Cripple Creek Part 16

I wasn't thinking about it that day back by the river, naturally, since none of it had happened then, but I was definitely thinking about it the morning I stood on a hill looking down at Stillman's camp.

Another thing I was thinking about, both times, was that all my life, with my time in the jungle, my years on the street as a cop, prison days, psychiatric work, even the place I grew upa"all my life I'd lived out of step and synch with the larger world, forever tottering on borders and fault lines. It wasn't that I chose to do so; that's simply where I wound up.

As a counselor, of course, I'd have been quick to point out that we always make our choices, and that not choosing was as much a choice as any other. Such homilies are, as much as anything else, the reason I'd quit. It's too easy once you learn the tricks. You start off believing that you're discovering a way of seeing the world clearly, but you're really only learning a languagea" a dangerous language whose very narrowness fools you into believing you understand why people do the things they do.

But we don't. We understand so little of anything.

Such as why anyone would want to cause the rack and wreckage I saw below me in bright moonlight.

J. T. came trodding up the hill, sliding a bit on the wet gra.s.s. I curbed my impulse to make smart remarks about city folk.

"What do you think?"

Pretty much what she did, at that point.

The kids were down below, sifting through the rubble. For all my best intentions I couldn't help but think of them that way. Smoke curled from the remains of the cabin and crossed the moon. They'd come straggling in not long after we arriveda"all but Stillman, who after sending the rest off into the woods had stayed behind to confront the interlopers.

We didn't hear Nathan until he was almost beside us.

"Missing someone?"

He carried his shotgun in the crook of an arm, barrel broken. My father and grandfather always did the same.

"Boy's back in about a mile."

"He okay?"

Nathan looked down at what was left of the camp. "Will be.

Have to splint that leg 'fore we move him."

J. T. and I exchanged glances. "You saw who did this?" she said.

Nathan nodded.

"Three of 'em. Watched the others head off and knew they'd be all right. The boy, one that sorta runs thingsa""

"Isaiah."

"Him and the ones did this, I followed them. Figured, push came to shove . . ." He lifted a shoulder, raising the gunstock an inch or two, then, without saying more, turned and stepped off into trees. We followed.

"No way you're out hunting in the middle of the night."

"Not usually."

I stopped, putting a hand on Nathan's shoulder. I doubt anyone had touched him for years. He looked down at my hand, probably as surprised as I was, but none of it showing on his face.

"I been watching out for them," he said. "One way or the other, you knew they'd be having some trouble."

"Watching them, huh." We went on up a steep slope and down into a hollow. I saw Isaiah Stillman ahead, propped against a fallen maple. Another body lay a few paces away. "Because of your dog. Killing that boy."

"Just started me thinking, all the trouble could come their way up here."

"Like this," J. T. said.

"Or worse. Yes, ma'am."

"Sheriff," Stillman said as we approached. "Are the rest okay?"

I nodded.

"That old f.u.c.ker shot me," the other one said. It looked bad, but it wasn't. Nathan knew his distance and how much buckshot would disperse. The boy's pants were shredded and his lower body well bloodied and someone at the ER was going to be picking out shot with tweezers for a couple of hours, but the boy'd be back on his feet soon enough.

"Shut up," J. T. told him.

"There was three of them," Nathan said, "all of them youngsters. Figure his friends'll be on the way to hiding under their beds by now."

J. T. looked at me. "Not another message from Memphis, then." Which is what we'd both been thinking, though neither of us had said it.

"Guess not."

"They tried to make me fight them," Stillman said. "When I wouldn't, that enraged them."

"Took to beatin' on the boy some fierce. Mainly that one there."

As Nathan nodded his direction, the boy started to say something. J. T. kicked his foot.

"So you stopped them," I said.

Nathan nodded. Pulling his knife, he peeled a thick slice of bark from the fallen tree, then hacked some vines from a bush nearby. Three minutes later he had Isaiah's leg splinted. "Other one, I figure we just throw him in the truck."

"Or in one of the ravines," J. T. said.

Girl was definitely catching on.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.

WE TOOK ISAIAH and the boy called Sammy to Cahoma County Hospital, then picked up the other two and put them away in the cells for the night. Tomorrow they'd either be headed to Cahoma County detention themselves, or up to Memphis, depending on what Judge Gray decided. Both of them stank of old beer and a kind of fear they'd never known before. One set of parents came in, listened to what we told them, shook their heads, and left. The other, a single mother, asked what she needed to do. You could tell by the way she said it that she'd been asking herself the same question for a long time.

From over by Jefferson, the boys said. Been drinking at the game and after, just having fun, you know? You remember what that was like. Someone had told them about these weirdos playing Tarzan up in the hills and they decided to go check it out.

"Be a long time before they get their lives unbent again," J. T. said.

Maybe. Always amazing, though, how resilient human beings can be.

It was Moira who, as they all quit camp, grabbed the laptop and took it along. She sent an e-mail, "an IM" as J. T. explained to me, to an old friend back in Boston, who then placed a "land-line" call to the office.

I was thinking about that later in the morning, about Moira and about people's resilience, when Eldon stopped by and asked me if I felt like taking a walk. J. T. was home trying to get some sleep. June was off at lunch with Lonnie, their lunches having gotten to be a regular weekly thing. I signed out on the board and grabbed the beeper. We headed crosstown, out past the old Methodist church into what used to be the Meador family's rich pastureland and was now mostly scrub.

"You okay with this?" Eldon said after a while.

"Val and you, you mean."

"What we're doing, yeah."

"I think it's great."

"Most people think we're crazy."

"That's because you are."

"Well . . ."

We stopped to watch a woodp.e.c.k.e.r worrying away at a sapling the size of a broomstick.

"No way there's anything in there worth all that work," Eldon said. "We'll be back, you know."

"Sure you will. But it will never be the same."

"No. It won't."

He bent down and pulled a blade of gra.s.s, held it between his thumbs and blew across it. Making music even with that.

"Hard to pick up and go, harder than I thought. Never would have suspected it. All these years, all these places, this is the only place that's ever felt like home."

"Like you say, you'll be back."

"What about those othersa"think they'll be back?"

"Memphis?"

He nodded.

"Not much doubt about it."

At wood's edge a young bird staggered about, flapping its wings.

"Trying them on for size," Eldon said. "Like he has this feeling, he's capable of something amazing, even if he doesn't know what it is yet."

We started back towards town.

"Good you're okay with it, then."

"You and Val? Sure. The other . . ."

"That's the way of it. Violence is a lonesome thing, it gets inside you and sits in there calling out for more. But they had no right bringing it here."

"And there should be an end to it. A natural end, an unnatural onea"some kind of end. How long does it have to go on?"

"You're asking a black man?"

"Good point."

As we walked back, he talked about his and Val's plans, such as they were. An old-time music festival up around Hot Springs, this big campout that got thrown every year down in Texas, a solid string of bluegra.s.s and folk festivals running from California up to Seattle.

"That's where all the VW microbuses go to die," Eldon told me. "Regular elephant's graveyard of them, all along the coast. VW buses, plaid s.h.i.+rts, and old guys with straggly gray ponytails everywhere you look."

We stopped outside the office. June waved from inside. Eldon looked in.

"She doing okay?"

I nodded.

"And Don Lee?"

"Not quite so good."

"Yeah." He started away, then turned. "All that stuff about giving something back? I always thought that was c.r.a.p."

"Mostly it is."

"Yeah. Well . . . Mostly, everything is."

Lonnie had come back to the office with June. The two of them plus Don Lee were all sitting with coffee. Don Lee nodded.

Lonnie raised his cup in invitation.

"Who made it?" I asked.

June smiled.

Safe, then.

"Don't worry, Turner," Lonnie said. "Happens to all of us as we grow older, that getting cautious thing. Starts off with the coffee, say, then before you know it you're wearing double s.h.i.+rts on a windy day and stuffing newspapers around your door."

"Maybe even have a silly little hat you wear to bed when you take your afternoon naps," June said, Lonnie giving his best "Who, me?" look in response.

They'd heard about most of what had taken place out at the camp. The rest, I filled them in on.

"So why the h.e.l.l'd they trash the place?" Lonnie asked.