“But Grandma and Grandpa are old,” Jennifer objected. “Daddy wasn’t.” Again the room grew still as Joanna struggled to find the right words. “Do you remember the night of Daddy’s funeral?” Jennifer nodded wordlessly.
“We made a decision that night, the two of us together, a decision for me to run in your father’s place, right?”
“Yes.”
“And when we said it, people believed we meant it, your grandparents, Jeff and Marianne, and lots of other people, too. They’ve all worked hard to see that what we said that night comes true.”
“But…”
“No. Wait a minute. Let me finish. You’re not the only one who’s scared, Jenny. That’s the reason I was late coming to dinner. While I was sitting outside Helen Barco’s shop and worrying about whether or not I wanted to win the election, I fell asleep.”
Jenny’s eyes widened. “You’re worried, too?”
Joanna nodded. “And for the same reasons you are. If I win, what happens then? Maybe you’re right. Maybe the bad people who came after Daddy will come after me as well. But I promised to run for sheriff. Promising to run means that if you win, you’re also promising to do the job. Even if you’re scared to death.”
Jennifer moved slightly on the bed, cuddling closer, putting her head in her mother’s lap. “I don’t want to be alone,” she whispered, grasping her mother’s hand, squeezing it tight.
Joanna felt hot tears well in her eyes. “I know,” she said. “I don’t want you to be, either. I’ll try to be careful.”
“Promise?”
Not letting go with one hand, Joanna used the other to brush a strand of damp hair off Jennifer’s still tear- stained cheeks. Unable to speak, she nodded.
“Girl Scout’s honor?” Jennifer pressed.
“Girl Scout’s honor,” her mother whispered in return, while Helen Barco’s mascara streamed un noticed down her face.
ONCE MORE Harold awakened, caught in a disorienting spin-the turbulence between real and dream, between known and unknown. He had no sense of how much time had passed, but the sky far overhead was dark now. Blackness surrounded him like some all-enveloping, evil shroud.
Harold was so desperately cold that he wondered for a moment if maybe he was already dead, already put away in that cut-rate casket he had taken off Norm Higgins’ hands. Eventually though, he sorted it out-remembered where he was if not how he’d come to be there. Remembered that his body was broken; that he was trapped and unable to move.
Harold was lying there trying to think of a way to escape his prison when he heard the familiar wheeze and throb of his old Scout’s much overhauled engine. He heard it laboring up the steep dirt track toward the basin, toward the glory hole. It must be Ivy, he thought at once. Had to be Ivy, come to search for him. Who else would bother? And who else would know to come here. Sudden tears filled his eyes-not tears of selfpity but tears for his daughter, for Ivy. What would happen to her now? After taking care of her mother all those years, would she have to spend the next ones taking care of him as well?
He wished suddenly, fervently, that he had died in the fall. He upbraided himself for not trying harder to die. He should have concentrated on that rather than on trying to find some way out.
Now, with Ivy approaching ever nearer, Harold was filled with a desperate need to escape his broken body quickly-to do it now, before Ivy found him. Before she had a chance to call for help. Before she could turn him over to the care of doctors who would try valiantly to patch the shattered pieces back together.
He already knew that wouldn’t work. Broken backs didn’t magically heal themselves. Once the doctors finished screwing around with their casts and braces and astronomical bills, Ivy Patterson’s worst nightmare would materialize and she would be handed yet another cripple to care for.
if Ivy calls to me, Harold thought wildly, I won’t answer. I’ll pretend I’m already dead.
Maybe she’ll go away and leave me alone. Over night, he would simply will himself to die. He had seen his own father do it after he was hurt in the mining accident. He knew it was possible. And the cold would help.
But even as Harold toyed with the idea, the Scout’s engine grumbled closer, climbing steadily, grinding up over the final incline. As the Scout came closer, a flash of light splashed across the small pile of wood-chip-sized rock that made up the mound of tailings around the mouth of the glory hole. Almost directly overhead, the engine coughed once and backfired as the ignition was switched off. Harold heard the driver’s door creak open on familiar rusty hinges; heard leather shoe soles scrape across loose shale, pausing long enough to climb over or through the barbed-wire fence that surrounded the glory hole. Then there was another sound of something heavy, cardboard perhaps, scraping along the ground.
Harold pressed his lips together, and forced himself to keep quiet. He was determined not to answer, no matter what. He waited for Ivy to speak to him and was surprised when she didn’t.
Instead, a flashlight switched on. A powerful beam of yellow light slid down the darkened walls of the shaft, searching here and there, to the right -;and then the left, before finally settling on his body. Still nothing was said, nothing at all.
He was tempted to speak then, but abruptly the light switched off. In the sudden jet-black darkness, everything was still until the first five-pound river rock plunged toward Harold with accidental, —but still deadly, accuracy.
Long before it hit him, he heard it bouncing off the walls and knew what it was. And in that split second, he remembered everything. But by then it was much too late.
The rock hit him full on the chest, sending a long splinter of broken rib deep into his heart. Harold Patterson died instantly, died in exactly the nightmarish way he had always dreamed he would, with the rocks of retribution raining down around him.
The barrage continued uninterrupted for some time as the rocks plunged through the darkness.
