In the Mood - [Millennium Quartet 02]

by Charles L. Grant

  “Tell you what,” he tells the yard. “I’m going to recite the names of all the women who have stayed in this house, as far back as I can.”

  It will kill some time, it will keep his mind off his arm and the nothing in his back and legs, and it may well amuse him.

  “Damnit, John, where the hell are you?”

  Hating the thought that he needed anyone.

  Feeling a new tear slide along his nose.

  “Did you know,” he tells the lawn, “that I’ve had every one of Marcotte Dovinsky’s wives?”

  Did you know, he thinks, that Kyle may well be my son?

  Nothing.

  No sound at all.

  * * * *

  and...

  * * * *

  No sound at all when Les Burgoyne checks the sky, makes a face, and walks over to the kitchen window. “Fran? I’m going to get the horses in. It doesn’t feel right out there.”

  “Hang on,” she says, flicking off the radio. “I’ll go with you.”

  He takes off his hat, wipes his brow with a sleeve, and has an idea, maybe help the kid out. “Sharon?”

  She stands shivering next to Kyle beneath the pines, Mag at her feet.

  Louder: “Shar?”

  When she looks, he tilts his head toward the pasture. “I’m going out to get the guys. You want to help out?”

  Kyle gives him an are you out of your mind look so comical he has to grin, and beckons him his own invitation. “No time like the present to learn,” he calls, taking his gloves from a hip pocket and pulling them on.

  It isn’t until he looks at the paddock that he remembers he only has two horses, the roan and the gray. Nice work, he thinks; nice going.

  Luckily, after a heated discussion with Sharon, Kyle stays behind. Pouting. Standing over Mag and, by his gestures, demanding she stand up. Les points as he walks over to the tack room in the stable nearest the house, and Sharon nods, veering in that direction. She seems in no hurry, and he doesn’t blame her. The shocks she’s had today, he’d probably be in bed with his wife and a bottle, not coming out until the next century got here.

  Fran beats him there and glances at the girl, asking the question with her eyes.

  “I counted wrong,” he apologizes.

  “No sweat,” and adds softly, “She needs it more than me, anyway. You’re sweet.” And kisses his cheek.

  “That’s me,” he says with a stupid grin.

  She grunts, and helps Sharon with her saddle and bridle. It doesn’t take long to get the horses ready, although they seem to be a bit skittish.

  They feel it, too, he thinks, wishing he knew what the hell “it’’ was. And when Fran opens the gate to the pasture, both animals pull hard at the reins, eager to move, get out with the herd.

  “Boy,” Sharon says, shifting in her saddle. “You give them vitamins or what?’’

  Her voice is shaky, her cheek gleaming, her eyes bright. Les wants to tease her about her seat and the way she’s hanging on for dear life, but he suspects that if he does, she’d either spit in his face or fall into hysterics. And when her mount, the gray, rears a bit, he reaches over and pulls the horse back firmly.

  “No hurry,” he says, both to the animal and the girl. “The guys aren’t going anywhere. We’ll take our time.”

  “Kyle,” Sharon tells him, “will help get them in the stalls.” It isn’t a suggestion; it’s a fact, even if Kyle doesn’t know about it yet.

  “Sure thing,” he says, twists around and waves to John.

  John waves back, and with Lisse, starts a slow walk toward them.

  “You know her?” Sharon asks stiffly. .

  “Nope. I understand he met her in New Orleans, while he was working on that book thing of his.”

  “Is she a writer?”

  He looks over. Her spine is rigid, her hands twist the reins. Oh boy, he thinks; oh boy.

  But he’s pleased that the girl’s come along. Taking care of the herd will keep her mind busy. She knows how to put distractions aside; she knows how dangerous these critters can be when they get a temper up.

  As if he’d spoken aloud, she says, “Don’t worry, Les, I’ll be all right.”

  “I ain’t worried, kid.”

  They ride on, slowly.

  “I’m scared, though.”

  He nods. “Just keep your mind on your job, nothing will happen.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I mean, I’m scared the cops won’t get him.”

  He stops, waiting until she realizes she’s alone and turns her mount to face him, its tail and ears twitching. To her apprehensive, did I do something wrong look, he says, “What I heard on the radio there, he’s holed up in a store. The bookstore by the movies. They’ll get him, Shar, don’t you worry.”

  She considers what he’s told her, and more than the odd wind and thunder, the smile that touches her lips unnerves him so much that he almost changes his mind and tells her to go back, she has no business out here, not today.

  Then the smile fades, replaced by a puzzled frown. “Listen,” she says. Looks east and west, and over her shoulder.

  He’s not sure what she means until the roan snorts and tosses its head.

  The silence; it’s the silence.

  Out here under the open sky, there ought to be at least a whisper of sound, a breeze, the herd talking to itself, a bird, something.

  But there was nothing.

  No sound at all.

  * * * *

  and...

  * * * *

  Lanyon Trask asks Sebastian to pull over there, behind that car with the windows blown out. Once the limousine has stopped, the engine turned off, he steps onto the road and approaches the car.

  “My Lord,” he says to himself. “What happened here?”

  “The wind.”

  He jumps and spins around to face Alonse. “The wind you say?”

  “Yes, sir, I believe it was that wind.”

  “Nobody inside.”

  The giant looks to the ranch entrance. “Perhaps they went there for help.”

  Trask nods. “You’re probably right, Alonse, you’re probably right.”

  He looks at the gate, at the name carved in the arch, and walks around the giant and past the limousine.

  “Reverend Trask?’’

  He steps onto the bridge, rests his arms on the rail, and looks down at Oakbend Creek. Shallow water and shifting shade, the silver dart of some small fish, the skip of a water spider darting over the surface. He feels Alonse beside him, hut he says nothing because he is struck by the way the water skims and ripples over the rocks in its bed without making a sound.

  It saddens him somehow; it saddens him deeply.

  “Alonse,” he says when too much silence makes him uneasy, “I think it’s time I stop this foolishness and let you take me home.” He leans over the rail a bit more, up on his toes, trying to see beneath the bridge. “I have been vainglorious in my beliefs, my friend. I have assumed the weight of a cloak that has not been given to me. I... I am a fraud.”

  Only then does he swivel his head around so he can look into Alonse’s face. Only then does he realize how small he truly is.

  Oddly, the giant smiles, showing all his teeth. “You remember, Reverend, a day long time ago, I cry to you about the boys in school making fun of me and Seb on account of how tall we were then, how big across? How they were supposed to be afraid of us, but they weren’t?”

  Not quite following, but recalling the moment well, he returns his gaze to the creek. “I believe I gave you and Sebastian a lecture, am I right?” He chuckles. “Or was it a sermon?”

  “You always give a sermon, Reverend,” Alonse answered gently, fondly. “Even you say hello good morning, you are giving a sermon.”

  Trask laughs, shakes his head, takes a pebble from the ground, and flicks it into the water. “And I suppose you remember the moral of that sermon?’’

  “Feel sorry for yourself, you die slow and bad the whole of your life. Every day. E
very night.”

  Trask nodded. And touched his shirt where a simple wood cross hung from a leather thong, a smaller version of the one above his office door. He reached inside and pulled it out, held it top and bottom between his thumb and forefinger. And whisper-prayed, “Lord, I don’t suppose you’d mind a coward on Your side?”

  A rustling, and Alonse’s hand appeared over the rail, a penny in the palm.

  “I make a wish,” he said. “I will make a wish.”

  A pause before the palm flips the penny high, and when it hits the water, Trask frowns and leans over again.

  He saw the splash, he can see the glint of copper, but he hadn’t heard a sound.

  * * * *

  and...

  * * * *

  John stops before he reaches the first stable, holding his hand out blindly until Lisse takes it and squeezes it.

  “It’s awful quiet,” she says. “Makes you want to take a horn and blow so loud your brains come out your ears.”

  The two riders have stopped, and he wonders if they’ve noticed the quiet, too.

  “Calm before the storm,” Lisse says with a forced laugh.

  He can hear the tension in her voice, see it in the way the muscles of her neck stand out, feel it in her grip. She’s been this way since he told her about Joey, about how, long before he married Patty, he knew he could never give a wife children, and how, after a year, they decided to adopt, and didn’t care if the child was a newborn or well into growing.

  At the time, they had thought it a miracle—Joey there, in St. Louis, the first time they went. They had no interest, not really, in who his birth parents were, and Joey took to them so fast, it was as if he’d always been in the house. From the beginning.

  “So,” Lisse had said, “you don’t know where he comes from?”‘

  “You have to remember,” he had answered, “that I’m crazy, okay?”

  She hadn’t responded.

  She knew what he meant.

  “A penny,” she says, tugging at his hand.

  “I’m wondering how long he’s been here, how many other parents he’s had. If there really are any records of him at all.”

  The tug becomes a yank. “Stop it! Just... stop it!”

  “I’m wondering,” he says, unable to stop himself, “if Ruesette Argo or Stan Hovinskal have ever met him.”

  Lisse gives his knuckles a stinging slap, and walks away. “I’m not crazy,” she insists tearfully, turning, walking backward, shaking her head. “I do not want to be crazy, John, you hear me? I—” She turns again and heads for the pines, and the drive beyond.

  “Lisse, don’t,” he calls.

  He can see Kyle and Mag staring at them, wondering; he can see Fran by the stable uncertain whether it was her place to intervene.

  He can see everything but what he’s supposed to do now, and it makes him angry, and frustrated, and makes his fingers snap at his side and his tongue work at his lips and his body sway at the waist, a slow rocking while his right heel hits the ground again, and again, and again.

  And again.

  “Lisse,” he calls. “Lisse, please.”

  She slows but she doesn’t stop, hint’s of fire in her hair and in her walk.

  Suddenly she whips around, arms flying outward, hair veiling her face, and she marches back, muttering to herself until she nearly runs him over.

  “Goddamnit, John Bannock,” she snaps, ‘‘you’re stalling again.” Tears in her eyes. “You’re loon crazy, and you’re stalling. Standing here all this time, talking to this one, talking to that one, talking—”

  “Lisse, wait.”

  “—to every damn person in the whole damn world, and you’re stalling and you know it and if you’re going to do this thing your crazy says you have to, then goddamnit, stop all this talking and go do it before I...” Tears on her cheeks. “Before I. ..” And she punches him in the chest so hard he staggers, astonished at her strength, surprised that her expression shows no regret.

  “Well?” she demands.

  He rubs his sternum gingerly, gauging the rise of his own temper.

  “You’re marked,” she says in a harsh whisper. “You can’t drink it away, you can’t run it away, all you can do is go more crazy than you are and—”

  She stops, too shocked to react, when he clamps a hand over her mouth and says, “Shut up and listen.”

  He can see by the way her eyes slowly widen that she hears it. Then Fran moves away from the stable, rubbing a hand nervously over a shoulder. Kyle and Mag, keeping close together, come out from under the pines, Mag hanging onto his arm with both hands.

  Thunder.

  At first he thinks it’s thunder.

  * * * *

  and...

  * * * *

  Lanyon Trask looks up from the water with an uncertain frown, looks to Alonse for an answer, but the giant is too busy scanning the sky.

  “Again?” Sebastian calls from the limousine.

  “I don’t know, son,” Trask answers, then grabs Alonse’s hand and heads quickly off the bridge. “But I do not believe we should stay here long enough to find out. Turn that thing around, Seb, and let’s leave. Now.”

  He doesn’t wait for either man to open the door for him. He gets into the limousine himself, even as it’s moving to face west, and pushes himself into a corner, the wooden cross in his hands.

  Thunder, he thinks, but something tells him that he’s wrong.

  * * * *

  Patty races around the house to the backyard, stumbling to a halt when she sees her father digging a hole under the trees. He looks up and scowls.

  “Dad?” she calls, “have you seen Joey?”

  “I’m busy,” he snaps. “Go away, have some respect.”

  Flustered, she backtracks to the front yard. Dory comes out of the house, shaking her head, shrugging. “So what do we do now?”

  Patty clasps her hands and holds them to her mouth. “I don’t know. He was right here a moment ago. I... he’s never done this before. I don’t know.”

  “Well, you’d better make up your mind quick, Sis.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Jesus, Patty, are you deaf? Can’t you hear it?”

  * * * *

  and...

  * * * *

  Arn holds his arms out at his sides, trying to look as sorry as he can. “Can’t let you do it, Rod. You know I can’t let you do it.”

  “You jackass,” Rod screams, making Vonda wince and begin to sob. “I’ll kill her! I swear to Christ I’ll kill her!”

  Think, the chief orders; think, because he’ll do it.

  “One more chance,” Rod warns.

  Arn knows there’s no way any of the shooters can get him, not now. He keeps moving around in that narrow recess, turning one way, then another, Vonda always at the front.

  Think, for God’s sake; think.

  But he can’t, because Rafe is hissing urgently at him, and finally he looks over his shoulder and the deputy points west, up the street.

  When he looks, he’s not sure he understands what he sees. When he finally does, he can’t help a grin.

  “Hey, Rod,” he calls, mopping his brow with a jacket sleeve, “I think it’s gonna get cooler, huh?”

  “What? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “The breeze, Rod. The breeze.”

  “What goddamn breeze are you talking about? You trying to mess with me, Baer?” He tightens his grip on Vonda, who’s struggling to keep her feet. “Three seconds, Mr. Chief. Three seconds.”

  Arn points to his right. “That breeze,” he says.

  And holds his breath.

  Prays.

  Trying to watch two things at once:

  Rod easing out of the recessed doorway to make sure there’s no trick, cops crawling up on him, maybe; and the breeze coming down Madison in the form of a faint cloud of dust as high as the tallest building. A peculiar phenomenon he’d seen once before, like watching rain come at him acros
s a pasture.