Valhalla (22 page)

As Smiley Baggs tried to calm things down, dusting off Rich Kelleher and telling him to come with him to the lodge, Spider walked over to Stone.

“Where’s you gun?” he asked.

“What gun?”

“You
gun! The one we issue you.”

Stone smiled coldly. “At the report, Spider. You’ll hear it then.”

The report took place a half hour later, in the main room of the lodge, where Jagger had set up a kind of office,
a sofa and desk cozily arranged close to the fireplace. That way, Stone figured, he could lie in comfort and think up new rules and regulations which he would then try to enforce from his seat at the desk, much as he was doing now, after Stone had told him and Newman that he had lost his rifle. Spider, like a vigilant Doberman, stood twitching off to one side, clutching his Sten gun with both hands.

“And you want to stick with that?” Jagger asked. “You
lost
it?”

“Just like I said,” Stone insisted. “We’d seen their camp. We were in a hurry. And crossing this stream, I dropped it in the water—which was deep and very cold.” He spoke precisely, as if he were reciting the story. He did not even want Jagger to believe him. “I couldn’t see it, so we came on home.”

Jagger was smiling. He seemed to be enjoying himself. He looked at Eddie. “And what about you, old buddy? Is that the way you saw it?”

“Just like he said—
old buddy.
”

Jagger did not miss the sarcasm. “Guess he’s your new hero now.”

“I don’t need any heroes. And anyway, there ain’t any. There never was.”

“No kidding.” Jagger acted as if he were greatly impressed by this last bit of information. He nodded sagely and turned to Newman. “What do you think, Kevin? You think we ought to buy this incredible, stinking piece of shit they’re handing us? Or should we just send them packing?”

Newman was predictably judicious. “I don’t know. I think Walt never has understood the importance of not having the guns out there, handy for any kind of mischief anyone wants to dream up. That way lies anarchy.”

“For Christ’s sake, he stashed the gun!” Spider broke in, obviously disgusted with Newman’s homilies. “He knows it, and he knows
we
know it.”

“One thing I know is, it
was
my gun,” Stone put in. “I brought it here. That’s why I’m mad I lost it. Probably even madder than you are.”

Jagger got up and went over to the fire to warm his hands. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know.”

“Well, I sure as hell do! He
stashed
it!” Spider insisted. “I know goddamn well he stashed it.”

For thirty or forty seconds Jagger continued to stand there warming his hands, occasionally shaking his head. And when he finally turned around, he looked oddly rattled.

“Oh yeah—
that,
” he said. “Of course he took it. We all know that. No, it’s his attitude I don’t know about, this hostility I just can’t figure.” He looked from Stone to Eddie and back again. “Explain it to me, will you? Why are you two and Tocco and so many of the others so hostile to us? And especially to me? What do you think we’re involved in here, some kind of silly power game? You think we get off on all this, working twice as hard as the rest of you?” His voice had begun to rise. “Doesn’t it ever dawn on you that if we don’t knock heads together here, if we don’t streamline this operation and keep control of things, we’re probably gonna starve this winter! You hear me?
Starve!”

Suddenly there were tears in his eyes and his hands were shaking.

“We’re gonna wind up eating each other like a fucking pack of dogs! Is that what you want, huh? Is that what all of you want? Tell me!” He looked at Eddie, who was staring down at the floor. Eddie shrugged.

“’Course not, Jag. We’re doing our best.”

“Your
best?”
He turned back to Stone. “Is that what you were doing when you stashed our gun, Stone? Was that your best?”

Stone calmly repeated that he had lost the gun. The tears still stood in Jagger’s eyes. He seemed unaware of them.

“Look, all we’re trying to do is get as many of us as possible through the winter, without turning into cannibals or getting slaughtered by the Mau Mau. Is that so hard to understand? By spring, things are bound to change. The government will get control again. Power will be back on.” He looked at Eddie. “And there’ll be tennis again, I just know it. And there’ll be money. It’ll be like before, like it always was—you thought of that?”

Eddie nodded. “Sure, Jag.”

“All we gotta do is get through this stinking winter and we’ll make it. We really will.” For emphasis he kicked over a chair, and suddenly he seemed to realize that he was crying and shaking. Hugging himself like a freezing man, he turned back to the fire. He pawed at his face, smearing tears. “What do you think, Kevin?” he got out. “Do we kick him out? Or do we let him stay?”

Newman gave Stone a reassuring look. “Well, I think we gotta keep in mind what Walt contributes, like finding the Mau Mau today. If worse comes to worse, we’re gonna need men like him.”

“Spider?”

The spindly Mexican would not look at Stone. “Maybe if he brought the gun back—maybe I’d say okay. Otherwise I say he walks.”

Jagger still would not turn away from the fire, and Stone wondered why the others continued to let him lead. Certainly
they could see just as clearly as he did how close to a breakdown the man was. On his second day out of St. Louis Stone had stumbled on a rabbit that became so frightened it ran in a circular course in front of him, faster and faster until he finally clubbed it. That was how he perceived Jagger now, so unremittingly terrified that he did not know what he was doing, only that he had to keep doing something, had to keep moving, had to keep running, all the time.

For himself, Stone had had enough of the man. “Well, that’s my report,” he said. “If you want me for anything else, I’ll be in my cabin.”

“Hey, we ain’t decided about you yet!” Spider complained.

But Stone kept on moving, with Eddie close behind him. As they neared the doorway Stone glanced across the room into the kitchen and saw Eve standing at a table chopping up some food. She looked up at him with no expression at all, almost as if she were on drugs. But he knew better. He knew she was only on fear, like her lover.

Outside, Eddie wagged his head. “Goddamn stranger,” he said. “I don’t even know him anymore.”

At the meeting that night Jagger told the group about Stone and Eddie locating the camp of the Mau Mau. Almost everyone had questions to ask and Stone answered them as well as he could, though for some reason he went along with Jagger in minimizing any danger the gang posed for the colony. Neither he nor Eddie had told anyone of the boy he had killed, and because of this he felt an oddly heavy weight of guilt as the meeting went on. The people there had a right to know, he nagged himself. The heinousness of the crime—the unspeakable mutilation of
the boy—cried out to be known. Yet Stone said nothing. It was not a dog he had shot, not an animal, but a human being. The arrogance of the act cried out just as loudly for silence.

Newman suggested that it might be wise to post double guards at night, but Smiley got up and said that there was no real need for them, that “young Kelleher and whoever’s in the Cadillac” had a clear view of the pastures and the road and would be able to give warning shots in plenty of time. He added, though, that it might be a good idea if everyone “kept their pants on all night,” which elicited laughter only from Pam and Kim.

Without mentioning the gun Stone had “lost,” Jagger then went on to the O’Brien brothers and their report, which was unremarkable except for the fact that in the course of the day they had come upon a ten-point deer, which they had shot and wounded, but were unable to run to ground for almost an hour, by which time a pack of wild dogs had all but devoured it. In recounting the story, Harlan almost wept with disappointment, and the rest of the group was not much happier, already, and vainly, tasting the venison that was not to be. During the telling, Stone noticed some eye-play between Eddie and the O’Briens’ girls, play that ended with Eddie salaciously running his tongue over his lips only to be outdone by Pam popping her thumb into her mouth. Both girls giggled—until Oral told them to shut up. Losing a buck was no laughing matter, he told them.

By then Stone was anxious to leave the meeting. And when Flossie Baggs and Ruby Dawson both got up and denounced Kelleher and Tracy, saying that there was no room for sex perverts in the colony and that the two of them should be made to leave, Stone began to edge toward
the door. Before he made it, however, Rich Kelleher got quietly to his feet and slunk out ahead of him.

Outside, Stone called after him, but the youth kept moving, disappearing into the darkness. Stone had no trouble understanding his need for privacy; he himself was not eager to return to his cabin and the inevitable chatter with Annabelle and Eddie. And finally he decided not to go there just yet. He circled around the lodge to the lake’s chilly shore and followed it for a time. As cold as it was this night, there was no sound coming from Valhalla, no one doing calisthenics near the parapet or swimming in the heated pool. But the lights were on as bright as ever—the only electric lights burning anywhere in the vaulting darkness—and it occurred to Stone what a beacon they presented, what an inviting blaze they must have seemed to the scared and hungry people flung across the dark bowl of land rising up from the lake. And because the Mau Mau were among those people, he suddenly wanted the voice of Stentor. He wanted to shout across the cove so loudly that the junkman would hear him even through the walls of his citadel.
Turn out your lights
, he wanted to shout.
Turn out your goddamn lights!

Stone slept badly that night, dreaming of the black youth so constantly one would have thought the reality had not been horrible enough. Over and over his finger would close on the rifle’s trigger and the boy would do his limp dance in the roaring air, and each time the trigger would seem to grow tighter and heavier than before, until finally Stone had to pull on it with all his might to make the boy perish one last time. So for a while Stone did not even hear the banging on the door, or if he did hear it, thought it only his heart smashing at him. Then, slowly, the voice came through.

“Mister Stone! Mister Stone!”

From his mummy’s bed, Eddie joined in. “The door, Stone! For Christ’s sake, get the door!”

Stone had pulled on his pair of old jeans and now he hurried to the door and opened it—on Tracy Kelleher wearing boots and the beautiful robe of that afternoon. She looked stricken. Her eyes were streaming.

“It’s my dad,” she got out. “He’s gonna kill himself.”

“Right away. Let me get something on.”

As he dove into a sweatshirt and boots, Annabelle, awake now, asked from the bed if she should go along.

“I’ll let you know,” he said, picking up his coat and hurrying outside.

A light snow was falling and he saw Tracy already back at the door of the motor home, which was parked next to Stone’s cabin. Shivering, she held the door open for him as he went inside. Kelleher, still dressed, was sitting in candlelight at the kitchenette bar with one hand holding up a bottle of Chivas Regal while the other worried a forty-five automatic. In the ordered world of Jagger’s Point, neither of these items was supposed to exist, at least not here, in the domicile of a non-productive malcontent. But for Stone, they were very real, especially the gun, and he treated the man accordingly, not crowding him and even trying a smile.

“You’ve been holding back, John,” he said.

Kelleher did not return the smile. “You get out of here.”

Tracy had closed the door behind them. “Please listen to him, Daddy,” she begged.

“What’s to listen to? What can he change? In this world, you are what people say you are. There’s no changing that.”

“Who cares what they say!” Tracy said.

“I do. It’s my good name. And I got a right not to go on living without it. I’ve got that right.”

The words came out slurred, and Stone noticed that the bottle was over half gone.

Tracy went along. “I know what you mean, Daddy. I really do. But what happens to me then? How do I live—without you?”

“Come with me,” he said. “Let me take you with me.”

“Give Mister Stone the gun, Daddy. Please. Do it for me.”

Kelleher shook his head ponderously. “Can’t. I need it.”

But even as he was saying this, the barrel of the gun tipped forward and came to rest on the bar’s Formica top. He righted it again but Stone could see the great heaviness in him: the alcohol, the hour, the pain.

“You want me to go, I’ll go,” Stone said. “But how about a drink for my trouble? Chivas Regal—it’s been over a year since I’ve even seen a bottle.”

Kelleher shrugged clumsily. “Why not? Then you leave.”

Stone did not chance looking at Tracy, for fear he might put her father on guard. Instead he moved casually into the kitchenette and reached across the narrow bar for the bottle of scotch—only missing it and seizing the gun barrel instead. As he twisted it, wrestling the automatic from him, Kelleher seemed more relieved than anything else. He lowered his head onto the scotch-wet bar and sobbed, just as Tracy reached him, hugging him and crying too. His arm went around her, returning her embrace for just a moment before he caught himself and pulled away.

“No!” he cried. “No, honey! Please! Stay away from me!”

She moved back as if he had punched her. She looked at Stone in puzzlement and entreaty, as though he could make things right again if he chose, and when all he did was shake his head her pretty face shattered like porcelain. Crying, she ran back to the bedroom and fell into bed. Stone again reached for the bottle, this time picking it up and drinking deeply. As he set it back down, Kelleher sighed and raised his head. He looked sadly at the bottle
and took a pull himself, shuddering as he swallowed the silken whiskey.

“I wouldn’t have done it,” he said. “I know me—I wouldn’t have had the guts to do it. Still, I’m glad you came by. It’s a bad night.”