Valhalla (26 page)

“Don’t you reckon I ought to have ’em again, Walt?” he asked. “The keys
are
mine, you know.”

“We’ll see. Later.” Beyond the old man, Stone saw Eve walking away, back toward the lodge. But he had other
things on his mind. He motioned for Newman to come forward.

“Paul,” he said to Tocco. “You take him and Spider and carry the body back to the corn crib. Bury it for now under the corn.”

He handed his rifle to Oral O’Brien and told the brothers to take up watch at both ends of the Point, close to the blacktop. “That’s the way they’ll come—
if
they come. And what I said still goes—you’ll be relieved before anything’s decided.”

“Good enough,” Harlan said. His brother was nodding. They started off in opposite directions.

For a few moments, everyone continued to stand around, as if immobilized by the sight of Newman and Spider picking up the slain Mau Mau and carrying him away. His body, limp, moved like something made of sponge rubber. Then, one by one, they all turned and headed back toward the lodge.

Stone went over to the board fence, which Rich Kelleher was still using for support. “You gonna be all right?” he asked.

Rich barely nodded. He would not raise his head.

“What happened exactly?”

The youth shrugged. “I saw them—the one coming out of the chicken house, the other from the barn. I guess I’d dozed off. I yelled, but they wouldn’t stop.”

“So you shot.”

Again Rich nodded.

“Did you see any more of them anywhere? Like out beyond the buildings?”

“It was too dark.”

The youth looked as if he were about to cry. Stone put a hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t sweat it,” he said. “You did what you were supposed to do, that’s all. You were stationed here to protect us and our food. And that’s what you did.”

Rich’s head was still downcast. But now there were tears running freely from his eyes.

“You’ll be okay,” Stone told him. “Come on, let’s head back.”

On the way, Stone stopped at the corn crib and helped Tocco and the others finish covering the body with ears of corn. Then they all headed back for the lodge. Before they reached it, Smiley came running out to meet them.

“They’re gonna leave!” he panted. “They’re gonna clear out! Jagger’s got ’em all stirred up. He wants to take the food and guns and load up the boats, and ever’one just sail off across the lake—leavin’ the lodge for the Mau Mau! You gotta stop him.”

“Have they started yet?” Stone asked.

The old man nodded. “Some is downstairs gittin’ the food already. Goddang, them Mau Mau would jist ruin this place.”

Stone considered that an understatement, but he said nothing. They entered the lodge through the back door and went on into the candlelit kitchen, where Dawson, Ruby, and Mr. Goff were busy loading canned goods and other food items into cardboard boxes and pillowcases.

“I thought we were gonna have a meeting,” Stone said.

Dawson shrugged. “I don’t think so. Not now. Everyone agrees—we gotta get out of here.”

“That’s my food you’re takin’!” Baggs bawled at him. “It’s
all
mine. You jist cain’t up and take it like this.”

Going on into the main room, Stone saw Jagger standing possessively over a pile of food and other supplies near
the front door. And because the guns had been kept in the same place as the food—inside the locked root cellar, now obviously broken into—Stone was not surprised to see that Jagger had rearmed himself, this time with a rifle. Some of the group were coming in the front door with clothing and other items that they had just gathered up in their cabins. Others were busily running up and down the basement stairs, adding to the mound of food on the floor. A few were standing around, looking anxious and scared, ready to leave.

Stone walked over to Jagger. “I take it this is your idea,” he said.

“Why not? You got a better one—like staying here and getting slaughtered?”

Stone looked at the others, hoping to find some doubts among them. “It’s nighttime, for God’s sake. You won’t be able to see where you’re going. And what will you find when you get across? It could be more Mau Mau—you thought of that? Only over there you won’t have any building for protection, no place to hold them off. You’ll be sitting ducks.”

Jagger sneered. “The Mau Mau are
here
, not there.”

“One gang of them, sure. But there are more. And they’re just as likely to be over there as anywhere.”

Tracy Kelleher and little Cynthia Dawson had begun to cry.

John Kelleher pounded his fist on a table. “Then what do we do, goddamn it?
Just what do we do
?”

Others obviously had the same question. And though they might not have been looking to Stone for an answer, he gave them one anyway.

“The only thing we can do. We’ve got almost as many
people as they have. And we’re probably better armed, with more ammunition—rampaging ghetto kids aren’t likely to conserve ammo. So we just stay right where we are, with walls to protect us and a gun at every window. And we wait. If they try an attack, we beat if off. And they move on.”

“And how do you know they move on?” Jagger demanded. “Can you guarantee it?”

Stone shook his head. “No guarantees. But I can tell you this—leaving here now would be like swimming away from a capsized boat. You’re safer staying with it.”

Now, timidly, other voices began to join his.

“A sinking boat,” Flossie said. “That’s what scares me about crossing in the dark. That water is so cold.”

Edna Goff concurred. “And we don’t really know what we’d find on the other side.”

“But we do here, don’t we?” Jagger put in. “The Mau Mau. In a few hours we’ll be rats in a trap.”

“Why?” Stone asked him, gesturing with his gun. “Our weapons any different from theirs? Won’t they shoot? Won’t they kill?”

And so it went. Smiley Baggs, wanting only to save his lodge, had been with Stone from the beginning. Then gradually, in addition to Flossie and Edna Goff, others began to cross over—Rich Kelleher, Pam and Kim, Tocco and Annabelle. And finally even Newman changed his mind.

“Yeah, I guess maybe you’re right,” he conceded to Stone. “It could get pretty dangerous out there on the water in the dark, with a bunch of jam-packed boats. But that doesn’t mean we do this thing your way, just taking up positions at the windows like John Wayne and shooting
our way out. What we’ve got to do is finesse them. We’ve got brains and experience—so let’s act like it.”

“I’ll buy that,” Jagger said. Then he added, “Any way but
his
.”

But Stone had his defenders too. “Well, I like
his
way,” Edna Goff asserted. “And I say he’s in charge, whatever we do.”

Since no one raised any objections—Jagger and Newman merely looked at each other—Stone once again tried to get things moving.

“All right, then—first things first. Before we get into any
finesse
, we’ve got work to do. Pam and Kim, you take up positions at the two corner back windows, in the kitchen and in the bedroom. Raise them, so you can hear as well as see anything going on out there.” He turned to Rich Kelleher. “In fact, Rich, you go around and raise
all
the windows.”

He then told Smiley to douse the fires in the fireplace and in the wood stove in the bedroom. Everyone else, he said, was to get all the buckets they could—in the cabins as well as in the lodge—and fill them at the lake and bring them back into the lodge. He, Tocco, and Annabelle would stand guard over them until the job was finished.

Only Jagger and Newman failed to go along, evidently preferring to stay behind and discuss strategy. Stone let them. He had enough hands as it was. And within ten minutes everyone except the O’Briens was back in the lodge, with buckets of water situated in every room, for fighting any fires as well as for drinking and flushing the two toilets. Stone kept Pam and Kim at the corner windows and positioned some of the men at the windows in the main room and the dining room. As soon as the
“finesse” discussion was over, he planned to station more in the kitchen and in the two bedrooms as well as out on the front porch. But for now, maddeningly, he had to wait.

In the dimness Stone could barely make out the faces in front of him. With the fire out, the only source of light once again was Valhalla and its solitary file of outdoor sodium lamps. Everyone as usual had winter outdoor clothing on, but it obviously was not working very well: many in the group were shivering, and Stone even heard the chattering of teeth.

“Okay, Newman,” he said, “let’s hear about this
finesse
of yours. But keep it short. We need every window covered as soon as we can.”

Even in the darkness Newman somehow managed to achieve the air of an academic as he rose to address the others.

“First, let me say I agree that we give them a show of force, with a gun at every window. We let them see how many we are and how well armed—and then we offer them peace. We say we’re sorry about the accident and that we’ll pay for it. We offer reparations, a payment of some kind.”

Tocco exploded. “Jesus Christ, wouldn’t you know it! First thing out of his mouth is appeasement! Our little Chamberlain! Our Carter!”

Jagger snarled for Tocco to shut up. “Let him continue.”

Newman calmly did so. “Some food ought to do it, plus a few of our guns that are already low on ammunition.”

“Just food and guns, that’s all he wants to give up.” Tocco struck his right forearm in the Italian gesture of sexual scorn. “I say we do what Stone says, just line up at
the windows and when we see the whites of their eyes—which in this case ain’t gonna be that hard—we cut ’em down.”

Newman and Jagger did not have to argue the point, for suddenly almost everyone was moving to their side. The prospect of peace was so much more appealing than that of war. Mister Goff spat at Tocco and Mama Dawson blasted him with sarcasm, saying that they all hated to frustrate his natural desire to “kill niggers,” but he’d just have to put up with it.

Tocco dismissed their objections with a sneer. “All I know is I ain’t gonna hold out no goddamn olive branch to no kiddie Mau Mau. I’m gonna take a bunch of ’em with me.”

“You’ll have that chance,” Newman said. “—If diplomacy fails.”

“Diplomacy!” Tocco laughed at the word, spurned it. But he seemed resigned now, giving in.

Newman went on. “Then we’re agreed. We present them with a show of force—but then we offer friendship and reparations.”

Everyone was nodding, agreeing. But Awesome Dawson had a question.

“How do we get this across to them, though? How do we communicate?”

It was a problem Newman had anticipated. “How about this? We make up a couple of signs and put them where they’re sure to see them. We could put one on the windshield of Tocco’s Cadillac—anybody coming up the drive would be bound to see it. And the other—and I know this sounds gruesome, but we want to make sure they don’t miss it—the other we could put on the dead man. We
could drape him over the board fence near the barn and pin the note on his back.”

Flossie sighed and Mr. Goff began to weep. Over to the side, near the windows, Stone saw Eve close her eyes, as though she hoped thereby to shut out the picture Newman had just drawn for them.

“What would we put on the signs?” Awesome asked.

“I’m not sure yet,” Newman said. “We’d have to work it out. Something like we regret the shooting, and that it was an accident. We say we’ll pay for our mistake with food and guns. And if they’re interested, they could just hold up the sign. We’ll meet them halfway.”

Dawson was grinning. “Something like that, huh?”

“Unless someone’s got a better idea.”

“What bugs me,” Tocco broke in, “is that when they do come at us, it’ll be with our own guns.”

“Not if we give them a better target,” Jagger said, his voice subtly charged with importance.

“What better target?” Tocco asked.

“Valhalla.”

“What’re you talking about?”

Jagger looked smugly over at Newman. “You tell him, Kevin,” he said.

Newman obliged. “It’s simple—we tell the Mau Mau that there’s more of everything up there—more even than we’ve heard about and dreamed about. And we tell them we know all about its defenses—we make that part up, of course. We tell them we know how many are defending it and right where every gun is. Every gate.”

“Then why ain’t we taking it ourselves?” Tocco laughed. “That’s what they’ll ask, genius.”

Newman almost purred. “And of course we’ll tell them—because we’re scared. Because we’re chicken.”

“You can say that again.”

But Tocco was about the only one not to seize upon the idea. Most of the others were nodding, saying yes, draw the Mau Mau away from us, draw them anywhere. It was so popular in fact that Jagger decided everyone should know whose idea it was.

“It’s not just a great idea, it’s our salvation,” he announced. “That’s what Kevin said—when I suggested it to him.”

For his troubles, Jagger got only an embarrassed silence. Finally Dawson spoke up.

“But what happens when they’re finished up there? Thirty kids can go through an awful lot of stuff in a very short time. Then they’ll just come back down again and we’ll be right where we are now.”

Newman was shaking his head, already a step ahead of the objection. “When they attack Valhalla, we clear out of here. We load the boats with everything we need and row across the lake. And we find another haven.”

It was exactly what everyone wanted to hear: reprieve and escape. The nodding was more vigorous now, the voices more certain. Annabelle, the Kellehers, even the Dawsons, all spoke up, giving their eager approval. In fact, as far as Stone could tell, besides himself, only Eve seemed unmoved by the idea, even apathetic, as though it were a matter of small importance whether they all lived or died. Tocco seemed more confused than anything else, probably not disliking the idea so much as its source. And that left Stone, evidently he alone who saw the thing for what it was, a proposal for murder.

“Aren’t we forgetting something?” he asked. “There are two young girls up there and a little boy.”

But Newman had an answer for that too. “Plus three men, a woman, and more damn firepower than a Marine division.”