“So I’ve been told.” After a moment’s silence, he said, “How surprised should I act? I mean, considering you’ve told me about the cake.”
“Oh, that cake!” Jed slapped his thigh. “My God, I must’ve aged ten years listening to her go on about chemistry and all these equations and molecular coefficients. The only physics I ever needed was bullet trajectories and wind speed.”
“I think you had fun.”
“Oh yeah. Grace always was smart as a whip. Michael took after her more than me. He was gonna . . .” The old man took a hard swallow. “He was fixed on engineering school, but the money was a problem, so he joined up. Then he figured out how much he liked the Marines and that was that. I thought maybe when Alice came along, he might stop to think about what would happen to her and Deb if he was to get himself killed, but he was stubborn just like you. Once his heart was set on a path, there was no talking to him.”
Jed looked so miserable that Tom had to fight the impulse to blurt out that, fine, he would stay. There was no way around this; his leaving would hurt, and there was nothing he could do about that.
The Coleman hissed. He let Jed break the silence. “I got something else for you.”
“You shouldn’t,” Tom said, quietly. “You’ve given me so much already.”
“And not nearly half what you’re worth,” Jed said, fiercely. The deep crevices along the sides of his nose were wet.
Tom said nothing. Jed unzipped the Road King’s right saddlebag, reached in, and fished out a bulging, plastic accordion document pouch, tied with string. “You got maps, and I put down how to get where me and Grace are going come spring. There’s a list, too,” he added as Tom unwound the string. “Folks who might come in handy. I know I told you not to trust anyone, but if they’re still around, these are good people.”
Tom fingered the envelope, then drew out a brittle piece of paper so old that the edges were frayed, though the ink was new. “Who are they?”
“Vets, most of them. We rode Rolling Thunder together. And here.” Jed dug inside his shirt and slipped something from around his neck. “You take these. Show them to anyone on that list, and they’ll know you’re okay.”
The tags, warm from Jed’s body heat, were not a matched set.
The edge of the older tag was crimped, and there was no social; just Jed’s name, service number, blood type, and religion. The design of the other he was very familiar with, because his meat tag tattoo had the same information. His own tags, with their rubber silencers, were tucked in an old sock drawer back in a house that, more than likely, was now nothing but ashes.
“I shouldn’t take these.”
“Tom, you’re young. You think you can go it alone, but you ought to know by now that you can’t. You’re going to need help. Now, you take those.” Jed paused. “Humor an old fool. Do it for me, if nothing else.”
Jed had a point. If Vietnam veterans were anything like vets nowadays, the network was tight, and the bonds were for life. Draping the tags around his neck, he tucked them inside his shirt.
“Where’s your other tag?”
“With Michael. That tag of his there is the one they brought to the house. Night before the funeral, though, I slipped one of mine in there with him, so he wouldn’t be alone.” Jed put his hand on Tom’s shoulder. “Now you won’t be either.”
There was a knock at the front door. Three, actually: sharp and evenly spaced.
Darn it. Grace’s brows pulled down in a frown. Jed was early, but . . . he always used the south door. Anyway, he wouldn’t knock.
More raps: “Grace, it’s me.”
Her shoulders relaxed, but only a little. She knew the voice, but it was the wrong place at the wrong time. She would have to figure out a way to get rid of him. He couldn’t see the table, the gifts.
“Grace?”
Well, shoot. She threw a quick glance at the timer, now halfway through this ninth cycle. It shouldn’t take more than twenty seconds to answer the door. Plenty of time.
One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand . . . I’ll just say he can’t stay. She headed out of the west room and took the short hall to the front door. Three-one-thousand, four . . . I’ll be firm, and then I’ll shut the door and I won’t answer again, no matter what . . . Six-one-thousand. She dragged open the front door, wincing against a wintry blast. Seven—
Everything she needed to say piled up like those grains of sand on that miniature mountain. Her mouth opened, but not a word tumbled out. She recognized the old man in his black parka and too-large bombardier hat, pulled so far down he had to tip his head back to see where he was going.
The other two—hard and grim-faced and also old, because just about everyone was these days—she didn’t recognize at all.
Three men. For one brief moment, she felt a weird sense of déjà vu. She wasn’t at the cabin, and the world hadn’t gone to hell, and the Marines had only just arrived as she wandered out of the kitchen with measuring spoons—because, for the life of her, she couldn’t remember what those spoons were for.
Then her eyes shifted to the horses.
Three men, two rifles.
But six horses.
These men, that’s three. She felt the air drying her tongue, her voice evaporating the way the fizz in pop died. A horse for him, too, but not me or Jed—because they’re not here for us, and that makes four.
So where are the other two men?
She looked at the old man in that ridiculously outsized hat. “Abel?”
25
Saturday night.
“I don’t like it. They’ve been gone way too long, practically since dawn, and they don’t hunt during the day. Plus, they got a bonfire going in the snow. What sense does that make?” Sharon dug a grimy fingernail into a huge, weeping sore pocking her right cheek. The ulceration, mushy and liverish, occupied the bull’seye of a faded green-gray tattoo of a web like a squashed spider.
Sharon tossed a glare at Acne, perched on a low coffee table to the left of a crackling fire Alex had gotten started, and then turned an equally suspicious eye on Alex. “How come they ain’t come back to camp?”
“How should I know?” Alex asked, although this place could hardly be called a camp. From the metallic scent of hard ice and what she’d been able to make out in the failing light, the Changed had claimed someone’s old lake place: a swank and very large Victorian with gingerbread, a porch swing, and even a flagpole. Acne and Slash, the pack’s muscle, had herded them into a small guesthouse that held the long-stale whiff of sulfur and rancid fat from an ancient breakfast of fried eggs. Compared to the run-down sheds and frigid lean-tos of the past week, this place was a mansion. “I don’t know any more than you do.”