He swung around a thicket and saw the figure seventy yards ahead struggling in a clump of vines. Cork’s eyes were still too unfocused to make out details, but it appeared that whoever it was had become entangled in blackberry brambles. Cork dropped to one knee and let the bag fall to the snow. He worked the lever of the Winchester and put a round into the breech. As he lifted the rifle to his shoulder and tried to sight, the light flashed across his vision. He rubbed his right eye with his knuckle and took aim again dead center in the back of the struggling figure. A moment before he squeezed off the round, he shifted his sight to the trunk of a tamarack a few yards to the left of the blackberry brambles. The tamarack exploded in a shower of bark. The figure jerked free of the thorns and scrambled away. Cork stayed on his knee a minute, leaning on the Winchester for support. He couldn’t have picked himself up to give chase even if he’d wanted to. Further away through the trees, he heard a snowmobile kick over and scoot off. Slowly he got up and moved to the blackberry brambles. A rifle lay fallen deep in the snarl of thorny vines. He left it there for a moment, intending to fish it out on his way back. With the bag and his own rifle in hand, he followed the footprints until he came to a place where clearly the snowmobile had circled and headed away.
Cork sat down feeling heavy and tired and so tortured by his body that he could barely think. But he didn’t have to think to know whose snowmobile it was that had been there. A big black oil stain marked the spot where the machine had been parked. Only one machine he knew of leaked oil that badly. It was called Lazarus.
33
Cork let himself into Molly’s cabin with the key under the back steps. After he hung his coat by the back door, he went upstairs and took four Advil from the container in the bathroom cabinet. He hurt all over. There was a large, blood-oozing, purple lump on his forehead and a headache that made him see white. His ribs felt as if Parrant had just given them another healthy beating. He’d torn the stitches in his hand.
He wanted to look carefully through the contents of the black bag, but he knew in his present condition he wouldn’t be able to concentrate. He had to lie down for a while. He looked for a place to hide the bag and finally made room under the logs in the woodbox next to the fireplace. Then he made his way upstairs and lay down on Molly’s bed and promptly went to sleep.
When he woke, he smelled wood smoke. He sat up, pleased to find that the headache was gone although the lump on his head was still tender and so were his ribs. There was blood on the sheets from his hand and the ooze from the lump on his forehead had stained the pillowcase, but he was no longer bleeding. Outside Molly’s bedroom window, the sky was nearly dark. Cork realized he’d slept for hours.
Downstairs he found Molly sitting in the main room, reading. A blaze in the fireplace made the corners of the room flicker with shadow. Cork hesitated near the kitchen door, where the tantalizing aroma of potato soup was strong. Molly sat in her easy chair, in the small circle of lamplight. She wore jeans and a red wool sweater and red wool socks. Her red hair was done in a long braid that hung loosely over her shoulder. She glanced up and eyed Cork, who stood uncertainly in the quivering light on the far side of the room.
“Smells good,” he said.
Molly closed her book, marking her place with a playing card, the ace of spades. Cork saw she was reading The Road Less Traveled. She folded her hands on the book and waited for an explanation.
“I need you,” he said. “I haven’t been able to breathe since I left you. I need you, Molly. As much as I need air.”
“Cork,” she whispered, and rose from the chair.
He stepped toward her, into the stronger light of the lamp.
When she saw his forehead, her face mirrored his hurt. “Oh, Cork, what happened?”
“A log. I don’t for the life of me know why they call fir a softwood.”
Molly reached up and touched the lump.
“Ouch!”
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay.”
“It’s not bleeding, but I think I should put something on it. Maybe ice.”
“It’s fine.” He looked down uneasily at the braided rug under his stockinged feet. “I’m sorry, Molly. I’m sorry for everything.”
“I know.” She touched his cheek. “Let’s talk about that later. Right now I’ll get some hot soup into you.”
Cork put his arms around her waist. “I don’t deserve you,” he said. “I never did.”
“You’ve got a lot of time to work on it,” she answered.
After they’d eaten, Molly went out to lay a fire in the sauna.
“It’s a beautiful night out there,” she said when she swept back in. “Let’s go, Cork.”
The moon was rising, turning the vast flat of the lake a ghostly blue-white. A few isolated pinpoints of light marked the far shore, but Cork felt as if the night belonged to Molly and him alone. They stepped into the small dressing room of the sauna. Molly had lighted a Coleman lantern and turned it low. The heat from the stove just beyond the inner door made the temperature in the room pleasant. Molly eased off his coat, then removed her own. She undid the buttons of his shirt and kissed his chest.
“I’ve missed you,” she said.
Cork lifted the bottom of her sweater, and she raised her arms to let him slide it off her. She wore no bra. He gently touched her breasts with his palms, then bent and kissed them. Her skin was moist and smelled faintly of the smoke from laying the fire. Cork appreciated the scent.
“I’ve missed you, too,” he said.
He kissed her fingers, every one. She pulled her hands away and moved them to the brass button of her jeans. Cork watched her hands as they opened the jeans with a soft sizzle of the zipper. She eased the jeans past her hips, her thighs, her calves, until they were a puddle of denim at her feet. She pulled them off and kicked them free. Reaching back, she undid her braid, and shook out her red hair. The room seemed terribly warm to Cork.
“I don’t deserve this,” he said.
“What life gives us, good or bad, we seldom deserve.” She took a blanket that had been folded on a bench behind her and arranged it on the floor. She knelt on it and watched as he undressed to his red-plaid flannel boxers. She laughed. “New?”
“They’re warm.” He shrugged.
Then Molly saw something that made her give a little cry.
He looked down at the deep bruising over his ribs. “It’s nothing.”
“Nothing? Come here.”
He stepped near her on the blanket. She put her lips to the bruise. “Better?” she asked.
“Much,” he said.
She stood and pressed her breasts against him and gave him a long kiss. Then she slipped her fingers into the elastic of his flannel boxers and began to draw them down. Looking at him through a whisp of her red hair, she promised, “I’ll be gentle.”