Blue Heaven (2 page)

“School, eh?” Tom said, reaching out and tousling the boy’s hair. William nodded, his eyes wide.

“Too bad you can’t take the day off and go fishing with me. I really got into some nice ones last night before I came over. Fifteen-, sixteen-inch trout. I brought a few to your mom for you guys to have for dinner.”

“I want to go,” William said, swelling out his chest. “I’ve never gone fishing, but I think I could do it.”

“You bet you could, little man,” Tom said, sipping the hot coffee. He gestured toward the cluttered mudroom off the kitchen where he’d hung his fishing vest and stored his fly rod in the corner. “I’ve got another rod in my truck you could use.”

Suddenly, William was squirming in his chair, excited. “Hey, we get out of school early today! Maybe we could go then?”

Tom looked to Annie for clarification.

“Early release,” Annie said deadpan. “We’re out at noon.”

Tom pursed his lips and nodded, his eyes dancing, now totally in control of William. “Maybe I’ll pick you up and take you after school, then. I’ll ask your mom about it. I can pick you up out front. D’you want to go along, too, Annie?”

She shook her head quickly.
“No.”

“You need to ease up a little,” Tom told her, smiling with his mouth only.

“You need to go home,” she replied.

Tom was about to say something when her mother came down the stairs, her head turned away from the kitchen and toward the front door. Annie watched her mother walk quickly through the living room and part the curtains, expecting, Annie thought, to confirm that Tom’s vehicle was gone. When it wasn’t, her mother turned in horror and took it all in: Tom, Annie, and William at the kitchen table. Annie saw the blood drain out of her mother’s face, and for a second she felt sorry for her. But only for a second.

“Tommmmm,”
her mother said, dragging his name out and raising the tone so it was a sentence in itself meaning many things, but mostly,
“Why are you still here?”

“Don’t you need to get to work?” her mother finally said.

Tom was a UPS driver. Annie was used to seeing him in his brown uniform after work. His shirt and shorts were extra tight.

“Yup,” Tom said, standing so quickly he sloshed coffee on the table. “I better get going, kids. I’ll be late.”

Annie watched Tom and her mother exchange glances as Tom hurried past her toward the front door, grabbing his shoes on the way. She thanked God there was no good-bye kiss between them, or she might throw up right there.

“Mom,” William said, “Tom’s going to take me fishing after school!”

“That’s nice, honey,” his mom said vacantly.

“Go brush your teeth,” Annie said to William, assuming the vacated role of adult. “We’ve got to go.”

William bounded upstairs.

Annie glared at her mother, who said, “Annie …”

“Are you going to marry him?”

Her mother sighed, seemed to search for words. She raised her hands
slowly, then dropped them to her sides as if the strings had been snipped. That answered Annie’s question.

“You told me …”

“I
know
,” her mother said impatiently, tears in her eyes. “It’s hard for you to understand. Someday you’ll see, maybe.”

Annie got up from the table and took her and William’s bowls to the sink, rinsed them out. When she was through, her mother was still standing there, hadn’t moved.

“Oh, I understand,” Annie said, then gestured toward the stairs. “But William doesn’t. He thinks he’s got a new dad.”

Her mother took a sharp breath as if Annie had slapped her. Annie didn’t care.

“We’ll talk later,” her mother said, as Annie avoided her and went straight outside through the mudroom to wait for William in the yard. She knew her mom would be heartbroken because she hadn’t kissed her good-bye.
Too bad
, Annie thought.
Mom had been kissed enough lately.

AT NOON, Annie waited with William at the front of the school for Tom. They looked for his pickup and never saw it. When a UPS truck came down the block, William pumped his fist and growled,
“YES!”

But Tom wasn’t driving the truck, and it never slowed down.

After taking Tom’s fishing rod and vest, Annie and William walked along the damp shoulder of the state highway out of town. Annie led. She knew there was a creek up there somewhere. A woman driving a little yellow pickup pulled over in front of them.

“Where are you two headed with such dogged determination?” the woman asked in a high-pitched little-girl voice. Annie disliked her immediately. She was one of those older women who thought they were young and pert instead of squat and wide.

“Fishing,” Annie said. “Up ahead, on the creek.”

The woman said her name was Fiona, and she delivered rural mail, and she would be going that direction if they needed a ride. Even though William shook his head no, Annie said, “Thank you.”

While they drove deep into the forest and began to see glimpses of a stream through the trees, Fiona never stopped talking. She acted as if she was interested in them, but she wasn’t, Annie thought. Fiona was determined
to convince them that delivering mail was a very important job and not just anybody could do it. As if she expected Annie to say, “Wow—you deliver the
mail
?” Fiona’s perfumed scent was overpowering inside the small cab. Annie’s eyes began to water, and she threw an elbow at William, who was pinching his nose shut.

“Can you let us off here?” Annie asked at no particular landmark except that she could see the creek.

“Are you sure this is okay with your folks?” Fiona asked, well after the time she should have.

“Sure,” Annie lied.

They thanked her and got out. William was concerned that the fish would be able to smell him because his clothes were now reeking of perfume, but Annie convinced him fish couldn’t smell. Not that she knew anything about fish.

MAYBE, ANNIE THOUGHT, the men didn’t notice William and her because the dark green plastic they wore over their clothes blended in so well with the color of the heavy brush. Maybe, the men had looked around for another vehicle, and not having seen one, assumed no one else was there, certainly not on foot. But Annie could certainly see
them
; the profiles of four men parked in a white SUV in a campground space.

Everything was wet and dark under the dripping canopy of trees, and it smelled of pine, loam, and the spray of the creek. Other than the white car, the campground looked empty. There was a picnic table next to the SUV, and a low black fire pit.

Annie watched as the driver got out and shut his door, looked around the campsite, then turned back to the vehicle. He was middle-aged or older, lean, fit, and athletic in his movements. He had short white hair and a tanned, thin face. Three more doors opened, and three more men climbed out. They wore casual rain jackets, one wore a ball cap. The man in the ball cap put a six-pack of beer on the picnic table and pulled out four bottles and twisted the tops off, putting the tops into his jacket pocket.

The men seemed to be comfortable with one another, she thought, the way they nodded and smiled and talked. She couldn’t hear what they said because of the sound of the rushing creek behind her. The Ball Cap
Man offered bottles of beer to everyone, and took a long drink of his own. They didn’t sit down at the table—too wet, she thought—but stood next to each other.

Annie felt William tugging on her arm through the plastic. When she looked over, he gestured back toward the path they had come by, indicating he wanted to go. She gave him a
just-a-minute
nod and turned back to the campsite. It thrilled her to spy on the men. Men fascinated and repulsed her, maybe because her mother attracted so many of them.

What happened next was terrifying.

The Driver circled the group of men, as if returning to the car, then he suddenly wheeled and jabbed a finger into the chest of a wavy-haired man and said something harsh. The wavy-haired man stumbled back a few feet, obviously surprised. As if a signal had been given, both the Ball Cap Man and a tall, dark man stepped back, and stood shoulder to shoulder with the Driver, facing down the wavy-haired man, who pitched his beer bottle aside and held his hands out, palms up, in an innocent gesture.

“Annie …” William pleaded.

She saw the Dark Man pull a pistol from behind his back, point it at the Wavy-Haired Man, and fire three times,
pop-pop-pop.
The Wavy-Haired Man staggered backwards until he tripped over the fire pit and fell into the mud.

Annie caught her breath, and her heart seemed to rush up her throat and gag her. She felt a sharp pain in her arm, and for a second she thought that a stray bullet had struck her, but when she glanced down she saw it was William’s two-handed grip. He had seen what happened in the campsite, too. It wasn’t like television or the movies, where a single shot was a deafening explosion and the victim was hurled backwards, dead, bursts of blood detonating from his clothing. This was just a
pop-pop-pop
, like a string of firecrackers. She couldn’t believe what had just happened, couldn’t believe it wasn’t a prank or a joke or her imagination.

“Annie, let’s get out of here!”
William cried, and she started to backpedal blindly, toward the creek.

At the water’s edge, she looked over her shoulder, realizing they had lost the path and could go no farther.

“No,” she yelled at William. “Not this way. Let’s get back on the trail!”

He turned to her panicked, eyes wide, his face drained of color. Annie reached for his hand and tugged him along, crashing back through the brush toward the path. When they reached it, she looked back toward the campsite. All three men stood over the Wavy-Haired Man, firing pistols into his body.

Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.

Suddenly, as if Annie’s own gaze had drawn him, the Driver looked up. Their eyes locked, and Annie felt something like ice-cold electricity shoot through her. It burned the tips of her fingers and toes and momentarily froze her shoes to the ground.

William screamed,
“He sees us!”

SHE RAN like she had never run before, pulling her brother along behind her, yelling, “Stay with me!”

They kept to the trail that paralleled the lazy curves of Sand Creek. The stream was on their left, the dark forest on their right. Wet branches raked her face and tugged at her clothing as she ran. She could hear her own screams as if someone else was making them.

Pop-pop.
A thin tree in front of them shook from an impact, and half-opened buds rained down. The men were shooting at them.

William was crying, but he was keeping up. He gripped her hand so tightly she could no longer feel her fingers, but she didn’t care. Somewhere, she had lost a shoe in the mud, but she never even considered going back for it, and now her left foot was freezing.

How far were they from the road? She couldn’t guess. If they got to the road, there was the chance of getting a ride home with someone.

William jerked to a stop so suddenly that Annie was pulled backwards, falling. Had one of the men grabbed him?

No, she saw. His fly rod had been caught between the trunks of two trees. Rather than let go of it, he was trying to pull it free.

“Drop it, William!” she cried. “Just drop it!”

He continued to struggle as if her words hadn’t penetrated. His face was twisted with determination, his tears streaming.

“LET GO!” she screamed, and he did.

She scrambled back to her feet and as she did she saw a shadow pass in the trees on their right. It was the Ball Cap Man, and he had apparently
found a parallel trail that might allow him to get ahead so he could cut them off.

“Wait,” she said to William, her eyes wide. “We can’t keep going this way. Follow me.”

She pushed herself through heavy wet undergrowth, straight at the path she had seen the Ball Cap Man running on. She hesitated a moment at the trail, saw no one, and plunged across it between two gnarled wild rosebushes, pulling William behind her. This time, she didn’t need to prompt him to keep running.

They were now traveling directly away from the river through heavy timber. Annie let go of her brother’s hand, and the two of them scrambled over downed logs and through masses of dead and living brush farther into the shadows. Something low and heavy-bodied, a raccoon maybe, scuttled out of sight and parted the fronds in front of them.

They left the roar of the river behind them, and it got quieter in the forest. At one point they heard a shout below them, somewhere in the trees, one of the men shouting,
“Where did they go, goddammit?”

“Did you hear that?” William asked.

She stopped, leaned back against the trunk of a massive ponderosa pine, and nodded.

“Do you think they would shoot us if they found us?”

She implored him with her eyes not to talk.

William collapsed next to her, and for a few minutes the only sound in the forest was the steady dripping of the trees and their winded breath. Even as she recovered from exertion, the terror remained. Every tree looked like one of the men. Every shadow looked momentarily like a man with a gun.