“Wasn’t lying, Gillespie,” he says as the barrel of Rod’s gun, however briefly, leaves Vonda’s neck.
And puts his right hand in his jacket pocket.
* * * *
and...
* * * *
When it begins, it sounds like thunder.
* * * *
5
1
S
lowly John takes his hand away, from Lisse’s mouth, keeping it up, though, to caution her against speaking. The idea that what he hears is thunder—deep and constant and rumbling and growing—is wrong. He knows it not by the sound, but by the vibrations beneath his feet.
The breeze strengthens, just enough to lift dust, just enough to turn his head slightly as he moves toward the pasture fence, uncertain, left hand moving as if searching for something to hold on to. Fran looks over at him and he shrugs; the riders in the pasture are having a difficult time controlling their mounts; a flutter of wings as some small bird flees a tree near the paddock.
“John,” Lisse whispers, “is it an earthquake?”
“No,” he whispers back, and asks her with a simple gesture to hold on for a minute, don’t speak yet.
While the rumbling deepens and grows louder, and now he can feel it in his stomach, practically in his bones, and if it lasts much longer he’s pretty sure he’s going to come down with the emperor of all headaches.
The breeze is strong enough now to set smaller branches trembling in the taller trees’ leafless crowns. Pine needles stir and shift. Dead leaves stir, and shift.
Deeper still, the vibrations shimmer through his legs into his stomach, and there is a terrifying moment when he fears they will affect his heart.
Lisse grabs his elbow, not to pull him back but to hold on. “Horses?” she wonders.
“Can’t be,” he answers. “There aren’t that many of them. Certainly not enough to do that,” and he points to a narrow puff of dust that rises sharply a few inches over the grass near the fence. A second erupts in front of the far stable door. From his left, over by the creek, they hear what sounds like a score of birds shrieking.
“Hey, Mr. Bannock,” Kyle calls. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t know,” he yells, but he can’t help a check of the cloudless sky just to be sure there really aren’t any thunderheads up there.
Louder.
Deeper.
Suddenly his right hand snaps out and grabs Lisse’s arm.
The sound, it isn’t constant, isn’t smooth. Within that cavern-deep rumbling he can hear the rhythm that distance had masked.
“Oh man,” he says.
Lisse tries to pull him away. “What? What do you mean? John, what is that?’’
Another dust eruption in the pasture, not much higher than the highest blade of grass, but dark enough for him to see that there are others out there, swelling upward, hanging briefly, then scattered by the wind.
“John?”
“I was wrong.”
And Fran races toward the fence, hands cupped around her mouth, screaming, “Les! Sharon, ride! For God’s sake, ride!” Climbing the fence, screaming, “Ride, Les! Ride!” while she waves her right arm frantically, sweeping her husband and Sharon to the east.
That’s all it takes.
John breaks for the fence himself, realizing what a stupid, pointless gesture it is. There’s nothing he can do, and had he any sense he’d be running in exactly the opposite direction. But he has to see. He has to make sure. And he has to know that Les and Sharon will be okay. He doesn’t realize he’s still holding Lisse’s arm until she stumbles and falls to one knee, jerking him around, nearly bringing him down, too.
She’s crying, and back there Kyle and Mag are making their way toward the house, torn between curiosity and fear, neither stronger right now.
He turns.
Fran screams her warning without a breath, arm still sweeping, her voice rising to a helpless keen as Les and Sharon, struggling with the roan and gray, finally get them moving and charge toward the stables. Les’s hat is gone, and Sharon leans so far over her mount she seems molded to its neck.
John thinks Sharon is screaming, too, but he can’t hear her; the thunder not thunder has grown too loud.
When he sees it, he gasps.
* * * *
2
The sound is like splitting glass, and Gillespie, his right shoulder exposed, jerks the arm, and his gun, out and away from Vonda, who falls immediately to the pavement.
Nothing moves but the dust cloud.
No one moves but Gillespie, whose knees buckle and he lurches against the display window, rights himself and begins to run.
Arn stares dumbly at his wife, then wheels and snatches his gun from the cruiser hood, races back to the center of the street in an awkward crouch and hopes to hell he’s better here than he is on the firing range.
The breeze turned wind sweeps the dust down Madison, blurring the sun and sky.
Gillespie fires wildly, staggering toward the corner, and Arn fires back just as wildly, half blinded by the dust, shoved by the wind, wondering why in the hell the others aren’t getting into the act, why does it always have to be him that does all the damn work.
Then he realizes it’s his fault: Out here like he is, dust sweeping the street like rain, they don’t want to hit him, and isn’t that a goddamn fine kettle of goddamn rotten fish.
Gillespie fires, and a chunk of tarmac slices Arn’s left ankle, staggering him to one knee.
That’s all it takes.
Maybe it was Rafe, maybe somebody else, but a shotgun lets go, and Arn drops to the ground, firing, still firing, while thunder explodes around him, and Gillespie lets loose thunder of his own, rebounding off glass, dancing spastically, falling, getting up, a ghost in the dust that refuses to go down until Arn, choking, slammed by the wind, aims and guesses and pulls the trigger one last time.
* * * *
3
The sound is like nothing George has ever heard before.
He has given up trying to crawl to the half-open front door, and uses his right hand instead to claw at the floor while rocking side to side, hoping he’ll be able to get to the threshold. Once there he knows, he just knows, he’ll be able to figure out a way to get inside.
His broken left arm fills him with pain so intense he nearly loses vision.
He thinks he can feel something in his legs, but they still won’t obey him.
He curses himself for the tears that slide and sting into his beard, and he claws the floor again, gasping when a nail breaks, tasting blood in his mouth, willing himself to get closer to that damn door over there, it’s only a couple of feet away, even a dead man could make it.
The sound grows louder. Nearer.
And something else just inside it.
He shudders a deep breath and rests for a moment, eyes closed, listening carefully, spitting blood, until, at last, he knows what it is.
It isn’t thunder.
It’s the rhythmic beat of a hundred wings.
* * * *
4
The limousine sweeps past the house he had visited only that morning, and Trask can see the, two women on the lawn, staring at him as he passes, while that large old man leans out from under the porch roof to stare at the sky.
The noise, the thunder, whatever it is, makes the limousine shudder, and he can’t believe Sebastian is having such a hard time steering. The wheel jerks left, right, and the car swerves sharply left, sharply right.
Alonse prays aloud.
Trask prays as well, but silently as he watches the bend come at them.
Too fast, he thinks; Sebastian, you’re driving too fast, we’ll never make it.
* * * *
5
Patty races to the road, waving her arms wildly to stop the limousine, but it has already passed her, going too fast for her to catch. She can hear the sound that she knows isn’t thunder, and she knows she won’t be able to get to the ranch in time.
&nb
sp; To stop her son.
She doesn’t understand, not really, what he tried to do to her with those wonderful soft hands, and for a while it had seemed as if she’d been wandering in a dream.
Floating.
His eyes everywhere, smiling at her.
Mocking her.
But the dream, like all her dreams, had ended abruptly, and Joey was gone, and the years she had spent wandering with him all over the country tried to flood her memory all at the same time. To tell her what she’d done. To tell her what she’d seen. But it was too much, far too much, and she can do nothing now but concentrate on the fact that he’s gone, and for some reason that’s wrong, and for some reason she has to stop him.
Louder, now, the thunder, and she runs back to the house, skidding to a stumbling halt when she sees Ari lying on the porch, her father kneeling beside him, wiping something on the old man’s shirt.
“Pop,” Dory says, leaning against the post, her arms folded sternly across her chest.
Garza looks over his shoulder, and frowns only the way he can frown when his children have done something terribly, terribly wrong.
Slowly, shaking, Patty climbs the steps, her arms out for balance, and pleading.
“Pop, I don’t think it worked. I don’t think Joey did it.”
Garza nods. “The father. Must be that damn father.”
“Joey,” Patty begs, looking from one to the other. “I need to talk to Joey.”
“No, you don’t,” Garza tells her. “And even if you do ...” and he shrugs, and turns back to the task of cleaning off his razor.
“I hate you!” Patty screams.
“Too bad,” Dory tells her, turns toward the house, then whips around again, her right arm out and rigid, fist and wrist bone catching Patty across the throat and lifting her off the steps.
When she lands on the walk, she hears something snap, and sees the; sky darken, and hears nothing but the thunder, expanding in her skull.
* * * *
6
Rod Gillespie falls, more blood than flesh, and Arn rests his forehead on the street, letting the wind swing over him until he pushes up to his hands and knees, rocks back onto his heels, and coughs, and spits, and rocks up to a standing.
There are no cheers, no backslaps, no congratulations.
Rod Gillespie is down, and he cannot hear the wind.
* * * *
7
George Trout tries one more time to reach the edge of the open door. If he can grab hold, he can use it to pull him, since nothing else is working and there isn’t much time left. But his fingers won’t stretch far enough, and he can’t rock anymore, and the wings have stopped beating long enough for him to open his eyes and take stock.
He laughs.
A short laugh, a scornful laugh, but a laugh nonetheless.
“And the horse you rode in on,” he yells, just before the crow with the bright blue eyes brings its beak into George’s eye that isn’t gray anymore.
* * * *
8
Over the rise.
They come over the rise.
The palomino’s bobbing headfirst, mane brushed by the wind that flows out of the north. Then its neck. Its chest. Its forelegs. Until it stands alone on the upper pasture, and the dust begins to rise and flow like dark water along the top of the grass, through the grass, bending and snapping the blades that are caught and taken with it.
Standing alone under a sky John thinks is much too large, much too high.
Standing alone, while the thunder not thunder continues to roll behind it.
He can’t help it; he feels the tears, standing alone at the fence, with Fran far to his right silently urging her husband on, Lisse behind him on her knees, begging him not to leave her.
He feels the tears.
And something else.
Facing the wind and its debris, unblinking, breathing deeply, waiting for the moment when the dream will end and he’ll wake up in New Orleans or Denver or Ossining or San Diego just in time to make another tape, and have another drink.
“Joey,” he whispers.
And Joey, astride the palomino’s back, lifts his hand and waves. Just once.
Although they’re several hundred yards apart, John whispers the little cowboy’s name again, and he can hear the response clearly, whispering in his ear:
“Casey’s wrong, Dad, you’re going to die.”
* * * *
6
N
o,” John says.
And, “No,” he says again.
The palomino rears, forelegs slashing at the sky, and the thunder increases as the animal swings around to face him and begins to move.
The others come behind it, heads first, then chests, over the rise, moving slowly through the wind.
Inexplicably, Les and Sharon have stopped, and Fran is too hoarse to scream at them anymore; all she can do is pound the top of the fence in frustration and point and shake a fist and look as if she’s going to climb over, run out, and drag them home.
John takes an uncertain step back as Royal shifts smoothly into a trot, and the herd follows suit, still flowing over the rise.
“I thought...” says Lisse behind him, “I thought you said there weren’t that many.”
He can’t answer; he doesn’t have an answer.
Not a dozen.
There were scores.
Their hooves pound the grass, raise the dust, join the wind; feed the thunder.
“John, let’s get out of here.”
They spread across the full width of the pasture, from a trot to a canter, and he can feel the pressure of their urgency to move faster, can see it in the way their heads move, in the way they skip a step, prance, canter on.
Waiting for the order.
Not scores.
There are hundreds.
“Les,” Fran whimpers as she climbs stiffly off the fence.
Les and Sharon are still halfway to the stable, and John realizes they can no longer go sideways to escape the herd, because the herd is too wide, and their horses are suddenly fractious, fighting their bits, fighting their riders.
“Les,” Fran whimpers. “Les.”
John backs away, watching Royal, watching Joey, dust like amber smoke rising from the herd, swirling around it and through it, until there is only a flash of a head, a reach of a leg, a smear of flank.
Dust-smoke boiling into the sky, prairie fire, wildfire, but instead of crackling flames there is only thunder, the sound of hooves.
Sideways now, he takes Lisse’s hand, resisting when she tries to pull him toward the house. “I don’t think so,” he says. “I don’t think that’ll matter.”
She doesn’t ask how he knows that, just changes direction toward the drive, pausing only when Fran calls to her, not for help but to catch something she tosses underhanded after digging it out of her jeans. It falls short, raises dust, and Lisse hurries over, holds up a set of keys John recognizes belong to the Jeep.
“Fran,” he yells, to be heard over the thunder. “Fran, come on!”
Her hands lift helplessly—I can’t, I can’t—and she edges toward the stable door.
* * * *
The palomino charges.
* * * *
John’s first running step is a stumble, because he can’t not watch Les and Sharon, still fighting their mounts until the first of the herd reaches then, with the dust-smoke, and the thunder, and he isn’t sure if Sharon falls or Les’s roan is toppled because one moment they were there, and the next moment there is nothing but the smoke and the charging herd.
Still, he doesn’t run again until Lisse tugs frantically at his shirt. Then he moves, not looking back, brandishing a fist to drive Kyle and Mag toward the Jeep. Mag bolts instantly, but Kyle is frozen, mouth gaping, eyes in full wide panic.
“The fence,” the boy says as John reaches him and grabs for his arm. “See? The fence. Sharon will jump the fence, she can do that, she’s really good, but—”
Joh
n sees the herd and nothing else.
“Come on, kid,” he urges, trying to turn the boy around. “We have to go. Now!”
In the Mood - [Millennium Quartet 02] Page 31