Valhalla (33 page)

Watching through his binoculars, Stone made a careful count of them. Including the two bodies, they were ten in all, which meant that there could not have been more than eight Mau Mau who were staying, undoubtedly the General and his favored few.

“What’s it mean?” Eve asked. “What’s going on?”

Tocco thought he had the answer. “A fight for power. The ones leaving are the losers.”

“I’m not so sure,” Stone said. “Could be the leaders just decided to make the goodies up there last longer by driving out half their people.”

Whatever the reason, Stone knew that this was no time to discuss it. He told Eve to go back to the cabin and douse the fire with ashes. He told Tocco and Annabelle to stay where they were and keep an eye on Valhalla. He and Eddie meanwhile would cut over to the road and watch for the fleeing Mau Mau.

“They can go any one of three directions,” he said. “And if this is the one they choose, we might as well know it. We might as well be ready for them.”

“Oh God,” Annabelle sighed. “I knew we should’ve left today.”

Stone tried to reassure her. “They don’t look armed. We’ll be all right.”

“Oh sure,” she said.

Then Stone was gone, hurrying with Eddie at his side through the woods that lay between the lakeshore and the blacktop. Stone knew exactly where there was a jog in the blacktop, a curve moving away from the lake, and he headed for that point. There, he and Eddie could stay back
in the trees, hidden from view, and still be able to see whoever was coming up the road.

When they reached the curve Eddie sagged panting onto a stump and mopped at his forehead with his sleeve. “Jesus, I’m useless when I’m scared,” he said. “I can hardly breathe.”

Stone knew the feeling but he was already occupied with his binoculars. Because of the trees along the road he could not see Valhalla itself, only its base and the shallow channel separating it from the mainland. And he was not surprised to see the Mau Mau already congregating there. The channel was probably a foot deep and ten degrees above freezing, and the half-dozen rocks sticking out of the water were too few and too far apart. The Mau Mau were going to have to get wet.

And that was exactly what they did. One by one, Stone watched them step down into the water and wade across to the other side. Incredibly, not one of them took off his boots or rolled up his pants. They just strode through the water and kept on going, as if they had never heard of frostbite or gangrene. And the parapet was not above them at that point; they had nothing to fear from Valhalla. Nevertheless they took no precautions, wasted no time. Stone noticed that the one who had been carrying a body up above now was free of it.

“Well, which way they going?” Eddie asked. He still had not moved off the stump, probably dreading what he would see.

Stone did not answer for a few moments, not until he was sure. “Remember that road Smiley brought us here on? Well, that’s the one they’re taking—away from here.”

Eddie jumped up and took the binoculars. “You mean it? And that’s all you can say?”

“Well, I’m smiling,” Stone said. And he was.

“Christ, the least you could do is cheer! Like this!” He let loose with a hooray that sounded like any solitary cheer, lonely and inadequate.

“I just want to be sure they
keep
moving in that direction,” Stone said.

“Don’t worry, they will.” Eddie was still staring through the binoculars. “Jesus, half of ’em are white—you notice that?”

“Yeah, white or Chicano. You can’t tell from here. And three of them are girls.”

Eddie gave the binoculars back to him. “Well, now you can cheer. They’re still going up that road.”

“Hip hip hooray,” Stone said. He took another look.

Eddie was laughing. “You’re a cold fucking fish, Stone. Can’t imagine what Eve sees in you.”

Stone lowered the glasses, satisfied now. “I wasn’t aware she saw anything.”

“My mistake.” Eddie picked up his rifle. “Better go spread the good news.”

“Yeah, go ahead. I’ve got an errand to run. You remember that gun I stashed?”

“You think it’s still there?”

“I plan to find out.”

Stone found the rifle exactly where he had left it, wedged into the termite-ridden heart of the dead tree. The gun had remained dry there and appeared to be in good condition. He went back to the Point then and searched under the charred porch timbers of his old cabin until he found Kelleher’s forty-five automatic. Formerly silverplated, it was a blackened thing now, covered with soot and wood ash. Stone went over to the Kellehers’ motor
home and dug through the litter there until he finally came up with what he was after, a full box of forty-five shells, plus two extra clips. He then drained a can of motor oil out of one of the cars and took everything down the shore to the new cabin, where he proceeded to clean and ready all the weapons except the Sten gun, which Tocco declined to part with, saying it was already clean enough for his purposes.

Jagger meanwhile had managed to get out of bed in the lodge and find his way to the A-frame. His long sleep seemed to have left him just as sullen and insular as before, and he continued to cultivate an almost monastic silence, even when Tocco not unexpectedly began to bait him.

“Really am surprised to see you back here, Bjorn. Wasn’t there anything worth absconding with up at the lodge?” As Jagger ignored this, Tocco went blithely on. “Now, don’t you fret, golden boy. One of these days the beautiful people are gonna be back in power and it’ll be strictly vodka tonics and tennis from then on. People like me, we’ll be your ball boys.”

“Aw, why not leave him alone?” Eddie said, and got Tocco’s finger for his trouble.

For supper, the women had cooked some more of the beef and three of the dozen or so potatoes Stone had found earlier in the root cellar of the lodge. While they ate, Annabelle for some reason picked up the torch from Tocco, only shifting the sarcasm onto Stone now.

“That arsenal you were cleaning, Walter—what’re you gonna do with it? You gonna take Valhalla all by yourself?”

“Could be,” he said.

“Sort of Big Bwana against the savages, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“I do wish we could be here to see it. Just sit out there on the rocks with a pair of binoculars and watch you roll right over them.”

Stone did not know what to make of her attitude toward him. He decided to go along with it. “Just like I wish I could be there to see you on the road,” he said. “Say, waking up in the morning in a snowbank. That ought to be fun.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Eddie moaned. “I’m already getting sick.”

“Well, think about it—the most you can hope for along the way is something exactly like this. Shelter, firewood, water, and food—all the horse corn you can eat.”

“I don’t follow you,” Eddie said. “You recommending this or the road?”

“Neither.”

“Of course not,” Annabelle explained. “For him it’s Valhalla. Vengeance and virgins.
Former
virgins.”

Stone looked at her, still hoping to find some reason for her hostility. But her mocking expression offered nothing. He turned to Tocco.

“You know, it’s funny,” he said. “You used to be our biggest hawk on Valhalla.”

“Well, sure, when we had twenty people and they had five or six. I don’t mind a little fighting when the odds are in your favor. But suicide, that’s another matter.”

“You’d rather live, huh?”

Tocco laughed. “You could say that, yeah.”

“And that’s what we’re doing here now? We’re living? Tomorrow the meat plays out and the vegetables the day after that. Then it’s horse corn and water. But that’s living, huh?”

“No, it ain’t. Which is why we’re gonna hit the road. Why we’re gonna find something better.”

“If it’s better,” Stone said, “you’re gonna have to take it. You’re gonna have to fight for it, just like up at the junkman’s.”

Tocco looked at the others and shook his head. “What is it with this character, anyway?”

“Don’t ask me,” Eddie said.

As they finished eating, Stone kept the conversation on Valhalla, explaining to the five of them exactly what it was he wanted to do, how they would do it, and why they should do it. He said that the break-up of the Mau Mau did not mean there was a shortage of food up there, but rather the opposite. The General must have made a count of his bounty and decided that there was just too much to share, enough probably for the whole winter—if he had half as many people. So he had driven out the less favored and now was going to settle down to a long winter’s orgy of food and drink and sex.

There were only seven or eight Mau Mau there now, Stone said, and he believed that most of them would be drunk every night until the liquor ran out. So they could be overrun, beaten in a commando-style raid in which the attacking party—the six of them—would gain access to the buildings and go from room to room, rounding them up or killing them.

“And then it would all be ours to defend,” he said. “Food, lights, booze, heat, hot water—it would be ours for the winter. And by summer, who knows? Maybe that man on horseback will come. Maybe we’ll have order again.
And we will have survived.
”

He looked from one of them to the other, hoping this
last thought would take hold and rout their fears. Instead he saw much the same old look in all their faces, a look that was at once puzzled, patronizing, and hostile. In Eve, however, it was also sardonic.

“You mention killing,” she said. “Does that come a little easier for you now than it used to?”

Stone ignored the touch of derision in her voice. “A fair question,” he conceded. “And the answer is yes. I’ve been taking lessons lately.”

“I see.” She smiled dubiously. “But that still leaves the problem of morality. I mean, if you kill someone in order to take what he has—isn’t that murder?”

“No, it’s war.”

“I see. And we’re on one side and the Mau Mau are on the other?”

Now it was Stone’s turn to smile. “You hadn’t noticed?”

“Because they’re black, they’re the enemy, is that it?”

Stone said nothing for a few moments, even though he realized that he suddenly had the answer, the
right
answer, to that most incendiary of questions. He felt an enormous sense of relief. “No,” he said. “They’re the enemy
despite
their being black.”

The answer failed to impress Eve. “But aren’t they just trying to survive, the same as we are?”

“Ask Rich Kelleher. Or the junkman.”

After that, the discussion flagged. And just as the fire began to sink down into itself, so did the others draw down into themselves. They grew quiet and even solemn, lost in thoughts that Stone figured probably centered on the days ahead, on the road. Looking at Eve in the firelight, as the flames flickered in her hair and across her gravely beautiful face, he imagined this would be the way he would remember
her, his ice maiden, so perfect in every way, including her inviolability.

As inscrutable as she was, Eddie was the opposite, transparent in his concern about what to do. Stone had no doubt that if Eddie had been there with him alone, the little man would have joined him in an assault on Valhalla. But Eve made the difference, somehow seemed to have replaced Jagger in his mind as the sun around which the tiny planet of his person had to revolve. Maybe it was because of what they had shared, the great stoned days of the tennis tour. Or maybe it was simply that he loved her too. Whatever the reason, Stone did not question that Eddie would go or stay, depending on Eve’s wishes. And there, Stone knew, he could not have much hope. Passive, egocentric, sybaritic, she struck him as about the last person in the world who would volunteer to make war over a principle, or for that matter, any other reason.

As for Jagger, he did not enter into the discussion at all, perhaps feeling that his new position as a laughingstock, an object of scorn, placed him beyond the pale of the group. Still, Stone wanted to know what the man’s plans were. So he asked him.

“What about you, Jagger? Is it the road or Valhalla for you?”

The question seemed to bewilder him. “What are you talking about?”

“Your plans. What are you gonna do?”

The tennis star bristled. “What do you care? Whatever I do is
my
affair. It don’t involve you or anyone else.”

Stone smiled. “No shit. Gonna take on the big world out there all by yourself?”

“If you say so.”

“Well, that’s too bad. I was hoping you might join me on Valhalla.”

Jagger took this as an insult too, and he was breathing hard now. He looked away from Stone, his eyes skittering past Tocco and Annabelle before finding Eve.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re going upstairs. To bed.”

There was a long moment of silence, during which Eve did not move. She glanced at Stone and then looked down at her plate again, saying nothing. Stone stood up.

“She’s not going anywhere,” he said.

But Jagger ignored him. In three quick strides, he went over to Eve and roughly pulled her to her feet.

“I told you to come on!” he bawled.

“And I told you she ain’t going anywhere!”

Stone had moved between them and the loft, a challenge Jagger seemed only too willing to meet. Letting go of Eve, he spun toward Stone, his fists rising at the same time a grin was spreading on his handsome face, as though all this was just what he had wanted, needed. Remembering the man’s speed against Tocco, Stone raised his hands too, but only as a feint to cover the movement of his right foot, which he brought up into Jagger’s groin now with brutal swiftness. Tocco was already yelling like a fight fan—a yell that went dead at the sound of contact, which was like that of a cleaver chopping into meat. As Jagger started down, not even screaming yet, Stone punched him in the face, hard enough to reverse the direction of his fall.

In the brief silence that followed, Stone was already regretting what he had done, that he had not just stood there and traded punches with the man, beaten him fair and square, for Eve’s benefit if for no other reason. But somehow, because it had been Jagger, because he despised the man so absolutely, his reaction had been virtually automatic.
The man simply did not deserve a fair fight. It would have been stupid to chance a cut eye or a broken tooth brawling with such a tinhorn. And yet, looking at Eve now, at the shock and puzzlement distorting her face as she looked from Jagger to him, Stone wished he had done otherwise. Nevertheless it was not she but Eddie who went to Jagger’s side. Tocco was yelling again.