Hour of the Hunter (17 page)

This is what it takes to stay in school."

"That may be, but you sure as hell don't have to ride that thing home in this downpour. Don't be stubborn. Let me load it into my van."

She accepted gratefully. The radio was on as they drove toward the rambling house off Euclid where Diana lived in a tiny apartment over a garage. They were almost there when the local announcer began a public-service listing of all the functions for that evening that had been canceled or postponed in a show of respect for the slain president.

Among them was the performance of the Youth Symphony scheduled for Robinson Hall.

"Damn." Diana bit her lip in disappointment and fought back tears.

There went another three bucks she wouldn't have come next payday.

Along with the other two she had missed by not working all afternoon at the department, payday would be very short indeed in a budget that was already tight right down to the last nickel. At this rate, how would she ever accumulate enough money to buy next semester's books?

"That means you're off tonight?" Garrison Ladd was saying.

Not trusting herself to speak, Diana nodded.

"What will you do instead?"

"Study, I guess," Diana answered bleakly. "I've got some reading to do."

"How about dinner?"

"Tonight? Isn't that . .

"Tacky?" he supplied with a wink. "You think just because somebody knocked off the president, the rest Of us shouldn't eat?"

"It does seem . . . well, disrespectful."

"From what I hear about JFK himself, he'd be the last one to want us missing out on a good time. Come on. I'll take you someplace special.

How about the Eugene Hotel?

They have terrific steaks there."

Diana found herself salivating at the very mention of the word steak.

She hadn't tasted one since the previous summer's rodeo-queen supper.

Her school budget seldom made allowances for hamburger, let alone steak.

She let herself be enticed.

All right," she said. "But I've never been to the Eugene Hotel. What should I wear?"

"We'll manage," he said.

Despite Iona's warnings about not inviting men up to her room, it didn't seem polite to leave Garrison Ladd waiting outside in the cold car while she went up to change. After all, he was an instructor at the university. Surely, someone like that was above reproach.

She started having doubts though when, after closing the apartment door behind him, he stopped just inside the threshold and didn't move.

Diana turned back and looked at him. "Have a seat," she said. "I'll go into the bathroom and change."

He studied her curiously. The undisguised appraisal in the look made her nervous. "What's the matter?"

"Come here," he said, crooking his finger at her.

"Just come here."

Against her better judgment, she did as she was told, walking toward him slowly, woodenly. What was going on? she wondered. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe she shouldn't be here in her room alone with this man.

Diana stopped when there was less than a foot between them. "What?" she asked.

"Has anyone ever told you how lovely you are?"

"Come on," she said, shaking her head. "Don't give me that old line."

She started to move away from him, but he caught her wrist, imprisoning her hand in his and drawing her closer.

With his other hand, he brushed the hair back from her face and then traced the slender, curving jaw with a gently caressing finger.

"It's not a line," he said. "You're beautiful."

"People in Joseph don't talk to the garbageman's daughter that way," she said stiffly. Tentatively, she tried to free her hand, but he didn't let it go.

No doubt about it. Her mother was right. She'd made a serious mistake in inviting him up here, and she didn't know how to get rid of him.

She tried again to loosen his grip on her wrist, but he held firm.

"They don't? How do they talk to her?"

Now Diana was genuinely scared. Her apartment was a long way from the main house. If she yelled for help, no one would hear her.

"Let me guess," Garrison Ladd continued, still holding her captive.

"They'd probably say something gross, like 'Fall down on your back, honey, and spread your legs."' At once hot, humiliating tears stung Diana's cheeks. This was the very thing she had hoped to escape by running away from Joseph, by running away from home. Those words, those exact same words, were ones her father had shouted at Iona in one of his drunken, raging tirades when neither one of them knew their daughter was in the house.

Too young to realize what was going on, Diana knew no words for what her father had done to her mother. She had hidden in the closet and waited until it was over, crying and praying that her father would die, that God would strike max Cooper dead on the spot, but, of course, He hadn't.

And now, here she was faced with those very words again, and with whatever else came with those words.

She squared her shoulders and prepared to fight. Running away hadn't done her any good if the words had found her anyway, searched her out here in Eugene in her own apartment. Maybe destiny wasn't something you could escape by running from one end of the state to the other.

but she sure as hell didn't have to go quietly.

"Let me go," she snapped. "You're hurting me."

"Not until you kiss me, Liza."

Liza! She felt as though he'd slapped her. Who the hell was Liza? An ex-girlfriend maybe? Had Gary Ladd mixed her up with someone else?

"My name's not Liza. Let me go!"

He smiled and effortlessly pulled her to him until her taut body was against his chest. "Haven't you ever heard' of Liza Doolittle, Liza?

She's a garbageman's daughter, too, you know. And my name is Henry Higgins, so what are You going to wear to the ball, my dear?"

He kissed her then, quickly, briefly--a brotherly kiss not even a garbageman's daughter could fault him for-and led her to the closet, where he began rummaging through her clothing, looking for an appropriate dress.

The rush of relief and gratitude that swept over Diana almost brought her to her knees. He hadn't meant her any harm. It had all been a game, genuine teasing. She wasn't used to that, and she didn't know how to handle it.

-Here we are." He held up the blue taffeta semiformal Diana's mother had made for her to wear to the prom.

"This should do nicely."

Gathering everything she needed into a bundle, Diana hurried into the bathroom to change, while Garrison Ladd lounged comfortably on her bigger-than-twin-but-less-than full-sized bed. The idea of him sitting there big as you please made her blush. Her mother had warned her about that, too, about letting men sit on your bed, but then what did her mother know?

As soon as Diana was dressed, they drove to Garrison's place, a two-bedroom apartment with a pool, emptied now for the winter. He invited her up, but she wasn't taking any more chances. She stayed in the car while he went inside to change. He came out wearing a tuxedo-his very own tuxedo. Except for Walter Brennan, maybe, no one in Joseph, Oregon, owned his own tuxedo.

They went to the hotel for a dinner of medium-rare steaks, lush salads, and huge baked potatoes complete with sour cream and chives. Feeling like Cinderella, Diana couldn't help noticing that Garrison Ladd paid more for that single steak dinner than she'd earn from a full week's worth of work, but that didn't keep her from enjoying herself They laughed at anyone and everyone, including one tearful waitress who acted as though it were inappropriate for anybody to be out on the town having such a gloriously good time with John F. Kennedy not yet in his grave.

Diana Lee Cooper didn't know when she'd ever had so much fun. She laughed until she cried, and then she laughed some more, and all the while the part of her that had never laughed before was falling more and more in love by the minute.

Finally, at midnight, she'd had enough. "I've got to go home and get some sleep," she announced. "I've got newspapers to deliver in the morning."

"No way," he told her. "I'm not letting you out of my sight. We'll stay up all night. When it's time to deliver your damn newspapers, I'll help you. How does that sound?"

At five O'clock in the morning, in a driving rain, the two of them delivered the black-banded newspapers that announced President John F. Kennedy's death. Garrison Ladd drove her around the route in his VW-Bus. Diana, barefoot but still wearing her blue dress, hopped in and out of the bus to Send the papers sailing through the air.

Gary Ladd was impressed that she never missed a single porch.

Afterward, back in her apartment, cold and wet and still laughing, she let him help her Out of her soaked clothes.

The wet taffeta was ruined, but Diana didn't care. She didn't look at it as he unzipped it and let it slip to the floor In a sodden heap.

Nothing mattered except this wonderful man she was with who had the ability to make her laugh and feel beautiful at the same time.

She barely noticed as he unfastened her bra and slipped her garter belt and panties down to the floor. She stepped delicately out of them and stood naked before him while he wrapped his arms around her, holding her close.

"You're shivering," he said. He kissed her once, a long, lingering kiss, and she responded eagerly. Playfully, he nibbled at her ear. It tickled, and she giggled, but then she caught herself. She realized what was happening and tried to pull away.

"Don't tease me," he whimpered urgently. "Please don't tease me."

She closed her eyes and let herself melt against him while the room whirled around her. She tried to block out the sickening memory Of her father's drunken voice, but it was all there again in her mind, not only the night she'd spent in the closet but also that other terrible long-ago night after the first pre-rodeo dance.

A few of the boys took her out behind the school and offered to show her exactly what she'd have to do to win.

They told her that any girl who came from the wrong side of the tracks wasn't going to make it to the top any other way. Somehow she escaped them. She ran all the way home, arriving in tears with her clothes half torn off.

And just when she got inside, closing the door behind her, just when she thought she was safe, Max Cooper materialized behind her and switched on the light. Drunk, he was enraged when he saw her clothes.

"Slut!" he shouted.

"You worthless, no-good slut! What the hell have you been up to?"

Desperate to get away, she darted past him up the stairs.

The booze slowed him down, and she got away clean, but Max plowed up the stairs after her. Upstairs, she locked herself in the bathroom and was sick, vomiting into the toilet. He banged on the door a couple of times. She heard him distantly, over the sound of her own retching.

At least he didn't break the door down. The wooden door kept his fists at bay, but his words found their mark all the same.

"You're a bitch, Diana Lee Cooper! A no-good bitch of a prick-tease!"

She was washing her face by then, staring at her ashen face in the bathroom mirror. She wouldn't be that, she vowed into the mirror. No matter what he called her, no matter what it was, she wouldn't ever be that.

"What did you say?" she asked vaguely.

She stood with her head thrown back, her wet hair dripping on the floor behind her. Without her being aware of it, Garrison Ladd had kissed his way down her yielding neck and across the gentle swell of her breast. He closed his lips around one delicate, upright nipple. She moaned with pleasure as wild sensation shot through her body.

Reluctantly, he let the nipple go. Straightening up, he crushed her against him while his breath came in short, harsh gasps. Through the confines of his trousers, she could feel his urgent hardness straining against her. She pulled back from him again for a moment, far enough away to look up at his face and see the blazing intensity in his eyes.

That was when the second realization hit her--Garrison Ladd wanted her.

Diana Lee Cooper was stunned by the unbridled passion in his wanting.

How had she allowed it to happen? How had she let him go this far?

Because it was too far-too late to tell him no, too late to make him stop. She remembered the promise she'd made, a sacred vow spoken to the frightened face of a girl reflected back in a pockmarked bathroom mirror while her father pounded on the door. There could be no turning back.

She reached up with both hands and pulled Garrison Ladd's face down until his lips once more grazed hers.

"I won't tease you," she whispered fiercely. "Not ever."

And she kept her word.

The nonpeople were very jealous of Little Bear and Little Lion. They wanted the boys' beautiful birds to use the feathers on their own arrows.

One night the boys' grandmother warned them, "Tomorrow the people will come here. They will kill me and try to steal your birds. You must take the birds far away from here and throw them off the mountains in the east."

The -next morning, it happened just as she said. The people came to the house and killed Wise Old Grandmother, but Little Bear and Little Lion escaped, taking their beautiful birds with them. Back then, the people had not yet lost the ability to follow tracks, so they followed the two boys across the desert.

As Little Bear and Little Lion started up the far mountain, they heard the angry people close behind them. Little Bear was too tired to go on.

"Here," he said to his brother. "You take my bird as well. I will wait here for the people. They may kill me, but at least the birds will be free." And that is what happened. Little Bear kept the people with him long enough for Little Lion to throw the beautiful birds with their multicolored feathers off the mountain. And that, nawaj, is the story of how Sunrise and Sunset got their colors.

They say a certain type of criminal always returns to the scene of his crime, and Andrew Carlisle fit that mold. He was curious. He wanted to know if anyone had discovered Margaret Danielson's body yet; not that he would actually have gone up the mountain to see for himself, but he couldn't resist pulling off into the rest area at Picacho Peak since it was on his way. He was rewarded by the collection of law-enforcement vehicles parked haphazardly around the picnic and playground area, which told him what he needed to know.