The burgers arrive and are great. Valerie, who does not like red meat, gets a grilled fish sandwich and a big salad loaded with thousand island. Lunch goes along perfectly.
Until, from outside, comes the rumble of motorcycle engines, the deep, throaty, unmistakable rasp of America’s finest, the Harley-Davidson. Dust rises up in the sunlight beyond the swinging doors. The engines are gunned, then killed. To Holt it sounds like a half-dozen of them. When the doors blast open and the boots hit the wooden floor and the men barge into the quiet of Olie’s Saloon, Holt sees that he is off by two. There are four men, two of them large, one skinny and tall, one simply gigantic. These are not the kind of people Vann Holt prefers as lunch guests. He looks briefly at them, then turns to his daughter and asks about Lewis and Clark.
The bikers are still taking a table when a voice carries through the disturbed atmosphere of the saloon.
“That one looks good enough to eat.”
Holt ignores it, though his pulse has risen and he feels a coolness crawl across his scalp. Valerie glances at the men, then quickly back to her father. She’s trying to explain how Lewis and—
“I said, hey cupcake, you look good enough to eat!”
It is impossible to ignore him now. Holt sees that it’s the tall skinny one, sitting already, while his huge minions shuffle and bang around the table. Skinny has red hair, a darker red beard and a blue bandana wrapped around his head. His eyes are bulging and blue, and look ready to burst from their sockets. His arms are taut as wires, coming through the holes of the stained denim vest. They are covered with tattoos. He looks at Valerie with the dullest of smiles. His cohorts all look at Valerie, too.
She stares back at them. “Try it, and I’ll blow your fucking lungs out,” she says in a voice so cold it completely startles Holt.
All four of the bikers break into serious laughter, a guttural roar not unlike the sound of their machines.
Then Holt has to laugh too—does my little girl really talk like that?—and Titisi and Lane Fargo, and finally even dour Rich Randell are laughing along, though Fargo’s hand slides inside his jacket to certify the readiness of whatever he is carrying in there.
After the laughter trails off, the sounds of the talking bikers fill the room and the incident appears to be forgotten, just another colorful little postcard in the lives of minor outlaws.
Holt’s stomach relaxes some and he continues to eat. The pressure he feels in his head when angry, abates. He glances over at the bikers to find them deep in beer and roaring talk, blatantly insulting the waitress, arguing over what should go on the pizzas. With a little discipline and a little education, he thinks, those pigs might amount to something. Big. Strong. They might even make good Liberty Men someday. Perfect for Titisi. Maybe not so dumb as they act. Degeneration of the race, pure and simple.
Titisi finishes his second cheeseburger and focuses his attention on the double order of fries. He leans to Randell, whispers something, and they both chuckle knowingly. Lane Fargo, upright and attentive as always, has that glazed look that Holt recognizes: it means Fargo’s attention is everywhere at once.
Valerie has gone quiet. Holt understands that her heated little outburst embarrassed her, and now she’s trying to regain composure. He knows from raising her from infancy that Valerie is not a natural combatant, but rather thrives on harmony, accomplishment and love. Patrick was the same way. Yes, Carolyn’s clear-eyed, even temperament dominates Valerie over Holt’s own reactive and heated disposition.
Suddenly the bikers stand and the giant yells back toward the kitchen: “Stuff your fuckin’ pizza.”
This brings another roar of moronic laughter from the rest of them, who bang through the flimsy wooden chairs and cram through the swinging doors back out into the parking lot. Skinny is last out, after tossing some bills on the table and looking at Valerie again. In a gesture of purest vulgarity, he smiles at her, runs his wet red tongue over his sharp, widely spaced yellow teeth, then sticks it straight out—it’s astonishingly long—and wiggles the tip at her.
Valerie blushes and looks away.
Holt is about to speak, but Skinny is on his way now, barging past the doors with a phlegmy chuckle.
“Let’s get out of here,” says Valerie.
“Sit tight,” says Lane Fargo, his eyes trained on the swinging doors. “Let them go.”
The motorcycle engines boom to life with that slapping mechanical flatulence of the Harley. One, two . . . three. Holt can see the exhaust rising from the lot outside. The last bike kicks over and joins the chorus; the engines are gunned to a deafening pitch. Then the clutches release and the bikes scream out of the parking lot, headed south on Highway 371. Holt follows their diminishing sound.
He counts some money onto the table, then slides back his chair. “Well? Shall we try to find some more birds? Something other than vultures? Lane, have a look out there, will you?”
“Love to.”
Fargo eases across the floor—he’s a big man, six-three, two-twenty but his gait is even and quiet. He slips outside. Holt can see his boots and the bottom of his pants beneath the door.
Then he’s back. “They’re swarming down the road, at the hoagie place. We may as well just head out, Boss.”
They spill into the fierce afternoon sunshine of Anza Valley. Holt looks across the lot to the two Land Rovers parked in the shade, windows down halfway for the dogs. Sally eyes him from the rear kennel of the white one. He has just put his arm around his daughter’s shoulder when the low grumble of the bikes suddenly rises in pitch again, and he is only a few steps toward the trucks when the four machines—popping and farting chaotically—roll back into the lot and stop between Holt and his vehicles. Fargo is closest to the Land Rovers, so the Giant jumps his Harley between Lane and the others. Skinny makes a wide, dust-throwing semi-circle and comes to rest closest to Holt and Valerie. One of the others pops his clutch and runs his huge bike toward the group, sending Titisi and Randell one way; Holt and Valerie the other. Skinny guns his hog straight at them, laughing loudly, and Holt can see no alternative but to push her out of his path. He does this, wishing he could get to his shotgun, but he’s clearly too far from the truck. Skinny is off his bike in a flash, flipping down the kickstand in a quick, fluid motion. He smiles as he approaches Valerie, who squares off and kicks at him. His own long leg shoots out and Valerie goes down in the dust of the lot, then quickly jumps back up again. She is wobbling; her hat has fallen and her cornsilk hair is firmly wadded in Skinny’s left hand, while his right snugs a monstrous Bowie knife against her throat.
“Feel good, smart cunt? You fight me and I’ll cut you a new windpipe. Let’s go back inside the diner, smart cunt—right like this.”
Holt takes a step forward, then stops. Past Skinny’s bike he sees Lane Fargo backed against the red Land Rover, his hands up, Giant looming over him with what looks like a toy pistol aimed at Lane’s head. The two other bikers are blocking his path anyway, one of them leveling a sawed-off shotgun at him. He looks quickly to his right, only to see Titisi and Randell backing up at the approach of Biker #4 who is whipping a short chain round and round in a blurring circle.
Holt hasn’t felt so helpless since he got the call from the Sheriff’s Department those five long years ago, telling him that his son was dead and his wife critically wounded. The rage just covers him like a hot blanket, and he has trouble seeing now—everything seems to be taking place in a fractured, sped-up version of reality, like film with hunks of action edited out.
Skinny begins dragging Valerie toward the front doors of Olie’s Saloon. Lane Fargo is frozen against the red Land Rover, hands still up as if they might be forever. Titisi bellows and charges into a whip of the chain that thuds into his belly and sends him, jackknifed, to the ground. Valerie draws a pained breath and whimpers. Then, motion catches Vann Holt’s disbelieving eyes, a motion not part of this film, an intrusion, a disruption. Into the parking lot lumbers a pickup truck, which moves past Fargo and the
Giant before the driver can sense that something is very wrong here. It stops right in the middle of the lot, tires angled toward a parking space, unable to move forward past the Shotgun Biker, who still holds his weapon aimed at Holt but turns now with a prodigious scowl to confront this pain-in-the-ass innocent bystander in the pickup. Holt looks at the truck’s driver—just a regular guy wearing a gray hat tilted back on his head and a rather calm—perhaps uncomprehending—expression on his face. There are a couple of big dogs in the cab with him. Holt turns to his daughter and Skinny, as if his vision might pull along the truck driver’s vision with it, and reveal to him the immediate danger unfolding here. For some reason, Holt believes that now is the time to speak.
“Let her go, young man. This isn’t worth it. Somebody’s going to get killed.”
“Fuck off, old fart. Lenny, keep that prick’s hands up over there. Keep it cool out here for a minute—that’s all I need with this bitch.”
“Let her go,” says Holt again. “Just let her go and ride away and we’ll ride away, too. No reports, no cops, no nothing. Just a little misunderstanding between men. You want money, I’ve got enough to make it worth your while. There’s a thousand easy, right here in my wallet.”
“Ah, shutup you old woman,” snaps Skinny.
Titisi vomits. Randell has taken a knee beside him and has a hand on the big man’s shoulder, but he stands back up and hops away a step as the puke jets into the gravel.
The man in the truck seems frozen.
Holt takes another desperate look toward Lane Fargo, who doesn’t seem to have moved one inch.
He hears Valerie whimper again, and turns to see her struggling with Skinny, then Skinny yanking her to face Holt, the wide shining blade of the knife up high now, where the throat meets the chin. Then Holt realizes that Valerie’s tormentor isn’t brandishing her for him at all, but for the stupefied young man in the pickup.
“Drive the fuck out of here! This is just a little family dispute. Get out, faggot!” yells Skinny.
To Holt’s absolute astonishment, the truck driver nods agreeably, shifts his truck into reverse and looks over his shoulder to back out. An irrational surge of hatred fills Holt as his last potential savior—Valerie’s last potential savior—begins to ease his truck backward. In fact, the driver is so shaken he pops the clutch and stalls the engine.
What happens next occurs so quickly and chaotically that Vann Holt does little but watch.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
The driver’s door of the stalled truck burst open and one of the dogs, a very large German shepherd, shot from the cab into the dust of the parking lot. Next came the cowardly Samaritan himself, still wearing the hat, his body cloaked in a long duster jacket. He landed deliberately, then walked around the front of his vehicle, as if going to lift the hood. Instead, he pulled from inside his coat a bright stainless steel revolver and very casually took a two-hand shooter’s stance, aiming the gun at Skinny and Valerie.
“These bullets are a lot faster than that blade,” he said. “Let her go.”
Shotgun Biker swiveled his sawed-off away from Holt and toward the Hat Man, but Holt registered a far more urgent motion, something swift and brutal and decisive. The dog was a blur already, just teeth and mouth, airborne toward Shotgun Biker, who hip-pivoted his weapon and blasted twice before the torn and shredded dog even hit the ground. The sharp burned smell of gunpowder filled the air and a red mist lowered in the breeze. Then Hat Man fired. Holt spun to see Valerie falling one way and Skinny the other, knife mid-air and about eye level, the top of his shoulder ripped apart in a jagged explosion of vest denim, t-shirt and blood. Shotgun Biker was fumbling with his spent double-barrel as Hat Man pistol-whipped him to his knees, grabbed the tumbled shotgun and hurled it onto the saloon roof. Holt swirled instinctively to Valerie, who was fleeing into the cafe; then he turned to see Lane Fargo. Fargo was still backed against the truck with his hands up, but Giant was on his bike again, backing it away with his feet, pistol still trained on helpless Fargo, who had squatted, knees bent and ready for whatever it was he wanted to do. Giant fired two rounds just past Lane’s side, pocking the red Land Rover with flat, metallic bangs, sending Fargo back against the truck hard, his eyes fierce and wide. Hat Man spun to his left and took aim at the biker with the chain, who was frantically trying to kick his Harley back to life. For a second it looked as if he would belly-shoot the grunting biker, but instead Hat Man took four long strides to Skinny and jammed the barrel of the revolver into his face, forcing him to his knees. He kicked away the big bowie knife. The dog hadn’t moved but the pool of blood around it seeped leisurely into the sand. Suddenly, Giant boomed across the lot on his bike, one hand on the throttle and his other—without a firearm now—lifted in a placating gesture at Hat Man. Hat Man aimed his revolver at the Giant, then back at Skinny. “Enough, man—you got it,” growled Giant. Hat Man gave him a curt nod but kept the gun pointed at him, letting him pass by and stop next to Skinny, who, clutching his shoulder and climbing onto the back of Giant’s Harley, cast Hat Man a look of purest hatred. “You’ll see me again, fancy faggot,” he hissed, glancing down at the dog. “Enjoy dinner.” Then, in a booming symphony, the three hogs and their drivers and one pale, bleeding passenger bounced onto the highway and accelerated away with a low-pitched moan of horsepower, fury and defeat.
The man knelt over his dog, running a hand along its lifeless flank. He had set his hat on the ground, and placed his revolver in the crown.
Vann Holt ran past the Olie’s waitress, standing on the wooden deck of the restaurant, then disappeared through the swinging doors.
Valerie stood just a few feet away, looking through a dusty window, with a huge kitchen knife in her hand. The color had drained from her face, which was splattered with Skinny’s blood. To Holt, it looked like ink on snow. Her hair was drenched in sweat.
“Oh, God, honey,” said Holt, wrapping his big arms around her. “Are you all right?”
“I’m okay, Daddy. I’m okay.” The knife hit the floor.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Who is he?”
“You’re sure, absolutely sure you’re not hurt?”
“The second I pushed that pig away, he shot him.”
“Let’s go outside. Can you walk outside?”
“I told you I’m okay, Daddy. I just feel kind of . . . sticky.”
The cook emerged from the kitchen with a .30/06 rifle and a wild look on his face. He was a fat man with a rim of gray hair around his face and head, florid cheeks, and a clean white apron. “What the hell?”
“It’s over,” said Holt. “Put the gun down.”
“I’ll call the Sheriffs.”
“We already did—the CB,” Holt lied. It was a given for him that the police would confuse rather than clarify things.
“Ambulance?”
“Nobody’s hurt.”
“She’s not hurt? She’s bleeding, you know.”
Holt gave the chef a withering look. All of his native authority, not to mention his frustration, fear and anger, came rushing back now, and he saw by the cook’s eager nod that he had no intention of calling an ambulance.
He eased Valerie back into the bright October sunlight, where he ordered the waitress, forcefully, to get some coffee ready for the sheriffs. Only now did he register the frantic yapping from the Land Rovers—three springers vaulted into excitement by the gunshots.
Titisi and Randell had gathered themselves to stare, somewhat bewildered, at the man and his dog.
Lane Fargo stood midway between the fallen hero and the restaurant, his pistol drawn. A consuming self-consciousness emanated from him: his face was bright red, his eyes uncertain. He watched Holt and Valerie descend the steps to the parking lot, unwilling to look either his boss or his boss’s daughter in the eye as they approached.
“Mr. Holt, I think we could run them down in the Rovers.”
“No.”
“There’s not
much out there but clean highway.”
“No. Settle the dogs down, Lane. See if those bullets wrecked my gas tank.”
“I’m thinking we should get off stage before the cops come.”
“Check the dogs and trucks, Lane.”
“Yes, sir.”
Valerie left her father’s side to approach the man still kneeling in the dust beside his dog.
“Can I help you put him in your truck?”
He didn’t look at her. “Sure. Thanks.”
“Thank you. Oh, Jesus in heaven—thank you.”
Holt approached, somehow larger now than he was a few moments earlier, and offered his hand to the kneeling man. “My name is Vann Holt.”
The man finally rose, slipping his revolver into the pocket of his duster and slapping the hat against his leg, but still looking down at the dead shepherd. He shook Holt’s hand without enthusiasm.
“John,” he said, looking down again at the dog. “That was Rusty.”
Holt contemplated John’s slender, stunned face. He saw a trustworthy but uncertain face, a face hollowed with fear and revulsion, the face of a man who has acted and now must live with the consequences. For just a brief moment, the eyes reminded Holt of his own. “You all right, son?”
“Pretty much.”
“This is my daughter, Valerie.”
John looked at her while he shook her offered hand, his eyes lingering on her face, perhaps on the blood that flecked it.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like that,” said Holt.
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