Storm Runners (28 page)

“You’re not asking for mercy, are you?”

“Haven’t you had enough blood?”

The guns of Pendleton thundered and again Stromsoe heard them in his chest and in his ear.

“I mean, you’re free now, Mike. Why not just head to Mexico, find Ofelia’s ghost, or her sister, marry her, spend your millions?”

“What are your plans? Do you love this tall news lady?”

Stromsoe stayed to the middle of one row, moving deeper into the orchard. The fallen leaves were thick on the ground but they were soaked from the recent storm and allowed him to pass quietly. Led by faith and instinct, Stromsoe made the turn that he hoped would lead him to Mike. He had never missed his left eye like he did now.

“Yes, I do.”

“You’re very lucky to love twice. You must say your prayers every night, and pay your taxes, and go to church on Sundays.”

Stromsoe saw Mike standing beside the trunk of an avocado tree, facing the driveway and the house, his back to Stromsoe, an arm raised to his ear. Alone.

Stromsoe looked down before each step, keeping away from the leaves and on the damp silent earth left by the heavy rain.

“I’m not much of a churchgoer,” he said.

“Can she really make it rain?”

“She really can. It’s impressive.”

“Think how valuable she would be to the deserts of Mexico. Think of the thousands of acres of poppies.”

“Bring us down as your guests when you get settled. She’ll make some rain. Funny, though—I have the feeling you’re already there.”

“I went north. Everyone will be looking south.”

“That was smart.”

“Enjoy your time with the rainmaker. I’ll see you when you least expect it. And I’ll make you one promise, Stromsoe, for an old friend—I’ll never use another bomb.”

“Maybe a razor, like the guard?”

“Too wet, even for me.”

Stromsoe was seventy feet from Mike now. Mike had on a white dress shirt tucked neatly into his jeans, and cowboy boots. The sun hit him in a shifting pattern allowed by the big-leafed trees. He leaned on one elbow against a low tree limb and he looked like a gentleman farmer sizing up this year’s crop.

The artillery thundered again.

Sixty feet.

Mike hummed a few bars of “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

Every nerve in Stromsoe’s body stood up and listened.

Lord, how I want to be in that number…

Fifty feet.

“Adios,” said Mike. “Always watch your back, my friend.”

“Good-bye,” said Stromsoe. “Don’t forget to watch your own.”

He guessed that Mike had heard him, but Tavarez was still and silent for a moment.

Then Mike wheeled quickly to his left and Stromsoe saw a flash of steel in the sunlight.

Stromsoe swung his left hand up to the gun stock as Mike dropped and rolled and fired.

The double blast took out the limb. The bullet from Mike’s handgun screamed past Stromsoe’s head. Tavarez zigzagged into the grove, his white shirt flickering amid the tree trunks.

Stromsoe barreled after him, reloading the twenty-gauge without looking at it.

Tavarez scrambled up a hillock, made the top, and whirled around. Stromsoe saw the muzzle flash and heard the wooden knock of the round hitting the tree beside him. Mike was gone by the time he had the shotgun to his shoulder.

Stromsoe thought ambush as he reached the hillock, knew that if he rounded the crest he’d catch a bullet, so he veered out around the rise and tried to do it fast so as to keep Mike at least guessing.

He came around the back with the shotgun held out and two fingers on the two triggers but Mike had already made the road. Stromsoe charged ahead. Through the trees he watched Mike lope across the asphalt into more orchard and he could see the blood on the white shirt.

Mike made straight between the trees now, trying to stretch his
lead, but Stromsoe stayed heavy upon him. Bars of shadow and sunlight held Mike as if inside a large cage but Stromsoe knew that if Mike could get out of sight, Mike could surprise and kill him, so he willed his legs to do more.

Then he came up a gentle swale. The grove ended abruptly at a high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Beyond the fence were rolling hills of flowers—an ocean of reds and yellows and white stretching all the way back to the blue Fallbrook sky.

Mike ran parallel to the fence but geometry was on Stromsoe’s side now and he closed the distance.

Mike fired but Stromsoe could hear only the roar of the two barrels and feel the sharp kick of the butt against his shoulder.

He stepped behind the trunk of an avocado tree, reloaded the side-by, and flicked the safety off. He could see Mike outstretched on the ground. Stromsoe aimed down the barrels as he walked.

Mike’s chest was a bloody mess and he was breathing fast. One arm was out and one was trapped beneath him. His legs were spread. His pistol was on the ground by his right boot. Stromsoe lowered the shotgun but kept it pointed at Tavarez’s head as he kicked away the handgun. Mike’s eyes followed him but he didn’t move.

Stromsoe went to his knees beside Mike and looked at his white, blood-splattered face. “Mike.”

Mike opened his hand and Stromsoe wondered what he meant by it. It’s over? I have nothing? You mean nothing to me?

The eyes stared at him with the same broad mysteries. Stromsoe saw nothing cruel or furious in them, nothing illuminated or forgiving—just the partial understanding that is all a man can have.

“This isn’t how I pictured it, Matt.”

“Me neither.”

Mike stared straight ahead and said nothing for a moment, as if listening to the speed of his own breathing.

He blinked. “We did our best with what we were given.”

“We were given everything, Mike. This is what’s left of it.”

“I never once felt like I had enough. Never.”

The breeze stirred Mike’s hair and something in his throat rattled and caught.

“It doesn’t hurt, Matt.”

“Good.”

“Come closer. I can’t hear you. All I hear is wind.”

Stromsoe moved closer.

With a groan Mike freed his hidden fist and swung but Stromsoe caught the wrist and slowly turned it back on itself until the switchblade slipped from Mike’s hand.

“Your luck will run out,” hissed Tavarez. “And the luck of your pale race and your soulless country. And the devil will then fuck you to death one at a time then all at once.”

“Yes. He’s practicing on you right now.”

“You still believe in the God who ignores you?”

“I believe, yes.”

“My faith isn’t strong like it used to be.”

“Faith doesn’t make God.”

“Or hell.”

“That either,” said Stromsoe.

Mike tried to slow his breathing but this made his throat stutter like a truck on a washboard road. He gagged and swallowed loudly. “Tell my children I loved them. Tell my wife I’m waiting in hell for her.”

“I’ll tell the children. But you’ll have to pass along your own curses, Mike. You always find a way.”

“You were never as smart as me,” said Mike.

“Never. But I’ll be here an hour from now and you won’t.”

“That’s an arguable privilege.”

“It’s not arguable to me at all.”

Mike took a series of very shallow breaths, then coughed weakly. His voice was a whisper. “We did have everything, didn’t we?”

“Everything.”

“I don’t have a single regret.”

“I’ve got a million,” said Stromsoe.

“Except that I didn’t shoot you first.”

Mike managed to lift his head off the ground. His eyes searched for the pistol but his head lowered back down to the leaves. Then his fists slowly opened and the light left his eyes.

Stromsoe sat for a long while. He could smell the blood and the rich earth. It was cool in the orchard with the sun streaking the leaves. A painted lady landed on the toe of Mike’s right boot, fanned its wings in a spot of sun.

Stromsoe remembered the time Mike had helped him run down the kids who threw the rocks at the marching band, and how surprised he’d been at Mike’s ferocity as well as his own. He thought again of the abandon, when every nerve and muscle was needed for that good fight, when he was stronger and faster than he would ever be. What a pure thing, what a rarity as the years had gone by—a moment to be right, and to have a friend there with you.

He looked down at the body and thought of the many people who had died so that he could sit here in this dappled garden. Long ago, standing in the burnished afternoon light of a Southern California cemetery with his father and mother, Stromsoe had understood with a child’s simple wonder that some lives end so that others
may continue. Later he came to understand that a man’s life can be made rich through love as by Hallie and Billy and Frankie, or cursed through hatred as with Tavarez, but it was all their lives that coursed through him now as he reached out and closed Mike’s eyes forever.

Fallbrook got record rains that season. The total rain recorded in our area was 34.89 inches, a place that usually gets 12 inches. My rain gauge stands just a few miles from where Charles Hatfield once had his secret laboratory.

T. JEFFERSON PARKER
Fallbrook, California
August 2006