The wind sweeping up the cliffs from the sea was cold, and his wet clothing was no protection at all. He was glad that Plumtree at least had the leather jacket.
Angelica had stepped out onto the wet pavement, but now she leaned back in and tore the woven blue seat cover off the front seat, yanking on it to break the strings that tied it to the struts, and when she had dragged it out and shaken dust and cigarette butts out of it she wrapped up her short rifle in it; the stock was folded forward, and the bundle was no more than a yard long, with the ends flapping loose over the pistol grip. She laid it on the truck hood while she shouldered on the sopping knapsack.
“You’ve got what, three rounds left?” she asked Cochran as she picked up the bundled rifle.
Taking the question as a fresh test of his mental acuity, Cochran called up the details of his shooting at the Saturn. “That’s right,” he told her firmly.
“I’ve got seventy rounds of mixed hardball and hollowpoint, but the magazines have been sitting in greasy water for a couple of days. Oh well—I’ve heard .45s will even fire underwater.”
“I hope the omiero hasn’t washed off of the hollow-points,” said Pete as he slammed the door on his side and walked around the back of the truck.
“I imagine the ghosts will all be gone, at least,” said Plumtree, “after what’s-his-name shows up, old Dickweed McStump.”
“What?” said Angelica. “Who?”
“This famous Greek god. What’s his name?”
“Dionysus,” said Cochran with an apprehensive glance at the bottle in his left hand. “This isn’t the night to be dissing him, Cody.”
“Whatever,” said Plumtree. “It sounds like he takes ghosts away with him. The big trick,” she added, “will be seeing to it that he doesn’t wind up taking any of us along in that cnrwd.”
“Well, that’s cleared it up,” said Cochran. “You’ve put your finger on it, all right.”
“I’ll put my finger in your eye, if you don’t shut up,” she told him; but she linked her shivering arm through his as they began trudging down the park driveway Cochran was holding the pagadebiti bottle with both hands.
When they got to Point Lobos Avenue, they had to walk south along the shoulder for a couple of hundred feet, and almost didn’t dare to cross at all, for cars with no headlights on were hurling their dark bulks around the corners from north and south, so fast that the tires yiped, and their passengers were leaning out of the windows and firing guns into the air as they swooped past. But finally there was a quiet gap, and Cochran and his companions sprinted wildly across the lanes and sprang over the far curb onto the sidewalk.
Leaning on the wet iron railing on the seaward side of the highway, they could see through the marching curtains of rain, patches of bright flame on the dark plain below them. Dots of yellow fire that must have been torches bobbed and whirled on the line between the vast rectangular pool of water and the open sea beyond, and Cochran realized that people must be out dancing along that narrow concrete wall. And even way up here on the highway ridge he could hear distant drumming over the roar of the rain.
“Damballa!” said Plumtree huskily; then, “The sounds of hammering and sawing must not cease.”
“It’s good, the drumming’s good,” agreed Angelica nervously.
“Scott Crane is down there somewhere,” whispered Plumtree. ‘Tonight I’ll face him, not his ghost.”
THE STATEMENT seemed to click a switch in her head, and at long last Valorie had no choice but to remember New Year’s Day. After dawn, first:
Trucks and cars on the road behind the gas-station telephone booth had been drumming their tires over a step in the asphalt, and Plumtree had had to hold her free hand over her ear to hear the 911 operator. “You killed him with a speargun?” the voice said.
“No,” said Plumtree in a harsh voice. Cody hod been the one who had taken this flop, this early-morning telephone call, and an emotion had been interfering with her speech. “A spear from one. I stabbed him in the throat. He was stabbed with it before, in 1990?”
“You stabbed him in 1990?”
“No, this morning, an hour ago.”
“He was known as…the Flying Nun?”
“I don’t know. That’s how I was thinking of him.”
Valorie had been aware of Cody’s guess that the 911 operator was just keeping her talking, keeping her on the line …
And a police car had soon come chirruping up behind her, and policemen with drawn guns had shouted at her: “Drop the phone! Let us see your hands!” One had wanted to shoot her; then he’d wanted to mace her. “Take it easy.” another had said, “She’s just a ding.”
They had handcuffed her with her hands in front. “Let’s go. Show us where you killed him.”
But when they had driven her to the slanting meadow above the beach, and got out of the car, the field was silvery bright with fresh vines and grasses and fruit; and since there had been only the cries of wild parrots in the meadow on that morning, Valorie’s memory now had to make the birdcalls loud and harsh and poundingly rhythmic.
The policemen said it was obvious that no one had stepped across the grass in the last day, and so they had marched her back into the car, and driven here to the jail and put her into a cell with mattresses looped over the white-painted steel bars and steady clanging from one of the other cells. Lunch had been hot dogs and sauerkraut, and when they had offered to let her make a call, Cody had declined, but asked if she could have the twenty cents anyway, or a cigarette.
AND THEN, finally, Valorie let herself remember the actual dawn:
In her father’s voice, Plumtree’s body had called to the bearded man who had stepped barefoot into the meadow: “Get over here, Sonny Boy.”
But when the man had walked closer, her father had abruptly receded, and it had been Cody who found herself standing over the little boy who was lying on his back on the dirt. Plumtree was holding the spear with the points at the little boy’s throat.
She looked up at the tall bearded king, and her vision was blurry with tears as she said, “There’s nothing in this flop for me.”
“Then pass,” said the king in a quiet voice. “Let it pass by us.” After a moment he nodded at her, almost smiling, and said. “In the midsummer of this year, you and I will be standing in happy sunlight on the hill in the lake.”
“I don’t think so,” said the reintruded father, breathing in a choked way while the little boy shivered at his feet, “I’ll call—I called you this morning!—and I raise you the kid.” Plumtree’s eyes darted down to the pale child under the spearpoints. “That’s a raise you don’t dare call, right?” Tight laughter shook Plumtree’s throat. “This flop … finally! … gives me a king-high flush in spades. It’s the first day of the new year, and you’ve got to face the Death card––the suicide king.”
The bearded man stepped back. “I’ve—seen you before.” he said. “Where?”