by John Saul
Rita shook her head. “Don’t even think it. Greg is here, and there have been people in and out all evening.”
Frank felt a wave of nausea as the alcohol in his blood regained its grip on him, and he swayed slightly. “I—I don’t know what to say,” he mumbled. “I just can’t believe he’s dead. Not Max. He was so—” He faltered, unable to find the words he was looking for.
“I know,” Rita told him, gently steering him toward a sofa and signaling Greg to pour a cup of coffee from the immense silver urn that stood on a sideboard. “We’re all going to miss him terribly, but we’re going to go on, just as he would have wanted us to.” She perched stiffly on the edge of a wing-backed chair opposite the sofa.
Greg came over and set a cup of coffee on the table in front of Frank. “Looks like you’ve had a couple of drinks—” he began, but before he could finish the sentence, Rita Moreland’s melodic voice smoothly cut in.
“I think I could use one myself, Greg. I think perhaps a shot of your uncle’s bourbon might be in order.” Though she spoke to Greg, her eyes never left Frank Arnold. “Frank?”
Frank hesitated, then shook his head. “I think I’ve had enough, Rita. In fact, I probably shouldn’t have come out here tonight—”
“Nonsense,” Rita replied, letting just enough sharpness come into her voice to let Frank know she meant what she was saying and was not simply being polite. “Outside the family, no one in town was closer to Max than you were.”
Frank nodded, then licked nervously at his lips. He knew he shouldn’t say what he was about to say, but he also knew he wasn’t going to be able to stop himself. And there was something in the way Rita was looking at him that told him she already knew what he was about to say. “I think they killed him,” he blurted.
Rita Moreland, hand extended to accept the drink Greg was holding out to her, didn’t so much as flinch. Her eyes remained on Frank. “Go on,” she said softly.
Frank met her steady gaze. “I don’t know what happened to Max, but I can’t believe it was just an accident. I think they must have run him off the road or something.” He began speaking faster, his words tumbling over one another as they rushed from his mind to his mouth. “Max was a good driver. He would never have just run off the road like that. And think about it—UniChem wanted the company, and Max didn’t want them to have it—he wanted to sell it to us, he told me so—”
“Now just a minute,” Greg Moreland interrupted. He set the drink on the coffee table in front of his aunt, as Rita’s eyes remained fixed on Frank, her face an expressionless mask. Greg glared at Frank. “You’ve had way too much to drink, Frank, and I don’t know what you’re thinking, coming in here tonight—of all nights—and throwing around charges like that. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know what I think—” Frank began, but once again an indignant Greg Moreland cut him off.
“You know what you imagine,” he shot back. “If you want to know what happened, I—or even Aunt Rita—will be glad to tell you! It was a one-car accident, Frank. And it wasn’t even Uncle Max’s fault. He was already dead when the car went off the road.”
Frank frowned, as if he couldn’t quite put the words together. “I don’t—”
“You don’t get it?” Greg finished for him, his voice crackling with anger. “Well, maybe if you hadn’t gone out and gotten drunk tonight, you would get it. He died at the wheel, Frank. He’d just sold the company, which except for Aunt Rita was the only thing that meant anything to him. He was under a lot of strain, and he had a stroke while at the wheel. That’s what killed him, Frank. Not the accident. A stroke. He was already dead when the accident happened.”
Frank, dazed, sank back into his chair. His eyes fixed on Greg Moreland, but he could see by the anger in Greg’s eyes that Max’s nephew was telling him the truth. Finally he managed to shift his gaze to Rita Moreland, a wave of shame sweeping over him as he saw the pain in her eyes.
The pain he’d caused her, with his drunken accusations.
“I—I’m sorry, Rita,” he said, pulling himself to his feet and managing a single step toward her before collapsing back onto the chair.
His words seemed to trigger something in Rita Moreland, and suddenly she came alive again. “It’s all right,” she said, the forgiving words coming to her almost automatically. “We’ve all had a terrible shock today.”
“It’s not all right,” Greg Moreland broke in, his voice cold. “He had no right to come out here and upset you that way, Aunt Rita. I ought to call the police.”
But Rita held up a protesting hand. “There’s no need for that, Greg. I’ve known Frank for a good many more years than I’ve known even you. If you’ll just call Jed, perhaps—”
“It seems to me he got out here under his own steam—” Greg began, but Rita shook her head.
“We don’t need any more cars going off the road today, Greg. Please, just call Jed.”
“You don’t need to call him,” Judith put in quickly, anxious to calm the situation before Frank’s temper might erupt. “I’ll take him home, and Jed can drive me back.”
Greg seemed about to argue, but a look from his aunt changed his mind. As he stalked out of the room a moment later, he glared at Judith, and for an instant she had the strangest feeling that he was jealous. But why would he be? Since she’d been back in Borrego, he hadn’t shown the slightest interest in her. “I—I’ll just go up and get my coat,” she stammered, feeling as if she had somehow inadvertently made a bad situation even worse.
When Judith too was out of the room, Rita Moreland finally picked up the untouched drink from the coffee table, stared at it for a moment, then drained it. She paused as if waiting for the alcohol to fortify her, then once more met Frank’s eyes. “I want you to know I understand how you feel,” she said gently, her voice now free of the carefully controlled graciousness she had mastered so many years ago that it had become second nature to her. “In fact, the same thought you just expressed crossed my mind too. Max called me just before he died. Something had happened, and even though he’d already signed the papers, he said he had time to back out. And he intended to do it.” She shrugged helplessly. “I’m not sure what the problem was—he didn’t tell me. But I have to tell you the first thing I thought when Greg told me what had happened was that somehow—for some reason—they’d killed him. But I was wrong, Frank. Greg assures me it was a stroke, Frank, pure and simple. Max was at an age when those things can happen, and Greg had warned him about the possibility for months. It was just one of those things that nobody can predict.”
Frank’s sense of shame deepened.
He’d come out here to offer his condolences and express his sorrow.
Instead, Rita Moreland was comforting him.
Jed came awake slowly. Darkness surrounded him, yet his room was filled with a strange silvery glow, as if a full moon was somehow shining through the ceiling itself. But when he looked at the window, the night outside was a velvety black.
The glow was somehow coming from within the room itself
He sat up, then gasped.
Perched on the top rail of his cast-iron bedstead was an enormous bird. It looked like an eagle, but Jed was certain he’d never seen one this large. Indeed, as he watched, it suddenly spread its wings and its feathers filled the room, spreading from one wall to the other. Jed felt his heart begin to pound, and he involuntarily shrank back. But a second later the bird settled down again and its head turned sideways so that one of its eyes fixed on Jed.
It was from the giant bird’s eye that the silvery light emanated, a cold radiance that hung in the room, yet did not wash away the darkness. When Jed held up his hand to shield his eyes against it, he found that his hand was invisible. Though he could feel his fingers touching his face, the bird’s image remained before him, as clear as ever.
The bird’s beak opened, and a single word issued forth from its throat.
“Come.”
Jed froze as he
recognized the voice that had risen from the maw of the great bird.
It was his grandfather’s voice, as clear as if it had been the old man himself standing at the foot of the bed.
The enormous bird spoke the word once more.
“Come.”
And then it spread its wings and the room filled with a great roaring noise as the bird rose straight upward. It seemed to pass right through the ceiling, and as it rose higher into the pitch-blackness of the night, Jed could still see the silvery light radiating from its eyes. It hovered in the air for a moment, then wheeled around, and with a great rushing sound as its wings found the breeze, it soared toward the mesa.
As it disappeared, Jed came awake for the second time.
This time he was lying on the sofa, the television droning in the background. In his mind the dream he’d just awakened from was still fresh and vivid.
So vivid, it hadn’t been like a dream at all. Even now that he was fully awake, he still felt as if he had actually experienced the presence of the enormous bird.
He had a strange urge to go to the mesa, to Kokatí, right now, and find his grandfather.
His reverie was broken by the sound of his father’s truck pulling into the driveway, and a moment later Frank, leaning heavily on Judith Sheffield, lurched through the back door and into the kitchen. Jed stared stupidly at his father for a second, then his eyes shifted to Judith.
“He’s drunk,” she said. “Help me get him into his room, and then I’ll tell you what happened.”
Jed took his father’s other arm, and between the two of them they managed to get Frank through the living room and down the hall into the master bedroom. He collapsed onto the bed, rolled over on his back and held out his arms toward Judith. “Stay with me?” he asked.
Judith felt herself reddening, and glanced toward Jed. To her surprise, the boy was grinning broadly. “It’s not funny,” she snapped. “Of all the things for him to say—”
Jed tried to control his grin and failed. “Why shouldn’t he say it? He’s been wanting to all week. Haven’t you seen the way he looks at you?”
Judith’s blush deepened. “Jed!”
“Well, it’s true, even if he’s too drunk to know what he said,” Jed insisted. His eyes fixed on her, twinkling impudently. “You want to get him undressed, or shall I?”
“You do it,” Judith mumbled, her cheeks still burning. “I’ll go make some coffee.”
Five minutes later Jed joined her in the kitchen, still snickering. “What happened?” he asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him drunk before. Not like this, anyway. He’s really blitzed.”
“Max Moreland died this afternoon,” Judith told him.
Jed’s laughter faded away. “Mr. Moreland?” he echoed. “Wh-What happened?”
Judith explained, then added: “Your father got the idea in his head that someone from UniChem killed Max.”
“Oh, Christ,” Jed groaned. “What’s going to happen now?”
Frank Arnold’s voice filled the kitchen. “Now,” he said, “I’m going to find out what did happen.”
Jed and Judith spun around to stare at him. He was standing in the kitchen door, a bathrobe wrapped around his large frame, his face still wet from the cold shower he’d just taken.
“I thought you were asleep,” Judith said.
Frank shook his head. “I wasn’t asleep, and I wasn’t so drunk I didn’t know what I was saying.” His eyes met hers squarely, and his voice dropped. “And Jed was right—I have been wanting to ask you to stay all week.”
Once again Judith felt herself beginning to flush, and once again she found herself glancing involuntarily toward Jed.
Jed, realizing that whether or not Judith spent the night with his father was up to him, hesitated only a second. “I think maybe I’ll take off for a while,” he said, his eyes shifting to his father. “Okay if I take the truck?”
“The keys are in it,” Frank replied, his eyes never leaving Judith.
Jed started toward the back door, then turned and winked at Judith. “See you in the morning. And pancakes would be great for breakfast. We haven’t had a decent pancake around here for years.”
It wasn’t until he was a block away from the house that he realized where he was going. When he’d left, he thought he’d drive around for a while, or maybe go see if Gina Alvarez was still up.
But now that he was in the truck, he knew.
He was going to Kokatí, to see his grandfather.
Brown Eagle emerged from the kiva. He’d been sitting on the stone bench facing the firepit for hours, his body motionless, his mind turned outward from his own spirit to accept whatever might emerge from the sipapu in the center of the floor.
He had maintained a silence during his long vigil, listening only to the voices from the underworld. When at last he came back to himself, he discovered he was alone in the kiva. There had been ten others in the holy place when he’d come in so many hours ago, and he had no recollection of them leaving. But that was all right; it often happened to him when he was in communion with the spirits, and when the communion was over he had no memory of where he’d been or what he’d done, much less of what anyone around him might have done.
Indeed, for all he remembered, he might never have been in the kiva at all.
Tonight, as he climbed out of the hatch in the chamber’s roof, he had the distinct feeling that this wasn’t the first time he’d left the kiva since the vigil began.
Tonight he’d been possessed by Rakantoh, the greatest of all the Kokatí spirits, who had dwelt in the canyon until the dam had forced him to fly away from his home.
Yes, tonight the great spirit eagle Rakantoh had come to him, and they had flown together. Flown, and seen many things; things that he needed, for reasons the spirit had not yet revealed to him, to tell his grandson.
So he strode away from the kiva and went to look out over the canyon and the lake that flooded Rakantoh’s ancient home.
He stood at the edge of the canyon, waiting in the darkness, and when, half an hour later, he saw headlights bobbing across the mesa far in the distance, he knew at once that it was Jed.
Rakantoh had summoned him, and he had answered.
Tonight Brown Eagle would introduce his grandson to the mysteries of the kiva.
Chapter 12
It was close to midnight, and Rita Moreland knew she should feel exhausted. Until an hour ago the phone hadn’t stopped ringing, and though Greg had argued with her, she’d insisted on taking every call, exchanging a few words with all the people who had offered her their sympathy. After a while the words had come almost automatically, but still she’d listened, and spoken, and been amazed at how much her husband had been loved. For the last hour, though, the phone had been mercifully silent, and she and Greg had sat alone in front of a small fire that had now burned down to no more than a few glowing embers.
“You should go to bed, Aunt Rita,” Greg said, rising from the sofa to sweep a few coals off the hearth and place the screen in front of the huge brass andirons that had been in the fireplace as long as the house had stood.
Rita’s hand fluttered dismissively. “I wouldn’t sleep. I’d just lie there, waiting for Max to come home.” Her eyes, their normal curtain of reserve lifted, were bleak and lonely as she gazed at her nephew. “But he’s not coming home, is he?” she asked.
Greg made no answer, knowing none was expected.
Rita leaned forward and picked up her glass. A half inch of Max’s favorite bourbon still remained, and Rita held it up to the light of the fire, the glowing coals flickering eerily in the amber liquid. “We have to decide what to do, Greg,” she said.
Greg nodded briefly and sank back onto the sofa. “The funeral will be on Friday morning,” he told her. “I’ve already made most of the arrangements. It’ll be at the old church.”
“I wasn’t thinking of that,” Rita replied, her voice oddly detached, as if she hadn’t yet brought herself to deal with Max’
s funeral. “I was thinking of the company.”
Greg’s brows rose slightly. “I’m not sure there’s anything that needs to be done. Uncle Max signed the sale today—the papers are in his desk.”
Rita’s lips tightened. “But there was something wrong—he was going up to the dam to talk to Otto Kruger.”
Greg nodded. “It was something about the maintenance reports,” he said. “There was a problem up there today. Some damage to the main power flume. Uncle Max thought there was some kind of irregularity—”
“Irregularity?” Rita repeated. “What do you mean?”
Greg’s eyes shifted to the floor, and when he spoke again he sounded almost embarrassed by what he had to say. “I’m afraid Uncle Max didn’t read the last reports very well,” he said. “He seemed to think he’d ordered some repairs that weren’t made. But he’d signed the report, and the repair orders.”
Rita frowned. “I find it hard to believe Max would have let the dam go,” she said.
Greg met her eyes. “Aunt Rita, he was getting old. He was already suffering from high blood pressure, and his arteries weren’t in the best condition. He should have retired five years ago.”
Rita turned the matter over in her mind, hearing again the last conversation she’d had with Max. He’d sounded upset—indeed, he’d sounded furious—but he hadn’t told her exactly what the problem was.
At whom had he been angry? Himself, after discovering his own mistake?
Or someone else?
She’d never know.
She took a deep breath. “All right,” she said. “I suppose there’s no point in trying to figure out exactly what happened. But what do we do about the sale? Max seemed to think it shouldn’t go through.”
“Not exactly,” Greg replied. “He wanted to find out what had happened up at the dam—how bad the damage was. I suppose it would have affected the value of the company.”
“You mean UniChem might not want it anymore,” Rita translated. To her surprise, Greg shook his head.
