Everville (64 page)

Two-thirds of the way down the mountain slope, passing through a patch of trees more thinly spaced than elsewhere, the woman on Harry's back said, "Stop a moment will you?" She surveyed the terrain. "I swear-this is where my daddy was murdered."

"was he lynched too?" Raul replied.

"No," she said. "Shot by a man who thought my daddy was a servant of the Devil."

"Why'd he think that?"

"It's a long story, and a bitter one," the O'Connell woman said. "But I found a way to keep his memory alive."

"How did you do that?" said Harry.

"His name was Harmon," she replied, and as they moved on away from the place she told Harry and Raul the whole bitter story. She told it without melodrama and withOut rancor. It was simply a sorrowful account of her father's last hours, and of how he had passed his vision of Everville to his daughter. "I knew it was my duty to build a city, and call it Everville, but it was hard. Towns don't just spring up because people dream them-well, not in this world, at least. There has to be a reason. A good reason. Maybe there's a place on a river where it's easy to cross. Maybe there's gold in the ground. But my valley just had a piddling little creek, d nobody ever found gold here. So I had to find some other ason for people to come here, and build houses and raise lies. That wasn't easy even at the best of times, and these weren't the best of times. See, the man who killed my daddy became a preacher in Silverton, and he used the pulpit to spread all kinds of rumors about how there was a hole to Hell right here on Hannon's Heights, and devils flew out of it at night.

"So, after a couple of years of being almost alone here, I decided to take myself off to Salem, where maybe I'd find some people who hadn't heard what the preacher Whitney was saying. And one day, I'm talking to this man in a feed store, and I'm telling him about my valley, my sweet valley, and how he should come look at it for himself, and suddenly he digs out a silver dollar and slaps it on the counter and says to me: Show me. And I say to him: It's quite a ways from here. And he puts his hand on my leg, and starts to pull up my skirt and he says: No, it's real near.

"Then I realized what he was talking about, and I called him every kind of name under the sun and I took myself off in a high old fury. But as I was walking home, I got to thinking about what he'd said, and I thought maybe the best way to bring men to my valley was first to bring women-"

"Clever," said Raul.

"Men don't always follow religion. they don't always follow common sense. But women, they follow. Women they'll suffer every kind of privation for. This has been proved, over and over." She tapped Harry on the shoulder. "You've been stupid for women, have you not?"

"It's been known," said Harry. "So, you see, I had my method. I knew how I would bring men to fill up my valley. And once they were there, they'd start to build my daddy's dream city for me."

"I get the theory of it," Raul said. "But how did it work?"

"Well, my father had been given a cross, by a man called Buddenbaum-"

"Buddenbaum?" Harry said. "It can't be the same man-"

"You've heard of him?" "Heard of him? I shot him this afternoon."

"Dead?"

"No. He was very much alive when I saw him last. But like I said, it can't be the same Buddenbaum."

"Oh I think it could," Maeve said. "And if it is@h, if it is-I have some questions I want that bastard to answer."

Larry Glodoski and his soldiers had staggered out of Hamrick's Bar feeling ready to take on anything that crossed their path. they had guns, they had God, and they could all whistle Sousa: What more did an army need?

The civilian population was not so sanguine, however. A lot of people-particularly the tourists@ad decided that whatever was happening on the mountain, they'd prefer to see it on tomorrow's news than experience it in the flesh, and they were beating a hasty and disorderly retreat. More than once, as the men made their way down Main Street, they had to step aside to let a carload of vacationers careen by.

"Cowards!" Waits yelled after one such vehicle had almost mounted the sidewalk to avoid them.

"Let them go," Glodosid slurred. "We don't need bystanders. They'll only get in the way."

"You know what?" Reidlinger said, seeing a sobbing woman bundling her kids into a RV, "I'm going to have to leave you guys to it. I'm sorry Larry, but I got kids at home, and if anything happened to them-2'

Giodoski gave him the fish-eye. "Okay," he said. "So what are you waiting for?" Reidlinger started to apologize again, but Glodoski cut him short. "Just go," he said. "We don't need you." Reidlinger made a shamefaced departure. "Anybody else want to go, while the going's goodt' Larry asked.

Alstead cleared his throat, and said, "You know, Larry, we've all of us got responsibilities. I mean, maybe we're better leaving this to the authorities."

"Are you deserting too?" Giodoski wanted to know.

"No, Larry, I'm just saying@'

Bosley interrupted him. "Well now he said, and inted down the block at the two people coming in their direction. He knew and despised them both. The woman for r foul mouth, the youth at her side for his sodomitic ways.

"These two are dangerous," he said. "They're accomplices of Buddenbaum's."

"There's not two of them," Bill Waits observed, "there's three. Lundy's carrying a baby." "Stealing children now," said Bosley. "How low will they stoop?"

"Wasn't she the one at the crossroads?" Larry said.

"She was."

"Gentleman, we've got work to do," Larry declared, stepping past Bosley.

"I'll front this. You just keep your eyes open."

Tesia and Seth had seen the quartet by now, and were crossing the street to avoid them. Giodoski stepped off the sidewalk to intercept them, demanding as he approached, "Whose kid is that?" His inquiry was ignored. "I'm not going to ask again," he said. "Whose baby have you got there?"

"It's none of your damn business," Tesia said. "What are you going to do with it?" Bosley said, his voice shrill.

"Shut up, Bosley," Larry said.

"They're going to murder it!"

"You heard him, Bosley," said Tesia. "Shut the fuck UP."

Now Bosley overtook Larry, pulling out his gun as he did so. "Put the baby down," he squealed.

"I said I'd deal with this," Giodoski snapped.

Bosley ignored him. He strode on towards Tesia, leveling his gun at her as he did so.

"Jesus," Tesla said. "Haven't you got anything better to do?" She jabbed her finger in the direction of the Heights. "There's something coming down that mountain, and you don't want to be here when it arrives."

As if to punctuate her warning, the streetlamps began to flicker, and then went out. There were cries of alarm from all directions. "Do we run?" Seth murmured to Tesia.

"We can't risk it," she said. "Not with Amy."

A few lights came back on again, but they were dim and fitful. Bosley, meanwhile, had stepped in to claim the baby from Seth's arms.

"You've got no right to do this," Seth protested.

"You're a cocksucker, Lundy," Alstead said. "Fhat gives us all the right we need."

Bosley had a grip on the baby now, but Seth refused to relinquish her.

"Alstead!" Bosley hollered, "give me a hand here."

Alstead didn't need a second invitation. He came around the back of Seth, and grabbed hold of his arms. Larry, mean-' while, had taken out his own gun and had it leveled at Tesla, to keep her from intervening.

"What's going on up there?" he said to her, nodding in the direction of the Heights.

"I don't know. But I do know we're all in deep shit when it gets here. If you want to do some good why don't you evacuate the people who need help, instead of baby snatching?"

"She's got a point, Larry," said Waits. "there's a lot of old folks-2'

"We'll get to them!" Glodoski blustered. "I got it all planned."

Amy began bawling now, as Bosley wrested her from Seth's arms. "She's missing your tits, Lundy," Alstead leered, reaching out to paw his captive's chest.

Seth responded by jabbing his elbow in Alstead's belly, hard enough to drive the wind from him. Cursing, Alstead spun Seth around and punched him in the face, twice, ffi= times, solid blows to nose and mouth. Seth stumbled backwards, his legs betraying him, and fell to the ground. Alstead moved in to kick the youth, but Waits held him back.

"C'mon. Enough!"

"Little cocksucker!"

"Leave him alone, for Christ's sake!" Waits hollered. "We didn't come out here to beat up kids. Larry-?"

Giodoski glanced over at Waits, and as he did so Tesla ducked beneath his arm and flew at him, intending to disarm him. She failed. There was a brief, ragged struggle@e gun twice discharged into the air@fore he caught her a backhanded blow. She reeled before it.

Waits, meanwhile, was hauling the bloodied Seth to his feet, while yelling at Alstead to keep his distance, and Bosley was fumbling for his own -uii, which he'd pocketed before snatching the child.

"Tesla-" Seth hollered, "1.)ok out!"

She shook the blotches from in front of her eyes in time to see not one but two weapons being leveled at her.

"Riiii! " Seth told her.

She had a moment only in which to decide, and her instinct carried the day. Before Giodoski or Bosley could get a bead on her she was away, pelting down the block. Behind her she heard Glodoski yellin-. Then he fired. The bullet carved a niche in the sidewalk a ytrd to her right.

"Larry, stop!" Waits was shoutin-. "Are you crazy?"

Glodoski simply fired again. This time the bullet shattered a store window behind her. She made the corner without a third shot being- fired, and glanced round to see that Waits had caught hold of Glodoski and was attempting to wrest the weapon from him. She didn't wait for the outcome, but darted out of sight and range.

She bitterly regretted losing Seth and Amy, but the encounter had served a purpose Giodoski and his bully-boys would regret. If there was power to be begged, stolen, or borrowed from Buddenbaum then she'd have it, and damn the niceties.

iv As Harry, Maeve, and Raul crossed Unger's Creek the lights in the streets ahead, which had been flickering for a quarter of an hour, gave up completely. The trio halted for a moment, their other senses attenuated in the sudden darkness. There was no comfort to he had from them, however. they heard only panicked cries from the city, and from the thicket and trees silence, as though every nighthird and insect knew what Sapas Humana did not: that death was coming, and the loudest would be found first. As for the other senses, their news was no better. For all the balm of the summer air, it carried that tang Harry had nosed entering the building at Ninth and Thirteenth: rotten fish and smoking spice. It was on the tongue too, tempting the stomach to rebellion.

"They're coming," Raul said.

"It had to happen."

"Will you hurry yourself, then?" Maeve said. "I want to see my city before we all go to Hell."

"Anywhere in particular?" Harry said.

"Yes, as you're asking," Maeve replied. "There's a crossroads-"

"What is it about those damn crossroads?" Harry said.

"It's where I lived. Where we built our house, my husband and me. And let me tell you, that house was a glory. A glory. Until the sons of bitches burned it down."

"Why did they do that?"

"Oh, the usual. Too much righteousness and too little passion. What I would give for a taste, just a taste, of the way it was at the beginning, when we still had hope... "

She fell into silence for a few moments. Then she erupted afresh: "Take me there!" she hollered. "Take me there! Let me see the ground where it all began!"

Tesia found Buddenbaum sifung in the Nook, as Seth had told her she would. The little coffee shop was deserted, and dark but for the fire Buddenbaum had started on a plate in front of him, feeding it with scraps of menu.

"I was about to give up on you," he said, with a smile that was very nearly sincere.

"I got waylaid." "By some of the locals?"

"Yes." She came to his table, and sat down opposite him, plucking a napkin from the dispenser to moo the sweat from her face. Then she plucked another and blew her nose.

"I know what you're thinking," Buddenbaum said. "Oh, do you?"

"You're thinking: Why should I give a shit about these fucking people? They're cruel and they're stupid, and when they're afraid they just become more cruel and more stupid."

"You're exempting us from this, of course."

"Of course. You're a Nunciate. And I'm-"

"The Jai-Wai's man."

Buddenbaum grimaced. "Do they know you've come here?"

"I told them I was going walkabout, to think things through." She dug in her pocket, and pulled out the cards. "Ever seen these before, by the way?" She laid them on the table. Buddenbaum regarded them almost superstitiously, his mouth tight.

"Whose are they?" he said, his fingers hovering over them but not making contact.

"I don't know."

"They've been in powerful hands," he said appreciatively.

Testa went back into her pocket in pursuit of a stray card, and brought out the remains of the reefer she'd confiscated from the crucifixion singer. She sniffed it. Whatever it contained, it smelled appealingly pungent. She plucked a spill of burning cardboard off the plate, and putting the reefer to her. lips, lit it.

"Will you work for them?" Buddenbaum said.

"The Jai-Wai?" she said. He nodded. "I doubt it."

"Why not?"

"They're psychotic, Buddenbaum. they get a buzz out of seeing people suffer."

"Don't we all?" "No." She inhaled, just half a lungful. Held the smoke. "Oh, come on Bombeck," Buddenbaum replied. "You wrote for the movies. You know what gives people a thrill." She exhaled a breath of lilac smoke. "The difference is: This is real."

Buddenbaum leaned forward. "Are you going to share that?" he said. She passed the joint over the fire. It had induced some subtle visual hallucinations. The flames had slowed their licking, and the beads of sweat on Buddenbaum had become crystalline. He drew on the joint, and spoke as he held his breath. "What's real to us isn't what's real to the rest of the world. You know that." He turned his gaze towards the dark street. A family of five was hurrying along the sidewalk, the children sobbing. "Whatever they're suffering," he said, exhaling now,