“They’re
why
you’re staying?”
“I figure they won’t be able to keep it going up there. Machines will break down. Things will change.”
“So what?”
Stone knew there was no way to say it without sounding
like a fool, so he said it plainly. “So I’ll wait till they’re weak enough, and then I’ll take over.”
“Take over?” Tocco laughed again, louder this time.
“That’s right. I’ll hit them at four in the morning, and kill as many as I have to.”
Unlike Tocco, Annabelle was not laughing. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’m serious.”
“Why?”
Stone did not answer immediately. “Let’s just say I want a hot bath.”
But she would not let him off that easily. “And what else?”
“The junkman’s daughters—I want to try to save them.” Stone looked down at the fire. Though he felt foolish, he also felt a vast sense of relief, even before he articulated his other reason. “And I want to kill Rich Kelleher’s killers.”
Tocco had to get up and walk. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!” he lamented. “The man has flipped.” He went on then, enumerating all the different ways Stone would get himself killed.
“It’s just not a one-man job,” he concluded. “If you had eight or ten, maybe you could do it.”
Stone looked at Annabelle. “How about three?” he asked.
“No way,” Tocco said. “Never. Not this cat. I never been suicidal, and I don’t intend to start now.”
As Stone sat there, with his back to the lake, Annabelle’s eyes shifted from his slightly, fixing on a distant point over his shoulder. And suddenly she smiled.
“How about six?” she asked.
Stone turned and saw the rowboat plying toward them
across the choppy, sun-glazed surface of the lake. He could not make out the rower or the man in the stern of the boat, but there was no mistaking the passenger in the bow, with her yellow hair blowing like a pennant in the wind.
“Six would do fine,” he said.
The boat was still a few hundred yards out in the lake when Eddie, who was rowing, veered it toward Stone’s fire.
Annabelle had forced a laugh. “The return of the jet-setters. Just what we needed.”
Looking out over the water at the boat and its occupants, Stone thought of the first time he had seen Eve, standing alone in the doorway of the ruin, and he remembered his feeling of curiosity and excitement, so strong even then, in the first moments of her existence for him. But now, as the boat drew close enough for him to meet her gaze, he felt something much stronger, something akin to joy.
Taking off his boots, he went into the water and pulled the boat up onto dry land. Then he helped her out, hoping for some response, hoping even that she might fall into his arms and put an overdue end to their long dance of denial. But nothing had changed. All he got was an embarrassed smile and the old pulling away, the coolness of the castrator’s knife.
“You’re just in time for breakfast,” he said.
Eddie laughed and clapped him on the arm. “Stone, old buddy—just couldn’t live without you! Yeah, we smelled it halfway across the lake.”
In the stern, Jagger seemed to have all he could do just to get up and struggle out of the boat. He had nothing to say, nor would he meet anyone’s eyes for more than a moment. While Eve and Eddie both looked discouraged, he appeared in even worse shape, downcast and embittered, filled with a new and sullen rage. Seeing the half-eaten jars of vegetables near the fire, he went straight for them and began to eat, ravenously. Annabelle smiled at him.
“Have some breakfast,” she said, but he ignored her.
There was still some meat left, and after the others had gathered around the fire, Stone began to roast the remaining strips. Retrieving one of the jars of corn from Jagger, Annabelle divided it between Eve and Eddie. And Tocco went so far as to get a blanket and throw it over Eve’s shoulders. Stone noticed that the three of them had come back empty-handed except for a rifle that Eddie carried. And when none of them offered any information about what had happened across the lake, he pointedly asked them. In answer, all he got was a wink from Eddie.
After a short time, with his mouth still full of food, Jagger abruptly got up and announced that he was going to the lodge to sleep. “And don’t wake me,” he said. “Not even if the fucking Mau Mau come back. Let them kill me in my sleep.”
It was only as he disappeared around the ridge of boulders, heading for the lodge, that Stone and the others learned what had happened.
“It was just like Wimbledon,” Eddie said. “Our boy really covered himself with glory.”
Eve, staring at the fire, said nothing as Eddie went on, explaining how the group had begun to splinter soon after landing on the other side. The O’Brien brothers, with Pam and Kim, had taken their share of the food and guns and had gone on alone, while the Baggses and Goffs, being from the area, had found families willing to take them in. The rest of the group had straggled into an abandoned hardware store in Spalding, where they settled in around a fire in an unroofed part of the structure and tried finally, desperately, to sleep—but so unsuccessfully that almost half of them were awake and watching as Jagger got up and silently began to assemble a getaway pack consisting of the best food and weapons he could find in the communal stock. No one did a thing, however, not until he hefted his treasure and began to tiptoe out of the store, at which point Awesome Dawson brought him down with a crushing tackle. The rest joined in picking him up and running him out into the street, without a crust of bread or a knife or even a match.
“Yeah, he got himself kicked out,” Eddie said. “And don’t ask me why the two of us followed him—probably out of guilt, for all the years we been living off him.”
“But why come back here?” Annabelle asked, looking wryly from Eve to Stone.
Eddie shrugged. “Who knows? I guess we wanted to catch Stone before he took off.”
“Whatever for?” Annabelle was enjoying herself. “Is he that much fun to travel with?”
“Well, maybe we just figured he was the genius who brought us here in the first place.”
Stone looked at Eve, which only made her turn away. Strangely, the night she had just passed seemed to have affected her more deeply that the day before. What the
Mau Mau had not been able to accomplish, Jagger apparently had. She looked frightened and close to tears, and the fact that she could not hide it obviously embarrassed her.
Tocco decided to add to her problems. “Well, you might as well row on back,” he said. “You’ve come to the wrong place. Because your genius friend here has flipped. He’s gonna stay on right here at the Point and keep an eye on the Mau Mau. How’s that for smarts, huh?” He tapped his head and laughed.
Eve and Eddie both looked over at Stone, but they were not laughing.
He shrugged indifferently. “It’s no big thing. I just figured that for now I’ve got food and shelter here, so why leave?”
Annabelle was shaking her head in mock reproach. “Now come on, Stone—you were straight with us. Why not be straight with them?” She smiled sweetly at Eve. “You see, he plans to attack Valhalla and rescue some damsels in distress. Also get vengeance for Rich Kelleher in the bargain.”
Eddie did not believe her. Frowning and grinning, he looked at Stone for clarification. But Eve, next to him, apparently knew better, or at least knew Stone better. She looked bleakly angry, as if she had expected something like this.
“Well?” Eddie said to Stone. “Tell us it ain’t so.”
“Yeah, do that,” Tocco put in.
“It’s an oversimplification,” Stone said. “I just want to stay in the area awhile and see if things change up there. If they do, I might want to try to help the junkman’s girls. They’re very young.”
“Not anymore, they’re not,” Annabelle said.
Eve sighed and turned to Eddie. “Well, I guess maybe
we did come to the wrong place. Do you want to go back?”
“To
what
?” Eddie asked.
“The air over there isn’t so rarefied. People at least know the name of the game is survival, not self-indulgence.” Eve looked straight at Stone now, her eyes bruised with reproach. “Not some ridiculous notion of duty and honor.”
“Oh, come on,” Tocco chided her. “You’re being too hard on the boy. He can’t help it if he’s better than the rest of us.”
Stone had had enough. “You can all go to hell,” he said. “You think it’s gonna be a picnic out on the road this time of year, you’re welcome to find out. Me, I’m gonna do just what you suggest, Eve. I’m gonna
survive—
right here. And when I can do more, I’ll do that too.”
“You’re serious, then,” Eddie said.
“Bet on it.”
As Stone gathered up his pots and pans, preparing to wash them in the lake, Tocco asked Eddie about the rifle he had brought with him, a semiautomatic twenty-two.
“You got ammo for it?”
“Originally, no,” Eddie told him. “But I found a box of shells in the hardware store last night.”
“That’s good. Maybe you two can travel with me and Annabelle, then. What do you say?”
Eddie shrugged. “What about Jag?”
“What about him?”
The little man glanced at Eve, but she gave him nothing. “Well, I think he expects to stay with us,” he said.
“Fuck him,” Tocco sneered. “I still owe that bastard.”
“Well, we can’t just leave him here, can we?”
“Why not?” Annabelle asked. “He’d have Stone. And
they both do have so much in common. They’d make such a lovely couple.”
Eve suddenly looked up at Tocco. “Sure, we’ll go with you,” she said. “What’s to hold us here?”
Again Eddie asked about Jagger. And this time Eve told him.
“What he does is his business, not ours.”
Eddie was nodding, trying to accept this. He seemed puzzled, and somehow lost. “Yeah. Okay,” he said. “But just one thing—we’re pretty beat and cold. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to wait a day and warm up, eat our fill. Hey, is there any more meat on those cows?”
Kneeling at the lakeside, washing a pot, Stone did not answer.
He worked throughout the afternoon getting things ready at the new lakefront cabin he had chosen, up the shore from the Point. It was a dilapidated A-frame with a free-standing “modernistic” fireplace and a broken glass front that offered a view whose southerly extremity included both the Point and Valhalla. He had expected the others just to stand by and watch him, but surprisingly they pitched in to help almost as if they planned on staying there themselves. While he raided the lodge for whatever he could use—any overlooked food, cooking utensils, blankets, pillows, buckets—Eddie and Tocco carried armloads of firewood from the stack outside the lodge to the cabin. At the same time, Annabelle and Eve swept the place out and tried to cover the areas of broken glass with boards and old pieces of cardboard.
Later, while Tocco and Eddie brought some buckets of ear corn to the A-frame, Stone went back to the cow carcasses and salvaged what meat he could, including the animals’ tongues. He was surprised to discover that in his absence the wild dogs had been more interested in the half-burned body of the youth Rich Kelleher had shot than they were in the cows. But he accepted this, took what breaks he could get. And when he returned to the cabin, he found that the others had brought three mattresses down from the lodge, evidently planning to be as comfortable as possible for the one night they were staying on.
Eddie said that Jagger had “cussed” them out for waking him. “But he’s back asleep now,” he reported. “Clear conscience, I guess.”
“Fuck him,” Tocco said, the malediction evidently covering all his feelings toward Jagger.
Putting the mattresses into place, Annabelle asked Stone if that would be all. “Perhaps sir would like some wine from the cellars of Valhalla,” she went on. “Say, a presumptuous little Cabernet?”
Stone forced a smile. He was thinking of the two guns he still had to get. He decided that it would be better to wait until he was alone.
“No, that’ll be all,” he said. “You’re excused.”
Annabelle bowed. “Merci beaucoup.”
That was about the only attempt at levity during the whole long industrious afternoon. Stone built a fire in the potbellied fireplace while Eddie kept hauling in buckets of water and throwing them down the bathroom stool, trying to make it function properly. Eve, still wearing one of her safari outfits, stretched out on a mattress to rest. And Stone found his gaze returning over and over to the bewitching swell of her hips and buttocks in the tight khaki pants. Even as he stared into the burgeoning fire, it was her body he saw, his hands slowly pulling the khaki pants down off
her hips until it was all there for him, the firm sleek cheeks open to his mouth, open to the passing of his cock, the piercing of her, the possession. Just the thought of it made him hard, like a teenager. And he silently raged against the times he lived in, these days of rape instead of love.
Outside he saw Tocco and Annabelle sitting together amid the ruins of the cabin’s pier, which apparently had been washed up on the shore a long time before. The two of them were earnestly discussing some matter. And then suddenly they both looked up. Annabelle got to her feet and hurried to the shore, to peer in the direction of Valhalla. As Tocco did the same, Stone realized what the interruption was, hearing it now himself over the roar of the fire.
“There’s shooting,” he said to Eddie. “Get your gun and come on.”
Eve had heard it too and was already getting up from the mattress. With Stone leading, carrying his pistol and binoculars, the three of them ran out of the cabin and joined Tocco and Annabelle. Looking down the shore, toward Valhalla, Stone could make out figures scurrying from the buildings toward the front gate. Others were already on the road, starting down. One of them was carrying another person, wounded or dead, over his shoulder. Above them, on the parapet, two Mau Mau were shooting up into the air, as if they were driving cattle. And indeed, the fleeing Mau Mau did have the look of driven livestock, just in the way they moved down the winding road, hurrying, heads down, panic and fear in every step on their flight. And they appeared to be leaving without a possession: no guns, no backpacks, nothing. Before they hit the first turn, two of their former comrades had dragged a body out to the parapet and now they pitched it over the
side. It struck the rocks below and bounced outward, landing in the middle of the road. Those taking flight parted like water around it and kept on going.