Annie thought, If Jess goes for it, he’s a dead man. He should stay put. Look what happened to Mr. Villatoro when he listened to Swann. She hoped William wouldn’t try something stupid to save her and get himself hurt.
“You need to answer me!” Swann shouted, his voice cracking, revealing his fear. Annie craned her neck to see that the shouting had stretched Swann’s face, popped several of his stitches. Blood streamed down his face and dripped from his chin onto the top of his collar. It was soaking through his shirt onto her neck. It felt hot, like oil dripping from beneath a car. Be tough, she thought. Show grit. No crying. She was more angry than scared, and if he loosened his grip, she would fight her way free like a wildcat.
She felt Swann take a sudden gasping breath of alarm. She turned back around and couldn’t believe what she saw.
Jess Rawlins was running down the hill toward them, still holding his rifle, the barrel flashing in the morning sun.
“What are you doing, old man?” Swann yelled out. “You need to stop right now and drop the weapon. STOP!”
Swann jerked the pistol from her head, pointed it unsteadily out in front of them at Jess, and fired off three quick shots. She flinched with every explosion. Jess Rawlins jerked and stumbled, but didn’t stop coming.
The old rancher was close enough now that Annie could hear the sound of his boots crunching in the gravel.
Swann suddenly threw her aside like a doll so he could set his feet and grip his pistol to aim with two hands. He fired again, four shots in quick succession. At least two she could tell were hits. There were blotches of blood on the front of Jess’s jacket, but the man’s face and his look of pure determination hadn’t changed a bit.
When the rancher finally stopped it was to raise his rifle from twenty yards away, aim calmly, and shoot Oscar Swann squarely between the eyes. Swann dropped straight back into the doorway, his pistol thumping on the porch. Annie rolled away, unhurt.
MONICA ROLLED the dresser drawer as hard as she could into the locked door of the bedroom, and it swung open, the lock broken. She stepped over Villatoro’s body and grabbed William’s hand, pulling him through the living room behind her. She saw Swann’s trunk in the doorway. He was flat on his back, blood pouring from his ears, pooling on the floorboards. Annie was scrambling to her feet and running off the porch, toward someone out in the yard.
Monica heard it. The sound of a helicopter approaching, blades thumping bass.
She stepped over Swann’s body and saw everything at once. Singer, dead on the grass in front of his car. Gonzalez, splayed out and steaming, his face and most of his head gone.
The helicopter sliding over the southern hill, flying so low it was kicking up dirt and branches, coming straight toward the house. The sheriff’s SUV, siren suddenly whooping, speeding down the two-track toward the ranch, followed by two other departmental vehicles and an ambulance.
Jess slumped in the yard, sitting down, his rifle cast aside, his bare head bowed as if he were sleeping, his hat off, upturned in the grass next to his legs. Annie running toward him, her arms outstretched.
THE LAST THING Newkirk saw before he turned the pistol on himself was Monica Taylor and her two kids down on the ground with the rancher, hugging him, wailing, keeping him still in the grass as the sheriff bore down on them.
May
I have no hesitation in saying that although the American woman never leaves her domestic sphere and is in some respects very dependent within it, nowhere does she enjoy a higher station. And if anyone asks me what I think the chief cause of the extraordinary prosperity and growing power of this nation, I should answer that it is due to the superiority of their women.
– Alexis de Tocqueville
JESS RAWLINS ALMOST DIED three times in the helicopter before he finally stabilized, although there were periods when he wasn’t sure just which side of that line he was on. That was a month ago.
Now, he seemed to be emerging from his trauma, if only for a while. There were things he just knew had happened, without recalling the details. The ride in a helicopter, EMTs in flight suits prying his eyes open, asking him questions, talking about him as if he weren’t there. Villatoro lying next to him on one side, Hearne on the other. Both either asleep or gone. My team, Jess had thought. Jess’s world going black and wonderfully white twice while in the air, once while landing. The white was ethereal, welcoming. But turning back each time, thanks to the electric shocks that restarted his heart. Then surgery, doctors, bright lights, more surgery, the prick of needles on the undersides of his forearms, the sharp smells of antiseptic and his own blood, the tinny sound of bullets that had been removed from his body being dropped into metal trays.
In the midst of the surgeries, there had been a long parade of faces, voices, one after the other, some he knew, some he didn’t, some he wished he didn’t. He would try to sit up to meet and greet the people who were there to see him, but his legs wouldn’t cooperate. He would be able to speak, smile, talk things out sometimes. Not always, but sometimes. There were instances when he could see them and hear them clearly, and his mind was active, but he couldn’t will his lips to move. He hated that.
But there were things he could recall clearly.
Monica, wearing many different outfits, even changing her hair, telling him to get well, pull through, she needed him to live, it was important.
Sheriff Carey, hat in hand, talking to his own boots, apologizing as much to himself as to Jess, Buddy with him, looking from Carey to Jess. Carey saying, “They’re mounting a recall petition to get rid of me. The whole damned valley. I’ll resign before they throw me out, though.” Buddy saying, “Our old sheriff says he wants the job back.”
Karen and Brian, Karen shaking her head as if she just knew this kind of thing would happen, Brian consoling her for her loss, putting his arm around her, gently trying to steer her out of the room before she broke down. Karen saying she didn’t know how she would deal with it if Jess died now that he was such a hero, wondering out loud why he’d never shown this kind of heroism with her before, saying this was so… unsatisfying.
J.J., escorted by Buddy, breaking Jess’s heart when he reached out and touched his hand through the sheets before recoiling, Jess knowing how hard it was for his son to do that, thinking at the time it was best J.J. not even know about Monica and Hearne, the best thing for everybody concerned. J.J. making Jess’s heart soar when he said he was feeling better, that he’d like to try to come back to the ranch and reenter the world to see how it worked out, that he missed the place and his father more than he realized.
Doctors showing other doctors where the five bullets had hit, reen-acting the trajectory of the one that had really done the damage when it broke his collarbone and angled down, nicked a lung, exited through his spine. The others, two in the thigh, one of which turned out to be the real bleeder, one in his neck that passed straight through, and a really painful one in his butt, kind of embarrassing, mostly. That one ached the most. Then it didn’t.
Three surprising visits, although they didn’t seem surprising at all at the time.
Fiona Pritzle, darkening the doorway, flowers in her hand, saying, “How are you doing, my big guy?” Jess, coming out of himself, hurling a bedside water bottle at her, missing and hitting the top of the doorjamb, the water spraying everywhere. Fiona scuttling away, the nurses rushing in to calm him, get him settled back in the bed, reinserting the tubes in his arm.