“I hear you.”
Now an extended silence fell over us. Denise walked to the window and looked out into the yard. Ralston cocked his head and smiled at me, a quizzical expression that said,
But he was the one who squirmed as the minutes dragged on. “That’s a whole bunch of money, doll,” he said to some crack in the floor. “We could get a great new start with that.”
He looked up at me and found another reason to take the money and run. “The answers you want won’t be here in Denver, will they? There’ll be expenses, and they’ll come out of the book’s value, right off the top. That’s only fair.”
Denise took a deep breath, as if the same thought had just occurred to her. I could quickly eat up the entire value of the book traveling, and for what?
Erin was watching me intently. I smiled at her, then at Denise, who had just turned from the window. “It’s your choice,” I said. “You could take your money and be done with it. Speaking just for myself, I’ve got to try.”
“Wherever that leads,” Ralston said. “Whatever it costs.”
Denise looked at me and her face was troubled. She said, “This isn’t easy, is it?” A moment later she said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Janeway…could Michael and I have a few minutes alone?”
Erin and I went out on the porch and stood quietly at the edge of things. “Well, old man,” she said. “You do make for an interesting first date.”
“Next time I’ll take you on a tour of Denver’s best pawnshops.”
“That would be good. I’ve been wondering where I can hock my virtue.”
Half a dozen crazy answers wafted up from my funny bone, but the moment trickled away: the mood was different now. I looked back at the door and said, “I wonder what they’ll do,” and Erin said, “Trust me, they are going with you. If I know anything about people, they’re going all the way. That woman in there’s got more heart and soul than I’ve ever seen in a stranger.”
I tried to look hurt in the moonlight. “Hey, I’ve got heart, I’ve got soul.”
“Yes,” she said, “but you were no stranger. I had heard so much about you from Miranda that I knew you long before we met.” And I thought,
“Denise is special,” Erin said. “I don’t know how to describe it, it’s just something I know. Goes way beyond class. She has already decided what needs to be done and now she’s got to break the bad news to him. But he will do whatever she says. He would lie down and die for her.”
“He’s smart.”
“Yes. And they’re both very lucky.”
A moment later I said, “So what’s next now that you’re back from the wilderness?”
“Tomorrow I’m going to disappear for a week into the real wilderness. I have a cabin in the mountains, where I shall write, eat very little, drink lots of liquids, meditate, and commune with nature. It’s a serious hike just to get up there. No roads, no electricity, best of all, no telephones. If I take a bath at all it will be in very cold water.”
“Can I come?”
“That would defeat my purpose, wouldn’t it? And you’ve got plenty enough to do here.”
“I’ll think about nothing all week but you getting eaten by a bear.”
“Oh, I can take care of myself. I do this every year.”
I pretended to sulk and she said, “I’ll call you when I get back.”
“That’s what they all say.”
I walked out into the yard and looked up at the sky. The old lady was still on my mind. She haunted me and I cursed myself for not listening to her better. I believed she had been trying to tell me something important, but I had heard only half of it and now none of it made any sense. How could Burton have had anything to do with our civil war? He had come to the States in 1860, a year before the war began. What could he have said or done that had gone off like a time bomb a year later?
It was crazy, almost impossible to believe.
I imagined Burton walking up into the yard. I saw him as a young man, just arrived from that other time, straight from the jungles of unknown Africa. How would we like each other? The first minutes would tell that tale, as they must have done with Charlie Warren. Burton formed his opinions quickly, and so did I.
