After I finished she continued to rock against me slowly, her arms bent, elbows propped upon my shoulders. With her hands on her cheeks she made a tunnel just the size of our faces and we breathed in each other's air, hers like fire on me. Her wet hair was stuck to my temples, and her lips brushed my nose as she made a last serpentine thrust that crushed her to me, and I could hear her breathe deeply on my neck. I let my fingers glide down her hips to the soles of her feet, just to let her know I was still alive.
"I think I've just been run over by a soft truck," I said, and Katherine kissed my neck. I gathered her dress and lifted it. She pushed back and raised her arms as I slipped it over her head and tossed it in the back. She fell forward and shivered. I wrapped my arms around her and the mist rolled over us, cooling the sweat on our skin. I held her loosely. A single mosquito worked its wings frantically in the wet air in its search for food, and we ignored it.
"Look in the back seat and see if there are any towels," I said. I thought I remember seeing a few in the baskets.
"Yes, a couple. Some underwear, too," she laughed. "Need some new clothes?" She reached over my shoulder and returned with a pair of jockey shorts with holes in them.
"No," I said. "Just the towels."
I climbed over her to the door, then dragged her out, lifted her in my arms and walked to the river.
"No!" Katherine said, struggling a bit. "No way, Mac!"
It was too late for her to argue as I waded into the cool water, my shirt trailing behind me in the current. I stopped in the chest-deep water, black and swift, and she clung to me, laughing.
"My hair!" she said. "Don't let it get wet!"
So I lifted her and she wrapped her legs around my waist, my face wedged between her breasts. I kissed her and tried to squeeze water from the ends of her dark hair.
"Mac, there could be snakes out here," she leaned down and whispered in my ear. "Or alligators."
"You have to trust me, Katherine," I said to her chest. "Remember?"
"Yes," she said. "And I do. I trust you."
Moonlight filtered through the fog just enough for me to get my bearings, and I carried her back to the car, letting her down with a wet slap on the front seat. She reached around the headrest and dug the two towels out of the back. I took one and began fluffing her hair as she unfolded the other and rubbed at me for a few seconds before she started fiddling around.
"Oh-ho!" she said. "It's a miracle!"
"Stop that." I kept working.
"Look who's been brought back to life," she said. I tried to concentrate on her hair, but that soon became impossible.
"Quit," I said. "You're giving mothers all over the world a bad name." I gripped her head in both hands under the towel and pushed her gently back on to the seat, then stretched out on top of her. We made love again, slowly.
* * *
We lay face to face on the narrow seat, listening. The water whispered past and pearl-sized drops of dew, gathered from the mist by giant oak limbs, pattered across the roof. Katherine's fingers ran along the small of my back suddenly, and her arm jerked. She rubbed her nose back and forth on my neck.
"Falling asleep?" I asked.
"Yes," she climbed over me to the back seat and came back wearing her dress. I stretched out on my back, the seat warm under me. Katherine lay down on top of me and snickered.
"What?" I said.
"Nothing, really," she said. "I was just thinking."
"Tell me." My voice was a coarse whisper. Her legs slid down my sides and she crossed her arms on my chest, then propped her chin up in the vee. I closed my eyes, and could feel her breath on my lips.
"I was thinking of the look on your face when we drove up," she said.
"Oh."
"No, no," she said earnestly. "You don't understand. I was so happy to see you. I honestly felt like I was home."
Her thick hair fell forward in a cascade. "It was nice."
"I felt like Pepino," I said. "I thought you were going to ask for my green card." She laughed, and squeezed me with her thighs.
"My father was a mechanic," Katherine said. "He worked on school buses in the county shop every day. He even died there." She stopped and put her cheek against her forearm.
"Every day he came home smelling like oil and grease and cleaning solvents." Her voice was far away. "I used to wait hours for him. He'd pick me up and hug me, and I loved him so. He was the kindest man I've ever known," she said. "You won't scare me away with dirt." Her voice was deep and I felt its vibrations through her arm. I felt a warmth spreading across my cheeks, then guilt spread over that like a foul smear.
"You know, Mac," she said. "You're very good at what you do."
She hesitated, and it sounded as if maybe she'd crawled out on her own little limb. "There are a lot of people in Las Vegas who would hire you. People who wouldn't always be trying to get you killed."
"Well," I mumbled, hesitating. I opened my eyes and looked into hers. "I
can't leave right now. I mean, there are so many things I need to do here in Palmetto Bay. And I have the house, and all..."
She didn't move for several seconds. "What?" She lifted her head, and her dark eyes narrowed.
"My house," I was getting uncomfortable. "I...I have a lot of things unfinished, you know?"
Katherine put her hand flat on the center of my chest, and pushed herself slowly into a sitting position. She leaned down, staring into my eyes. Her face was rock-still and her palm was hot.
"God damn you," she said, then she slapped me so hard it burned. She slapped me again.
"Wait!" I said, and caught her wrist as she swung a third time.
"God damn you!" Katherine twisted free, pushed herself backward and bolted from the car.
I sat up and fumbled for my pants, pulled them from the floor and struggled into them, poking another hole in my leg. When I stepped from the open door I saw her standing with her back to me in thigh-deep water, her white dress billowing around her like the opened petals of a morning glory. It spun lazily, wrapping itself around her legs.
"Katherine," I said, stepping to the water's edge.
"Stay away from me!" she said. "What do you think I'm made of, you son of a bitch? Rubber, maybe?"
"That's me." She turned slowly toward me, and in the dim grey dawn her exquisite form drew light from the horizon. She seemed to glow. "Katherine Furay, the unbreakable woman."
"Hey," I raised my hands, "I just want you to understand..."
"Shut up!" she shouted across the space between us. "Don't you think I understand, Mac? Patty Sheevers was my best friend. She never let me down my entire life.
"She swiped her dad's car and drove me to the hospital the night Candace was born," Katherine said. "You ask me to understand, when it's you, damn it! It's you who doesn't understand."
She looked at me, angry and hurt. "Patty's dead. I'm alive, and I want you because I like who you are. But I don't sympathize with you, Mac." She walked out of the water, but kept her distance from me.
"If you loved her, if you respected Patty," she said. "You'd let her go. Don't you see, you've turned her into your ideal woman, your centerfold?
"Her opinions are your opinions, her wants and desires are always the same as yours. That's not real."
"Katherine," I said in protest, "I made an oath to Sheevers."
"You made an oath to yourself," she said, suddenly weary of the argument. "Patty's gone, and I will not resent her, damn you!" Birds were waking in the trees and, far away, a peacock screamed.
"I want a commitment from you, Mac," she said. "I'm not talking about wedding bells and a little house in the country. I mean a commitment to try, because I didn't leave James for you. I did it for me, for the same reason I made love with you this morning. It felt good to do that, to fuck because I wanted to, and not because I felt an obligation.
"I'm a living woman, and I might do things that really piss you off. I might have opinions and habits that you don't like, but I'm real, McDonald Clay, an
d Patty's not. Not anymore."
She shook her head and walked up the bank past my car, leaned against the big oak, and closed her eyes. I turned back to the river and watched the day begin.
Two therapists spent almost a year trying to exorcize Sheevers from me, but I had carved a Sheevers-sized hole in my heart and, like a junkie, I loved my fix. Katherine's words hurt deep and I wanted to ignore them, but I sat on the sand and thought about what she'd said. The sky turned a citrus yellow then, very slowly, a deep blue.
I heard a rustling sound behind me, and Katherine made a silly noise. When I stood and turned back to her, prepared to commit myself to her, ready to laugh, I watched her being lifted into the air by two large men in jungle fatigues. On held a hand over her mouth, his other arm around her waist. The second man struggled with her thrashing legs.
I leapt forward, but someone knocked me down and it felt as though a piano had been dropped on my back.
A pair of arms gripped me in a vise, and whoever it was had biceps larger than my thighs. A pointed chin dug into my neck, and I could smell the hyped-up breath of an ugly man. I tried to twist away, but his hands were locked onto his thick-veined forearms. He lifted me to my toes.
"Take your hands off her!" I said, stupidly. Someone laughed, and the man who held Katherine's face in his hand unsnapped a large knife from his belt with the other and lifted it to her tender throat. Time screeched to a halt as she looked helplessly at me.
"Not yet." It was a voice that sounded familiar, but when he stepped into view I didn't recognize him immediately. He wore camouflaged fatigues with red epaulets and a blood-red brim on his flat-topped cap.
I'd noticed the soldier at the Men's Club had gold epaulets and trim, these soldiers around the talking man wore dark-green ornaments. One, a tall, gaunt soldier who trailed the man with the red brim, had gold stripes on his epaulets and I figured it must be a form of rank, since they wore none on their sleeves and had no insignia.
Thinking of the Men's Club made me remember this man. The speaker at the podium. "She stays alive until we have her daughter," he said. The gorilla held my arms tightly to my sides, but no one had thought to shut my mouth.
"You guys seem so big on attacking women," I said. "How can you make a good army out of a bunch of pussies?" I thought it best to keep the conversation simple. The speaker walked over to me, and I saw a gold star at the top of his collar.
"So, you're McDonald Clay?" He didn't ask it as a question to be answered. "Good. It will be nice to eliminate you before we kill her daughter."
Katherine shouted into the man's hand, and I thought of Mel and Torrea asleep, and Candace alone. "I saw you at the Men's Club," I said. "You're the moron that wants to take over the world."
"So," he said. "It was you!" He leaned in close. "Then, it will be a pleasure killing you. Stanley is in the hospital because of you."
"War is hell," I quoted another general.
"Stanley is my son," he said indignantly. I thought of this man's willingness to go after someone else's daughter.
"Good," I said. "Now, you're a matched set. Neither one of you has any balls."
He punched me in the stomach, but I was so numb by that time from the giant's grip on my chest that I laughed at him. I prayed to God for any good idea, but got a dial tone in reply. I figured it was a little late in my life to remember Him, and God might be wary of any conversion of mine made during duress.
The man holding Katherine offered his knife to the general. He thought it over.
"No," He looked past me to the goon with the bad breath, and grinned. "Drown him."
"Mac!" Katherine tore free from the hand and cried out, but the man captured her again. She fought against the two of them.
"Put her in the car," the general said, and they took her away. He winked at Bruno. "You'll enjoy this, Sergeant. When it's over, come to the farm. We'll see you there."
He walked out of my line of sight and Hulk spun me around, showing me the river. I strained against his hold, but I don't think he even noticed. He chuckled. I felt the water work its way up my pants legs as he moved easily into deeper water. Re-tuning his steel grip across my chest, he prepared me for baptism.
My feet no longer touched the bottom, and I watched a small twig float by under my chin as the soldier pushed me down. I quickly filled my lungs with all the air I could get in the small space he left me. My head went under and I closed my eyes, then opened them again in the murky water.
I fought, but was no match for him, and a bubble of air escaped my lips, a little glob of my soul headed toward Heaven.
I put my feet against his shins and pushed, kicked slowly in the thickness of the river, but couldn't move him. Another bubble popped out and my chest began to hurt. It felt as if one more set of arms were squeezing above his. My body was burning the oxygen from my lungs, and less was making it up the road to my brain.
I thought I saw the sun, but the illusion passed and the water around my face was turning black. I fought to keep my mouth closed and felt myself weaken. A tunnel of light appeared in a perfect circle just inside the door of my mind, and I looked down it for Sheevers. This was the moment I'd waited for, five years of planning, and there was no one there. A little bubble of expended gases leaked from my lips, and I knew without a doubt that Patty wasn't coming for me. She hadn't been there, just as I wouldn't be there for Katherine. I got mad.
Kong was getting bored, and his grip loosened as I stopped fighting him. I swung my hand limply against my leg and felt something in my pocket. Little white fireworks were going off in my head as I pulled one of the long galvanize nails from the pocket and reached out of the water, flailing a partially closed fist lightly against his head until I found his ear.
I grasped it tenderly, like a baby, and he didn't pull away. The nail slipped once as I worked it across my palm, but I held on to it. I pushed the tip into his ear and, with the last bit of strength I could find, slammed it home with the heel of my palm.
He roared and lifted me out of the water. I sucked in a burning lung full of air, knocked his arms back and twisted around to face him. He really was ugly, and his face was contorted in pain as the thick fingers dug for the nail's head. I slapped the hand and he screamed, his other hand coming out of nowhere with a razor-sharp knife that flashed past my face and cut a thin line along the top of my forearm. I put my feet on his belt and pushed away, heading for the bank, but I stumbled and fell flat on my back in the shallower water.
Blood oozed from his ear and his head hung sideways as he staggered after me, the knife slashing diagonal arcs in the wind. I stood up and dug my toes into the muddy river bottom. I hoped he wouldn't connect with the next swing and I dodged under his arm, came up on the inside and brought my palm solidly onto his ear with a wet slap.
His mouth opened wide and his eyes rolled back, the hand holding the knife hanging between us. I slapped again and he stumbled. My hand snaked over his wrist, and I turned the large knife around until the point bent the fabric of his shirt.
I pushed off from the mud and slammed hard against the handle, driving the blade into his chest until we were locked together in an obscene dance. His eyes closed, then reopened halfway. He stared at me as he slipped into the moving water, tangling around my legs. I kicked at his body until we separated and I watched him drift in the flow, making a lazy turn to end up lying sideways just under the surface, one blind eye staring up at nothing. The knife flashed once in the morning sun as the current rolled him away.
I crawled onto the clay bank and stayed on my hands and knees, gasping for air. I wanted to lie down and sleep, to close off this world, but I heard automatic weapons fire in the distance. I shook my head and tried to pull myself together. The cut on my arm wasn't bad, but my body couldn't keep making new blood to replace what I was losing, so I tore off my shirt and wrapped it around the cut.
I thought I'd never make it to the car, but I did, somehow. Someone came roaring down the road, and I crouched behind
my car trunk. A big black Lincoln with dark tinted windows raced by in a cloud of dust, and I couldn't see who was inside. They didn't slow down. Katherine was in there, surely, and Candace might be, too.
I jumped in my car, and the keys were still dangling from the ignition. I cranked up and almost followed the Lincoln, but another rapid round of popping fire reminded me of my priorities. I couldn't abandon Mel.
FOURTEEN
My car dug twin trenches in the red clay as I spun it around, and the steering wheel fought against my hands. I reached into the glove compartment, pulled out the pistol and checked its clip. I dropped it beside me on the seat and dug around until I found the spare clip. I looked it over and pushed it into my pocket.
I made a clumsy high-speed turn at the gate, and when the car clipped one of the thick, creosoted posts, my pistol zipped across the seat and fell between it and the door. I could hear the sharp crack of Mel's 30.06, and saw three soldiers running in a crouch from the barn toward the house, firing on the run. The kitchen window shattered. I stomped the gas pedal to the floor and bounced across the yard, hitting the first runner solidly with the left fender as the other two scattered. When I stepped down hard on the brake pedal, the wheel spun out of my hands and the car skidded sideways.
It would have flipped over, but it hit the big water trough and shuddered to a stop in a billowing cloud of dust. I scrambled over the seat and dug for the pistol, found it wedged halfway under, and kicked open the door. Just as my feet hit the ground I heard bullets impacting in the rear of the car with hard metallic thumps and I dropped into a prone position, trying to see through the cloud of dirt. Whoever he was, he was shooting right at me but his shots were high, punching holes in my car about a foot above my head. I stayed where I was, steadied my pistol, and waited.
When a breeze whipped the dust away suddenly he was straight in front of me, and I dropped him with a single shot. I dug in and scanned the barnyard for the second man, but heard only the clicking sounds of the engine as it cooled. My eyes swept the side yard as well, slowly and carefully as I lay still in the dirt. I saw the soldier I had run down lying in a heap just inside the cattle crossing.
A Thousand Bridges Page 14
