“If you want me to say I’m sorry, I won’t,” Paul told him stubbornly.
“That’s not what I asked. How did it feel to kill a man?”
“Cork, please don’t,” Darla pleaded.
“Let him answer,” the priest said.
Cork went on, “I saw the man on the floor of his cabin. His heart was shattered, blown apart, but he was still alive. He was still alive when you were in the cabin, too, wasn’t he?”
The boy’s face was stone.
Cork stood up and crossed to the boy. He leaned close. “He was alive. There was a hole in his chest and blood everywhere and you couldn’t believe he could still be alive, but he was, wasn’t he? Did he look at you? Did he try to talk to you? Was his voice all choked with the sound of him dying? How was it, Paul? How was it watching the man you killed die?”
The corners of his mouth twitched. His lips trembled. “I… He
…”
“Did it feel good with the rifle in your hand and a man dying right there at your feet? Tell me how good it felt, Paul. Tell us all what a great feeling it was.”
A wounded look entered Paul LeBeau’s eyes. His face began to change. The hardness of the man melted like a wax mask, revealing the face of a child in great pain.
Cork pressed Paul harshly, “Go on. Tell us. Tell us all how good and honorable it felt.”
Tears appeared along his lower lids and in a moment began to trickle down his cheeks. “He looked at… me…”
Darla tried to put herself between Paul and Cork. “Don’t,” she begged.
Cork took Paul harshly by the shoulders and pulled him away from his mother. Darla grabbed for him, but the priest held her back. Cork made the boy look at him. “Did it make you feel like a man to see him die? Did it?”
The boy couldn’t speak. His voice was choked with sobbing. Finally he managed to say, “I’m sorry.”
“Look at me,” Cork ordered.
The boy raised his head.
“Once someone’s dead, being sorry doesn’t cut it. If you hit a man, you can apologize. If you destroy his property, you can pay him back. But if you take his life, there’s nothing you can ever do to make that right. Do you understand?”
“Paul-” Darla tried to break free of the priest, who held her tightly.
“Do you understand, Paul?”
The boy wept so much he couldn’t reply.
“You were ready to kill another man. A man who may be innocent. Could you live with that the rest of your life? Could you!”
The mission was filled with the sound of the boy’s weeping.
“Answer me!” Cork demanded.
“No,” the boy finally sobbed.
Cork, who’d kept Paul firmly at arm’s length, drew him close. He put his arms around him and held him tightly while the boy wept. “No,” Cork agreed gently. “And thank God for that.”
After a while, Paul pulled away and Cork let him return to his mother. The priest said quietly, “I guess that’s the truth of everything, Cork.”
“What are you going to do?” Wanda asked.
Cork looked them over and sighed heavily. “I’m not the sheriff anymore.” He said to Darla, “Keep Paul here a while longer, until this business is done for good.” To the priest he said, “How about a ride to my Bronco.”
“Cork.” Wanda touched his arm. “Migwech.” Thanks.
St. Kawasaki stepped outside with Cork. The sun had dropped below the treeline and the snow across the meadow was a soft blue-white. The air was turning colder.
“I didn’t know about Paul at Lytton’s place yesterday,” the priest said. “I feel responsible.”
“Paul’s responsible for his own actions. He knows it.” Cork picked up his rifle from where it leaned against the mission wall. “Thanks,” he said to Tom Griffin.
“For what?”
“Holding Darla. Letting me work with Paul.”
“It was hard, but easier on him than the legal system. He’s a fine young man.” The priest took a deep breath. “So, what now?”
“Now I get what I need to put a real son of a bitch in his place.”
“You have something on Parrant?”
“I think I probably do.”
“And you’ll be able to keep all this out of it?”
“Whatever happens, they’re safe,” he said, nodding toward the mission. He opened the door of Wanda Manydeeds’s old truck. “I feel exhausted. Is this what you feel like after hearing a confession?”
“Usually,” St. Kawasaki said, “I feel like a drink.”
41
Molly looked down on the water from a great height. The surface was perfectly blue and so still it looked like a cloudless sky. Lake Tahoe? she wondered. Tahoe was like that. Blue. Still. Cold. Freezing cold. So cold when she swam in it sometimes she hurt all over as if she were being squeezed by a great blue hand.
Like now, she thought suddenly. And she realized she was not above the water, but in it.
She shivered in the grip of that perfectly still water, in the terrible grip of the blue water cold as ice.
The sun burned her eyes. She should look away, she knew. If she looked at the sun too long, she would turn into a sunflower. She’d heard that when she was small from a lady at her father’s cabin. The lady was fat and laughed a lot and gave her Baby Ruth and Oh Henry candy bars and smelled like flowers. Gardenias.
The fat lady pointed a plump finger at her and warned her laughing, you’ll turn into a sunflower. Her father told her different, told her she’d go blind. Her father was probably right. Maybe that’s why her head hurt so much. She was going blind from staring at the sun. He’d told her the truth. About that and many things. Told her she came from bad blood. Told her her mother was a tramp. Told her she would end up one, too. Told her men would be after her like devils, and if she let them have her, she would burn. Was that it? Was that the burning in her head? Was she burning like he said she would? Then why was the rest of her so cold?
She tried to lift her hand, to shield her eyes and block the fire that burned them. But she could not feel her hand, could not tell where it was, if it moved at all.
Am I dying? she wondered. Then why am I not afraid?
Cork’s hands were full of flowers. Brilliant yellow petals around a black center. Sunflowers. He held them gently, held them out as if offering them. He stood on the still blue water with fire at his back, all alone with the sunflowers in his hands. She tried to call to him, but she had no voice. He let the flowers drop one by one onto the water. They landed without a ripple and floated toward her, formed a circle, and the circle was warm. That made her happy. To be warm again. She lay in the warm circle of sunflowers thinking how tired she was and how good it would feel to sleep. To sleep and sleep while she waited for Cork to lie down, too.
She was afraid.
… Did I tell him?…
The fire burned in the blue water around her, in the blue that was all that was left of her vision. The blue and the fire. And then the cloud, black as smoke, moved above her. In the shadow of the black cloud she could see no more.
… Did I tell him…
Yes.
The voice came from the cloud.
Yes, you told me.
… No… not you… did I tell Cork…
