And finally it did not explain Valhalla, the fact that Stone found himself sitting alone at night in the freezing shell of a Cadillac staring up at the floodlit spectacle of a small band of ghetto youth casually plundering the life’s work of some anonymous St. Louis junkman. Stone thought of all the wine and liquor they had to choose from. He thought of the walk-in refrigerators Smiley had talked of, filled with meats and cheeses and every other kind of “vittle.” He thought of the sauna and the beds and the baths and the centrally heated air, and the books and phonograph records and films. And somehow he could not help thinking of it all as his, his world as much as the junkman’s that the Mau Mau were plundering. In his mind, they were the Visigoths in Rome, they were Pizarro’s men in the golden halls of Machu Picchu. They did not belong.
All this, however, was only tangential to his real concern, which was for the junkman’s daughters. He accepted it that their little brother was dead, that he had been the tiny figure thrown over the side with his father and grandfather, and possibly his mother too. But Stone believed that the girls themselves were still alive, still prisoners, fair game for rape and mutilation and other hobbies of the General and his gang. He knew that he could not save them from what they already had endured, but the idea that he should do something, try to rescue them, while they still could be rescued, began to feed on him. It worked down to the softness at his center, however, and he told himself that he could not do it, not just one man with a puny thirty-eight pistol. And even if he retrieved the rifle he had hidden in the dead tree as well as Kelleher’s forty-five from the ruins of his cabin, he knew that it would make no difference. Even with three guns, and even if he struck in the middle of the night, when most of them would be drunk and asleep, the outcome would still be the same. He might be able to take a few more of them with him, but ultimately he would be killed, and the girls would be right where they were now. He was only one man. Nothing was going to change that fact.
And yet he began to realize that he had no real choice in the matter, that just as he was unable to go up there and free the sisters, so was he unable just to pick up and leave. Though he had told Eve and Eddie and Tocco that he planned on staying near the Point for only a day before moving on, he really had not known what his plans were. As Tocco said, he did want to go after Eve. But even more, he wanted to get straight with himself again, he wanted a measure of control over his life, and that meant going on alone. But somehow both of those choices seemed strangely empty now. There was only one place he truly wanted to be. And that was Valhalla.
Only he knew he could do nothing about it now. At the same time, he knew that if anything in life was true, it was that things had a way of changing. Nothing remained as it was for very long—not even on Valhalla. So he would stay in the area. He would use one of the abandoned lake front cottages up the beach from the Point. He would watch and wait. And eventually he would make his move. It was only a matter of time.
At one in the morning, barely able to keep his eyes open, he went back to the lodge and wakened Tocco. The big Italian groaned and grumbled as he struggled out of his “bed”—two sofas that he had pushed together for himself and Annabelle.
“What the hell time is it?” he asked. “Ten o’clock?”
“After one.”
“I don’t believe it. I feel like I dropped off for a couple of minutes, that’s all.”
“Stay alert out there,” Stone said.
“Don’t worry about it.” Tocco finished checking the Sten gun and gave Stone an odd look, half salacious, half threatening. “I guess I can trust you in here with my girl, huh? You gotta be dead on your feet. Question is, will you be dead in the sack?”
Annabelle sighed wearily. “Jesus—even now. Don’t you ever quit, Paul?”
“So far you ain’t given me much reason to.”
She waved her hand at him. “Get out of here, okay? I promise, if he touches me, I’ll scream. I’ll bite off his ear.”
Tocco smiled at Stone. “And I’ll bite off his head.”
Ignoring them both, Stone lowered himself onto a studio couch across the room. He had been awake for over forty hours and he felt as tired as he ever had in his life. His body felt weighted, as if he might sink down through the couch and just keep on going. It occurred to him that if the Mau Mau came bursting through the door, he probably would not do a thing about it, other than beg them to let him sleep.
“You okay?” It was Annabelle, looking at him over the back of her sofa. Tocco was gone.
“Tired,” he told her. “I’ve got to sleep.”
“Come with us,” she said. “Please. You could help us. We could help you.”
Her voice sounded thin and strained, as if she were about to cry. But he could not raise his head to look.
“No, I’ve decided to stay here,” he got out.
“But you can’t, Stone! Not with the Mau Mau so close.”
“I’ll get by.”
“The hell you will! It’s crazy!”
“Maybe. But I’m not leaving.”
Annabelle sighed. “We’ll never make it, not on the road, in the winter. No food or anything. And you won’t make it here. Not alone. Come with us. Please.”
If she said anything more, Stone did not hear it. For he was falling now, plunging through the stillness toward the dark green bottom of his mind. During the hours that followed he remembered only one of the dreams that by morning had his clothing damp with sweat. He was on the lake in a rowboat under Valhalla and bodies were raining down upon him, roiling the water all around, making it hard for him to stand in the boat. He was shouting up at the General and Jagger and Newman to stop the slaughter, and then he saw the junkman’s daughters being dragged nude up onto the parapet. He shouted even louder, but Jagger and the General casually went ahead and tossed the girls over the edge. And Stone watched as the young bodies came plummeting toward him, until, just as they were about to strike the water, they extended their arms like wings and began to fly, to glide and roll and soar just above the surface of the lake. Time and again they passed over him so closely that he tried to reach up and catch them. And when he succeeded in getting one finally, she turned to paper in his hands, a paper airplane which he ripped open to find the message inside. Save us, it said.
Tocco woke him and Annabelle at first light. After using the bathroom, Stone went outside to see how things were on Valhalla, and he was not surprised to find them unchanged, with all the lights still on and the stereo still blasting away. Stone went on out to the dock and threw a couple of pebbles into the lake mist. Above it, the bluffs on the other side were already catching the sun. It struck him how beautiful the world still was, how spectacularly indifferent nature remained to the travails of men.
Sitting down on the dock, he watched as Tocco came toward him from the lodge.
“You gonna have breakfast with us?”
“Corn and beans?”
“What would you prefer—eggs Benedict?”
“Now that you mention it.”
Tocco smiled, but he looked troubled. “Annabelle,” he said, “she really wants you to come with us. I guess she don’t figure me much of a Boy Scout.”
“I already told her—I’m gonna stay around here. There are things I want to do.”
“Like what?”
“Personal things.”
Tocco wagged his head in pity. “You poor sap—I knew it. The second we’re out of sight, you’re gonna hotfoot it around the lake and try to find her, right? What I can’t figure is why you didn’t just go with her last night. It would’ve saved you a lot of trouble.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“I just can’t figure you,” Tocco said. “I never could. What are you—crazy? How the hell can you stay here, with all them spades breathing down your neck?”
Stone decided to change the subject. “Listen, how would you like a real meal before you take off? How would you like some steak?”
Tocco laughed. “What’re you ta
lking about?”
Over the next hour, Stone showed him. After chasing away a couple of scrawny dogs feeding on the half-frozen carcasses of the two dead cows, he used his hatchet and hunting knife to cut off sizable portions of the animals’ shoulders. Then he and Tocco built a fire on the lakeshore about a hundred yards north of the lodge, at a point just beyond an outcropping of rocks that he knew would shield them from Valhalla’s view. Because there was still smoke rising from the ruins of the cabins, Stone did not worry about the fire, and anyway he doubted that the new owners of Valhalla would be sufficiently awake and sober to care about much of anything. So he cut some green branches off one of the cedars surrounding the area, threaded the beef onto them, and proceeded to roast it.
The meat was stringy and tough, but Stone nevertheless found it delicious. And though Annabelle and Tocco obviously enjoyed it too, it was not enough to lift their spirits. Annabelle still seemed terrified at the idea of traveling alone with Tocco and she kept making remarks about their general incompetence, for instance that the two of them never would have suspected one could find beef on a cow. She said this with her customary attitude of ironic amusement, but Stone could see that it was only a pose now. For the first time since he had known her, she appeared vulnerable and even helpless. And this seemed to anger Tocco more than anything else, probably because he knew there was nothing he could do about it.
“What do you think of this character?” he asked her now. “Gonna stay around here and keep tabs on the Mau Mau—how’s that for ambition, huh?”
Annabelle looked straight at Stone. “Well, I’m not sure I believe it. Could be the minute we’re out of sight, he’ll take off in the opposite direction.”
Tocco pretended to be shocked at the idea. “What a thing to say! And about an old friend.” He looked at Stone. “She’s not right, is she, old buddy?”
Stone downed the last of a jar of tomato juice, furnished by Tocco. “All you got to do is come back and check on me. I don’t mind.”
“But why?” Annabelle was angry now. “What can you be thinking of? You just want to commit suicide, is that it?”
“No, I figure I’ll be better off than you two. Here, I got food—a corn crib full of it. And I got water and firewood and shelter.” He nodded toward the cluster of abandoned cottages about a quarter mile up the beach from the lodge.
“And what about them?” Annabelle asked. “The Mau Mau.”
“They’re why I’m staying.”
Tocco laughed and shook his head. In frustration, Annabelle repeated his words.
“They’re why you’re staying?”
“I figure they won’t be able to keep it going up there. Machines will break down. Things will change.”
“So what?”
Stone knew there was no way to say it without sounding like a fool, so he said it plainly. “So I’ll wait till they’re weak enough, and then I’ll take over.”
“Take over?” Tocco laughed again, louder this time.
“That’s right. I’ll hit them at four in the morning, and kill as many as I have to.”
Unlike Tocco, Annabelle was not laughing. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’m serious.”
“Why?”
Stone did not answer immediately. “Let’s just say I want a hot bath.”
But she would not let him off that easily. “And what else?”
“The junkman’s daughters—I want to try to save them.” Stone looked down at the fire. Though he felt foolish, he also felt a vast sense of relief, even before he articulated his other reason. “And I want to kill Rich Kelleher’s killers.”
Tocco had to get up and walk. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!” he lamented. “The man has flipped.” He went on then, enumerating all the different ways Stone would get himself killed.
“It’s just not a one-man job,” he concluded. “If you had eight or ten, maybe you could do it.”
Stone looked at Annabelle. “How about three?” he asked.
“No way,” Tocco said. “Never. Not this cat. I never been suicidal, and I don’t intend to start now.”
As Stone sat there, with his back to the lake, Annabelle’s eyes shifted from his slightly, fixing on a distant point over his shoulder. And suddenly she smiled.
“How about six?” she asked.
Stone turned and saw the rowboat plying toward them across the choppy, sun-glazed surface of the lake. He could not make out the rower or the man in the stern of the boat, but there was no mistaking the passenger in the bow, with her yellow hair blowing like a pennant in the wind.
“Six would do fine,” he said.
Twelve
The boat was still a few hundred yards out in the lake when Eddie, who was rowing, veered it toward Stone’s fire.
Annabelle had forced a laugh. “The return of the jet-setters. Just what we needed.”
Looking out over the water at the boat and its occupants, Stone thought of the first time he had seen Eve, standing alone in the doorway of the ruin, and he remembered his feeling of curiosity and excitement, so strong even then, in the first moments of her existence for him. But now, as the boat drew close enough for him to meet her gaze, he felt something much stronger, something akin to joy.
Taking off his boots, he went into the water and pulled the boat up onto dry land. Then he helped her out, hoping for some response, hoping even that she might fall into his arms and put an overdue end to their long dance of denial. But nothing had changed. All he got was an embarrassed smile and the old pulling away, the coolness of the castrator’s knife.
“You’re just in time for breakfast,” he said.
Eddie laughed and clapped him on the arm. “Stone, old buddy—just couldn’t live without you! Yeah, we smelled it halfway across the lake.”
In the stern, Jagger seemed to have all he could do just to get up and struggle out of the boat. He had nothing to say, nor would he meet anyone’s eyes for more than a moment. While Eve and Eddie both looked discouraged, he appeared in even worse shape, downcast and embittered, filled with a new and sullen rage. Seeing the half-eaten jars of vegetables near the fire, he went straight for them and began to eat, ravenously. Annabelle smiled at him.
“Have some breakfast,” she said, but he ignored her.
There was still some meat left, and after the others had gathered around the fire, Stone began to roast the remaining strips. Retrieving one of the jars of corn from Jagger, Annabelle divided it between Eve and Eddie. And Tocco went so far as to get a blanket and throw it over Eve’s shoulders. Stone noticed that the three of them had come back empty-handed except for a rifle that Eddie carried. And when none of them offered any information about what had happened across the lake, he pointedly asked them. In answer, all he got was a wink from Eddie.
After a short time, with his mouth still full of food, Jagger abruptly got up and announced that he was going to the lodge to sleep. “And don’t wake me,” he said. “Not even if the fucking Mau Mau come back. Let them kill me in my sleep.”
It was only as he disappeared around the ridge of boulders, heading for the lodge, that Stone and the others learned what had happened.
“It was just like Wimbledon,” Eddie said. “Our boy really covered himself with glory.”
Eve, staring at the fire, said nothing as Eddie went on, explaining how the group had begun to splinter soon after landing on the other side. The O’Brien brothers, with Pam and Kim, had taken their share of the food and guns and had gone on alone, while the Baggses and Goffs, being from the area, had found families willing to take them in. The rest of the group had straggled into an abandoned hardware store in Spalding, where they settled in around a fire in an unroofed part of the structure and tried finally, desperately, to sleep—but so unsuccessfully that almost half of them were awake and watching as Jagger got up and silently began to assemble a getaway pack consisting of the best food and weapons he could find in the communal stock. No one did a thing, however, not until he hefted his
treasure and began to tiptoe out of the store, at which point Awesome Dawson brought him down with a crushing tackle. The rest joined in picking him up and running him out into the street, without a crust of bread or a knife or even a match.
“Yeah, he got himself kicked out,” Eddie said. “And don’t ask me why the two of us followed him—probably out of guilt, for all the years we been living off him.”
“But why come back here?” Annabelle asked, looking wryly from Eve to Stone.
Eddie shrugged. “Who knows? I guess we wanted to catch Stone before he took off.”
“Whatever for?” Annabelle was enjoying herself. “Is he that much fun to travel with?”
“Well, maybe we just figured he was the genius who brought us here in the first place.”
Stone looked at Eve, which only made her turn away. Strangely, the night she had just passed seemed to have affected her more deeply that the day before. What the Mau Mau had not been able to accomplish, Jagger apparently had. She looked frightened and close to tears, and the fact that she could not hide it obviously embarrassed her.
Tocco decided to add to her problems. “Well, you might as well row on back,” he said. “You’ve come to the wrong place. Because your genius friend here has flipped. He’s gonna stay on right here at the Point and keep an eye on the Mau Mau. How’s that for smarts, huh?” He tapped his head and laughed.
Eve and Eddie both looked over at Stone, but they were not laughing.
He shrugged indifferently. “It’s no big thing. I just figured that for now I’ve got food and shelter here, so why leave?”
Annabelle was shaking her head in mock reproach. “Now come on, Stone—you were straight with us. Why not be straight with them?” She smiled sweetly at Eve. “You see, he plans to attack Valhalla and rescue some damsels in distress. Also get vengeance for Rich Kelleher in the bargain.”
Valhalla Page 25