The Winslow Incident (27 page)

“Hell yes, now.” He looked past
her toward the sound of a truck rumbling along Fortune Way. “They’re
quarantining us.”

“Who ordered quarantine?”

“Who do you think?”

“Not my dad.”

“Who else has the authority?”

“I don’t know,” Hazel admitted. Quarantine?
She didn’t like the sound of that, not one bit. It made her think of cruel
scientists in hazmat suits prodding people into white windowless buses, sick
people bleeding from their eyes.

She wanted to talk to her dad
again,
needed
to talk to him.
But then he won’t let me go
, she
realized and her heart hurt even more.
Not if he ordered quarantine.

Tanner got on his bike and started
it up. “The weirdness is spreading fast. I just saw Tilly Thacker making it
with Cal right on the sidewalk in front of the Fish ’n Bait.”

Hazel shuddered, then felt grateful
she hadn’t witnessed that too. “What was on fire at the ranch this morning?”
The exhaust from Tanner’s bike was making everything seem even hotter. “Did
more cows die overnight?”

“Die? No. Killed? Yes.” His rising
voice revealed a hint of fear. “Fifty head slaughtered and burned to a crisp.”

“You’re kidding, right? Why? Did
they figure out why they’re sick?”

“Why wait? Once Uncle Pard’s
damage control machine kicks in there’s no stopping it.” He revved the bike.
“Which is why I’m outta here!”

They were shouting at each other
over the Kawasaki’s engine, so she walked closer to where he sat on the idling
bike. “Take me with you.”

“Get your YZ, why don’t you?”

“Can’t.” She pointed to her
wounded arm. “I have to ride with you.”

“I’m not taking you anywhere.”

“Why not?”

“You totally blew it for me with
Patience.”

“How could you think I wouldn’t
tell her? Especially when you were so creepy about it? She’s my friend.”

“Since when?

He’s right
, she thought. She always kept Patience at a
distance—her and everybody else.

“Oh, and screw you, Hazel.”

“Fine. But you told her what
I
said too, so that makes us even. I also have my suspicions you’ve been talking
shit about me to Sean.”

She could see him biting the
inside of his cheek to keep from smiling.

“True?”

His half-assed shrug told her
yes.

“Then we’re more than even. Come
on, Tanner, I need your help.”

“Obviously.”

They stared at each other, neither
of them moving, neither flinching.

Until finally he said, “Get on.”

She hesitated. “We can’t leave
without Sean. And what about Patience?”

“Forget her—she’s completely
wasted.”

Hazel hadn’t seen her since their
fight in the tower of The Winslow last night, since she’d slapped Patience
across the face. “Where did you see her?”

“In front of the Mercantile. Saw
them both. Sean’s wasted too and man, was he all over her.”

“I don’t believe you.” She
wouldn’t believe that. Couldn’t. But suddenly she wasn’t so sure she knew
everything, wasn’t so sure she knew anything.

“Whatever,” Tanner said. “It’s
nothing to me, just thought you’d want to know.”

Her foundation dissolved again.
She hadn’t seen Sean since
their
fight outside the Crock. Who was left
to fight with? Another round with Tanner, she supposed. And things weren’t even
close to settled between her and Kenny Clark. “Do you know where Sean is now?”

“No, but I can take you by a piece
of his artwork on the way out of town.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ll show you.”

O
n the back of the bike, Hazel held onto Tanner
with her left arm and rested her head on his shoulder. She was spent and it
felt good to have somebody else in charge, for the moment anyway. She closed
her eyes against the dust kicked up by the motorcycle’s knobby tires.

The Percocet is wearing off
, she thought as her arm resumed its miserable throb.

From memory of every twist and
turn, she knew they were riding away from town on Winslow Road toward the
bridge . . . darker and cooler here, the trees reaching for each other across
the road.

Then the Kawasaki pulled them
uphill a ways, bouncing over slight whoops before coming to a stop. Tanner
placed both feet on the ground to keep them upright, and cut the engine.

Hazel could barely lift her head she
was so tired. And when she did, she couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing.

They had stopped at the granite
wall outside Matherston Miners Cemetery. It was tradition for townsfolk to
write messages on the wall’s white stone face:
Marry
me Julie
or
Congratulations Class
of ’02
.
And when they’d played ghost hunt as kids, whoever
located the grave first would write
Found
it!
so the other players knew to stop looking and meet up at the
merry-go-round.

The wall had been clean when she
and Sean were here Sunday afternoon. Now—chalked in scraggly, two-foot
tall letters—there was a message:
I’m
Sorry—SA
.

“I don’t get it.” She scuttled off
the bike, knocking Tanner off balance, and walked to the wall for a closer
look. Then she turned back to him. “What’s Sean have to be sorry about?”

“Beats me.”

“He didn’t say anything when you
saw him?”

“He told me it’s worse than food
poisoning.”

“Everybody knows that.”

“He said people are gonna get
sicker.”

“How could he possibly know that?”
Hazel looked again at the writing on the wall, then back at Tanner. “What is
going on?”

“I’ve got no clue. And I don’t
care.”

Hazel fished a Percocet out of her
pocket and dry swallowed it. Then she plunked down onto a big boulder in the
shade. “Okay, let’s figure this out.”

“No—let’s
go.
”

“No, wait a minute.”

“We can figure it out on the way
down the pass.”

She didn’t budge.

“Okay, dammit.” When Tanner got
off his bike she noticed that he was limping a little and sweating a lot.

She took a deep breath, then
exhaled sharply. “I saw Gus Bolinger hit the floor of the ballroom just like
that cow in the pasture Friday night. Same leg buckle, same sad sound on the
way down.”

Tanner wiped his face with the
back of his hand and blew out his cheeks. “So?”

“So I’m not sick, you’re not sick,
Uncle Pard isn’t, Kenny Clark isn’t—is
anybody
at the ranch sick?”

“If you ask me they’re all pretty
twisted, even on a good day.”

“Okay—so nobody at the ranch
is sick. And Patience and Rose are vegetarians and
are
sick. So that definitely
means people aren’t sick because they ate sick beef.”

“Right . . .” He joined her at the
rock but remained standing and sweating.

“So whatever it is, it has to be
something that affects both people and cattle because it’d be way too much of a
coincidence if both came down with completely different ailments, yet with
similar symptoms, at the exact same time.”

He bobbed his head and rolled his
eyes as if to say,
Can we hurry it up here?

“So what does that leave? The heat
wave? The water? Maybe Owen Peabody is right.”

“But no ranch hands have it and we
all drink the same water, don’t we? It comes from that piece of shit tank up
there; the ranch doesn’t have a separate supply.”

“Then what could it be?” She briefly
nibbled on her bottom lip. “Something in the air? A bug?”

“Wrong again, genius.” He blew hot
breath at her. “We’d all have it by now.”

She waved her hand in front of her
face. “I suppose we would.”

“Doc Simmons said Indigo had an
inflamed something-or-other tract,” Tanner said. “Some sort of gut problem. He
thought the bull might’ve gotten into a poison plant like jimsonweed. But
people don’t eat jimsonweed and cows don’t eat coleslaw.”

“Huh?” She squinted at him.

“It’s gotta be something people
and
cattle eat.”

Hazel tapped her chin with one
finger. “Zachary Rhone told Violet and Daisy not to eat any bread because it’s
moldy.”

Tanner made a sour face. “Does
moldy bread make people sick or does it just taste disgusting?”

“Makes me sick just thinking about
it,” Hazel said.

“But what does bread have to do
with cattle? Cows don’t eat bread either, they’re too busy gorging on grass.”

“And feed, right?” she asked.

“I guess.” He shrugged.

She glanced in the direction of
the bridge. “Feed comes from Fritz Earley.”

“What the hell’s a ‘fritz earley’?”

“He’s the grain distributor from
down mountain. Comes once a week to deliver feed to the ranch and—” Hazel’s
stomach sank. She pressed her hand against her mouth and shot to her feet.

“And?”

She let her hand fall. “And flour
to the bakery.”

“Moldy bread, moldy feed? Is that
what you’re thinking?”

“Oh, my God—Sean told me he
tried to tell Zachary something.”

“Me too.” Tanner wiped fresh sweat
off his face. “He rambled on and on about bacon and deliveries and Zachary not
listening.”

“Do you know what Sean was trying
to tell him?”

“I tried to get that out of him
but he wasn’t making any sense.”

“What did he say?”

“Something about mayo getting left
out too long in the sun and turning gray and nasty.”

Hazel remembered Owen in the
kitchen of the Crock holding up the slice of slightly gray-tinged bread. “Not
mayo,” she told Tanner. “Flour. Sean must’ve been trying to tell Zachary
there’s something wrong with the flour but he refused to listen. He told me
Zachary bit his head off when he tried to ask him a simple question.” She
scoured her mind—had she eaten any bread over the weekend? Not that she could
recall. She usually tried to avoid carbs. “Do ranch hands ever eat stuff from
Rhone Bakery?” she asked.

“Not that I’ve seen. Maggie Clark
bakes up cornbread and biscuits at the ranch.”

Hazel flashed on all the French
toast and catwiches she’d served at the Crock over the weekend—to her father,
Patience, so many others. “We have to warn people,” she said.

“If the feed’s bad,” Tanner
ignored her, “then what about the horses?”

“What about them?”

“Why aren’t they sick too?”

“Maybe they eat something else.
Oats. Hell, I don’t know—do I look like a farm girl to you?”

“No, you look like a stoner chick.
Which means no one’s going to believe you anyway, so what does this matter?
Let’s get outta here.”

She glanced at the wall. “I still
don’t get why Sean wrote that. It’s not his fault.”

Tanner looked unusually serious.
“If you really think about it, Hazel, it is.”

“
What
?”

“He should’ve told Zachary. He
said so himself.”

“He tried.”

“How do you know?”

“He told us,” Hazel replied.

“Even if he did try, even if he
didn’t do anything on
purpose
, it’s still his fault.”

“Don’t say—”

“He knew the flour might be bad,
but he delivered bread all the hell over town anyway.”

“Tanner! Don’t ever repeat
that—
swear
you will never say that again!”

“Don’t worry.” He held up his
hands as if to tell her,
Back off already.
“I’m completely out of here
and I have zero interest in what happens after I’m gone.”

She shook her head. “There’s just
no way. If Sean thought even for a second that the bread would make people
sick, he never would’ve delivered it. Besides, he’s sick too, isn’t he? Why
would he eat the bread himself if he knew it would make him sick?”

“Maybe he didn’t know it’d make
people sick. Maybe he just thought the bread would suck and the bakery would
take a hit. A way to pay back Zachary Rhone for being such a dick. But then he probably
tried some bread and when it smelled and tasted okay, he figured that was the
end of it.”

“Still . . . would he risk it? I
don’t believe it.” But wasn’t everything unbelievable right now? And except for
her grandmother and Violet, Tanner was the only sane person she’d talked to all
day so it was hard to disregard what he was saying.

“What’s not to believe?” Tanner
said. “You know how pissed he was at Zachary.”

The bakery was ruined, that was
certain. And Sean did tell her he thought he might get fired, told her Zachary
was drunk on power and he couldn’t take it anymore. Told her those things while
they delivered the bread. Together. All over town.