Heat (7 page)

W
hen Jesse woke there was a gray light in the room, and she was gone. For a moment he was sure he had dreamed too well, but her scent was still in the sheets, arousing him again. He heard her bedroom door open and close and her steps on the stairs; it was five-thirty
A.M.
by his bedside clock.

Jesse rose, showered, shaved, dressed in work clothes and went downstairs, not knowing what to expect from her. All seemed normal; Carey was eating her cereal while reading a schoolbook, and Jenny was at the stove, her back to him.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning, Jesse,” Carey said. “Mama's fixing your breakfast.”

Jenny did not speak, but turned and looked at him, and there was uncertainty in her face.

“Good morning, Jenny,” he said with the warmest smile he could muster.

She blushed, then smiled. “Good morning, Jesse. You're timing's good; your eggs will be ready in ten seconds.”

A glass of freshly squeezed orange juice awaited him, and he sat down and drank it. The eggs were perfectly cooked, and the sausage was wonderful. “The sausage must be local,” he said.

She nodded, eating her own eggs. “I get it from one of our few remaining farmers.”

He finished his eggs, then glanced at his watch. “I think I should be a little early on my first day,” he said. “Can I drop Carey at school?”

Jenny shook her head. “She's not due there until eight, and it's close enough for her to walk.”

“That's nice. See you later, then, Carey.”

“Goodbye, Jesse, have a nice day,” the little girl said.

He winked at Jenny, then left the table and started for the front door, grabbing his jacket from the coatrack in the hall.

“Jesse,” Jenny said. She had come out of the kitchen and into the hall.

Jesse looked to be sure Carey was still in the kitchen. He smiled.

“Don't say anything,” she said, raising a hand. “Not yet.” Then she smiled broadly at him. “I just wanted you to know that I'm not feeling the least guilty this morning.”

He laughed. “Neither am I.”

“Go safely.”

 

In the truck he shoved the Pastoral tape into the player and hummed along with it. The morning was spectacular—chilly, crisp, with sparkling sunshine. He thought his heart would leap from his chest.

 

The Wood Products factory was quiet when he arrived, but the employees' door was open, and Harley Waters was there before him.

“Morning, Jesse.”

“Morning, Harley.”

“Come on, I'll show you the drill.”

Jesse followed him to the back of the building and watched as Harley hit a button and the truck entrance clattered noisily open. They climbed a few steps to a wooden platform. Harley pointed. “It's real simple,” he said. “The trucks back in there, through the doors, and dump their loads. Further down there, they're unloading cordwood, but here, at your station, it's the remnants, and everything has to be fed into the hopper, there, by hand.” He handed Jesse a hardhat, some ear protectors and a pair of heavy gloves. “Don't fall behind. Herman doesn't like it when the trucks have to wait.” He took off his hardhat and scratched his head. “I think you're smart enough to see that there's nothing but your good sense to keep you from falling into that hopper yourself, Jesse, and if you do fall in, this machinery will make chipboard out of you.”

“I got you,” Jesse said, glancing at his watch. Ten minutes to go. “Have I got time to use the john?”

“If you hurry.” Harley walked away, and Jesse headed for the men's room. He was back in time to see the first truck backing in.

The truck dumped a load of odd-sized pieces of wood, branches and trimmings, a real mess, Jesse thought. The machinery was turned on, and he began to grab stuff and throw it into the hopper.

At nine-fifteen, a bell rang, and the machinery stopped. Jesse thought he would faint with relief. His face, arms and body were covered in scratches from the logs and branches he had manhandled into the hopper. He walked stiffly to the men's room to pee and to throw some water on his face. Harley Waters came in and assigned him a locker, and he drank some coffee from the thermos Jenny had prepared for him.

“How you like it so far, boy?” Harley laughed.

“It's just swell,” Jesse replied.

 

When the bell rang again at five o'clock, Jesse could hardly walk to his truck. His body ached from one end to the other, and the only thing that kept him going was the knowledge that when he got home, Jenny and Carey would be waiting for him. He turned out to be half right.

When he walked through the front door, Carey appeared from the living room. “Mom's upstairs getting dressed,” she said.

“I see,” Jesse replied. “Well, I think I'll have a bath and change clothes. He trudged up the stairs to his room and peeled off his work clothes while the water ran in the tub. When it was full he climbed stiffly into it and sank under the water with a groan. He had, he reckoned, just done the hardest day's work of his life. Herman Muller hadn't been kidding when he said it was the worst job in the plant.

 

Jesse was wakened slowly by the cooling water. He climbed out of the tub, feeling half-human again, got dressed and started downstairs, glancing at his watch. He had been in the tub for more than an hour. The doorbell rang.

There was a man at the door, wearing a suit and looking as though he didn't often wear it. Jesse walked to the door and opened it. “Evening, can I help you?”

The man stared at him. “I'm expected,” he said. “Who are you?”

Jesse opened the door and offered his hand. “I'm Jesse Barron; I'm boarding here.”

“Fred Patrick,” the man said shortly, shaking Jesse's hand.

Carey appeared from the kitchen. “Oh, hello, Mr. Patrick,” she said, “Mama will be down in a minute.”

As if on cue, Jenny came out of her room and down the stairs. “Hello, Fred,” she said to the man, pecking him on the cheek. “Oh, Hello, Jesse.”

“Hi,” he replied.

“Fred and I are going to a dinner out at the Legion Hall,” she explained.”

Jesse's heart fell. He had been looking forward to seeing her. “I see. I'll be happy to take care of Carey.”

“That won't be necessary,” Jenny replied. “She's staying with a friend for the night.”

“For the night?” Jesse said dully.

“Yes, I won't be back until late. I left you a plate in the oven.”

“Thanks,” he managed to say. “You folks have a nice evening.”

“Let's go, Fred,” Jenny said.

Jesse watched them to the door. As they went out, Fred Patrick shot a suspicious glance at Jesse.

Jesse didn't blame him a bit. He went into the kitchen, retrieved the warm plate from the oven and sat down disconsolately to eat it.

It wasn't the evening he'd had in mind.

J
esse washed his dishes, dried them and put them away. The food had revived his exhausted body and made him able to think again, but he didn't want to think. He was experiencing some sort of strange emotion, and he didn't like it.

He slipped on his coat and walked out the back door toward the garage; there his pickup truck rested beside Jenny's sedan. He wriggled under the truck, worked the combination on the safe and took out the cellular telephone, stuffing the pistol and the money back inside the steel box. He got into the truck and, resisting the temptation to start the engine for warmth, switched on the phone and waited for signal strength. He glanced at his watch; it would be nearly ten o'clock in Washington, so there was no point in calling the 800 number. He dredged up Kip Fuller's home number from his memory and dialed it.

There was the expected ringing, then a click and a squawk from the handset, followed by a series of beeps, then Kip's voice.

“This is Fuller.”

“It's Jesse. How openly can I talk on this thing?”

“It's an encrypted unit; my phones, both at the office and at home can read it, so we're very secure. How's it going, Jess?”

“Better than I could possibly have hoped,” Jesse said. He gave a detailed account of the past two days.

“Doesn't it bother you a little that it's going so well?”

“I don't know,” Jesse said. “I mean, they could hardly be expecting me.”

“They're expecting
somebody
,” Kip said. “After all, they've already had two agents up there and dealt with them both. They can't think the government is going to just give up.”

“Well, sure, I've got to be careful for a while, but I get the impression they need people, that they're recruiting. I think I'm just their kind of guy.”

“I hope so. I didn't expect you to see Casey and Ruger the first day. Any sign of Jack Gene Coldwater?”

“No, and no word of him, either.”

“For Christ's sake, don't ever mention his name to anybody; wait for them to mention it to you.”

“Don't worry.”

“How are you feeling, Jesse, I mean, really feeling?” Kip sounded concerned.

“A hell of a lot better than I was a couple of weeks ago,” Jesse replied. “I'm still a little numb in some ways, but I'm getting used to the idea of being a free man.”

“Don't get too used to it,” Kip said. “Remember, there's somebody who'd love to see you back inside, if he could get what he wants from you first.”

“I'll remember.”

“I've had word from the lady at the adoption agency. She says that the adoptive parents have your letter, and they'll think about what to do. It'll be a long time, of course.”

“I understand. I just want her to know that her mother and I didn't deliberately abandon her.”

Kip was quiet for a moment. “That phone uses more juice than an ordinary cellular phone; you've only got about four minutes talk time between charges.”

“I'd better sign off, then.”

“Keep me posted; if I don't hear from you at least twice a week, I'll get worried.”

“Okay, take care.”

“You too.” Kip hung up.

Jesse returned the phone to the safe under the truck, plugged it into the charger and locked up. Back outside, he discovered he didn't want to go back into the empty house. He wandered in the direction of Main Street, only a couple of blocks away.

The shops were closed now, their windows mostly dark. Only one lighted sign remained on the street: Harry's. Jesse ambled into the place and stopped inside the front door.

The smell of stale beer and tobacco smoke reached his nostrils, and the sound of pool balls clicking together came from the rear of the long room. Country music was playing on the jukebox. He'd never liked country music. Fifteen or twenty customers, all men, were scattered about the place, some of them watching a sports program on a silent television set above the bar. It was the sort of place he'd avoided all his life.

Jesse walked to the bar and took a stool a little away from anybody else. A man wearing an apron approached.

“Get you something?” he asked.

“A draft,” Jesse said.

The man pulled the beer and set it in front of Jesse. “Passing through?”

“I guess not. I went to work out at Wood Products this morning.”

The man stuck out his hand. “I'm Harry Donner; this is my place.”

Jesse took the hand. “Jesse Barron.” Harry seemed friendly enough.

“Where you bunking?”

“I'm boarding over at Mrs. Weatherby's.”

“Nice lady.”

“Seems to be.” Jesse sipped his beer. “How long you been in business, Harry?”

“Nineteen years,” Harry replied. “Before that I tended bar in Boise. I come up here and took a job doing the same thing, and a couple years later the boss died, and I bought the joint from his widow. Yours isn't a local accent; where you from?”

“North Georgia, up in the mountains. I was wandering West, headed more or less toward Seattle, when I happened on St. Clair.”

“You coulda done worse. How'd you end up at Wood Products?”

“I ran into Pat Casey, and he recommended it.”

“Herman Muller's a good man; he'll treat you right.”

Jesse laughed. “Well, he just about killed me today.”

Harry smiled. “They put you on the hopper?”

“That's right.”

“They do that to everybody; stick it out, and Herman'll find you something better.”

“I'll do it, if I live.”

Another customer sat down at the bar, and Harry moved to serve him, leaving Jesse alone.

This is what he had never wanted, he thought, sitting in a saloon somewhere crying into his beer. It was just the sort of place his father would have figured him to end up in, he knew, and the thought made the evening even more painful.

Suddenly, he identified the emotion he had been dodging all evening: it was jealousy.

Jesse had known Beth all his life, and since high school he'd never had anything to do with any other woman. She'd been his from the ninth grade on, and he'd never given a moment's thought to her running off with somebody else. Now Beth was gone, another woman had crawled into his bed and made him happy, and she was out this evening with another man.

What the hell, he thought, he had only just entered her life; she might have had that date for a long time. Why should she break it just for him? Still, that was what he would have wanted her to do.

This jealousy was powerful stuff, he realized, made up of equal parts of anger, pain and depression. He finished his beer and trudged back toward Jenny's house.

She wasn't home when he got there, and he turned in quickly. Exhausted, he didn't hear her when she came home.