Hector sipped more bourbon, but still managed to hold his tongue.
Hallie said, “Her brother, Rayburn, is coming by at seven in the morning. He’s going to take Meg back to his place and her siblings will meet her there. They haven’t seen her in years, and it sounds like the one chance Shannon will have to meet her kin. Think it’ll be safe enough?”
“Don’t see why not,” Hector said. “Roads back here are surely a maze, even to an old horse soldier like myself. And I was extra careful not to be followed.”
“They’re not as confusing as you think,” Hallie said. “If you stayed here a week or two, I expect you’d get around just fine.” Hallie poured them both more bourbon. Her cheeks were red from the liquor; this glint in her eyes that put more unworthy thoughts in his head. “Well, at least Megan finally seems to have found herself a real man in her time of greatest need.”
There was no graceful thing to say to that, so Hector sipped more bourbon. Hallie said, “You figure on settling down with Megan if you can see her through this? Figure maybe on raising Shannon as your own?”
“I don’t figure on anything,” he said. “I hardly know Meg, really. Shannon’s wonderful. I like the kid a lot. But there hasn’t been time for thinkin’ or woolgathering. I’m no likely family man at this point in my life. Nearly certainly more days behind than ahead now. And anyway it’s been run, duck and dodge from the get-go. And diggin’ out bullets.” He pointed at his arm.
“She told me about that. You’re really something, caring for the two of you under those circumstances. I can’t conceive of that. You seem more than a capable man.”
He smiled “Something tells me you’d manage just fine.” Hector said, “I can see you in Shannon’s face.” He amended that. “Well, I see some of her in your face.”
“She does remind me of pictures I’ve seen of myself as a child,” Hallie said. “Reminds me a little of Meg when she was a tiny one, too.”
“And Meg now?”
“That’s a little like looking in a long-gone mirror, too,” she said.
“Not long-gone at all,” Hector said. “Not by a longshot.”
She smiled. “So nice of you to say. You are a silver-tongued devil, sir.”
He stroked his chin. He badly needed a shave. “You maintain this place all on your own?”
“Mostly,” she said. “Boys come by once in a while, but mostly it’s just me.”
“I’m amazed,” he said.
“It’s plenty manageable,” Hallie said. “Pretty tiny compared to what Dave and I tended when we still had our place. And plenty others do it, and every day. This is not a remarkable life, you know.” She looked around with sad eyes. “And yet this place has never quite become home. I expect it never will. You know… no shared memories here.”
“I live alone too,” Hector said. “I live in too big of a house for one person.”
But he never spent any time at his place, not really. Not like Hallie seemed to spend on her lonely farm. He thought then that the solitude must be crushing for such a vital woman. Hallie said, “I’ll make you breakfast in the morning. An honest, home-cooked breakfast.”
“You don’t have to do that, Hallie.” But Hector thought it sounded wonderful.
“I want to. It’ll be a treat, even—I mean as it’s just for the two of us and I don’t have much reason to make the effort these days. It’s no trouble at all. What do you like?”
“Whatever you want to fix would be wonderful,” he said. “It’s been a lot of diner food and the like, lately. Grease-laden, but speedy service.”
“Sounds gosh-awful,” Hallie said. “Eggs, bacon, sausage and toast come the morning?”
“Sounds delicious.”
“Maybe a few other things too.”
“I can swear I’ll be lookin’ forward to it.”
She looked up at the clock on the wall. “You must be exhausted after that drive. I’ve made my bed up. You’ll sleep there tonight.”
“No way,” he said, “the couch will do me fine.”
“Really—with that arm, you need the room to sprawl. Don’t argue with me, Hector. You can’t win.”
The look she gave him, and the timbre of her husky voice, convinced Hector he was indeed wasting time pushing back.
And she was right—he could use a good night’s sleep in a comfortable bed where he could stretch out his wounded wing. He’d be useless, otherwise.
Particularly as it might prove out to be the last peaceful night he’d sleep for some time.
31
Hector awakened early, as he always did, awakened despite the comfort of Hallie’s big feather bed. The fresh sheets still somehow smelled of her. He reached over to the nightstand and turned on a light and picked up his Timex, squinting at its face in the dark. Four a.m.
He’d set out his notepad and some pencils on the nightstand the night before. He propped the down-filled pillows up behind himself and rested the notepad against his knee and wrote until the sun was visible through the cracks around the drapes.
At six, he put on some pants and a shirt and wandered out into the kitchen. Hallie was fixing breakfast for Meg and Shannon. She said, “If you want a hot bath, Hector, you’re next in line.”
“Sounds good,” he said. He stroked Shannon’s hair and said, “You need me to watch that dog for you while you’re visiting?”
Shannon shook her head firmly. “She’s coming with me.”
Meg smiled at Hector and he said, “Okay, honey. That’s fine.” He gestured to Megan and beckoned with his finger for her to follow him back to her mother’s bedroom. He pulled a forty-five from his suitcase and held it out to her. “Just in case, Meg.”
Meg looked at the gun and shook her head, this strange look on her face. “I don’t think I can touch it again. It’ll be okay, probably. And if it isn’t, my brothers are all hunters. They carry shotguns or rifles in their cars and trucks and have them around their houses. They’ll see to us.”
Hector searched her face. “You’re certain?”
Meg glanced again at the gun; she looked a little queasy. “I’m certain, Hector.”
She kissed him on the cheek then.
On the cheek. He half registered that.
She said, “We aren’t going to stay here long, are we?”
“I reckon not,” he said, weighing her tone.
“My mother’s quite impressed with you. She kind of confiscated all my books of yours that you bought me.”
“I’ll replace ’em.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “The more I learn about you, and the more I read your books, well, the more I find I it hard—”
Hector pressed his index finger to her lips, shushing Megan. “Just stop. I think I know where you’re going with that and you’re not the first to say it. Not even close.”
She said in a funny, awkward voice, “Anyway, mother is clearly fascinated by you.”
***
Hector rinsed the shampoo out of his hair and cut off the water. He groped around for a towel then dragged it over his head and dried off. He stepped out onto the bath mat, tying the towel around his waist. As he reached for his razor, he heard a male voice:
“Don’t you lie to me, woman. If you do, you’ll so surely suffer for it. You’ll suffer far out of proportion to any cause you might conjure. Pain is how I ensure future cooperation from those yet to come.”
Hallie responded, firm voiced. “I haven’t seen that sorry girl in five years. You’ve heard of a family’s black sheep? Of course you have. I figure you probably are the one in your clan. Well, that girl’s ours. The blackest of black sheep. Though not a monster like you are.”
The voice: “When one’s in trouble, young ones in particular, when they rabbit, they tend to run down familiar holes, woman. They dash back to mammy and daddy and the like. Out here, so far from the cities, Meg might think she could get herself lost. From most, that would surely be true. But I ain’t most. I am far from most. I’m the best at what
I do.”
The voice was low and menacing. Very masculine. Hector leapt to the obvious conclusion: it was the bounty hunter, Tomás Hawk.
“We forbid her to ever come back,” Hallie said, sounding haughty. “We didn’t want her corruptin’ her brothers and sister.” Next Hallie let her voice go hard and flat: “That girl made herself a whore with that Italian gangster. We didn’t want her shameful example for our grandchildren.” A long pause. “I can’t believe her, sleeping with that Italian slime.” Hallie was cool as ice. Cunningly calculating. If Hector didn’t know better, he figured he’d have believed her.
The voice sounded impressed, too: “You say that with conviction. You may even feel it in some part of yourself, ma’am. But the maternal instinct is a strange and powerful thing. Has a mind all its own. Has its reasons that reason can’t know. It’s a mystical thing that can thwart all intention. I wager, even if you feel as you say you do, if Miss Megan came back here looking for help, you’d not deny her. No true mother would. I can look around this place, at the photographs on your fireplace mantel. At the artwork from your grandchildren I can see taped on the icebox back there in the kitchen. I look at that little sweater on the chair there you’re knitting for some child, and I can see you’re a true mother. A woman of deep feeling and commitment to kin. A woman surely lying to protect her own child.” A pause, then a new edge in that voice. “And look there on that pretty old piano—a picture of Megan, the whore.”
Hector heard the sound of breaking glass. He reached for the doorknob, then hesitated. He was nearly naked—unarmed but for a straight razor he doubted he’d get a chance to use. His Colt was in Hallie’s room, under her soft pillow. But getting there to his gun meant walking down the hallway visible from where he guessed “Tomahawk” was standing.
The voice said: “Look—now Meg’s ugly. That pretty face so like your own all disfigured and the like. Would you wish the real article to look like this? Or maybe your own face to look this way?”
“You get the hell out of my house,” Hallie said, her voice hard and firm. “You have no right to be in here.”
“Who’s that in the shower?” Hector could hear the smile in the bounty hunter’s voice. “Must be some kind of coward or Megan, because whoever it is, they ain’t rushing out to your aid, ma’am.”
“That’s my husband,” Hallie said. “He had a stroke a couple of months back. He’s blind in one eye and deaf in both ears. I need to help him before he hurts himself. Get out of my house now, mister. You have no rights at all here.”
“That’s right,” the voice said. “I have no rights, so I therefore have every right. I’m not police, so I don’t have to fret over nonsense such as due process, search warrants, subpoenas and such. I go where I want, take what I need. Live as I choose.”
Hector heard something; tried to place the noise. When the man started talking again, Hector realized what he’d heard—the whisper of a knife being drawn from a leather sheath. Hector realized he was bathed in sweat now; his heart was racing. He picked up the straight razor. It wasn’t going to be pretty… an ugly way for Hector to die in service to a lost cause, taking a dainty straight razor to a buck knife fight.
And then lovely, brave Hallie? She’d still be alone with that monster.
The man said, “I haven’t bought a meal or paid for a dinner in two years. I live like olden days, catchin’, cleanin’ and cookin’ my own. Rabbit, squirrel and deer. Snake and woodchuck, if need be. I could strip that pretty arm of yours down to clean white bone in less than the time it would take for you to get out your second scream, ma’am. In my world there are no rules and therefore no consequences. Me and conscience parted ways a time back. My job is to take your daughter back to Mr. Scartelli. I have to take the child back to him too. Mr. Scartelli don’t much care if I bring Megan back alive, or dead, or in pieces. He’s frankly not much more particular about how that child comes back.”
“Get out of my house,” Hallie said again, her voice still steady. Did she really think Hector could make a difference like this?
No—he figured she was just steel. He started to recalculate in terms of strategy. He could make a dash for Hallie’s room, try to get his Colt. But by then, Tomahawk would have his Bowie knife to Hallie’s throat.
The bounty hunter said, “Megan doesn’t have friends back in Ohio. Not the kind that would risk helping her under these circumstances. She was in Cleveland, we know that. I know she was last seen in Dayton. That means she’s headed west. Headed out this way. Headed home. I do believe that. You’ve got other kin around these parts. Those pretty kids there in those pictures. I’ll go talk to them, next. Even if I find her at one of those houses, I want you to know, I’ll come back anyway and I’ll skin that left arm of yours down to bone for lying to me. It’s an investment in my own future, you see. For a man like me, reputation matters. Still counts for something in this lukewarm, piss water world.” Parting words: “I hope you believe me about my coming back if I find you lied. I do mean it. You best know I’m speaking fact.”
Hallie said soft but firm, “I surely do.”
Hector heard heavy steps—the bounty hunter sounded like a big enough man. Then the screen door slammed. He heard Hallie running down the hallway toward the bathroom. Hector flung open the door to meet her. He was opening his arms, but she pushed him aside, running to a closet. He shrugged and moved quickly to the bedroom to get his Colt. Maybe he could shoot the son of a bitch in the back on his way to his car.
Hallie handed Hector an old Winchester. He looked at the rifle, then said, “Call your son! Warn him that son of a bitch might be on his way over there.”
“They don’t have the phone out to his place,” Hallie said, looking annoyed at Hector. “That little reunion was handled through my daughter. He’s got the ham radio but that only works if he’s got it turned on, and I doubt he will at this hour. And you’re wasting time! You know what you have to do.”
Hector heard loud noises outside, some kind of music he didn’t recognize. There were lots of drums and blasting guitars.
He searched Hallie’s eyes, “You realize what you’re saying?”
Hallie squeezed his bare arm. “Yes, I do! That man needs killing. If you can’t do it, then give the rifle back to me and I’ll try!”
Hector nodded and ran to the sitting room. Through the front window he saw the car—a forty-eight Woody—rolling away. He’d never get a shot at the bounty hunter once Hector struggled through the front door locks with his lame arm.
“Damn!” he said. Then, “At least he has to go looking for that next stop, too. Maybe I can overtake him on the way. My Chevy’s fast.”
“No traffic back this way,” Hallie said urgently. “And all he has to do is follow Rayburn’s tire tracks in the snow—all the way back to his place.”
Fuck on a bicycle… darlin’ Hallie was so right.
Hallie was running toward the kitchen now. She fumbled with the locks. “Road curves around the back, Hec. If you run straight across the back field, you can maybe just head him off along the rear boundary of the farm. There’s a tree line to the west, so he won’t see you moving across the field. But you’ll have to be fast—he strikes me as a lead-foot.”
Hector just nodded. “How many shots in this thing?”
Hallie winced. “I don’t know, at least one… maybe as many as three.”
Hector kept hold of his Colt: the Peacemaker wouldn’t be much use except at close range, but it sounded like it could come to that if there was only one shot in the old Winchester.
He dashed out the back door nearly bare-assed into the wicked snow to kill an Indian.
32
It was cold and the wind still shearing down from Canada made it seem even colder. Heavy flurries were coming down, the kind that accumulate fast and deep.
Hector was already shaking. His bare feet burned from the snow and his teeth chattered uncontrollably. Hector chided himself: this middle-aged guy with two guns, running next-t
o-naked across two-hundred yards of ankle-deep snow to try and kill a hardcase young buck at least half his age.
He figured it’d be a miracle if he didn’t have a stroke or heart attack before he reached the northern boundary of Hallie’s holding. Hector feared that if he lived, he’d still be parting with some toes.
Somewhere about halfway across the field, Hector lost his wet towel. Now he was naked, lashed by the frigid wind, huffing steam from his nose and mouth, his feet on fire and his fingers getting numb. There was a copper taste in his mouth and he was having a much harder time getting air.
Yet Hector kept running through the wind and snow, determined to make it in time to kill the bounty hunter.
Hector hit the back boundary and leaned hard against a big old oak. He was doubled-over and seeing spots. He had stitches in his side. He began shifting weight from one burning, numb foot to the other in the nearly knee deep drifts, over and over, his teeth chattering wildly.
In the distance he could hear the hum of an engine—heard snow crunching under tires. Then he heard the radio, still turned up loud—that obnoxious, guitar-driven stuff the young kids were increasingly drawn to.
Squinting through the heavier snow, Hector got the rifle up against his shoulder, his left arm screaming at the exertion, and peered through the curtain of snow, awaiting a glimpse of the Woody.
When he was sure he could make the shot, Hector put a bullet through the front driver’s-side tire and watched the Woody start steering wonkily. He hoped the bastard’s blasting radio would obscure the sound of his shot. The heavy-falling snow might even help with that, Hector thought. With luck, the bastard would think it was just a blowout.
Hector heard “Tomahawk” cursing as he swung open the door of his Woody to haul himself out to check his car. Through the flurries Hector couldn’t get much of a sense of the guy—just big and strong-looking, long black hair tied up behind his ears. Hector couldn’t really make out his features.
The Running Kind: A Hector Lassiter novel Page 19