Winona would actually agree to let them take her away. If she refused, what could they do?
He heard the scrape of a belt buckle across the rock at his back. Jubal crawled up beside him and stared a long time into the valley, saying not a word.
“You ever want to go back, Cork?”
“Back?”
“To when everything wasn’t so complicated.”
“Moot issue, Jubal. You can’t go back. As far as I know, in life there’s only forward.”
Jubal was silent again. In the hills above them and to the left, a coyote howled. It seemed a forlorn sound, although Cork knew that under other circumstances he might have heard it differently.
“Back in Chicago, is there anyone special?” Jubal asked.
“Yeah. A woman named Jo.”
“Is it serious?”
“It’s headed that way.”
“Me, I’ve had more women than I can remember. They all kind of blend together.” Jubal’s eyes fixed on the white house at the center of the darkness. “Except for one.” He turned back and glanced at the Jeep. “That Willie. Man, he’s amazing.”
“He always has been,” Cork said.
“He’s getting famous. And you, you’re doing exactly what you always wanted to do. It’s funny.”
“What’s funny?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I always figured I was the one most likely to succeed.”
“You’ve failed?”
“Hell,” Jubal said. “I’m a washed-up football player. I’ve got no prospects at all on the horizon. That stuff I told you about, talking to the Dallas Cowboys, that’s bullshit. Nobody’s interested in me. You want to know the truth? Right now, I’m just a construction worker. A big, dumb ladder monkey.”
Cork didn’t know what to say to that, so he just looked at the moon. Jubal looked there, too.
“Winona had a vision once,” he said. “She saw me on a mountaintop, holding the moon and the sun in my hands, the stars singing around my head. She told me I was destined for greatness.” Jubal stood and reached skyward as if to take all the heavens in his hands. Then he held them out, empty, and shook his head. “So much for visions.”
They heard the Jeep door close, and in another minute, Willie joined them atop the rock.
“Sun’s up in an hour,” he said. Sunsupinour.
“Any coffee left in that thermos, Cork?” Jubal asked.
They shared coffee from the same cup and listened to the birds that had begun to chatter, and watched the eastern sky above the distant mountains turn amethyst then amber, and waited for signs of life to come from the ranch house in the valley so that Willie’s plan could be set in motion.
This was what Willie had proposed.
Every morning the McMurphys rose around six. They had breakfast. Then the three brothers headed south down the valley to tend to their marijuana grows. They would come back around noon, have lunch, and work the orchards the rest of the day. When the McMurphy brothers left after breakfast, Beckett, who was a freshman in high school, would ride an ATV to the main road, where a bus picked him up and took him to school in John Day. Which left only the two women at the house. And that, Willie had suggested, was when they would make their move.
Lights began to wink on in the house a few minutes after six. The sun was still below the mountains to the east, and the valley lay in the blue of their shadow. Cork took turns with his companions, staring through a pair of field glasses that Willie had brought, watching the fruit ranch for activity.
By seven, the sun was above the mountains and the valley was beginning to warm. Willie had the field glasses, and he said, “They’re leaving.”
Cork squinted and could just barely make out small figures moving in the yard between the house and what looked to be the barn. They went to a brown pickup, got in, and a moment later, across the mile of dry, high desert that separated them, Cork heard the distant sound of an engine growling to life. The pickup pulled out of the yard and down a lane that ran between the trees of the orchard. Outside the orchard, where the lane met the dirt road that came in over the hills from the main highway, they turned south. The pickup kicked up a little rooster tail of dust as it went, and Cork finally lost sight of it as it disappeared behind the broad chest of the hills where he and the others lay watching.
“How long before the kid takes off?” Jubal asked.
“Beckett should be leaving any time now,” Willie replied.
But Beckett didn’t leave. They waited nearly an hour, and there was no more movement at the fruit ranch below.
“What the hell’s going on?” Jubal finally asked, tense and impatient. “Where’s the kid?”
Cork said, “Sick maybe. Or maybe it’s spring break for schools in Oregon. Or maybe he’s just playing hooky. Whatever it is, we need to rethink our plan.”
“Hell,” Jubal said. “It’s just the kid and his mother with Winona now. We can’t handle a kid and a woman, we’re in trouble.”
Cork said, “If there’s a rifle in that house and he’s been taught how to use it, he can give us plenty of trouble. I don’t want any blood shed over this.”
Willie said, “What should we do?”
“If we drive down, they’ll see us coming for sure. I’d rather catch them by surprise.” Cork looked at Willie. “Can you handle the Jeep?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then Jubal and I are going to hoof it down there, sneak through the orchards to the house. When you reconnoitered here last week, Willie, did you see a dog?”
“Yes, but he always went with the men.”
“Let’s hope he went with them today.”
“We get down there, then what?” Jubal said.
“We find Winona and talk to her. And then we bring her out. Willie, you keep those field glasses glued to your eyes. When you see us leave the house with Winona, you come down there fast.”
“And if that kid goes for a rifle?” Jubal said.
“We talk to him.”
“You got a lot of faith in talk.”
“Talk doesn’t kill people, Jubal.”
Jubal eyed him a long moment, then laughed. “Shoot, we got nothing to lose. Let’s find Winona.”
CHAPTER 22
C ork and Jubal left the rocks and followed the road, which dropped into the valley in a series of lazy switchbacks. All those curves worried Cork. He hoped Willie’s assurance that he could handle the Jeep hadn’t been just cavalier or wishful thinking.
There was a white rail fence around the orchards, badly in need of whitewash, rotted in many places, completely collapsed in others. Cork and Jubal stepped over a fallen section and slipped among the rows of fruit trees. There were buds but no blossoms yet, and Cork couldn’t tell what kind of fruit they might bear. He and Jubal moved quickly until they came to the place where the trees gave way to the yard. They paused, and Cork studied the house. It was a classic, old ranch house, two stories, with a long front porch and a widow’s walk. White curtains framed the windows, but beyond that, the interior was invisible. Cork thought it would be best to slip in through the back door. He tapped Jubal’s arm and signaled that way, but Jubal’s eyes weren’t on Cork. They were riveted to the front of the house. When Cork looked there, he saw what had captured his friend’s attention. Winona was crossing the porch and descending the front steps.
There was no mistaking her. Her hair was shorter, and she seemed thinner, but even from fifty yards away, it was easy to see that she was every bit as graceful and lovely as Cork remembered.
