کتاب 07-21

21

She wanted to run, but there was no way. Her stomach, heavy with baby, had assumed a firmness and size that was magnificent, planetary. So she zigged and zagged through the mazy pines in a shambling jog, sweating and breathing hard.

In the dark, with her pulse thumping behind her eyes, it was doubtful she would’ve seen Michael Lindqvist following at a distance, even if she had looked for him. He went with care, in no hurry, watching for a long time before he moved from one tree to the next. If she had seen him, she might’ve been surprised by his expression, his small tight mouth and narrowed eyes. There was nothing particularly childlike about it at all. He followed her as far as the boathouse, but when she went on toward the dock, he went in, and had soon disappeared among the shadows.

Harper took her time making it down the wooden steps cut into the sandy embankment, grabbing bunches of sea grass to steady her. The ocean was a metal plate dented all over as if it had been battered by a thousand hammer blows. Moonlight blinked silver on the edges of the waves. Looked a little choppy out there. Harper didn’t see the man sitting on the end of the dock until she was out on it, halfway to the rowboat.

Don Lewiston jerked his head around to look back over his shoulder. He sat with a steel pail on his right and a fishing pole across his knees.

“Nurse Willowes! What brings you boundin’ down the hill?” he asked.

He wasn’t fishing alone. Chuck Cargill stood on the pebbly beach, holding a rod of his own, his rifle behind his feet on the rocks. Cargill squinted doubtfully up at them.

“Father Storey is awake. Can you get away? He wants to see John, just as soon as possible.”

Don’s tangled eyebrows shot up and his mouth opened in an almost comic gape.

“Yar, I think—” He stood, cupped one hand around his mouth. “Chuckie boy! Hold the fort here. I got to row the missus out to see John. She wants to have a look-see at that busted wing of his.”

“Mr. Lewiston? Hey, ah—Mr. Lewiston, I don’t think—” A tug on his line distracted him. The end of his rod bent toward the water. He gave it an irritated glance, then returned his gaze to Harper and Don Lewiston. “Mr. Lewiston, you better wait before you go anywhere. I should clear it with Mother Carol first.”

Don tossed his rod aside, took Harper’s arm, and began to help her down into the rowboat. “’S’already cleared or Mama Carol never woulda let the nurse even come down here! Now I ain’t gonna let a lady fackin’ eight months pregnant try to row herself out there alone in this chop.”

“Mr. Lewiston—Mr. Lewiston, you got to hang on—” Cargill said, taking a step toward them, but still holding his rod, which was now curved in a long parabolic arc, the line straining at the end of it.

“You got a hit, Chuckie!” Don cried, stepping into the rowboat himself. “Don’t you dare lose this one, that’s Ben Patchett’s supper you got on your line! I’ll be back by the time you reel her in!”

Don bent to the oars and the boat took a herky-jerky jump away from the dock.

As he swept them out across the water, leaning all the way forward and then pitching himself all the way back, the oars banging in their iron rings and plunging into the water, Harper told him what she knew. When she got to the part about Carol setting Harold up, Don made a face like a man who has caught a whiff of something corrupt. Which was more or less the case, she supposed.

“And Ben Patchett was the triggerman for her?”

“It seems.”

He shook his head.

“What?”

“I can just about believe Ben would shoot the nasty little fatboy for her. Ben Patchett can talk himself into doin’ just about anything in the name of fackin’ protecting his people. But I can’t see him callin’ a Cremation Crew on Harold. Too many ways that coulda gone south. What if Harold squawked about Camp Wyndham before Ben had a chance to nail him? What if the Cremation Crew was heavily armed and put up a fight? Nope. I can see Carol doin’ it. She’s a hysteric. She don’t think through the consequences of her actions. But Ben has a careful mind. He’s half cop, half bean counter.”

“Maybe Carol called the Cremation Crew first and only told Ben her plan after. Then he was stuck trying to clean up her mess?”

Don nodded glumly.

“You still don’t like it.”

“Not by half,” Don said.

“Why not?”

“Because she don’t have the fackin’ cell phones,” Don said. “Ben does. How was she gonna call anyone? How would she even know who to call?”

Don took a last heave at the oars and drove the rowboat up into the muck. He hopped out and steadied her as she came to her feet.

“God, you got big alla sudden,” he said.

“I like it,” she said. “I look silly, I can’t run, and I can’t wear anything except sweatpants and extra-extra-large hoodies. But I like the idea of being so big I can easily trample over lesser beings. I don’t want to fight my enemies, I want to squash them beneath my tremendous girth.”

Don squinted back in toward shore, but it was too dark for either of them to see what Chuck Cargill was up to. Then he glanced past the shed, up to the top of the ridge. “This camp is about to turn into a fackin’ madhouse. I don’t think I’ll be missed for a few hours. I wanta look over the boat while I’m out here. See how sea-ready she is. Maybe I’ll even put ’er in the drink.” He cast another glance down at her belly. “If I had my druthers, we’d be on the water by tomorrow afternoon. That baby isn’t goin’ to wait and we might need a week or two t’get up the coast.”

“Go examine the boat. I can paddle back with Mr. Rookwood.”

Don walked her to the door of the shed, hand on her elbow, as if she were a recovering invalid. The Fireman answered the knock wearing polka dot pajama bottoms and his black-and-yellow rubber fireman’s coat over a grimy undershirt. He was starved, sweaty, needed a shave and a haircut, and he smelled like a campfire. Harper fought down the urge to burrow her face into his chest.

“Lazarus done rose from his fackin’ tomb,” Don said. He was almost quivering with pleasure, his big craggy face flushed with color. “The Father is awake. He asked for you. He wants to see you . . . and then he wants to see Carol. He got a sermon to preach to her, and lemme tell you, Johnny, I think this one might have some fire and brimstone in it.”

The Fireman scratched his hairy throat in an absentminded way, looking from Don to Harper. “I better put something on,” he said. Harper expected him to shut the door so he could change into a better pair of pants and maybe a sweater. Instead, he looked around in a kind of daze, until he spotted his helmet hanging off a nail by the door. He set it firmly on his head and breathed a sigh of relief. He glanced at himself in the square of mirror nailed up by the door, turned the helmet two imperceptible centimeters to the left, and beamed in delight. “There. Perfect. Shall we go?”

“Don is staying on the island. He’s going to put the boat in the water.”

The Fireman looked more surprised at this than at the news that Father Storey was conscious.

“Ah. I suppose you’ll be going as soon as possible.”

“Not too soon,” Harper said quickly.

“By the end of the week, if I have anything to say about it,” Don told him. “That baby isn’t going to wait around for when things are more convenient. It’s on the way. She ain’t got but four weeks at most. Sooner we get Nurse Willowes to Martha Quinn’s island and the hospital there, the better I’m goin’ to feel. But that isn’t the half of it. The nurse reckons Carol Storey might be leavin’ with us. After word gets out about what she’s done, she might like to take her leave under her own power . . . ’fore they run her out on a rail.”

The Fireman turned his gaze back to Harper, fixing her with a stare that had gone from foggy to fascinated in a very short time. “What has she done? I mean, besides using nineteenth-century punishments on her enemies, keeping Harper confined to the infirmary, and threatening to abduct her baby?”

“Two words.” Don waggled his overgrown eyebrows. “Harold fackin’ Cross.”

“I’ll tell you in the boat,” Harper said.