“As it happens, richard,” Nacho snapped, beginning to boil. “I do DHTML and JavaScript with back-end server perl/CGI scripts for high-profile e-commerce Web site architecture, as well as audio/video capture and digitized real-time media streaming. You ever thought about a Web site, Karl? You’d be amazed how it can boost business, even for a little trinket shop like yours. If you’re interested, I could fit you in later this week sometime. How’s Wednesday look?”
Karl just glared at him and curled his lip.
“Hey,” Nacho said apologetically, “did I lose you with the technical stuff? Here, let’s try it in simpler terms.” He began talking very slowly. “A Web site is a—”
“You punks think you’re so smart, don’t you,” Karl cut him off, “just because you sit around playing computer games while the rest of us are out here working for a living. But you’ll sing a very different tune when we get a sheriff in this town. You try these tricks in front of my store then, I’ll call the law down on you so hard it’ll make your cocky little teeth rattle. What you do with that board constitutes a clear public nuisance, boy, and they’ll confiscate it. Then you can walk here to make fun of me.”
“Woof,” Nacho said. “Woof, woof.”
Karl clearly had no idea what to make of this response.
“What’s it like, bein’ Hamilton’s little lapdog, Karl?” Nacho asked. “She feed her pretty boy yummy little doggy treats?”
“I don’t have to take this.” Foster sneered and turned to go back inside his store, but as he reached the entrance he turned back. “You know, there’s a lot of support around here for making skateboarding illegal inside town limits, son. When they take your toys away, they may give you hoodlums tickets too. Hope your computer business pays well enough to cover the cost.” Then he spun away into his shop.
Filled with disgust, Nacho jumped onto his deck, set his board down, and kick-flipped the steps back onto the sidewalk, leaving a splintered gouge in Karl’s top stair.
Karl came racing out after him screaming like a banshee, but Nacho was already soaring down the street, too far away to hear, too free to care.
“It’s about commitment!” Greensong insisted. “You can’t say, ‘I stand for justice’ and then do nothing!”
“Of course not,” Rose said. “But there are ways to act without becoming just like what you’re acting against.”
“There’s no resemblance between me and them!” Greensong shouted. “They trash whole ecosystems to enrich themselves! I’m saving whole ecosystems for free!”
“Saving lives by taking lives?” Bellindi asked quietly. “The kinds of things you suggested to those kids could have left men maimed or even killed. Do you think it’ll be easier to save our forests when everyone thinks we’re criminals and they’re the victims?”
“Are a few dead men worse than the extinction of every salmon on the West Coast?” Greensong screeched, waving toward the window of her rented cabin as if an entire school of them were swimming in the twilight just outside. “Everything that lives in these forests is in danger of extinction. Men aren’t! I’m sorry, but you’re a couple of very nice girls from a very nice place that knows nothing about the real world.”
“If your ‘real world’ is about killing people to protest their lack of concern for the sacredness of life,” Bellindi said darkly, “I don’t think I want any of it here. And I doubt anyone else will either. If you think fighting Ferristaff all by yourself will be more effective, just keep spouting suggestions like the ones you’ve been making. You’ll have your forces down to one in no time.”
“If you’re so sure of your position,” Rose asked, “why did you propose these things to no one but a bunch of kids?”
“Because they can still hear me,” Greensong spat. “They’re not already brainwashed like the two of you.”
“Or because they’re so much easier for you to brainwash,” Rose replied evenly. “We came up here because we want to see Ferristaff stopped worse than you do, and you’re about to hand him the war. I’m not about to let that happen. Trust me, if there’s one tree spiked, one bomb made around here,” she rolled her eyes, unable to believe Greensong had even suggested such a thing, “we will know, and we will report you.”
“You traitorous little bitches.” Greensong sneered. “Are you sleeping with Ferristaff, or just running his errands?”
Rose looked at Bellindi, who was clearly struggling to keep her composure. “Hate us all you want,” Rose shrugged, turning back to Greensong, “but if you come up with any more plans that stupid, at least have the courage to propose them to adults next time, not just Taubolt’s kids.”
She and Bellindi turned to leave, wanting to finish the long walk home from Greensong’s isolated cabin before total darkness, but as they reached the door, something crashed through a window to their right, spraying glass onto the table there before skidding to a halt on the floor. As both girls froze, a second, closer window shattered. Greensong bit off a scream as a fist-size rock passed within inches of her shoulder and thudded off a low cabinet. Rose and Bellindi crouched down and scurried back toward Greensong who was cowering behind a kitchen chair—the only cover close at hand. The sound of laughter blossomed not far outside. Several men, from the sound of it.
“Hey, Greendyke!” bellowed one of the men outside. “Wanna get lucky?”
More laughter, loud and mean.
“We do!” shouted a second man. “Come out and dance, you tree-huggin’ bitch!”
“Yeah!” laughed the first man, “I wanna spike your tree, darlin’!”
More hilarity, and the sound of boots crunching on gravel as the men approached.
“I’ve got a gun!” Greensong shouted desperately.
Perhaps it was the fear in her voice that gave her away, but the men outside just laughed. “So have I, lady!” jeered the second man’s voice. “Hot, hard, and loaded.”
“Know which end to shoot from, honey-cum?” called the first man.
Suddenly the back door just behind them shattered with a clamoring racket, causing all three women to scream and throw themselves against the farthest wall. A third man stumbled through its ruin, leering and obviously drunk. “Boo,” he said, thinking this so funny that he could only lean against the ruined jamb and laugh at first.
“Oh, looky here!” exclaimed one of the men from out front, sticking his face in through a broken window. “Bonus points, Sandoval! One for each of us!”
“Three little tree huggers, lined up on a wall,” chanted the man who’d broken in the door. “Tasty little rabbits, and I’m gonna eat ’em all.” He bent double with drunken laughter as his two companions pushed the front door open and came inside as well.
“What kind of animals?” Ferristaff growled in disbelief. “Didn’t they have guns?”
“Of course.” Bruech shrugged. “But it was dark, and they kept missing. Apparently this went on all night, and by morning they’d had enough. They packed up and high-tailed it out of there.”
“Well, I didn’t pay them to turn and run the minute they encountered a little wild life, you can tell ’em there’s no check in the mail.” Ferristaff ran a hand through his thatch of silvering hair, and went to stare unhappily out at the darkness through one of his expansive living room’s picture windows. The house he’d built of local timber here in the hills outside of Taubolt had an impressive view of the coastline meandering north into the moonlit haze. “Frankly, I’m tired of all these ridiculous setbacks, Bruech. Why is it suddenly so hard to get a simple little survey done?”
“I’m as frustrated as you are, Robert, but I don’t know what else to try,” Bruech protested. “It’s like sending men into the devil’s triangle up there. I hire seasoned professionals—people we’ve used lots of times in much rougher terrain than this seems from the air—but they just end up wandering in circles, or losing their equipment. Now this. I don’t know what to make of it.”
“Well someone has to own that mysterious hole,” Ferris
taff grumbled. “Whoever that is could answer most of the important questions. Why haven’t you found them yet?”
“Frankly, sir, I think they’re hiding from us. Or being hidden. It’s the same game these people have been playing since we got here.”
Ferristaff said nothing to this. The memory of his embarrassment when he’d tried to leverage some cooperation from these yokels by reporting their tax evasion was not one he wanted stirred. Someone had beaten him to the punch there, and he wasn’t going to try it again, even if he thought anyone would pay attention to his accusations a second time. “There must be something we can use to make them quit this shit,” he muttered.
His thoughts were derailed by the sound of tires crunching across his gravel drive.
“Who would that be?” Ferristaff murmured, going to the door. Before he got halfway there, someone was banging on it to wake the dead. Angered, Ferristaff picked up speed, Bruech following behind, and yanked the door open to find Tom Connolly glaring at him on the porch.
“I want you out of here!” Connolly shouted so fiercely that Ferristaff balled his fists, bracing to block a swing that didn’t come. Connolly just stood there, shaking and livid, and continued to shout. “Your whole goddamn company and these goddamn thugs you import had better be packed up and—”
Ferristaff simply slammed the door shut again in his face, but Connolly resumed banging on it almost immediately.
“What the fuck is he about?” Ferristaff snapped at Bruech, who simply shrugged, looking startled. “If you can’t calm down and talk to me like a civilized man, Mr. Connolly,” Ferristaff shouted through the heavy redwood door, “then you’d better go because I’m about to call the police!”
“From Heeberville?” Connolly jeered back. “Now I’m scared! As it happens, they’re already on their way! I called them half an hour ago!”
“What?” Ferristaff asked, turning back to Bruech, who simply shrugged again and shook his head.
On the porch, Connolly had finally fallen silent.
“Mr. Connolly, I don’t know what’s happened, and I do want to,” Ferristaff said more calmly. “If I open this door, will you tell me what’s going on in some more reasonable manner, or do we have to wait until there are officers here to protect me?”
“Oh, that’s rich!” Connolly snapped.
After another lengthy silence, Ferristaff, who had never had much trouble handling himself in a fight, shrugged at Bruech, and opened the door.
Connolly stood glaring as before, obviously struggling for control. “Three of your men,” he rasped, “just tried to rape my daughter.”
Ferristaff’s jaw swung down like the tailgate of a dump truck. “My God!” he breathed. This was trouble. Real trouble, if not managed carefully. Fortunately, his very real shock seemed to temper Connolly’s rage, if only slightly. “Is she—” Ferristaff began.
“Jake happened to be nearby and got to them in time to stop it,” Connolly grated. “But your presence here has got to end. By morning, you won’t have a friend left in—”
“Mr. Connolly,” Ferristaff cut in levelly, “are you suggesting that I had something to do with this appalling crime?”
“You came under false pretenses,” Connolly accused, “and your activities here have been nothing but one big toxic spill ever since! We don’t want any more of—”
“I am deeply, deeply sorry about what’s been done to your daughter, Mr. Connolly,” Ferristaff interjected again, “and I will spare no effort or expense to see that these man are found and—”
“They’re already in custody,” Connolly interrupted in turn. “The only thing you can do for us is leave. If you need help packing, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
“I own this land, Mr. Connolly,” Ferristaff said, allowing just enough steel into his voice to cut through any illusions Connolly’s distraught condition might have allowed him. “I bought every acre I’m harvesting up here fair and legal. I’m sure I’d feel just as you do, had it been my daughter, but I am not the guilty party here, nor in any way associated with what those jackasses did. Consider them fired, and I hope they hang, but I have no intention of going anywhere. I don’t want you to leave here confused about that.”
“It’s your neck,” Connolly said with pure contempt, and whirled toward his car.
A moment later, as Connolly sped off in a spray of gravel, Ferristaff turned to find Bruech looking rather gray. “Forget the north coast for now. First thing in the morning, I want everything there is to know about this whole sorry fuckup. We’ve got some serious damage control ahead of us. Stockholders hate this sort of thing.”
“How’s Hawk handling it?” Ben asked somberly.
“He’s awfully torn up for Rose,” Laura said, “and angrier than I’ve seen him since Sandy left. He’d like to see those men all killed, I think.”
“I can’t blame him,” Ben replied, frowning more at the mention of her abusive ex-husband than of the would-be rapists. Over the years, it had become only harder to forgive himself for leaving her to such a fate.
They walked along the dry, grassy path in silence for a while, listening to the sigh and boom of surf from beyond the cliff tops. Laura had called him at the inn that morning to say she couldn’t paint and didn’t want to sit alone at home. Joby was at school, and Hawk was skipping classes to spend the day with Rose at her house. Ben had suggested lunch and a walk.
“That little flyer’s not going to improve tempers either,” Ben observed.
“What an ass,” Laura sighed. “Pretending to sympathize, while virtually blaming her at the very same time. Who does Ferristaff think he’s fooling?”
“Does seem like he’d have done better to say nothing at all,” Ben agreed.
The half-sheet flyers were circulating all over town. With impressive speed, Ferristaff had arranged for someone to leave little piles of them everywhere. Laura had been shown one at lunch, by a friend at the restaurant, and been almost too angry to eat after reading it. While decrying the terrible act, and calling for the stiffest punishment allowed by law upon Ferristaff’s three now ex-employees, the flyer had also suggested that it might be safer for Taubolt’s youth to avoid “associating with known provocateurs.”
“She only went up there to talk that woman out of what she was planning!” Laura said heatedly. “He should be thanking her, not accusing her of asking for trouble!”
“In a town this size,” Ben said, kicking himself for bringing it up again, “everyone will know that soon enough, and Ferristaff will only have slit his own throat further.”
“I know,” Laura said sullenly. “But any idiot should have seen how those flyers will infuriate all Rose’s friends. If anything, he’s just given them all one more reason to flock to Greensong’s side. I hope whoever distributed those things had the sense not to leave any at the school.”
“If they did, I’m sure Joby had the sense to get rid of them quickly,” Ben said, eager for a change of subject. “I’ve gotta say, it’s great to see him catch his stride again at last. It’s even better to see you guys together finally,” he added to be politic. “Took him long enough, but all’s well that ends well.” Receiving only striking silence in response, Ben looked curiously at Laura, and said, “Isn’t it?”
For a moment, she just looked away uncomfortably as they continued to walk. Then she said, “Ben, I’m so glad you’ve come. There’s been no one I could talk to here. Who knows Joby like you do, I mean.”
“Hey,” Ben said, touching her arm to draw her to a halt. “What’s wrong?”
She turned back to look at him. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Maybe nothing, but . . .”
“Is it Hawk?” Ben asked. “Do you think he suspects?”
“No,” she said, looking suddenly older and more tired than he’d ever seen her. “And he never will. It’s way too late to change that decision now. But it’s so hard deceiving him. And, for the rest of our lives, Ben? I wish we’d told him.”
“I know,” Ben
said miserably. “I’ve always hated lying to him too, but I’m still not sure we had a choice. He was in such awful shape. One more blow, and who knew what he’d have done to himself? He was even worse when I saw him back in Berkeley. There’s just never been any good time to tell him, and now . . . You two are together. That’s the future. The past is past,” he said, wondering how much richer and more joyful both their lives might have been if he’d just had the courage to stay with her and help her raise the boy himself. He hadn’t felt remotely ready to be a father or a husband then, but he’d have been better than Sandy, and now he’d have had everything his heart desired. Why, he wondered, did such clarity always seem to come so long after it was needed?
“But that’s just it,” she said unhappily. “I’m not sure the past is gone at all. Not for Joby. Sometimes, when we’re together, I’d swear we’re right back in high school.”
“What do you mean?” Ben asked, both genuinely dismayed and uncomfortably curious to learn that all was not as well between them as he had assumed.
“We’ve been together for a year, Ben,” she said, just above a whisper, “and we’ve still never slept together. We smile. We kiss. We cuddle. We talk. He says all the right things—does all the right things—until it’s time to move ahead—somewhere—with what we have. Then . . .” She raised her hands helplessly. “I’ve tried nudging him, but he’s full of perfectly reasonable answers. ‘Why rush? Let’s enjoy all the seasons of our relationship! Lay solid foundations!’ Ben, there’s nothing there to argue with, but sometimes it feels so much like he’s not there either!”
“Then nudge harder,” Ben said, compelled to encourage her despite another wish he didn’t want to acknowledge even to himself. “You’ve just got to tell him how you feel—what you want.”
“And do what I did to him the last time?” she said.
“What?” Ben said. “I don’t see how telling him—”
“That he’s got to sleep with me or lose me?” she said, almost shrilly.
The Book of Joby Page 49
