Wallace nodded. He got out of the car and stretched as tall as he could, settled back on his heels. Clayton went in through the great saloon doors and let them swing shut behind him. Wallace sat on the hood of the car and glanced over at the doors. Like a huge passway golem, his feet flat to the ground and his knees bowed and his long arms crossed over his chest. He heard the squealing of bats as they pinwheeled home in the early morning pale. Wallace took his tiny metal cylinder from his inside jacket pocket and uncapped it and tipped some white into the cap. Snorted it through one nostril and put the container away. Felt the gunmetal slung against his chest. After a moment he moved his hand and took his phone out and dialed. He waited long before he hung up. Then he dialed again.
THIRTY-SEVEN
The girl woke to fingers sweeping the curls from her forehead. She’d barely gone under in the small hours but when she did sleep she slept full. It took some minutes to raise her but then one lid opened. The other followed. Sarah sat on the bed with one hand pinned to the mattress at Madelyn’s side, the other running hair behind the girl’s ear.
“Mom?” said the girl.
“Hey.”
“Did you hear from dad?”
Sarah nodded. The girl started to shuffle out of the covers drowsily.
“No, honey,” Sarah said. “You’re gonna stay here a little while with Murray and Ella. I’ll be down the road waiting for dad to come home. Then we’re both coming back to get you.”
“Okay,” Madelyn said.
The girl’s head started to list. But before her cheek touched pillow she shook herself awake again and tried to sit up. Sarah settled the girl back down. She’d not left the bed.
“What is it, Madelyn?”
“I knew he’d win.”
Sarah put her chin to her shoulder and looked off into the shadowed corner of the room. She squeezed her daughter gentle at the wrist.
“Tell dad I knew,” the girl said.
“I’ll tell him. Now go back to sleep.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Dewfrost clung to the edges of the sideview mirror where the man’s hand turned over its reflection. The sun had yet to clear the fir-tops and he could see the faintest trace of his breath in the car. He leaned back in the seat and stared at the rear tire in the mirror. The tread had sunk an inch in the untilled fieldsoil. Tarbell surveyed the southeasterly corner of the distant house, the county road that led there. He waited for risen dust, birds flown, low rumbling in the earth.
Tarbell opened his eyes to the steering wheel, dials in the console. He propped himself up in the car seat and cast about for his bearings. When he looked out at the house again he saw the truck in the driveway, the front-third hidden from view by the building. He got out of the car in his undershirt, damp cotton at his lower back that he pulled out to cover the butt of his belt-hung pistol. He left the door open. Cussed himself out for drifting. Tarbell started across the field and then stopped and came back. He went into the car again.
As he walked the worn-down croprow ruts a landed flock of sparrows pulled up from their pickings and flew. He carried on toward the house with his right arm dangling, the short-barrels of the shotgun passing his knee like a pendulum.
Sarah wrung her hair in the towel and then threw it over a high hook on the bathroom door. Lengths of her hair gone very dark. The ends wet the shoulders of her shirt. She went down the hallway barefoot and into the kitchen. Coffee dripped in the percolator and she poured a cup and drank, raised one foot from the cold tile and pressed it up against the cupboard door in the counter behind her. She turned and set the mug by and took a bottle down from a high shelf. She poured a slug of whiskey into her drink and stirred it with a spoon. Turned again to lean on the counter. She drank in near quietude and listened to the sound of her breath, the soft complaints of the old house around her.
She put the empty cup in the sink and looked out of the open window. A long shadow stretched out in the lawn below, shape-shifting all the while. Narrow stick-shade lengthening at the figure’s side. Sarah stared at it for a second and then she dropped. She could hear feet walking the crabgrass. They stopped and Sarah clung to the low cupboards. The footsteps kept on and faded out. She waited.
A minute later they came back and passed the other way. She turned and looked over at the kitchen door. Slanted light shone through cracks in the wood slatting and lined the near tile. When she saw the thin beams break and vanish she got up and located the drawer in the opposite counter where the carving knives were kept. The doorknob started turning. Sarah went fast to the door and fitted the chainlock plug into its anchor and stepped back. When the door opened the chain rose taut and held. Sarah waited in the middle of the kitchen with her guts gone cold. The door eased back and the chain sagged. A man’s hand came into the kitchen through the gap and reached for the lockplug.
The hand had just found the end of the chain when Sarah ran in and drove the door back with her shoulder. She hit hard and the edged timber crushed the arm against the framing. She heard the snap of bone and the man’s forearm took a new angle from where the edge struck. Then the arm was gone and the door closed hard enough that Sarah stumbled forward and knelt against it. She was up again to turn the deadbolt and she could hear him screaming. She ran to the front door of the bungalow and bolted it and then came back through pushing the kitchen table.
Before she crossed the middle of the room the door blew inward as a wall of shot and torn wood and the thunderclap boomed through the house. Sarah had been lifted off the floor entire and now she lay in the kitchen entryway. Not long and Tarbell broke the top half of the door away with the stock and moved through the rag-ended lower half and into the house. Mud on the back of his pants and shirt, in his hair. He howled yet for his injured arm. He stopped when he saw her lying there. Then he sidestepped the wood-littered table and walked over to her.
Sarah’s shirt blossomed in crimsons. She had one hand over her heart and the other held the squared column of the entryway framing. Tarbell set the shotgun on the kitchen counter and walked past her. Through the living room and down the hallway to the bedrooms. Pistol drawn and cocked. Sarah lay alone and stared at the ceiling. She took a breath and let it go. She never took another.
PART FIVE
She crossed the southern border to Montana on a Friday afternoon. Her sister had not seen the child yet and hadn’t seen Sarah in over two years. Sarah called Daniel to say she’d arrived but she didn’t call again. When Daniel phoned her that Sunday evening she didn’t answer. He got in his truck and drove south on Highway 2 and eventually passed through the forty-ninth parallel.
The town where she’d been born had four traffic lights and a gas station. A brokedown inn above a greasy spoon. He got the address for her sister’s place from the girl at the diner’s lunch counter. He went to the house, little more than a trailer on blocks. Rotary clothesline turning in chinook wind. Nobody was home. Daniel went back to the diner and found out where their father lived.
Daniel drove down black nightroads until he saw the farmhouse sitting lonely in a barren field. When he pulled up to the place a porchlight came on. As Daniel walked up to the house the door opened and a tall man with white hair came out onto the decking. He held an infantryman’s rifle in his wiry arms and levelled it at Daniel. Hollering from the house that carried in the dark expanse around it. The old man turned and barked back into the room. Daniel didn’t slow and when his foot hit the first step the old man put his finger to the trigger. Daniel went up the steps and felt the hard muzzlesteel against his chest before he swept the barrel wide with the outside of his hand and shoved the old man backward into his own kitchen. Sarah and her sister were in the room when he came in and Daniel gave the gun to the sister and put his arms around his wife. The old man still sat on the cracked linoleum, drunk and slow in his motions.
The old man eyeballed Daniel from across the table while Sa
rah got the baby. The sister stood by the kitchen counter with the rifle safetied at her side, the bolt removed. They’d found Sarah’s passport and driver’s license in a coffee tin in the cupboard. The old man drank bourbon by the glass and after a while he started to cry. When Sarah came out with the child she left the house without a word and Daniel got up to follow. The sister laid the rifle on the table in front of the old man and chucked the loose bolt into the sink before she walked out. Daniel stopped in the doorway and watched the old man wipe teartracks from his rough cheeks, tip the bottle again. After a long time the man turned.
“You had a gun pointed at you before?” he said.
“No,” Daniel said.
The old man nodded, drank deep.
“You took it well, son.”
“I ain’t your son,” Daniel said. “You’re never gonna see her again.”
“Okay.”
“You cross north I’ll bury you up there.”
THIRTY-NINE
Murray heard the shot and went out to the back yard. He strained to better see the little house but a copse of trees blocked the most of it. So he looked to the fields and saw the car parked there. He tried to figure the make and model and then he went into the house and locked the door behind him.
He hurried the girl into the cellar with Ella trailing. Madelyn kept asking questions but Murray shushed her and the girl clammed up. He left her sour-faced, huddled on an old Chevy benchseat against the blockstone cellar wall. He squeezed Ella’s hand and she wouldn’t let it go at first but finally she did. Then Murray went back upstairs.
He went quick to his bedroom and the wardrobe against the west-facing wall. All he had for arms was a twenty-two rifle for groundhogs and vermin. A half-spent brick of rounds in a drawer. He turned the bolt-handle and ran the bolt back and forth, blew hard into the chamber. Then he put a round behind the breech and slid it forward. Ran the bolt again. He pocketed the rest of the bullets and went back downstairs.
They were only ten minutes in wait when muddied shoes passed by the small window above them. Murray saw them and corralled everyone into the corner of the room. He didn’t see Tarbell stoop and stare in through the silted windowglass, move on. Soon they could hear knocking at the front door. No more than a pitter-patter at first. A series of loud, deliberate thuds following. Murray raised the rifle and thumbed the safety off. Fifteen minutes later he was still holding the weapon and there had not been another sound from the house, without or within.
“Maybe it was Daniel?” Ella said.
Murray shook his head.
“He would have called out to us,” he said.
They waited and waited and then Murray got up.
“Just where the hell d’you think you’re going?” Ella said.
“I’m just gonna take a looksee.”
“I’m going with you,” Madelyn said, and she stood.
“You are not,” the old man said.
“Like shit,” she said.
The man caught her by the bicep before she could make for the stairs. She got hold of his wrist in the one hand and his collar in the other. He all but lifted her off the ground to move her. Ella cussed them both and pulled them apart.
“You will goddamn well stay put,” Murray said. “That’s the end of it.”
Ella had got between them and managed to keep the girl wrapped up. Madelyn looked like she might cry and that nearly set the old man off.
“Keep her here,” he said to his wife.
“Be careful,” she said.
Murray said he would and then he took the girl’s hand gentle and held it. She didn’t fight. She squeezed once and let go.
“Hold the fort down, kid,” he said. “Can you do that for me?”
Madelyn nodded.
Murray let her go and kissed his wife and then he went up the cellar stairs. He bolted the door shut behind him.
Within half an hour the kitchen door opened and shut again. Heavy bootfalls above. The cellar door unlatched and Murray came down the steps with his face ashen. He saw them sitting there and closed his eyes, swallowed, stood the rifle up and squatted low to the cold cement floor. Then suddenly he was up again and coming to them. He lifted Madelyn to her feet, stared at her long. Turned to his wife.
“We have to go,” he said.
They put Madelyn in the backseat of their car with a small suitcase of her clothes. Told her to buckle herself in. They’d lied through their teeth to even get her that far. When the old man closed the doors he flipped the child-locks but the girl didn’t see it. Murray was coming into the house and met Ella on her way out. She dropped the bags she was carrying and put her arms around the old man. Murray held her fast to him and cupped the back of her head in his rough and calloused palm, stroked her hair.
“Dear God,” the woman said.
“We have to get away from here,” Murray said.
Ella nodded and let go of him. She rubbed at her eyes with her thumbknuckles and then picked up the bags. Murray started to pass her and go farther down the corridor when he heard the grumbling of a vehicle on approach. Murray and Ella looked at each other and then went out quick to the porch to see the car that drove the county road.
“Is that the one you saw in the field?” she said.
“No.”
Ella raised a hand to her brow and squinted.
“It’s Daniel,” she said. “Daniel is driving that car.”
Murray hustled down the steps and ran up the drive, hitch in his right step as he went. Soon enough he cleared the hedgebrush at the edge of the property and loped out into the road grimacing, waving madly at the vehicle. The old man stood tall in the lane until the car slowed and stopped. He put his hands to his knees for a second, rose up. Daniel got out of the car and came over to him. When he saw Murray’s face he slowed and then stopped altogether.
“Where’s my daughter?” Daniel said.
“She’s fine. We got her in the car.”
“Where’s my wife?”
Murray stood and walked over to Daniel. The old man had tears in his eyes. He was making an odd noise through his teeth.
Daniel took a step back and looked out in the direction of his house through the treeline. He tried to turn but Murray got a mittful of his shirt. The old man raised a fist and shook Daniel hard. He unclenched his fist but then he cuffed Daniel at the cheek with the flat of his hand. Daniel didn’t seem to feel it but he looked at the old man like he’d never seen him before in his life. He tore loose and shoved Murray backward and went to the car. He drove around the old man and fishtailed into the cross-running dirt road that led home. Murray stooped in the lane and held his kneecaps again. Dust and dirt in his hair. Taste of roadgrit in his mouth. He listened to the diminishing whine of the car and after a moment he stood up straight. Ella was talking to the girl down through the window of their car. Madelyn had figured out her situation and was hammering on the windows with her palms. Kicking at the front seats and at the doorhandle. Murray spat to the tarmac. Took a deep breath. Then he turned and started off down the road, laid his footprints one after another in the tire-tracked clay.
FORTY
Wallace King took the call on his burner. He wrote the particulars on his hand. The rural route address where the cruisers were going. He got out of his car and went into the tavern. Into the safe room and through to the back where Clayton now slept in an army cot. Wallace knelt down and shook his boss. Clayton opened his eyes but he didn’t move. After a few moments he raised his watch up to see the hour. Wallace had his hand over his mouth.
“What is it?” Clayton said.
“Your fella at the precinct just called me.”
“And?”
“Cops are talkin’ about a body on the radio. Out at Dan’s place.”
Clayton rose, swung his legs off the cot and stood up.
“Give me your phone,” he said.
Clayton made two phone calls. The first from his office and the second on the way through the main room of the tavern. Wallace went to the windows and looked out. He turned back and shook his head no. Clayton went behind the bar and poured a glass of whiskey as he spoke into the headset. Then he hung up and set the phone down on the bar counter. He had just raised his glass to drink when a car came off the street and pulled up against the building’s front curb.
Tarbell came through the saloon double-doors in his wrinkled slacks and soiled undershirt. Filthy through his ass and back. He had tied the arms of his suit jacket together and hung it around his neck and shoulder as a sling for his broke left arm. Sleepless eyes fixed on Clayton, a look of cold craziness.
“What the fuck did you do?” Clayton said.
“I was looking for the fighter,” Tarbell said. “He wasn’t there.”
Clayton’s nephew did not get to explain more. Wallace stepped long and drilled a straight left into Tarbell’s sidejaw. Tarbell crumpled and went facedown to the barroom carpet, the exposed soles of his shoes thick with mud and fieldclay. He did not go out completely and rolled away until he hit the base of a nearby table. His hand went sluggish to his waist and Wallace stood hard on the blonde’s wrist. Drew his own pistol and aimed true.
Wallace King stood over Tarbell and looked to Clayton.
“Where do I kill this piece of shit?” he said.
“Call the doc,” Clayton said.
Wallace stood harder to the man’s arm.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” he said.
Clayton didn’t answer him. He just poured himself another whiskey and sat on the backbar until Wallace disarmed Tarbell proper and holstered his gun. Then Wallace took his mobile out of his pocket and sat down in a nearby booth. He made the call under Clayton’s watch and then chucked his phone onto the table beside him.
In the Cage Page 20