Guns [John Hardin 01] (3 page)

Ira had the Nikon out and had already ripped through one roll.

They all watched as the motor lifeboat rounded the harbor entrance and rumbled up to the dock, Stanton effortlessly heaving coiled lines to the life-jacketed crew who tied them off expertly. Ruben stepped from the salt-flecked wheelhouse as soon as the boat was secured and shut down, gesturing for the EMTs. They climbed on board and went down into the aft passenger cabin. Within a few minutes they came out with Ralph Stilley strapped to the stretcher, his left arm encased in what looked like an inflated pillowcase, his color gray, his eyes closed. Adele, who seemed to Sam to have suddenly aged a decade, trailed them, helped off the boat by Ruben and one of the crew, a young freckled woman with short brown hair.

Adele had a haggard, agonized expression and looked childlike in her yellow slicker and orange life jacket. She saw Sam and gave him a strained, distracted little smile, her attention totally focused on her husband. She tugged at the sleeve of an EMT and said, “But I want to go with him.”

“I’m sorry, lady,” the EMT said. “There’s just no room. It’s a serious fracture but he’s going to be fine, I promise. We’ve given him something for the pain. Call the hospital in about two hours. We really have to leave now.”

“It’s all right, Adele,” Sam said, walking over to stand beside her. “I’ll fly you to Greenville as soon as I can get some fuel.” He was thinking
I’ll get permission to drain the fuel out of Phil Saxton’s plane if I have to. Or just drain it and tape a note to the windshield.
Phil had an unlisted phone and was only on the island when he was not out to sea on a trawler for weeks at a stretch.

Adele clasped her hands under her chin, nodded meekly, and watched them load up her husband and then take him away, moving fast to the west.

Ira changed rolls quickly.

Sam put a hand lightly on her shoulder and said, “Dammit, Red. You look like holy hell.”

Ira realized it had been exactly the right thing to say as he watched her turn her face up to Bass and that lost-little-girl look was slowly fading, replaced by a tired grin and a glint in her eye.

“What,” she said, “I don’t look like I’m ready to party?”

Sam smiled and squeezed her shoulder.

“Oh, Sam,” she said. “It was bad. We thought it was just going to be a rainstorm. Then it got worse and worse through the night and we took down all the sail. Ralph was in the cabin fiddling with the radio and I was out in the cockpit and this monster wave came out of nowhere and hit us. We heard the rear mast crack and then it just…it just crashed down on the cabin. It smashed all of the electrical stuff and broke Ralph’s arm. The
bone
was sticking out and I didn’t know what to
do.
He was bleeding and he was in horrible pain. I managed to get the radio to work and Ralph said give them the numbers off the GPS and then it all quit. The mast was floating alongside all snarled in the rigging and every once in a while it would slam into the boat. I got Ralph tied into a bunk and went out and tried to steer the best I could. The motor ran slow for a while and then it stopped, too. It seemed to go on forever and there was just nothing I could
do.
Then I heard the engine and I knew it had to be you. And there you were, bouncing around up there while we were bouncing around down in the waves and it was almost funny and I cried and I knew you’d lead them to us. They shot a rope to us and came over in a raft and got Ralph and then came back and got me. And then I looked back and
Osprey
was gone. Just gone. If you hadn’t found us when you did…who’s this?”

“Ira Cohn, with the Raleigh
Sentinel,
Mrs. Stilley.” He had the tape recorder going in his shirt pocket.

“Really? Well, look, take a picture of
this,”
and she grabbed Bass by his jacket, pulled his head down, and planted a kiss full on his mouth, hard. Bass actually blushed.

Then she clamped him in a side-hug, her damp head barely coming up to his armpit, and smiled widely at the camera as Ira shot away.

“Did he tell you he’s a cowboy at heart?” she said.

Bass was unsmiling and trying surreptitiously to shade his face with the brim of his ball cap, but the fill flash would wipe out the shadow nicely.

What the devil
, Sam was thinking.
It’s only the Raleigh paper. Who’s going to see it? Don’t worry about it.

Since the helicopter had arrived Ira had not had to ask a single question.
Sometimes you just plain get lucky,
he thought.

Then he remembered Samantha Blackstone.

3

S
AM WAS FLYING BACK ACROSS PAMLICO SOUND AT TWENTY-
five hundred feet in the fast-gathering night, the sunset afterglow behind him. He had left an exhausted Adele at the hospital with her suitcase to spend the night with Ralph, who was in a massive cast and resting comfortably.

The air was scrubbed clean and silk smooth, the airplane just about flying itself on its own inherent stability. A large Carolina moon was climbing into the cobalt sky, a billion shavings of pure silver adorning the wide sound and the limitless sea beyond. The Outer Banks formed a slender black band fifteen miles ahead, broken by the inlets in several places, curving gently away as far as the horizon to the left and to the right. In the center of the broken band straight ahead the lighthouse winked slowly and Ocracoke Village sparkled in the darkness. So the power was back on. There were only scattered feathers of high cloud lightly veiling the emerging stars. It was a night fit for the slumber of the gods.

Ma Nature’s way of apologizing for losing her temper in the storm earlier.

Legally, nobody was to use the unlighted Ocracoke strip beyond one-half hour past official sunset. Which had occurred about forty-five minutes ago.
Well,
Sam thought tiredly,
once you start violating aviation commandments I guess you just get on a roll.

He was on a frequency with Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station because he was transiting one of their several coastal restricted areas, and was squawking their assigned transponder code. He thumbed the push-to-talk switch and said, “Cherry Point. Cessna three niner zero Whiskey Sierra. I have Ocracoke in sight,” thinking
now don’t go getting all technical about the time, son.

The bored controller came right back, “Roger Whiskey Sierra. Radar service terminated. Frequency change approved. And have a good
night,
sir.”

“Thanks, Cherry Point. You too. Cessna Whiskey Sierra.” He changed the squawk to the VFR 1200 code and switched over to the silent unicom frequency.

He had all his night vision and the moon was nearly full so the landing posed no real problem. In a few minutes he came in over Ocracoke Village at a thousand feet, the lights like a baroque necklace all around Silver Lake Harbor, set off by the dim anchor lights of several moored boats, the
Osprey
not among them tonight.

He waited until he was on a long final for the shadowy strip before turning on his powerful landing lights, recalling the old joke about what you do if you lose your engine on a night cross-country. You set up for best glide and go through your emergency checklist, and when you get close to the ground you turn your landing lights on. If you don’t like what you see, you turn them off.

He made one of those rare absolutely perfect landings during which you could not feel or hear just when the tires kissed, and taxied slowly to the tie-downs. He stood out on the apron for a few quiet moments taking in the night sky. The wind sock hung limply on its pole, worn out.

“I know just how you feel,” he said to it.

He had topped off in Greenville so he would be able to drain the avgas from his tanks to replace what he had borrowed earlier from Phil Saxton’s Lark, an older high-winger that looked like a Cessna until you saw those knobby-kneed gear and a few other peculiarities. Phil refused to even think about burning auto gas. Sam’s note was still taped to the Lark’s windshield. Transferring the avgas and then refilling the Cessna with auto gas was a chore that would have to wait for early in the morning. Then he would try to look up Phil and tell him what he’d done.

When he parked on the sandy patch in front of the cottage the phone was ringing persistently inside. He hurried in and grabbed it.

“My hero,” she said. “Hi, Val.”

“I heard you drive up. Don’t you think you should get a muffler for that antique Jeep before the tourism committee has it condemned? On second thought, you can probably get away with it for a while yet. The whole island is talking about how you rescued the Stilleys practically single-handed.”

“Aw shucks,” Sam said.

“I have two rewards for you. The first is one of your favorite suppers. I called the hospital to find out how Ralph is and what time you left, so everything’s just about ready. I’m putting the corn muffins in as we speak.”

He pictured her moving about in her warm steamy kitchen deftly doing amazing things to magical concoctions that would render them delicious, her cordless phone clamped between her shoulder and her ear. He could barely do instant oatmeal right, so what Valerie Lightfoot did in her kitchen held an aura of the mystical for him.

“What’s the second reward?”

“After we put Josh to bed we’ll get comfortable and discuss that one at length.”

“Do you hear that sound?” he said. “That’s me coming in your back door.”

He hung up and took only long enough to get into fresh underwear, jeans, and a decent shirt. He could shower at Val’s. Maybe the two of them could. It would conserve soap and rain water.

He went out the back door and used the sandy path they had beaten into the grass over the past year, winding through a grove of gnarled wax myrtles and yaupons, to the back door of Valerie’s cottage. Both his and her small houses were old rentals on the fringe of the village with metal roofs and gutter systems that drained rain water into large cisterns, shallow wells anywhere on the Banks tending to be brackish at best. Maybe one day the three of them would live in one cottage or the other. It would save rent and utilities. But neither he nor Valerie had raised that subject yet, both being stubbornly independent by nature and neither wanting too much baggage just now for a number of private reasons.

She met him at her door with a kiss on his cheek and a lingering hug. Her long black hair was done back in a pony tail.

Returning the hug around her narrow waist, he sniffed and said, “Meatloaf.”

“Nope,” she said. “Vanilla Fields. Fourteen dollars for a little spray bottle at Wal-Mart. I only wear it for special occasions like rewarding a hero.”

“Come to think of it, you do smell pretty good, too. And feel pretty good.”

“Careful, there are small eyes watching.”

Five-year-old Joshua Lightfoot stood in the doorway to the living room with two fingers in his mouth, watching solemnly.

Sam stepped aside, went down on his haunches, held out his arms and said, “Come here, Curly.”

Joshua lit up and ran barefoot across the kitchen, nearly knocking over a chair, flung himself at Sam, and administered a breakneck hug. “Come in my room and play Star Wars,” he said. “You can be Hanz Olo.”

“That’s Han Solo,” Valerie said. “Uh, uh, Mister Sky-walker. Go wash your hands. You too, Chewwy. And then both of you can set the table. Supper’s almost ready.”

“Can we light the candles and turn out all the other lights?” Joshua said.

“Okay, now go.”

Sam carried him into the bathroom and set him on his feet. Joshua turned on the water and Sam stood behind him and reached around the small shoulders to lather their four hands together vigorously while the boy giggled.

The cottage had only two bedrooms, a living room, a bath, and the kitchen, so they sat in candlelight at the rickety kitchen table, which Valerie had burdened with her version of meatloaf casserole, the recipe for which Sam thought ought to be kept in a bank vault, steaming foil-wrapped sweet potatoes, a vegetable concoction that even Joshua always devoured, her own ginger iced tea, and hot corn muffins with honey butter.

Under the table Joshua propped one small bare foot on Sam’s knee as usual, Valerie quietly and sincerely said grace as usual, and they all dug in.

Halfway through the meal Valerie asked, “What are you doing tomorrow?”

“I’ve got a chore at the airstrip first thing. Then I’ll go pick up Adele Stilley at the hospital if she wants me to. I’ve got a lot of finish work left for Brad Meekins on that newest rental cottage he built, but he doesn’t seem to be in any great hurry for me to get it done. No charters scheduled. Why?”

“I wondered if you could pick Josh up from kindergarten at three. I don’t get off until nine and Mrs. Bradley has to go up to Nags Head and won’t be back in time to watch him.”

“Sure. We’ll find something to do. Go bungee jumping, maybe. Or skydiving. We’ll grab foot-longers and milkshakes at the Burger Box. Maybe rent a good old western from the General Store later and fix up some popcorn. If he’s bad I’ll spank his backside.”

“Oh, sure you will,” Valerie said. “Whenever the two of you get together it’s not real easy to tell right off which one’s the five-year-old. Just remember his bed time is eight.”

“I’ll spank
your
backside, Sam,” Joshua said with a dimpled grin. “Sam, did you know that girl lions have to go out and get all the food and the boy lions just lie down under a tree? For real. I seen it on TV.”

“You
saw
it on TV,” Sam said. “And that’s exactly how things ought to be.”

“You’re warping my kid, you know,” Valerie said.

After the events of the day Sam felt especially privileged to be here with the two people he had come to care most about in the world, sharing the meal and each other, and he saw them with a newness.

Valerie glowed primitively in the candlelight. Her Cherokee blood, thinned only by two generations, gave her fine skin a dark sheen. Her cheek bones were high, her carriage was unpretentiously proud, and her long dark hair was satin black. She thought her breasts were much too small but Sam considered them to be perfect. Lightfoot was her family name, Joshua’s father having died in a brutal car wreck near Johnson City, Tennessee, just two weeks before the date that had been set for their marriage, never having seen his son. Her relatives were scattered up in the North Carolina mountains. At thirty-two, she was nine years younger than Sam.

Joshua was slender like his mother, with her large shining dark brown eyes, but he was light-skinned. His face was lean, his chin faintly prominent, his lips full, and his hair a tumult of light brown curls.
He’ll break a heart or two when he’s grown
, Sam often thought.

Over bowls of her peach cobbler, Valerie said, “I’ve been talking with Pam a lot at work when it’s slow about a new line of products she’s selling.”

Uh oh, here she goes again
, Sam thought.

Valerie worked as a waitress at Sonny’s Seafood, and always had a little left over at the end of each week for her savings after promptly paying all her bills, but she was continually on the lookout for some scheme that would greatly expand her income and help make her dreams of what she called a real house and of a good college education for Joshua come true. Sam knew she had tried Tupperware, which now filled two of her limited cabinets, and lines of cosmetics—although she seldom wore any makeup herself—and vacuum cleaners, and Beanie Babies, not to mention envelope-stuffing and home crafts assembly for some company based in Minneapolis.

“Val, please don’t take this wrong, but I don’t think you’re cut out for sales. The way you cook you could open your own restaurant and get rich. You know that business.”

“But these products practically sell themselves once people understand the principles behind it all,” she said, starting to clear the table. She turned on the overhead light and let Joshua make a wish and blow out the candles.

Joshua ran into his room and came back with an armload of worn miniature
Star Wars
figures and created an imaginary alien planet on the kitchen table while Valerie and Sam washed and dried the dishes.

“The way Pam explains it, there are all kinds of toxins in our bodies. If we can help our bodies get rid of them we’ll be healthier in every way,” she said seriously.

“So how do we go about doing that?”

“Magnets,” she said.

“Magnets.”

“I know it sounds a little far-fetched but Pam swears it really works. This company has all kinds of products. Small disc magnets about this big.” She made an O with her soapy thumb and forefinger. “Car seats with multiple magnetic pole lines embedded in them. Vests. Pads that you sleep on. Wrist bands. I’ll show you something in a minute. Pam’s mother-in-law used to have severe indigestion and painful arthritis. She’s been sleeping on one of those pads for just a week and taping the discs on at specific locations and her symptoms are all gone. Pam’s husband had a bad back from working construction so he started using one of the car seats and now he says he feels ten years younger. It’s a Japanese thing. Pam has a tester that lights up and beeps when it senses a magnetic field. She can tape a disc on your back and pass the tester near your stomach and it will go off. That demonstrates how the force field passes right through your body. The field stimulates the nerves internally to increase your blood flow and when you have increased blood flow you’re getting rid of toxins and you have healing, don’t you? Pam goes to monthly meetings that the company puts on over in New Bern and she’s invited me to the next one. You’d be welcome too, of course.”

“Now I know why you feel so good when you’re around me,” Sam said. “Go ahead, ask me.”

“Okay, why?”

“It’s my animal magnetism.”

“Pam
said
your friends won’t believe it at first. Wait, I’ll show you.”

She finished washing the last glass and Sam dried it and put it away while she rummaged in her oversized purse and came up with a thin pasteboard envelope, from which she extracted two knobby-looking black shoe inserts. “One size fits all,” she said. “Sit down and take your boots off.”

He sat and worked off his ropers.

She slid the inserts inside. “Okay, put them back on.”

“How much do these cost?”

“They’re not inexpensive, but what price do you put on your health?”

“About how much.”

“Sixty dollars. Well, plus tax and shipping, of course.”

“Sixty dollars.”

“There,” she said. “Now walk around a little. That’s it. Don’t your feet feel better already? Pam wears them and her feet don’t bother her at all anymore, and you know how we’re on our feet all the time, with that cement floor in the kitchen and only a thin layer of vinyl on it.”