She found the story of the crash on I-80 on page three. The body, a male, remained unidentified. “Not much left to work from,” the coroner had remarked. Except that the car, a late-model BMW, had a Georgia license plate. Didi realized that by now the tracing of the tag would be done and the FBI would know whose car it was. The police-beat reporters would smell a new scent on an old story, and pretty soon Laura’s picture would start showing up in the papers again. And Mary Terror’s picture, too. The death of Earl Van Diver might well make Mary and the baby front-page news once more.
Didi looked at Laura, who had fallen into an exhausted sleep. Any picture of the old Laura that appeared in a newspaper wouldn’t resemble the woman who lay there, her face pinched with anguish and tough with determination. But if Mary and the baby were back prominently in the news, that meant more of a chance for someone to recognize her. And more of a chance that some Smokey with a macho complex might spot her, do something stupid, and get David killed.
She turned on the TV, keeping the volume low, and she watched the ten o’clock Iowa City newscast. Coverage of the wreck was there as well, and an interview with the milk tanker driver, a fat-cheeked man with a bloody bandage on his forehead and a glazed stare that said he’d had a peek into his own grave. “I seen this van and the other car comin’ and the highway patrol right behind ’em,” the driver explained in a quavering voice. “Maybe doin’ eighty, all three of ’em. The van was flyin’ up on my tail and I tried to get over in the right lane and then wham the car hit my tanker and it was all she wrote.” The newscaster said the highway patrol and state police were searching for a dark green van with a Georgia license plate.
As Didi listened to the rest of the news, she picked up a notepad with Liberty Motor Lodge and a cracked bell printed across the top. With a motel pencil she wrote Mary Terror. Then Freestone, and three names she had memorized long ago: Nick Hudley, Keith Cavanaugh, Dean Walker. Beneath the third name she drew a circle, put two dots in it for eyes and the arc of a mouth: a Smiley Face, like the button she’d seen on Mary’s sweater there at the lumberyard.
The troopers would be on the sniff for Mary’s van. They’d be out in droves tomorrow. But they might also be looking for a stolen Oldsmobile Cutlass with a Playboy bunny decal on the rear windshield. It wouldn’t hurt to scrape that damned thing off, do away with the hanging dice, and, while she was out in the cold dark, swap license plates with one of the other cars parked outside. How many people looked at their plates, especially on a frigid gray morning? The scissor blades might work to loosen screws as well as the prongs of an engagement ring. If not, then not.
Didi tore off the notepad’s page, folded it, and put it into her pocket along with the diamond. She destroyed the next two pages, getting rid of the indentations. She put on her second sweater and her gloves, checked again on Laura’s hand—blood coming up through the gauze, but there was nothing more to be done but freeze it with ice—and then Didi went outside to do things that told her she still had the instincts of a Storm Fronter.
6
Sanctuary of Wishes
PIGS WERE SEARCHING FOR a dark green van with a georgia license plate?
Good, Mary thought. She was half dozing, her feet up on the Barcalounger and the TV on before her in the cozy little den. By the time the pigs found the van in Rocky Road’s barn, she’d be long gone with Drummer.
Her stomach was full. Two ham sandwiches, a big bowl of potato salad, a cup of hot vegetable soup, a can of applesauce, and most of a bag of Oreo cookies. She had fed Drummer his formula—warmed on the stove, which he appreciated—burped him, changed his diaper, and put him to sleep. He’d gone out like a light, in the bed shared by Rocky Road and Cherry Vanilla.
Mary watched the TV through eyelids at half mast. Pigs were searching, the newscaster had said on the ten o’clock news from Iowa City, sixteen miles west of the farmhouse she’d invited herself to visit. Baskin was the name on the mailbox. Mary used to buy ice cream at Baskin-Robbins in Atlanta. Her favorite flavor was Rocky Road. He’d looked like Rocky Road, dark-haired and chunky, enough of a roll of flab around his belly to make him soft and slow and oh-so-easy. His wife was blond and petite, with rosy cheeks. Cherry Vanilla, she was. The fourteen-year-old boy was dark-haired like his father, but more wiry: Fudge Ripple, she figured he’d be if he were a flavor.
There were family pictures on the paneled walls. Smiling faces, all. They no longer smiled. In the garage were two vehicles: a brown pickup truck with a University of Iowa sticker on the rear bumper, and a dark blue Jeep Cherokee. The Cherokee was roomy and had almost a full tank of gas. All she’d have to do is move her suitcases, the baby supplies, and her Doors records from the van, and she’d be ready to roll. An added prize had been finding Rocky Road’s gun cabinet. He had three rifles and a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver, with plenty of ammunition for all of them. The revolver would join her own Magnum when she packed the Cherokee.
Mary had taken a shower. Had washed her hair and scrubbed her face, and carefully cleaned her wounds with a solution of rubbing alcohol and warm soapy water that had left her gasping with pain on the bathroom floor. Her forearm wound looked the nastiest, with its raw red edges and its glint of bone down in the crusted matter, and her fingers from time to time would convulse as if she were clawing the air. But it was her torn thigh that kept oozing blood and hurting like a barefoot walk on razor blades. Her knee had turned purple and had swollen up, too, and the bruises advanced all the way to her hip. Mary had packed cotton against the wounds, put bandages from the medicine cabinet on top of those, and bound her forearm and thigh with strips of torn sheets. Then she’d put on one of Rocky Road’s woolen bathrobes, gotten herself a Bud from the refrigerator, and eased herself into the Barcalounger to wait out the night.
The newscast’s weather segment came on. A woman with blond hair sculpted into a spray-frozen helmet stood in front of a map and pointed to a storm system growing up in northwest Canada. Should be hitting the Iowa City-Cedar Rapids area in thirty-six to forty-eight hours, she said. Good news for the ski resorts, she said, and bad news for travelers.
Mary reached over beside her chair and picked up the road atlas she’d found in Fudge Ripple’s room, there on his desk next to his geography homework papers. It was opened to the map of the United States, showing the major interstate highways. I-80 would be the most direct route to San Francisco and Freestone, taking her through Iowa, Nebraska, curving up into Wyoming and down again into Utah, through Nevada and finally into northern California. If she kept her speed at sixty-five and the weather wasn’t too bad, she could make Freestone in another couple of days. When she left here depended on how she felt in the morning, but she wasn’t planning on spending another night in a dead man’s house. The telephone had rung five times since she’d herded them into the barn at six o’clock, and that made her nervous. Rocky Road might be the mayor or the preacher around here, or Cherry Vanilla might be the belle of the farm-life social set. You never knew. So it was best to clear out as soon as her bones could take the highway again.
She was weary, and she ached. Growing old, she thought. Giving in to pain and getting weak.
Ten years ago she could have strangled Bedelia Morse with one hand. Should’ve beat her to death with a piece of wood, she thought. Or shot her with the Magnum and then run the van over the other bitch. But things had been moving so fast, and she’d known she was torn up and she was deep-down scared she was going to pass out before she and Drummer could get away. She’d figured the pit bulls were going to finish Laura Clayborne off, but now she was wishing she’d been certain.
I panicked, she thought. I panicked and left them both alive.
But their car was gone. The dogs had done a number on Laura, at least as bad as the damage done to herself. Should have killed her, Mary fretted. Should have run over her with the van before I left. No, no; Laura Clayborne was finished. If she was still alive, she was gasping in a hospital bed somewhere. Suffer, she thought. I hope you
suffer good and long for trying to steal my baby.
But she was growing old. She knew it. Growing old, getting panicked, and leaving loose strings.
Mary slowly and painfully got out of the lounger and limped back to check on Drummer. He was sleeping soundly on the bed, cuddled up in a clean blue blanket, the pacifier clenched in his mouth, and his cherub face scraped from friction with the floorboard. She stood there, watching him sleep, and she could feel fresh blood oozing down her thigh but she didn’t mind. He was a beautiful boy. An angel, sent from heaven as a gift for Jack. He was so very beautiful, and he was hers.
“I love you,” Mary whispered in the quiet.
Jack was going to love him, too. She knew he would.
Mary picked up her bloody jeans from the floor and reached into a pocket. She brought out the clipping from the Sierra Club newsletter, now stained with spots of gore. Then she limped back to the den, and the telephone there. She found a phone book, got the area code she needed, and dialed directory assistance in northern California. “Freestone,” she told the operator. “I’d like the number of Keith Cavanaugh.” She had to spell the last name.
It was rattled off by one of those computer voices that sound human. Mary wrote the number down on a sheet of yellow notepad paper. Then Mary dialed directory assistance a second time. “Freestone. I’d like the number of Nick Hudley.”
It joined the first phone number on the sheet. A third call: “Freestone. Dean Walker.”
“The number you have requested is not available at this time,” the computer voice said.
Mary hung up, and put a question mark beside Dean Walker’s name. An unlisted number? Did the man not have a phone? She sat in a chair next to the phone, her leg really hurting again. She stared at Keith Cavanaugh’s number. Did she dare to dial it? What would happen if she recognized Jack’s voice? Or what if she dialed both numbers and neither voice was Jack’s? Then that would leave Dean Walker, wouldn’t it? She picked up the receiver again; her fingers did their clutching dance, and she had to put the phone down for a minute until the spasms had ceased.
Then she dialed the area code and the number of Keith Cavanaugh.
One ring. Two. Three. Mary’s throat had dried up. Her heart was pounding. What would she say? What could she say? Four rings. Five. And on and on, without an answer.
She hung up. It was a little after nine o’clock in Freestone. Not too late to be calling, after all these years. She dialed Nick Hudley’s number.
After four rings, Mary heard the phone click as it was being picked up. Her stomach had knotted with tension.
“Hello?” A woman’s voice. Hard to say how old.
“Hi. Is Nick Hudley there, please?”
“No, I’m sorry. Nick’s at the council meeting. Can I take a message?”
“Um…” She was thinking furiously. “I’m a friend of Nick’s,” she said. “I haven’t seen him for a long time.”
“Really? What’s your name?”
“Robin Baskin,” she said.
“Do you want Nick to call you back?”
“Oh, no…that’s all right. Listen, I’m trying to find the number of another friend of mine in Freestone. Do you know a man named Dean Walker?”
“Dean? Sure, everybody knows Dean. I don’t have his home number, but you can reach him at Dean Walker Foreign Cars. Do you want that number?”
“Yes,” Mary said. “Please.”
The woman went away from the phone. When she returned, she said, “Okay, Robin, here it is.” Mary wrote down the telephone number and the address of Dean Walker Foreign Cars. “I don’t think they’re open this late, though. Are you calling from the Freestone area?”
“No, it’s long distance.” She cleared her throat. “Are you Nick’s wife?”
“Yes, I am. Can I give Nick your number? Council meeting’s usually over before ten.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” Mary said. “I’m on my way there. I’ll just wait and surprise him. One more thing…see, I used to live in Freestone, a long time ago, and I’ve lost touch with people. Do you know Keith Cavanaugh?”
“Keith and Sandy. Yes, I do.”
“I tried to call Keith, but nobody’s home. I just wanted to make sure he still lived there.”
“Oh, yes. Their house is just down the road.”
“Good. I’d like to go by and see him, too.”
“Uh…may I tell my husband you called, Robin?”
“Sure,” Mary said. “Tell him I’ll be there in a couple of days.”
“All right.” The woman’s voice was beginning to sound a little puzzled. “Have we ever met?”
“No, I don’t think so. Thanks for your help.” She hung up, and then she dialed Cavanaugh’s number once more. Again there was no answer. Mary stood up, her thigh swollen and hot, and she limped to the Barcalounger and her can of beer. Two days and she’d be in Freestone. Two days, and she’d find Lord Jack again. It was a thought to dream on.
Mary fell asleep, with the lights on and the TV going and the wind shrilling outside. In her sanctuary of wishes, she walked with Lord Jack across a wide, grassy hillside. The ocean was spread out in a tapestry of blue and green before them, and the thunder of waves echoed from the rocks. She was young and fresh, with her whole life before her, and when she smiled there was no hardness in her eyes. Jack, wearing tie-dyed robes, held Drummer in his arms, and his blond hair flowed down around his shoulders and back like spun gold. Mary saw a house in the distance, a beautiful two-story house with rock chimneys and moss growing where the Pacific spray had touched. She knew that house, and where it stood. The Thunder House was where the Storm Front had begun, in its ritual of candles and blood oaths. It was where she had first been loved by Lord Jack, and where she had given her heart to him forever.
It was the only house she’d ever called home.
Lord Jack hugged their baby close, and he put an arm around the tall, slim girl at his side. They walked together through flowers, the air damp and salty with ocean mist, a lavender fog creeping across Drakes Bay. “I love you,” she heard Jack say close in her ear. “I’ve always loved you. Can you dig it?”
Mary smiled and said she could. An iridescent tear rolled down her cheek.
They went on toward the Thunder House with Drummer between them and the promise of a new beginning ahead.
And in the Barcalounger, Mary slept heavily in an exhaustion of blood loss and weary flesh, her mouth partway open and a long silver thread of saliva drooling over her chin. The bandages on her thigh and forearm were splotched with red. Outside, snow flurries spun from the sky and frosted the barren fields, and the temperature fell below fifteen degrees.
She was a long way from the land of her dreams.
Ten miles west of where Mary rested, Laura moaned in a fever sweat. Didi roused herself from a cramped sleep in the chair to check on Laura, and then she closed her eyes again because there was nothing she could do to ease the other woman’s pain, both physical and mental. The scissor blades had proved worthless for the task of removing screws from license plates, but Didi had gone through an assortment of junk in the Cutlass’s trunk and found a screwdriver that would work. The Cutlass now bore a Nebraska tag, its Playboy decal had been scraped away, and the red plastic dice trashed.
Sleep took the sufferers, and for a little while shielded them from hurt. But midnight had passed and a cold dawn was coming, storm clouds already sliding down from Canada in the iron dark. The baby woke up with a start, his blue eyes searching and his mouth working the pacifier. He saw strange shapes and unknown colors, and he heard the shrill and bump of muffled sounds: the threshold of a mysterious, frightening world. In a few minutes his heavy eyelids closed. He drifted off to sleep again, innocent of sin, and his hands clutched for a mother who was not there.
VII
FUNERAL PYRE
1
The Power of Love
HORN BLOWING.
Mary’s eyes opened, the lids gummy and swollen.
> Horn blowing outside. Outside the house.
Her heart kicked. She sat up in the Barcalounger, and every joint in her body seemed to scream in unison. A gasp of pain came from Mary’s lips. Horn blowing outside, in the gray gloom of a winter morning. She’d gone to sleep with the TV going and the lights on; a man with a crew cut was talking about soybean production on the tube. When she tried to stand up, the jolt of agony that shot through her thigh took her breath. The bandages were crusted with dark blood, the smell of copper rank in the room. Her forearm wound pulsed with heat, but it was numb and so was her right hand. She stood up from the chair with an effort that made the air hiss between her teeth, and she hobbled to a window where she could see the front of the house.
A thin layer of snow had fallen during the night, and covered the fields. Out on the white-dusted road, about sixty yards from the farmhouse, sat a school bus with CEDAR COUNTY SCHOOLS on its side. Come to pick up Fudge Ripple, Mary knew. Except the boy wasn’t ready for school. He was fast asleep, under the hay. The school bus sat there for fifteen seconds more, and then the driver gave a last frustrated honk on the horn and the bus pulled away, heading to the next house down the road.
Mary found a clock. It was seven thirty-four. She felt weak, light-headed, and nausea throbbed in her stomach. She staggered into a bathroom and leaned over the toilet, and she retched a few times but nothing much came up. She looked at herself in the mirror: her eyes sunken in swollen folds, her flesh as gray as the dawn. Death, she thought. That’s what I look like. Her leg was hurting with a vengeance, and she searched through a closet in the bathroom until she found a bottle of Excedrin. She took three of them, crunching them between her teeth and washing them down with a handful of water from the tap.
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