cork took
a step back.
Winona came between them. “We need to go,” she said. “Now.” She turned to the other woman. “Oh, Petra, come with us.”
“I can’t,” Petra said, her abject misery obvious. “Go. Go before they come back.”
Winona hugged her briefly, kissed her cheek, and turned to Jubal. “Let’s go.”
They ran, following the lane between the trees where the ATV had gone. They neared the edge of the orchard with its broken-down white fence, and Cork saw the dust raised by the Jeep as Willie drove it out of the hills.
They kept running, and the Jeep hit the flat of the valley floor and bore down on them. As Willie pulled up to them and stopped, Cork cried out, “Let me drive.”
Willie slid from his seat. While he shuffled around to the passenger side, Jubal and Winona piled in back. Cork turned the Jeep in a tight arc, and they shot toward the safety of the hills. In the rearview mirror, through the cloud kicked up behind them, he caught sight of another storm of dust rising far down the valley. The approaching McMurphys. He leaned more heavily on the accelerator.
They hit the switchbacks and began to climb. Cork took the turns hard and fast, and the tires slid precariously across the dirt roadbed. Below them, the brown pickup swung into the lane that led between the trees to the ranch house.
They hit the crest of the hill and, on the other side, followed the creek with its cottonwoods as it wound its way toward the main road into Furlough. Cork’s eyes swung between the empty road ahead and the veil of dust behind him that was all he could see in the mirror now. After several miles, it became clear that the McMurphys had opted not to follow, and Cork slowed to a more reasonable speed.
“Could you stop?” Winona asked.
“I’d prefer to keep going,” Cork said. “At least until I can see civilization.”
“She asked you to stop,” Jubal said.
Cork had heard watch commanders deliver orders in that same voice, and it rankled him. But he pulled to the side of the road and killed the engine.
Winona spoke again. “Could I get out, just for a minute?”
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