by L. L. Enger
“Shut up, Geoff,” said Gun, looking hard at Mazy. “You aren’t here at all.”
34
“Did they hurt you?” Gun said, on his back. Mazy was dabbing at his ragged side with a cloth, which made him pinch his words.
“I’m all right. Believe me.” She kept her eyes on the wound. “This is ugly. What did he shoot you with, a cannon?”
“A .44, and I’m glad he was in a hurry,” said Gun. Jack had doused the gutted stove and opened windows to clear the smoke. Gun was on the bed.
“I didn’t have any choice, Dad. I hated all the lying. They had me, was all.” Mazy gripped Gun’s wrist for a moment, suspending the rag above the ripped skin. “But you knew that. You could tell.” Gun reached up and ran a finger along Mazy’s cheekbone. She stopped it with her hand. “Couldn’t you?” she asked.
“You could’ve been less convincing.”
Mazy wiped hair from her forehead with the back of her hand. “It must have been rough on Barr’s ego,
coming to you and spilling it like that. All part of the production, just to get you out here.”
“What about the rest of it? You and Geoff.”
Mazy shrugged, a slim-shouldered gesture like her mother’s. “Marriage papers are real enough. But there’s no marriage. No baby, either.” Her face went from relief to anger. “Won’t Lyle’s family doctor be surprised.”
“Will be, when he gets back from the Riviera. Where’s Hedman?”
“Might be anywhere. He drove out of Stony behind Geoff and me. Annison drove separately. Always does.”
“Annison?”
“Lyle’s wife,” Mazy said, pausing for a glance at Geoff, whose face was dark. “Geoff’s mother.”
“Sounds like a headache pill,” said Jack. He ragged his hands free of ash on a corner of bedspread. “We had it figured, about the setup.”
“You came, though,” Mazy said. Gun glared at Geoff, who was sitting up straight now, his arrogance returning.
Mazy rinsed the cloth in a basin. When Gun’s side and legs were clean and wrapped in layers of cotton, the four of them walked away from the cabin toward the road.
The Jeep pulled into the Calgary airport at eleven p.m., midnight in Stony. Gun booked four one-ways on American to Winnipeg. Then he went to a pay phone on the wall next to the flight desk. He reached Carol at the newspaper office on the ninth ring.
“Where in heaven or hell are you calling from!” she blew. “No. Don’t tell me. I think I know.”
“What did you expect?” Gun said.
“Damn it, Gun, you like doing this!”
“Mazy’s all right. So is Jack. So am I.”
“You’re more than all right,” Carol said. “You sound like a kid who’s been out playing cavalry.”
“I guess we have been,” Gun said calmly. He told her about Barr’s confession, about the sudden flight, about the cabin in the woods with Mazy inside it. He didn’t mention the small war and its casualties.
“If Barr told you all that just to set you up, then how did you get out of there? And with Mazy?”
Gun shut his eyes, inhaled.
“Did you get hurt? Did anybody get hurt?”
“Carol, three of them are dead. None of them were Hedman.”
“My God.” Gun imagined Carol biting her emerald ring.
“I need your help now. All of us do.”
“What can I do?”
“Is it possible to put out a special edition of the Journal? Can you fire up the presses a little early?”
“I can if I need to. I’ll have to do it without my regular help.”
“It’s important, Carol.” Gun gripped the phone too hard, and his palm, red as fire, opened without permission. He caught the receiver with a forearm against his chest and juggled it back to his ear. “We have two witnesses now, Geoff Hedman and Barr. First you’ve got to secure Barr. Get him out of commission.”
“Out of commission.”
“Lure him in, knock him out, lock him up. Somewhere. Keep him cold until we get back. We’re going to need him.”
“I’ll try.” Carol sounded winded. “What about the paper?”
“I want you to write an article. News, editorial, call it what you like. People read your paper. Tell them how their good reverend got his buddy Rutherford to set up Tig Larson, and then let him go down under Hedman.”
“Hold it, Gun.” Carol was scribbling audibly. “If I do this, if I print this, all of it had better come out. In court. If one fragment of this isn’t proven, I’m throwing twenty years of news work out a high window.”
“It’ll stick,” Gun said. “If you’re afraid, don’t write the article and we’ll get through it another way. But Lord, Carol, it might make the difference.”
“Difference in what? You’ve got a witness with you. Bring him home.”
“The difference might be whether Hedman goes to jail, or I do. And Jack. We just left a few of Hedman’s pals out in the woods, but he has a lot more. In strategic positions, I’d bet.”
Carol bit her ring. Gun could see it.
“If you write it,” he said, “include everything. Don’t leave anything out. Only the unabridged version will do.”
Carol’s voice was dark and sharp, obsidian. “When will you get back?”
“Tomorrow afternoon. We’re flying to Winnipeg on American. We’ll drive from there.”
“Drive fast,” Carol said.
35
The DC-10 touched down in Winnipeg at one-thirty. The sun was starting to burn a hole through heavy skies, a silver drizzle was angling down before a clearing west wind, and Carol Long was waiting at the airport. She was the first person Gun saw as he and Mazy stepped from the debarking tunnel. He was surprised at the rush of joy he felt at seeing her. She wore a bright red sweatshirt. Her hair looked coal black. Her face was drawn and pale. She swept past Gun and threw her arms around Mazy. Then she pulled away and touched Mazy’s chin with the fingertips of both hands.
“And you came through it fine,” Carol said. “Thank God.” Her eyes were dry and steady, but there was a slight tremor in her chin.
Jack came down out of the tunnel flattening back his greasy crew cut with both hands. He smiled at Gun, then at the women. Geoff stood looking at his feet.
Gun said to Carol’s back, “How’d it go last night?”
“Just fine,” she snapped, turning. “I did everything exactly as requested.” Her glare was brief and freezing.
They stopped at a gun shop to replace the dead Ithaca, then headed south for Minnesota. Gun and Mazy rode in Carol’s car, Jack followed with Geoff in Gun’s pickup. By three-thirty they’d been on the road half an hour and Mazy was curled sleeping in the backseat. Gun was driving, holding the wheel as lightly as he could because of the burn blisters on his hands. He sipped at a giant Styrofoam cup of coffee he’d picked up at the airport. The coffee was cool but jumping with caffeine. He could feel it in the back of his head, a soft, pulsating pain, and though his body was exhausted, his eyes felt like mechanical shutters stuck wide open.
Carol was silent and staring out the passenger window at the long, greenish-brown reach of Manitoba prairie. So far Gun had honored her apparent wish to be left alone, but now he decided her silence seemed self-indulgent. He cleared his throat.
“So you don’t feel like talking,” he said.
She ignored him.
“And it’s because I left without telling you what was up.”
Carol leaned toward him. “Your daughter’s trying to sleep,” she said.
Gun looked sideways at her, rubbing the unburned heel of his right hand against his two-day stubble. He said, “Do you think I would have done what I did if I thought there was a better way?”
Carol looked at him, and their eyes met for an instant before she turned away. “Probably not. But I don’t think that says much for your judgment.” She brought up her feet and curled herself into the seat, facing the passenger door.
“Fair enoug
h,” Gun said.
The sky had cleared as much as it was going to for a while. The drizzle had stopped, but the sun was still nothing more than a dull yellow beach ball in the gray sky. Gun could tell by the arch in Carol’s shoulders that she wasn’t anywhere near falling asleep, and her left hand, resting on her leg, was a hard white fist. He said, “Carol, maybe you ought to tell me what happened last night. This isn’t over yet.”
“I suppose I’d better,” she muttered into the window. She twisted around in her seat, pulled herself upright. “I wrote the article, took it to the printer, and locked up Barr in a safe place.” She spoke quickly, then clamped her mouth shut.
Gun blinked. “You actually locked him up,” he said. He saw Carol start to smile.
“He’s in your new boathouse,” she said.
He smiled and swung into the passing lane to overtake a truck pulling a hay rack loaded with scrap iron. He laughed, trying to picture it: Barr in his stiff black-and-white collar and his carefully pressed pants, sitting there in the dark on the dirt floor, or maybe in the old Alumacraft, on one of the life cushions. He was probably getting some good practice in sincere prayer. “How’d you get him in there, anyway?”
“I had good help.” Now Carol smiled in spite of herself. “My son showed up last night, at supper-time.”
“No kidding. From California.”
“He wanted to see the ‘rugged north country.’”
“Turned out to be more rugged than he expected, I bet.”
“I’d say so, yes.” Carol’s voice had lost its tightness, sounded natural again. “Mike and I drove over to Barr’s house. No one was home, so we tried the church. There was a light in his office. I left Mike in the car, and he covered up with a few blankets and coats in the backseat while I went to Barr’s door and knocked. When he saw me he lit up like a Christmas tree. You know his capacity to gloat—here it was the night before the referendum, victory just hours away, the new cathedral probably cementing itself together in his fantasies—he was thrilled to see me. Asked me in for coffee. I told him thanks, but we had something to discuss. Someone had leveled serious charges against him, and I wanted to hear his side of the story before I wrote it up.” Carol paused, gave Gun a self-satisfied smile. “Believe me, I was winging it. Had no idea what I was going to tell him. I just wanted to get him out to the car. Finally I said that one of Hedman’s people, the cook, had phoned me up with a story about bribes and collusion. The reverend sobered up in a hurry. I said I’d arranged to meet the cook at my place, and would he like to come along. So off we went.”
Gun swallowed the last of his cold coffee and grinned into the cup.
“Then we took Barr out to your boathouse. I think Mike’s still in shock. His mom, the conspirator.”
“How’d you get the boathouse open? I had it padlocked, I think.”
“Before Mike and I went over to Barr’s, we stopped at old man Calvert’s, borrowed his lock clipper and bought a new one.”
“So Barr’s just waiting for us, then.”
“He’s waiting, all right. The question is how we’re going to reach him.” Carol sighed, then looked at Gun hard, her pupils bright as knife points. “This is the part I haven’t told you yet. Hedman’s got roadblocks on every road leading into the county.”
Gun could almost feel his brain notch into gear and start spinning off possibilities.
Carol said, “My paper hit the stands at eight-thirty this morning, and you’d better believe it caused a stir.
Hedman called me at a quarter to nine, just before I left. He threatened to have me arrested.”
“For what?”
“He wasn’t too specific.”
“Tell me about the roadblocks.”
“Like I said, every road leading into the county. Highways, township roads, everything. Tar and gravel. The official version is that ‘suspected felons’ are in the area; Sheriff Bakke loves his sweet ambiguities. But Hedman’s had every one of his paper-mill workers deputized. He’s taking no chances.”
“I’m flattered,” Gun said.
They drove on under overcast skies, crossed through customs without incident and continued southeast, the low marshland of the northern counties stretching out on both sides of the road, the real pine country still a hundred miles off. Half an hour beyond the border, Gun pointed at a green sign that said, hope, 5 miles. “There’s a good little cafe there,” he said. “Anybody hungry?”
“I am,” said Mazy from the backseat. She sat up and leaned forward, pushing her face between the bucket seats. “You two look nice together,” she said.
36
Gun parked in front of a small brick cafe on a mostly boarded-up Main Street. The sign painted in red letters across the big picture window said fat Freddie’s. In smaller letters below, it said Post Office in Rear: Hope, Minnesota 56362.
“You sure about this?” Carol asked.
“Freddie eats his own cooking,” Gun answered.
They got out of the Horizon and stretched. Jack and Geoff came rumbling up in Gun’s pickup. Gun walked to Jack’s window.
“Geoff behaving himself?”
Geoff leaned forward. His face had gotten older on the drive. “You guys are done,” he said. “All done. You might as well let me off here.”
“Surly child,” said Jack.
They were given the window booth. The place wasn’t particularly clean, but the burgers were thick, the buns homemade. Fat Freddie was nowhere to be seen. Gun ate quickly and finished first, then gave a summary of Carol’s news from Stony. As he spoke he took out a small pearl-handled jackknife and started working on his fingernails. “Hedman might have all the roads into the county sealed off,” he said. “But there’s another way in. By water. The northern tip of Stony Lake juts over the county line. All we need to do is reach the lake, find a boat, and head for my place. We pick up Barr and motor on into town, right up to the docks at the Muskie Lounge. If the referendum’s passed, and you can bet it will have, the celebration will be in full swing.”
“Where’s the boat going to come from?” Carol asked.
“There are lots of good boats up there on the north end. We’ll get a friend to lend us one.”
“It might not be so easy for you to find a friend tonight,” Carol said.
“Maybe not,” Gun agreed. “But when I need to, I can turn on the charm.” He pointed his jackknife at her.
“I think tonight you’ll need to.”
“You watch,” Gun said.
The waitress came with the check and set it down in front of Jack, who slid it over to Gun. “You’re treating, right?”
The waitress now at the till was older, with red eyes and orange lipstick. Her cheeks were broad, the skin starting to sag. “Your face,” she said, waving the twenty Gun handed her. “I could swear I’ve seen it.”
“I don’t think so,” Gun said.
They left Fat Freddie’s. Gun was following Geoff down the sidewalk when suddenly Geoff turned. “Gun,” he said. “I really need some cigarettes. Mind if I run back in?”
“Didn’t know you smoked.”
“Only when I’m nervous.”
“I’ll go in with you.” Gun steered Geoff back inside by an elbow.
Geoff told the woman at the till he wanted three packs of Camels, then picked up a pen from the counter and started writing a check. Gun stopped him and paid for the cigarettes with a five.
“My treat. Let’s get going.” He took Geoff’s elbow, but Geoff pulled away.
“I should use the can. Before we take off.” Geoff’s face verified the urgency in his voice.
Gun waited outside the men’s room. “Feel better?” he said when Geoff emerged. Geoff only smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
Back on the road the barren lowlands began to give way to an occasional hill populated with scrub pines. The wind seemed to be coming from the west and south at the same time, and Gun suspected about sundown it would switch around to the east again. The thinning cloud co
ver would firm up and drop down low, making good darkness.
Mazy was in the front seat now, Carol in back. It was the first time Gun and his daughter had been alone together since the rescue, and they talked quietly while Carol slept, told each other old family stories. The memories were fresh tonight, pleasant to dwell on, not painful, Gun realized.
“I’m sorry I missed so much,” he said.
“It’s okay.” Mazy leaned back on the headrest and smiled at the ceiling. “Mom said something once, late in the summer. You were on a road trip.”
“As usual.”
“She told me that missing someone you love is a privilege.”
“She was right,” Gun said.
Silence. He looked at his daughter, who smiled thinly, turned away. She said, “Sometimes I wasn’t
sure if you missed her at all. I was afraid the only thing hurting you was the guilt. I wanted to think it was love too.”
“Both,” said Gun. “A lot of both, Mazy.” He swallowed hard, trying to relax the swelling in his throat. He was afraid to let himself speak again.
37
Gun slowed the car as it neared the crest of a long climb, dark trees rising up on both sides, headlights spearing the low gray clouds like a pair of giant white fingers. Then the road flattened out and Gun pulled onto the gravel shoulder. On a clear night the view from here would be magnificent, an endless reach of black forest, dotted here and there with lights and cleft in two by the liquid expanse of Stony Lake. But the wind had shifted around to the east, as Gun had expected, and tonight not a single light was visible. He shut off the engine and rolled down his window. As if wakened by the silence, Mazy sat up from sleep. No one spoke. Gun could smell the lake. He could feel the cool late-inning buoyancy in the space beneath his heart.
The rumble of the pickup approached from behind. Headlights illuminated the inside of the Horizon, and Gun got out and walked the ten yards back along the gravel shoulder to talk with Jack.
“Let’s park in Landsom’s gravel pit,” Gun said. “We can walk from there, through the federal land.”