Blue Heaven (15 page)

“We can take this old fart,” redheaded Jarrod said. “He can’t throw us out of here. It’s a public place.”

“Forget it, man,” the dark boy said. “He isn’t worth it.”

Jess let it go. He could grant them a bit of false dignity in their cowardice.

Jess stood to the side on the porch and watched them come out, all four of them glaring at him as they passed. He was pleased that the blond girl at least looked ashamed of herself, ashamed of her companions. The brunette didn’t, though. Her face was a mask of righteous indignation. Jess heard the words
white trash
as they climbed into their car and threw gravel as they exited the parking lot. The redheaded boy shouted something as they pulled onto the two-lane, and raised his hand out of the window with his middle finger out.

He finished his lunch, which was cold, while the owner cleaned up the vacated table. The last selection finished on the jukebox, and the only sound in the Bear Trap was the ticking of the clock and the clink of the empty glasses she gathered from the table.

He gestured toward the poster. “This kind of thing is on the news so much these days it probably doesn’t even seem real to them.”

“They didn’t even leave me a tip,” the proprietress said as she stacked the dirty plates and glasses behind the bar.

PULLING OFF the road near his mailbox, Jess got his mail and tossed it on the seat next to him. Fiona had placed a Post-It note on an envelope from the county tax assessor with the words “BETTER OPEN THIS!!!” on it.

After changing into his work clothes and replacing his new Stetson with his sweat-stained old one, Jess stuck a pair of fencing pliers in his back pocket and saddled Chile. There was a cold, heavy stone in his belly as he rode up a slate-rock ridge that overlooked the ranch hill on the north side of the near meadow.

Growing up, Jess Rawlins had explored every inch of the ranch within riding distance of the house, and the rest later, on overnights via horseback or dirt bike. He had spent most of his time alone, and he was intimate with the folds of the terrain, the stands of trees, the overhang bank along the creek where he could reach down into the water and, if he was gentle, feel the gills flutter on the three-pound trout that lived there.

The slate-rock ridge was 150 yards from his house. The teeth of the ridge could be seen against the horizon from his porch and from the road, but the slope behind it was obscured from view. It was the perfect place to see but not be seen.

As a boy, Jess had created scenarios where he went into action and saved his family from outside threats. When he was very young he used to imagine Indians attacking. Later, it was escaped criminals or Communists. Aiming down the length of a broom handle or a BB gun, he had hidden himself on the top of the ridge with slate-rock outcroppings, and picked off his targets as they moved down out of the trees into the open ranch yard below. From the outcropping, the main ranch road was in full view as it spilled out of the trees and curved down the hillside in looping switchbacks before straightening for the ranch house. From his perch behind the slate rocks, he would see his mother through the window
in her kitchen, but she couldn’t see him. She had no idea he was up there saving her, saving the ranch.

Sometimes, he remembered, the situation got so desperate that he would need to counterattack. He would rise to his feet, holler a war cry, and charge down the hill, bobbing and weaving toward the house as his enemies shot at him. Sometimes they hit him, and to make the action realistic, he would splash water from his canteen on the place where the bullet hit, so he could feel the wetness of the blood. He would be practically soaked by the time he made it to the house and dispatched the last of the bad guys, despite his massive and fatal wounds.

At dinner, his mother would ask him why he was wet. He would say, “I
am
?”

Years later, he had shown this place to his son, Jess Jr., even urged the boy to hunker down behind the slabs of slate that poked twelve to fourteen inches through the grassy surface of the ridge like shields. Not that he wanted the boy to create scenarios of his own, but he hoped his son would simply appreciate the view the ridge afforded of the ranch, the land, the open vista bordered by dark trees. His son had looked around, then turned to Jess with a shrug, and asked how long it was until dinner.

HE PICKED his way down the slate-rock ridge, looking out at the newborn calves and their mothers, including the new arrivals from the night before, who were racing around in the fenced-off meadow, bawling, quiet only when they were sleeping or nursing from their mothers. He liked new calves. It was the only time in their lives they were ever clean, and their russet-and-white coloring was vibrant. They smelled fresh.

He rode through them, climbed the other side of the corral fence to the near meadow, and followed the fence to the top of the hill. The barbed wires had sagged between two posts, leaving enough of a gap that the calves could escape if they figured it out. Even so, they wouldn’t go far from their mothers, and both mothers and babies would make a god-awful racket trying to reunite. The desperate mothers might cut themselves up on the wire trying to get to their newborns. He dismounted, tightened the wire, and pounded new staples into the posts.
After finishing, he did what he always did, which was to walk along the fence, thumping each post to make sure it was sound, making sure the bottoms hadn’t rotted away.

That’s when he saw the strip of color hanging from a barb on the second strand from the top.

Jess bent over and looked at it. The yellow strip was no wider than a half inch and an inch long. It wasn’t frayed or bleached out by the sun or rain, which meant it was new. Maybe, he thought, one of the search team members had brushed too close to his fence. He remembered the description of the Taylor girl from the poster, that she was last seen wearing a yellow sweatshirt.

Then, in the mud near his boots, he noticed two footprints. One was from a small athletic shoe. The other, slightly larger, was made by a bare foot.

He stood up and looked out over his ranch in the direction the footprints were aimed. They were headed for his barn.

I
HEAR someone coming,” Annie said, bending forward and clapping her hand over William’s mouth and muzzling a long complaint about how hungry he was. William squirmed in protest and reached up to pry her hand away but heard it too: crunching footfalls in loose gravel outside the barn.

IT HAD been Annie’s idea to hide in the barn the night before, after they had shinnied through the limp strands of a barbed-wire fence. They had seen the barn roof glowing in the cloud-muted blue moonlight. The barn was situated in an open area at the foot of the slope, a clearing that held back the black wall of trees. There was a house down there, too, in fact two of them, but they were dark and she didn’t want to knock on any doors. After what had happened at Mr. Swann’s, she didn’t trust anyone.

They had held hands as they crossed the ranch yard, stepping as lightly as they could through the gravel, waiting for the charge of barking, snarling cow dogs that never came. Instead, a blocky old Labrador approached them, tail wagging, and licked William’s hand.

Luckily, the barn was empty except for a fat cow that stood still and silent in a stall. Half of the barn was filled with pungent hay bales stacked up to the rafters. Annie and William climbed them using the stair-step pattern of stacked bales until they were on the top of the hay. There, she decided, was where they would stop and rest. From the top, she could look down on the floor of the barn and see all of the doors.

“We need to build a nest,” she told William.

“Let’s call it a fort,” he said. “A fort sounds better.”

“Okay, a fort.”

“I’ll protect us,” William said. “I got outlaw blood in me.”

“You mean Billy? Stop that.”

“Dad was an outlaw.”

Annie glared at him. “William, your dad was a criminal.”

“He was your dad, too.”

“I doubt it.”

William’s eyes misted, his upper lip trembled, and Annie felt bad for what she’d said.

“I’m really sorry. Never mind that,” she said. “Let’s build our fort.” “I can do it, really,” William said through a shuddering breath.

“I know you can,” she said.

The bales were heavy, but not so heavy that the two of them couldn’t lift six out of the top row by the twine that bound them and stack the bales around the hole they had formed. Their fort was two bales deep into the stack.

Even though William was literally falling asleep as he stood there, Annie coaxed him back down to the ground, where they found a tack room. They carried stiff saddle blankets and a canvas tarp up to their fort and lined its floor with them. William was asleep before Annie could adjust the tarp to cover him.

She made one more trip to the tack room, and found a long, scythe-shaped hay hook and a pitchfork, which she took up to their fort. The pitchfork was now within reach on the top of the bales. The hay hook, with its long shaft and curled tine that looked like a pointed metal question mark, was stuck in the hay at eye level.

Annie had slept fitfully. Every sound—a bird whistling through the rafters, the fat cow shifting her weight or peeing with the sound of a bucket being emptied—scared her and kept her awake. The events of
the previous day and night kept replaying in her head, her reminiscence even more vibrant and vivid than what she had actually experienced in the first place. The bright red blood pouring from the chest and face of the Wavy-Haired Man who’d been shot. The smell of pig manure from Mr. Swann’s boots as they huddled on the floor of his pickup. The sharp pine needles that scratched at them as they ran through the night, putting several hours between themselves and Mr. Swann’s home. William, though, had slept like something dead. When he snored, she prodded him with her elbow to make him stop.

The last thing she remembered, until now, was seeing the muted cream glow from the rising sun through gaps in the east side of the barn.

Someone was coming.

It was much warmer in the barn now, and heat beat down on them from the roof just a few feet over the top of their hay wall. She guessed it was midday, or early afternoon. She threw the tarp back and found herself drenched in sweat. She was thirsty, and her mouth was so dry her lips stuck to her teeth as she tried to talk.

“Here they come,” she said thickly.

A LARGE sliding door opened, flooding the barn with light. The sound of it was like a roll of distant thunder. William’s eyes widened, and Annie withdrew her hand from his mouth.

Who is it?
he mouthed.

She shrugged in reply. She didn’t dare rise and peek over the hay bales to see who it was.

“Hello,” a man called. “Is someone in here?”

She tried to judge the voice. It didn’t sound threatening. But neither had Mr. Swann’s.

“I saw some tracks outside,” the man said. “They were pointed this direction. If you’re in here, speak up.”

Annie and William exchanged looks. Annie narrowed her eyes and gestured toward the hay hook and the pitchfork, and William saw them for the first time. He looked back at his sister with admiration.

Annie pulled William to her, and she whispered in his ear. “If he comes up here, we’ll have to defend ourselves.”

William nodded his understanding.

For a moment, there was no sound at all from below. What was he doing, Annie wondered. Had he left? What if he decided to go into his house and call the sheriff? Or his neighbor, Mr. Swann?

“Annie and Willie, are you in here?” the man asked softly.

Annie’s heart raced:
He knew their names!

She looked at William, who was scowling. He didn’t like to be called Willie. He reached up and drew the hay hook out of the bale, and ran his finger along its sharpened tip.

The man below was walking through the barn, and she heard the door to the tack room open and the sound of boots scuffing on the slat-board floor. Then the door closed, and the man called out, even more softly than before.

“Annie and Willie, if you’re in here, you can come out. You’re probably pretty hungry and thirsty, and I’d guess you’ve got family who is worried as hell about you. I see I’m missing some blankets and a tarp, and my guess is you needed them to get through the night. That was smart thinking. But I’d bet that a shower and something cool to drink would sound even better right now.”

William looked to Annie and made a face, indicating, “It sure would!”

Annie scolded him with her eyes.

“I imagine you two are scared,” the man said. “I understand. But I’m not going to do you any harm. My name’s Jess Rawlins. I own this ranch.”

Suddenly, Annie had doubts. The man’s voice seemed kind, and caring. There was a timbre to it she liked. But how could she know he was telling the truth? Or that even if he was a rancher, he wasn’t friends with people like Mr. Swann or the executioners?

“I’m coming up there on the top of my hay,” Rawlins said, “because if I was a kid your age, that’s where I’d go. Plus, it looks like my stack is one row higher today than it was last night when I left it.”

William clutched the handle of the hay hook with both hands. Annie slid the pitchfork into their fort from where she had put it the night before. She grasped the rough wooden handle and pointed the rusty curved tines toward the top edge of the hay bales.