“Fucking coward wouldn’t show hisself. I sent Jack after ’im. Scared ’im off.”
“We weren’t trying to sneak up,” the priest said.
But Lytton wasn’t listening. He bent and laid his body across his dog.
“Look, Harlan,” Cork said. “I’m sorry about Jack.”
“I’ll get you, O’Connor,” he threatened in a choked voice. “I’ll make you suffer for killing Jack. I swear to God I will.”
Cork looked down, and although he had never liked Harlan Lytton one bit, he felt sorry for him.
“Come on,” the priest said, taking Cork by the shoulder. “There’s nothing you can do. Leave him be.”
Cork followed Tom Griffin back down the lane. They’d gone fifty yards when Cork heard a cry rise behind them, a wail of grief prolonged and primordial.
The priest paused and glanced back. “God be with him,” he said. “Because from the looks of it, no one else ever will.”
15
Cork dropped ST. Kawasaki off at the rectory. Then he went to Sam’s Place. He opened the door, took a step into the dark, and reached for the light switch. His hand never made it.
A blow to his stomach made him double over. Another to his ribs sent him down, breathless and in pain. The weight of a big man settled on his back, pressing him facedown on the cold floor. The icy barrel of a rifle nuzzled his left temple.
“Shut the goddamn door!”
What little light had come into the room with Cork was blotted out as the door slammed shut.
Cork felt hot breath across his cheek and caught the smell of barbecued potato chips. The voice that followed was a rasping whisper.
“Listen up, O’Connor. You got one chance to stay alive. You listening?”
Cork tried to reply, but between the agony of his ribs and the pressure of the man on top of him, all he could do was grunt.
“I said, are you listening?” The rifle barrel cut into his head.
Cork nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“Good. Butt out, you understand? You ain’t the fucking law anymore. Just stick to making hamburgers from now on. You got that?”
Cork nodded again.
“He’s a fucking redskin, man,” another voice near the door argued. “I say just waste him.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Cork finally gasped, “… hard… to… breathe…”
“You’re lucky you can breathe at all.” Potato-chip-breath leaned close to his ear. “We’re everywhere, O’Connor. We’re watching everything you do. You can’t take a shit without we don’t know about it. One more move we don’t like and you’re dead. Understand?”
“… yeah…” Cork managed.
The muzzle of the rifle dug into his skull as if drilling for oil. “I can’t hear you.”
“… understand…”
“Good. And, O’Connor. You know how to keep a secret? Keep this little conversation to yourself. You tell anyone about it, you even talk about it in your sleep, we’ll know. If it’s one thing we won’t tolerate, it’s a man who can’t keep a secret. Let’s go, boys.”
Potato-chip-breath pulled away. The weight lifted from Cork’s back. The door opened. Before it closed, Cork received a parting kick in his ribs. Then he was in darkness.
It took a minute for him to move. He heard the sound of snowmobiles in the woods where the ruins of the old foundry stood. The sound moved off like a swarm of departing insects. He rose slowly to his knees and touched his ribs. They hurt like hell. He held to the wall and painfully drew himself up. He flipped the light switch.
The sight that greeted him was almost worse than the pain. Sam’s Place was in shambles. The window over the kitchen sink was shattered. Cushions lay cut open on the floor. The mattress had been yanked off his bed, sliced apart, and the stuffing pulled out. The cabinets stood open, the contents scattered. There were Christmas presents in the closet, gifts for his children and for Jo and Rose. The wrapping had been ripped off, the gifts torn open. Through the door that led to the burger stand, Cork saw canisters and boxed goods for the summer tourist trade broken apart.
There was another problem. Cork could see his breath. The air inside the cabin felt no warmer than the air outside.
He sat on the cushionless couch for a while, shaking. First from shock, then rage. He wanted to kill someone. Blindly. But he didn’t know who.
When he was able to think straight and to move, he cut apart a cardboard box and taped it over the gaping window. The thermostat on the wall was still set for sixty-four degrees, but the room temperature was only three degrees above freezing. The radiators felt like ice. In the basement, he discovered the ancient oil burner was silent as death. He tried the reset button. Nothing happened. He kicked the burner a couple of times, then he went upstairs and called Art Winterbauer, who’d handled the old furnace in the past.
“Did you try the reset?” Winterbauer asked in a tired voice.
“I tried the reset.”
“Did you kick ’er a couple of times?”
“I kicked, for Christ sake.”
“Don’t get mad at me, Cork. I ain’t the one with the antique furnace. Look, it could be the thermostat,” Winterbauer said. “Won’t know till I have a chance to look, and I won’t have a chance till Monday at the earliest.”
“Monday?”
“Yep. Up to my eyeballs right now. I can give you the names of a couple of other guys you could try, but I doubt you’ll have much luck with them either. ’Sides, that old behemoth of yours takes some special doing. If you want to wait till Monday, use a space heater or something. Or drain your water pipes and check into a motel.”
He turned off the valve on the main water pipe, put a bucket under the drain valve, and opened it. He emptied the bucket twice in the sink before the flow slowed to an occasional drip. He flushed the toilet and drained the tank. All the while he was considering his options. He could, as Winterbauer suggested, stay in a motel. But he hated motels. Also, it was Christmas and he didn’t have that kind of money to throw away. He considered calling Molly, but his promise to the priest quickly turned him from that thought. Finally he went upstairs and dialed the number of the house on Gooseberry Lane. Rose answered.
“Of course you’ll stay here,” she told him when he explained his predicament. “I’ll get the guest room ready.”
“I think you should discuss it with Jo,” Cork cautioned her.
“If she were here, I would,” Rose replied. “But she’s not and I’d insist anyway.”
“Thanks, Rose,” Cork said. “Thanks a lot.”
He gathered up a change of clothes and a few toilet articles and put them in a gym bag. He put the gifts into a big box, thinking he would wrap them again at Gooseberry Lane. He took one last item, a rolled bearskin, from a trunk in the cellar behind the old heater. He locked the door, got in the Bronco, and headed…
Home.
Rose opened the kitchen door. She wore an apron, and the aroma of baking cookies floated out around her. There were traces of flour in her dustcolored hair.
“Christmas baking?” Cork hung his coat on a peg by the door.
“My favorite time of year. I can bake to my heart’s content. Would you like some milk and cookies?”
Rose took a half gallon carton of Meadow Gold from the refrigerator. Cork set his gym bag and the box of gifts and the rolled bearskin on the floor and went to the cookie jar on the counter by the sink. The cookie jar was shaped like Ernie from Sesame Street. Cork had bought it years before when Sesame Street was Jenny’s favorite
