Outside, Eddie wagged his head. “Goddamn stranger,” he said. “I don’t even know him anymore.”
At the meeting that night Jagger told the group about Stone and Eddie locating the camp of the Mau Mau. Almost everyone had questions to ask and Stone answered them as well as he could, though for some reason he went along with Jagger in minimizing any danger the gang posed for the colony. Neither he nor Eddie had told anyone of the boy he had killed, and because of this he felt an oddly heavy weight of guilt as the meeting went on. The people there had a right to know, he nagged himself. The heinousness of the crime—the unspeakable mutilation of the boy—cried out to be known. Yet Stone said nothing. It was not a dog he had shot, not an animal, but a human being. The arrogance of the act cried out just as loudly for silence.
Newman suggested that it might be wise to post double guards at night, but Smiley got up and said that there was no real need for them, that “young Kelleher and whoever’s in the Cadillac” had a clear view of the pastures and the road and would be able to give warning shots in plenty of time. He added, though, that it might be a good idea if everyone “kept their pants on all night,” which elicited laughter only from Pam and Kim.
Without mentioning the gun Stone had “lost,” Jagger then went on to the O’Brien brothers and their report, which was unremarkable except for the fact that in the course of the day they had come upon a ten-point deer, which they had shot and wounded, but were unable to run to ground for almost an hour, by which time a pack of wild dogs had all but devoured it. In recounting the story, Harlan almost wept with disappointment, and the rest of the group was not much happier, already, and vainly, tasting the venison that was not to be. During the telling, Stone noticed some eye-play between Eddie and the O’Briens’ girls, play that ended with Eddie salaciously running his tongue over his lips only to be outdone by Pam popping her thumb into her mouth. Both girls giggled—until Oral told them to shut up. Losing a buck was no laughing matter, he told them.
By then Stone was anxious to leave the meeting. And when Flossie Baggs and Ruby Dawson both got up and denounced Kelleher and Tracy, saying that there was no room for sex perverts in the colony and that the two of them should be made to leave, Stone began to edge toward the door. Before he made it, however, Rich Kelleher got quietly to his feet and slunk out ahead of him.
Outside, Stone called after him, but the youth kept moving, disappearing into the darkness. Stone had no trouble understanding his need for privacy; he himself was not eager to return to his cabin and the inevitable chatter with Annabelle and Eddie. And finally he decided not to go there just yet. He circled around the lodge to the lake’s chilly shore and followed it for a time. As cold as it was this night, there was no sound coming from Valhalla, no one doing calisthenics near the parapet or swimming in the heated pool. But the lights were on as bright as ever—the only electric lights burning anywhere in the vaulting darkness—and it occurred to Stone what a beacon they presented, what an inviting blaze they must have seemed to the scared and hungry people flung across the dark bowl of land rising up from the lake. And because the Mau Mau were among those people, he suddenly wanted the voice of Stentor. He wanted to shout across the cove so loudly that the junkman would hear him even through the walls of his citadel. Turn out your lights, he wanted to shout. Turn out your goddamn lights!
Eight
Stone slept badly that night, dreaming of the black youth so constantly one would have thought the reality had not been horrible enough. Over and over his finger would close on the rifle’s trigger and the boy would do his limp dance in the roaring air, and each time the trigger would seem to grow tighter and heavier than before, until finally Stone had to pull on it with all his might to make the boy perish one last time. So for a while Stone did not even hear the banging on the door, or if he did hear it, thought it only his heart smashing at him. Then, slowly, the voice came through.
“Mister Stone! Mister Stone!”
From his mummy’s bed, Eddie joined in. “The door, Stone! For Christ’s sake, get the door!”
Stone had pulled on his pair of old jeans and now he hurried to the door and opened it—on Tracy Kelleher wearing boots and the beautiful robe of that afternoon. She looked stricken. Her eyes were streaming.
“It’s my dad,” she got out. “He’s gonna kill himself.”
“Right away. Let me get something on.”
As he dove into a sweatshirt and boots, Annabelle, awake now, asked from the bed if she should go along.
“I’ll let you know,” he said, picking up his coat and hurrying outside.
A light snow was falling and he saw Tracy already back at the door of the motor home, which was parked next to Stone’s cabin. Shivering, she held the door open for him as he went inside. Kelleher, still dressed, was sitting in candlelight at the kitchenette bar with one hand holding up a bottle of Chivas Regal while the other worried a forty-five automatic. In the ordered world of Jagger’s Point, neither of these items was supposed to exist, at least not here, in the domicile of a non-productive malcontent. But for Stone, they were very real, especially the gun, and he treated the man accordingly, not crowding him and even trying a smile.
“You’ve been holding back, John,” he said.
Kelleher did not return the smile. “You get out of here.”
Tracy had closed the door behind them. “Please listen to him, Daddy,” she begged.
“What’s to listen to? What can he change? In this world, you are what people say you are. There’s no changing that.”
“Who cares what they say!” Tracy said.
“I do. It’s my good name. And I got a right not to go on living without it. I’ve got that right.”
The words came out slurred, and Stone noticed that the bottle was over half gone.
Tracy went along. “I know what you mean, Daddy. I really do. But what happens to me then? How do I live—without you?”
“Come with me,” he said. “Let me take you with me.”
“Give Mister Stone the gun, Daddy. Please. Do it for me.”
Kelleher shook his head ponderously. “Can’t. I need it.”
But even as he was saying this, the barrel of the gun tipped forward and came to rest on the bar’s Formica top. He righted it again but Stone could see the great heaviness in him: the alcohol, the hour, the pain.
“You want me to go, I’ll go,” Stone said. “But how about a drink for my trouble? Chivas Regal—it’s been over a year since I’ve even seen a bottle.”
Kelleher shrugged clumsily. “Why not? Then you leave.”
Stone did not chance looking at Tracy, for fear he might put her father on guard. Instead he moved casually into the kitchenette and reached across the narrow bar for the bottle of scotch—only missing it and seizing the gun barrel instead. As he twisted it, wrestling the automatic from him, Kelleher seemed more relieved than anything else. He lowered his head onto the scotch-wet bar and sobbed, just as Tracy reached him, hugging him and crying too. His arm went around her, returning her embrace for just a moment before he caught himself and pulled away.
“No!” he cried. “No, honey! Please! Stay away from me!”
She moved back as if he had punched her. She looked at Stone in puzzlement and entreaty, as though he could make things right again if he chose, and when all he did was shake his head her pretty face shattered like porcelain. Crying, she ran back to the bedroom and fell into bed. Stone again reached for the bottle, this time picking it up and drinking deeply. As he set it back down, Kelleher sighed and raised his head. He looked sadly at the bottle and took a pull himself, shuddering as he swallowed the silken whiskey.
“I wouldn’t have done it,” he said. “I know me—I wouldn’t have had the guts to do it. Still, I’m glad you came by. It’s a bad night.”
He gazed at Stone with sad, bleary eyes. Yet, even at this squalid nadir of his life, the man managed somehow still to look the part of the successful middle-aged businessman. The steel-gray hair was n
o longer modishly cut and there was a stubble of gray beard on his face, but it made no difference, diminished not at all the aura of old prosperity and easy authority that clung to him like the fragrance of bay rum. Perhaps it was the beautiful wool glen-plaid robe he was wearing or the background behind him—wood-paneled and leathery, more like the interior of a yacht than a motor home—Stone did not know or really care. He did know, however, that he was going to have some listening to do, so he put the gun on safety, slipped it into his coat pocket, and edged onto a stool at the end of the tiny bar. Across from them, near the door, stood another of Smiley’s ubiquitous woodburning stoves, the only homely touch in the place, as well as the only source of heat.
“I guess you think you know what all this is about,” Kelleher said.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Rich, huh?” the father said. “Guess he’s spreading it all around. All the lies.”
Stone shook his head. “No. Not a word from him.”
“Well, who then? Those old hens at the meeting?”
“Nobody in particular. It’s just obvious, that’s all.”
Kelleher looked at him with unfocused scorn. “It is, huh? Well, you got a candy ass, my friend. Me do that to my own daughter?” He snorted at the idea. “Love her, sure. And take care of her. But what they say? That’s disgusting and sick. And ridiculous.”
“Then why the gun?” Stone asked.
“Because I got pride. I figure, when you lose respect, you might as well lose your life. Guess I’m a samurai at heart.” He pronounced it shamurai.
“But what about Tracy? Like she said, you’d be leaving her alone.”
Kelleher sighed and nodded. “Okay, all right—it’s past now. I won’t do it now. You don’t have to worry about us. If you want to leave, it’s okay. We’ll be all right.”
Stone looked at the scotch. “Oh, a couple more fingers of this couldn’t hurt me, could it?”
Kelleher reached for some glasses at the end of the bar and poured a few ounces of the whiskey into them. “Cheers,” he said.
Stone took a drink. “I’m surprised you’ve still got stuff like this. And the gun too.”
“You mean Jagger and his pals? Hell, they didn’t really search. They just asked for the weapons they already knew about.” Kelleher leaned across the bar toward Stone. “And I got plenty of ammo for it too.”
“Really?”
“Just between you and me.”
“Understood.”
Kelleher chuckled at the thought of his subterfuge and took another drink. Then, looking down the hall toward the bedroom where Tracy was, he shook his head. “God, I hope she sleeps.” Tears had formed in his eyes and when he spoke again, his voice broke. “Poor kid—what we’ve all done to her.”
Stone was not really interested in Kelleher or his story, but it seemed now that he had no choice except to remain there and listen to the man and drink his whiskey. It crossed his mind that there might also be some cigarettes stashed somewhere, but he never found the right moment to ask about them as Kelleher droned on, “spilling his depraved guts,” as he himself called it.
In the telling, however, there was not much that sounded depraved to Stone. A widower for the last three years, Kelleher had held on in Kansas City as long as he had been able to, in fact long after his business had dried up and even after the gangs had begun regular routes, making weekly calls for “protection” payments—valuables, food, bluebacks—without which one’s house was likely to be burned down or one’s children raped and stomped. So, after gathering all the food he could, all the supplies and valuables, and after installing an extra gas tank in the motor home, which he had used only occasionally before, he and Tracy and Rich had headed south, hoping to find some peaceful little town in Arkansas or Louisiana where they could sit out the rest of the bad times, the months or years it would take for the government—some government—to reestablish order.
As with Tocco and the Dawsons, it was gasoline that had brought them to Baggs’ Point, and the subsequent lack of it that had forced them to stay. At first, it had seemed almost perfect, Kelleher said. But as the weeks wore on, their sense of isolation and alienation deepened. Both Tracy and Rich became quiet and depressed, and Tracy cried often, in fact cried herself to sleep almost every night. And because she and Kelleher had always been close, especially since her mother’s death three years before, he had developed the habit of holding her on his lap each night until she was ready for bed. The intimacy of it had meant as much to him as it did to her, he said, for he had always loved the girl unreasonably. She was “so cute, so beautiful, so perfect.”
“And that’s all this whole thing is about,” he went on. “Me holding her on my lap, and the two of us kissing now and then, like any father and daughter. That’s all there was, and that’s all Rich saw.”
“That’s all?”
“Yeah, that’s all,” Kelleher insisted. “And you can tell that to those goddamn prigs over in the lodge too.”
Stone took another drink, and Kelleher just sat there glaring at him, obviously aware that Stone was not persuaded.
“You don’t believe me, I don’t give a damn,” he said. “Who the hell are you? You don’t mean a thing to me, or to Tracy either.”
“It’s Rich I can’t figure,” Stone said. “Why would he fight you if that’s all that happened?”
“How would I know?!” Kelleher yelled it in Stone’s face. “Who know what goes on in a kid’s head? Maybe he dreamed it all! How the hell do I know?”
Stone got up, preparing to leave. “Well, it doesn’t matter.”
“The hell it doesn’t! Your kid attacks you and drags you out of your home and starts punching you in front of your friends and neighbors—and you say it doesn’t matter!”
“Well, maybe he thought he had his reasons.”
“And what do you think?”
Stone did not answer for a few moments. He took one last pull on the bottle of scotch and set it down. He was through with Kelleher. He did not even want to look at him. But finally he had to, for there was still the man’s question.
“I think Rich had his reasons,” he said.
Before leaving, he walked down the short hallway to Tracy’s room and found her lying awake in bed, on her back, staring at the ceiling. Her eyes and face shone with tears that, unlike her father’s, touched Stone. Diffidently, he sat down on the edge of the bed.
“You want to come to my cabin and stay with Annabelle?” he asked. “Eddie could come over here. Or I could.”
She shook her head. Her voice was almost inaudible. “No. I’ll be all right here.”
“You sure?”
“He loves me. I love him.”
“He’s your father, Tracy.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Then why are you crying?”
“What you said to him. The way you said it. Everybody will. And he’s a good man. He’s an important man.”
Suddenly Stone did not know what he was doing in the Kellehers’ motor home. The father’s remorse was obviously just as spurious as his threatened suicide had been. And the daughter’s chief regret seemed to be the tarnishing of Daddy’s image—all of which left Stone with little to do except mourn the hour of sleep he had lost and try to make sure that he lost no more. He said goodnight to the girl and headed for the door. Kelleher, still at the bar, asked him for the forty-five.
“It’s mine,” he said. “I want it back. You can trust me with it.”
As he left, Stone slammed the door behind him.
When he reached his cabin, he wrapped a handkerchief around the forty-five and hid it under the porch, on top of one of the corner posts that supported the floor. Going inside then, he found Annabelle sitting in a rocker near the stove, bundled in blankets. She asked him how it had gone and he told her that it had been a false alarm, that all the man had wanted to do was talk. Annabelle said that she had been worried and had gone out to the barn.
“Rich Kelle
her’s on watch there,” she said. “I told him what was happening, but he barely said a word. I could’ve been commenting on the weather.”
Stone groaned, not really caring if he woke Eddie. “What are you saying?” he asked her. “You want me to go out there and tell him everything’s all right now?”
“One of us should.”
“One of us, sure. You go warm up the bed, all right?”
Outside, Stone trudged through the light snow back past the cabins and down the path to the farmyard and the small assemblage of buildings there: a barn, a chicken house, and a corn crib, all glowing pale orange in the light of a fire burning in a steel barrel situated at the corner of the open side of the barn, which extended out about thirty feet from the main part of the structure and served as a storage area for hay. The bales had been piled in such a way as to shield on two sides the person on watch. The shed wall formed the third side, and the fire barrel sat in the last, and open, side. A window in the shed wall permitted the guard to look out over the farmyard and the fields beyond, from which it was presumed any threat would come.
Stone found Rich Kelleher sitting in this fragrant little burrow on an upended bale of hay, looking out the window at the firelight and the darkness.
“Don’t shoot,” Stone cautioned. “I’m a friendly.”
Rich said nothing.
Stone told him what he had told Annabelle, that it had been a false alarm, that all his father had wanted to do was talk.
Saying nothing, Rich continued to look out the open window at the farmyard. He had a large face, with a small nose and a small mouth and a strong chin. His pale blue eyes were cold and humorless.
“Well, I thought you ought to know,” Stone said.
Finally the youth spoke. “Why?”
“Why not?”
Rich looked out the window again, his jaw a prow. “They’re not my family,” he said. “Not anymore.”
“Well, that’s between you and them.”
Rich made no response. Stone started to say goodnight and then gave it up. He had had enough of the Kellehers for one night.
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