“I go everywhere alone.”
There was no resentment in Willie’s voice, but the statement saddened Cork. As kids, Willie and Winona had been inseparable, and her leaving must have been a terrible blow.
“What have you been up to, Willie?” Jubal asked.
“School mostly. I got my B.A. from the U of M in the Twin Cities, then did graduate work at Yale.”
“Yale?” Jubal said. “You went to Yale?”
“For a while. I missed the North Country and came home after a year. I have a studio near Allouette now, but I go all over doing shoots for magazines.”
“Willie’s work has been in National Geographic, ” Cork said. He was driving, with Jubal riding shotgun. Willie was in back.
“ National Geographic? I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Jubal said. “My hat’s off to you, Willie.”
“I’ve been lucky.”
Cork knew there was more than luck involved. There was something at the heart of Willie Crane immeasurably strong and immensely admirable. He’d seen it sometimes, great adversity shaping great character. It could work the other way as well, killing everything in the human spirit. What made the difference, maybe only Kitchimanidoo or God alone knew.
“You’ve done pretty good, too,” Willie said to Jubal. “I’ve watched you play on television. But you didn’t play last year.”
“I couldn’t find an offense where I felt I fit in,” Jubal said, with a note of defensiveness. “I’m in talks with the Dallas organization. I expect to hear from the Cowboys any day now.”
“What are you doing in the meantime?”
“A friend of mine, guy I know from my days with the Broncos, he and I build luxury mountain homes.”
Which, as Cork understood it from his discussion with the La Plata deputy, was an exaggeration at best. But he said nothing.
They reached a river called the John Day and then drove through a small town called Furlough, which wasn’t much more than a grid of a dozen streets lined with cottonwoods, a grocery store, two bars, and a gas station, everything dusty-looking. A few miles beyond, they turned onto a dirt road that followed a rocky creek, and they began to climb in altitude. After five miles or so, Willie said, “Stop at the crest of this hill ahead.”
Cork did as he’d been instructed. Beyond the rise lay a little valley, and beyond the valley rose blue mountains capped with snow. A stream ran the length of the valley, and on both sides of the stream grew orchards. In the middle of the orchards was a big white house and outbuildings.
They got out of the Jeep, stood on the dirt road, and studied the scene below them. A cool wind blew at their backs. In that high desert place, the air smelled of fresh sage.
“A man named Spenser McMurphy started this as a sheep ranch in the eighteen hundreds,” Willie said. “A couple of generations later, it became what they refer to out here as a fruit ranch. It’s owned by the McMurphys, three brothers. The oldest is Crandall. He’s maybe forty, a bachelor, unattached. Middle brother is Caleb. Late thirties, married, has one son, a teenager named Beckett. Youngest brother is Cole. He’s a few years older than Winona, and he’s the one she’s with. They all live communally in that one big house.”
“Crandall McMurphy?” Cork asked. “Isn’t that the guy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?”
“That’s Randle,” Willie said. “But McMurphy went to college with Kesey and they were both wrestlers. Folks in Furlough are positive that Kesey based the character in his book on Crandall. Both of them, I guess, are sly and more than a little crazy. From what I understand, they’re all a rough bunch.”
“You told me they were heavily involved in drugs,” Cork said.
Willie nodded. “The orchard’s just a cover. They have several marijuana grows along the creek down the valley.”
“You learned this just by asking around?” Cork was frankly amazed.
“No. I tracked them when I was here last week. It’s planting season, and they’ve been busy getting the grows ready.”
“How long has Winona been with them?” Jubal asked.
“She came here a little over a year ago.”
“Came from where?”
“San Francisco. She was living on the streets.”
“Homeless?” Jubal said, obviously dismayed.
“She preferred to be called a free spirit.”
“You’ve seen her since she left Aurora?” Cork asked.
“Only once, a few years ago. She agreed to meet me when I flew to the Bay Area for an exhibit of my photographs.”
Cork said, “How’d it go? The meeting, I mean.”
“Awful. She was so lost. I begged her to come home, but she refused. I think she felt ashamed of what she’d become. She was into drugs, panhandling on the streets. Maybe worse. The one thing she agreed to was to let me send her money. Which I did. It was never much, but she wrote me that it helped, and she was grateful. Then she wrote me that she’d hooked up with a guy named Cole McMurphy and was moving to Furlough. I haven’t heard from her since.”
“Did you still send letters and money?”
“Yes, but I don’t know if she got them.”
“Have you tried to talk to her here?”
“I never got the chance. I had to ask around in Furlough to even find this place, and word got back pretty fast to the McMurphy brothers. Crandall and Cole came looking for me. If I didn’t talk so funny or walk so badly, they might have got physical with me. Folks tend to write me off. All they did was warn me not to try to see Winona.”
“And if you did?” Jubal asked.
“It wouldn’t go well for me, or for Winona. They weren’t bluffing. When I was here last week, I spent three full days just watching that place down there. I saw how Winona gets treated. The other woman, too. It’s not good.”
Darkness swept over Jubal. He turned his back to the valley and slammed his fist on the hood of the Jeep. “My fault,” he said. “Goddamn it, it’s all my fault. She’d never have left Tamarack County except for me.”
Willie didn’t argue, but Cork said, “Blame gets us nowhere, Jubal. We’ve got to figure out how to get her away from there.”
“We just go in and take her,” Jubal declared.
Willie shook his head. “We would be trespassing, and it would be kidnapping. They have guns, and folks around here are pretty isolated and tight. I’m guessing the local authorities have some idea of what the McMurphys are up to but don’t care, or maybe they’re being paid off. If push came to shove, we’d be taking the bigger risk. Besides, I have another idea.”
Jubal drew himself up, huge and angry, and said, “Let’s hear it.”
At dusk Cork and Jubal went to the store in Furlough. They left Willie behind because he didn’t want to take a chance on being recognized in town. They bought cold cuts, cheese, bread, and soft drinks. They also bought a big thermos and filled it with hot coffee. When they came back, Willie directed them to a jumble of rocks a mile from the orchards, but still high in the hills above the valley. They parked the Jeep where it couldn’t be seen from the road and hunkered down to wait for morning.
The sky was clear and the night was cold. The moon rose late, full and ice white over the valley. Cork slept fitfully in the front passenger seat of the Jeep. Willie dozed behind the wheel, and Jubal took up the whole of the backseat. Cork woke often and several times heard the cry of coyotes in the hills around them. Near morning, he woke again and couldn’t go back to sleep. He took the thermos, slipped away, and climbed up to the flat top of one of the rocks that hid the Jeep. Below him, the orchards formed an irregular darkness against the moonlit wild grass that filled the valley. It reminded him of a huge bruise on a patch of pale skin. The white house, iridescent in the brilliant moonlight, dominated the middle of all that darkness. Somewhere inside, Winona slept. He poured coffee into the thermos cup and, while he sipped the tepid brew, tried to imagine what she was like now after all she’d been through. He thought about Stockholm syndrome, and wondered if, despite all they would be risking for her,
