Mine

'Really? What's your name?'

'Robin Baskin,' she said.

'Do you want Nick to call you back?'

'Oh, no… that's all right. Listen, I'm trying to find the number of another friend of mine in Freestone. Do you know a man named Dean Walker?'

'Dean? Sure, everybody knows Dean. I don't have his home number, but you can reach him at Dean Walker Foreign Cars. Do you want that number?'

'Yes,' Mary said. 'Please.'

The woman went away from the phone. When she returned, she said, 'Okay, Robin, here it is.' Mary wrote down the telephone number and the address of Dean Walker Foreign Cars. 'I don't think they're open this late, though. Are you calling from the Freestone area?'

'No, it's long distance.' She cleared her throat. 'Are yon Nick's wife?'

'Yes, I am. Can I give Nick your number? Council meeting's usually over before ten.'

'Oh, that's all right,' Mary said. 'I'm on my way there. I'll just wait and surprise him. One more thing… see, I used to live in Freestone, a long time ago, and I've lost touch with people. Do you know Keith Cavanaugh?'

'Keith and Sandy. Yes, I do.'

'I tried to call Keith, but nobody's home. I just wanted to make sure he still lived there.'

'Oh, yes. Their house is just down the road.'

'Good. I'd like to go by and see him, too.'

'Uh… may I tell my husband you called, Robin?'

'Sure,' Mary said. 'Tell him I'll be there in a couple of days.'

'All right.' The woman's voice was beginning to sound a little puzzled. 'Have we ever met?'

'No, I don't think so. Thanks for your help.' She hung up, and then she dialed Cavanaugh's number once more. Again there was no answer. Mary stood up, her thigh swollen and hot, and she limped to the Barcalounger and her can of beer. Two days and she'd be in Freestone. Two days, and she'd find Lord Jack again. It was a thought to dream on.

Mary fell asleep, with the lights on and the TV going and the wind shrilling outside. In her sanctuary of wishes, she walked with Lord Jack across a wide, grassy hillside. The ocean was spread out in a tapestry of blue and green before them, and the thunder of waves echoed from the rocks. She was young and fresh, with her whole life before her, and when she smiled there was no hardness in her eyes. Jack, wearing tie-dyed robes, held Drummer in his arms, and his blond hair flowed down around his shoulders and back like spun gold. Mary saw a house in the distance, a beautiful two-story house with rock chimneys and moss growing where the Pacific spray had touched. She knew that house, and where it stood. The Thunder House was where the Storm Front had begun, in its ritual of candles and blood oaths. It was where she had first been loved by Lord Jack, and where she had given her heart to him forever.

It was the only house she'd ever called home.

Lord Jack hugged their baby close, and he put an arm around the tall, slim girl at his side. They walked together through flowers, the air damp and salty with ocean mist, a lavender fog creeping across Drakes Bay. 'I love you,' she heard Jack say close in her ear. 'I've always loved you. Can you dig it?'

Mary smiled and said she could. An iridescent tear rolled down her cheek.

They went on toward the Thunder House with Drummer between them and the promise of a new beginning ahead.

And in the Barcalounger, Mary slept heavily in an exhaustion of blood loss and weary flesh, her mouth partway open and a long silver thread of saliva drooling over her chin. The bandages on her thigh and forearm were splotched with red. Outside, snow flurries spun from the sky and frosted the barren fields, and the temperature fell below fifteen degrees.

She was a long way from the land of her dreams.

Ten miles west of where Mary rested, Laura moaned in a fever sweat. Didi roused herself from a cramped sleep in the chair to check on Laura, and then she closed her eyes again because there was nothing she could do to ease the other woman's pain, both physical and mental. The scissor blades had proved worthless for the task of removing screws from license plates, but Didi had gone through an assortment of junk in the Cutlass's trunk and found a screwdriver that would work. The Cutlass now bore a Nebraska tag, its Playboy decal had been scraped away, and the red plastic dice trashed.

Sleep took the sufferers, and for a little while shielded them from hurt. But midnight had passed and a cold dawn was coming, storm clouds already sliding down from Canada in the iron dark. The baby woke up with a start, his blue eyes searching and his mouth working the pacifier. He saw strange shapes and unknown colors, and he heard the shrill and bump of muffled sounds: the threshold of a mysterious, frightening world. In a few minutes his heavy eyelids closed. He drifted off to sleep again, innocent of sin, and his hands clutched for a mother who was not there.

Part VII – Funeral Pyre

1: The Power of Love

Horn blowing.

Mary's eyes opened, the lids gummy and swollen.

Horn blowing outside. Outside the house.

Her heart kicked. She sat up in the Barcalounger, and every joint in her body seemed to scream in unison. A gasp of pain came from Mary's lips. Horn blowing outside, in the gray gloom of a winter morning. She'd gone to sleep with the TV going and the lights on; a man with a crew cut was talking about soybean production on the tube. When she tried to stand up, the jolt of agony that shot through her thigh took her breath. The bandages were crusted with dark blood, the smell of copper rank in the room. Her forearm wound pulsed with heat, but it was numb and so was her right hand. She stood up from the chair with an effort that made the air hiss between her teeth, and she hobbled to a window where she could see the front of the house.

A thin layer of snow had fallen during the night, and covered the fields. Out on the white-dusted road, about sixty yards from the farmhouse, sat a school bus with CEDAR COUNTY SCHOOLS on its side. Come to pick up Fudge Ripple, Mary knew. Except the boy wasn't ready for school. He was fast asleep, under the hay. The school bus sat there for fifteen seconds more, and then the driver gave a last frustrated honk on the horn and the bus pulled away, heading to the next house down the road.

Mary found a clock. It was seven thirty-four. She felt weak, light-headed, and nausea throbbed in her stomach. She staggered into a bathroom and leaned over the toilet, and she retched a few times but nothing much came up. She looked at herself in the mirror her eyes sunken in swollen folds, her flesh as gray as the dawn. Death, she thought. That's what I look like. Her leg was hurting with a vengeance, and she searched through a closet in the bathroom until she found a bottle of Excedrin. She took three of them, crunching them between her teeth and washing them down with a handful of water from the tap.

She longed to rest today. Longed to go back to sleep here in this warm house, but it was time to get out. The school bus driver would wonder why Fudge Ripple hadn't come out this morning when all the lights were on in the house. He'd tell somebody about it, and they'd wonder, too. Routines were the vital fabric of the Mindfuck State; when a routine was disrupted, like a missed stitch, all the little ants got stirred up. It was time to get out.

Drummer began to cry; Mary recognized it as his hungry cry, pitched a tone or two lower and less intense than his frightened cry. It was more of a nasal buzzing with a few pauses for the summoning of breath. She'd have to feed him and change his diaper before they left. A sense of urgency got her moving. First she changed her bandages, wincing as she peeled away the crusty cotton. She repacked the wounds and wrapped them tightly with fresh strips of torn sheet. Then she popped open her suitcase, put on fresh underwear, and got a pair of flannel socks from Rocky Road's dresser. Her jeans were too constrictive at the thighs for her swollen leg, so she pulled on a pair of looser denims – again, courtesy of her departed host – and cinched them tight with one of her belts. She put on a gray workshirt, a maroon sweater she'd had since 1981, and she pinned the Smiley Face button on the front. Her scuffed boots went on last. In Rocky Road's closet hung a tempting assortment of heavy coats and parkas. She took a brown corduroy coat with a fleece-lined collar off its hanger and laid it aside for later, and chose