Nora Jane (37 page)

At five o’clock the sun was still high in the sky and people were getting sleepy. Everyone was getting sleepy except Little
Freddy, who had slept so long in the car there was no hope of him taking a nap.

“We’ll spell each other,” Freddy said. “You nap first and then I’ll nap. I want to take him down to the edge of the woods
and leave some food for Alabama. You don’t mind if I take him that far, do you?”

“Take the gun then, will you? Wear the holster and cover it up. I don’t want him to see it but I want you to take it.”

“I don’t know about that. What’s the big secret? If you have a gun you explain it to them.”

“All right. I’m going up and sleep in the loft.”

Freddy got the .38 revolver out of the glove compartment of the car and checked to make sure it had shells. He had never owned
a gun until Adrien Searle was killed in a hotel in Berkeley after reading at Clara Books. Adrien’s death had wiped out a lot
of Berkeley liberal bullshit. He had bought a gun, and both he and Nora Jane had learned to use it.

Freddy put on the shoulder holster, put the gun in the holster, and then opened the trunk and got out an old photojournalist’s
vest to use to cover it. He zipped up the vest and walked to where Little Freddy was arranging rocks on the bottom steps of
the stairway.

* * *

From the stairs there was a wonderful view of the woods with the sky stretching out beyond them. There were always clouds
in this vista, because of its nearness to the sea. It was a landscape that changed its colors all day long. In the center
of the view was a rock outcrop where the old mountain lion Freddy called Alabama loved to come and sun himself. It was there
that Freddy had first seen him. For fifteen years since that time he and Nieman had left treats on the rocks when they were
there. It was a ritual.

Freddy had been an overprotected child who had not had a father to teach him to be brave. He had had to figure it out for
himself or with Nieman’s help. They figured it out intellectually as they did most things in their lives. If there was a wild
animal who had the potential to be dangerous, they studied it and were cautious in their dealings with it.

Still, Freddy liked to walk down to the outcrop and leave dog treats on the rocks. He liked thinking of the old lion’s pleasure
when he came upon these windfalls. Also, he liked to believe that the lion could smell his hands on the treats and would know
they were gifts from a friendly member of another species. Usually he carried a heavy walking stick and a can of Mace on these
excursions. Now, rather than argue with Nora Jane, he had added the gun.

“Would you like to walk with me down to where the old lion lives?” Freddy asked his son. “We can take him some dog treats
and leave them on his rock and then we can sit on the balcony and watch to see if he comes to get them.”

“Like dog food?” Little Freddy asked, looking up from his rock work. He had lined up ten rocks to make a rock family.

“Better than dog food. These are dog treats, very special. To animals these are like candy. See, they come in different colors,
like the cereal Grandmother Annie gives you when our backs are turned.”

Little Freddy studied the box of dog treats. If there was one thing he really liked to do it was get his grandmother’s poodle’s
dog food and go behind the sofa and eat it. If his grandmother or her maid caught him they went crazy. They ran around and
yelled and held their hands up in the air. Dog food was good! It was hard, like eating salty rocks, and you could keep it
in your mouth a long time, like the gum the baby-sitter gave him once. Like those round chewing gums they never let him get
out of machines, only once that baby-sitter had gotten him some, and he had never forgotten it.

“You remember that baby-sitter that time that give me that gum?” he asked his father.

“Well, these aren’t for you to eat, son. These are for our friend, Alabama. He isn’t our friend really. He’s a wild creature
and we have to be careful, but we can go and leave him treats. He doesn’t care about us one way or the other. He hunts for
a living.”

“Well, okay. If you let me carry the box.”

“Okay. Let’s go.” Freddy held out his hand.

“Wait a minute. I got to put the daddy rock on the top.” Little Freddy picked up the largest rock in his collection and put
it on the highest step he could reach from the ground. Then he stepped back to look at his creation.

“What are they doing?” Freddy asked.

“Them are watching
The Wizard of Oz.
“

“Who all is there?”

“Momma rock, daddy rock, sister rocks, these ones are friend rocks that came over to play, this one is the baby-sitter rock.”
He held up a pretty granite formation split to show pink inside. His favorite baby-sitter wore pink all the time. It was her
signature color. Freddy shook his head in wonder.

“Okay,” Little Freddy said. “Let’s go down there then.”

They started down the long sloping hill to the woods, thick stands of Douglas fir and cedar and madrone trees. They were the
pride of the property and the reason Freddy and Nieman had chosen this piece of land on which to build their house. It was
virgin woods, sprung up when the cataclysms that built Northern California had stopped long enough for plants to begin to
grow. “Birds brought these seeds,” Nieman loved to say. “Or they were carried on the hides of animals or blew in with the
wind. It is dazzling to imagine how it came here.”

“Uncle Nieman says birds brought the seeds that made those trees grow here,” Freddy began. “We should get some of the seedlings
and plant them in town. Would you like to do that with me?”

“Is the lion going to eat this whole box of treats?” Little Freddy asked. “Every one of them?”

“Well, he’s a pretty big lion, for mountain lions. He’s old. He probably isn’t a very good hunter anymore. He’s probably hungry
a lot of the time and he needs a treat. I have some treats for you at the house. When we get back we’ll have them.”

“What treats do you have for me?” He was hoping it was gum but he knew it would not be.

“Well, some oatmeal cookies for one thing, with raisins in them. And some graham crackers for another.”

Davi saw them coming. “Allah brings the man to us,” he said. “Now it is revealed.” And he thought suddenly that his whole
life had been lived for this moment, when he, Davi, who had been sent from his mother at the age of seven to live in the hard
camp and learn a warrior’s ways, who had been beaten and despised and risen up from his despair and become so good at his
work that he was chosen to go to the United States to do Allah’s work on earth and earn his way to heaven, he, Davi, now stood
moments away from that reward. Allah is good, he knew. And he rewards the faithful.

“Abu, can we take him with the child watching, or must we wait?”

Abu bowed his head. He was quiet for a long moment while he sought help in prayer. “Now,” he said finally. “Allah guides us.
We will follow. You, Petraea. Take him quick. I will get the child out of the way.”

The old lion moved back toward his den smelling the sack of treats that was moving his way. Nieman and Freddy had been leaving
them for fifteen years. Occasionally, he walked out of the woods and sunned himself on the rock outcrop visible from the house.
That was the whole encounter for all those years. A bowl of dog treats on a vertical uplift near an old madrone. A lion walking
out and sunning himself within smell of men.

But these smells were confused. The good smell of the treats and the familiar smell of Freddy’s photojournalist vest, then
another smell, of fear and musk and oiled guns. The lion knew that smell and knew its danger.

The lion moved through the high grass and out onto the glade until he was about twenty feet from Davi and Petraea.

He stopped and waited.

Freddy was almost to the outcrop where he always left the treats. It was a group of three large rocks with an opening in the
center. On top was a large flat rock with an indentation like a bowl in the middle.

Petraea moved a few feet. The lion moved with him.

Freddy sat Little Freddy on a flat rock and let him fill the stone bowl with the treats. Little Freddy filled the bowl half
full, then took a blue treat and raised it to his mouth, watching his father as he did it.

“You know better than that,” Freddy said. “Those treats are for animals. We have human treats at home for boys.”

Little Freddy held the blue treat up into the air, then dropped it into the bowl and continued very slowly filling the bowl
from the sack.

Petraea moved several feet, then stepped out in view of the rocks and raised the rifle. Little Freddy saw the lion before
he saw Petraea. He saw both of them before Freddy did. He was looking right at Petraea when the lion leaped on the man and
began to mangle him.

Freddy threw himself on top of Little Freddy and pushed the child down into the crevice between the rocks. He took out the
revolver and stood up and raised it. He did not want to shoot a man or a lion or anything that lived, but he shot. He shot
at the lion’s flank and then the field was full of men. Two men were on top of him and talking.

“FBI
,”
one of them said. “We are here to help you. Don’t move. Where’s the child?”

Behind them two other men were running into the woods. The old lion was heading down a path to the river, disappearing like
a streak of sunlight.

“Did I hit Alabama?” Freddy asked. “God, I hope 1 didn’t hit the lion.”

“He ran off all right,” the agent said. “I don’t think you could have hurt him much.”

Little Freddy was still in the crevice. It was a nice, roomy place. He had brought the sack with the remaining treats with
him and was lining some of them up on a ledge in front of him. He put two on the ledge and then he started eating some. He
was eating a blue one and a reddish one. They were good. He liked them almost as much as he liked his grandmother’s dog food
that she kept in the closet in her big house with the big pool.

Nora Jane heard the shots and came running out onto the balcony. She stopped and looked and then ran down the stairs and then
down the pasture as fast as she could run.

“Let me go,” Freddy said. “She’ll be hurt.” But an FBI man got to her first and took her arm and began to explain what had
happened. “Your husband and child are all right, Mrs. Harwood,” he said. “Everything is under control. Let me take you back
to the house.”

“I want my child,” she said. “I’m going to my child.”

* * *

By the time she got to the outcrop Little Freddy had his mouth full of dog treats. “What are you eating?” she said. “Oh, my
God, what do you have in your mouth?”

“Sometimes when they eat things like that you need to get their sodium and potassium checked,” the young officer began. “We
had a problem with one of ours eating dirt after it rained. It turned out he was low on sodium because of some allergy medication
we were giving him.”

Petraea had been mauled but not badly. His left cheek was cut and there was a long tear on his upper arm and he had sprained
an ankle. The medevac crew decided to helicopter him to Fort Bragg before they stitched up the wounds. “I don’t want to go
sewing that up until we culture some of the saliva,” the young M.D. decided. “We’ll clean it and wrap it and take him on in.”

“His blood pressure’s very low,” a male nurse insisted. “I think he’s in shock. How are we going to sedate him? I think we
should get the truck and do it here.”

“Well, it’s not your call,” the M.D. said. “Goddammit to hell, I’m the doctor here.”

It took several hours for the National Guard and the FBI to find Davi. The Guard brought in German shepherds and they tracked
him to a madrone tree. He was covered with insect bites by the time they got him down. He was armed with a Ruger and an old
Ortigies caliber 7.65 but he did not shoot when the tree was surrounded. It seemed somehow not to be worth the trouble and
besides he was tired and very hungry.

Abu had been harder to take. In the struggle he had wounded a young guardsman from Petaluma. The young man would never throw
a football again or hold a woman against his chest without pain. He would try playing soccer with a group of wealthy men in
Marin but it would never be the same. Still, he would have five hundred thousand dollars in corporate bonds with which to
build a great house with a recreation room in which to watch other men play sports, and that was something. Fortunately, both
his children were girls. It’s not as if he had a son he could have taught to be a quarterback.

They had surrounded Abu in a grove of young trees. The dogs had him. There had been no need for the young man to go in but
Abu had shot a dog and the young man had gone crazy and charged. He shot Abu in the leg before Abu got off the shot that ruined
his arm. After he was down one of the big dogs came over and lay down beside him and whimpered like a child. It had been the
young man’s job to care for the dogs and he was fond of them and they of him.

“Is this ever going to end?” Nora Jane asked. It was several days later. They were at home in Berkeley, in their own home,
in their bedroom. “If it isn’t we have to go somewhere and change our names. I can’t live like this, Freddy. I want you to
take Salman’s books out of the store and put an ad in all the papers saying you won’t carry them. If you don’t do that I will
take the children and go away. I will not be part of this. I am not a revolutionary or a political person.”

“The death decree was lifted. This sect is a bunch of crazies. They have to have enemies to exist. I was just in the line
of fire.”

“They killed Holly Knight. We had dinner with her in Portland last summer at the Association meeting. Adrien Searle, then
Holly Knight, that’s two people that we
knew
. And Little Freddy was there when armed men came running out from all directions. I think he’ll remember that. Plus, the
girls know everything because it was in the papers. God knows what it will do to them to know their parents were almost killed
in a Holy War.”