“Just a scratch,” he said.
“Now you sound like Tal,” she said, laughing through her tears, “Is Timmy okay?”
“Kale was going to kill him. If I hadn't been here…”
“This is Kale?”
“Yeah.”
Jenny wiped her eyes with her sleeves and examined Bryce's shoulder. The bullet had passed through, in the front and out the back. There was no reason to think it had fragmented, but she intended to order X-rays anyway. The wound was bleeding freely, although it wasn't spurting, and she directed the nurse to stanch the flow with gauze pads soaked in boric acid.
He was going to be all right.
Sure of Bryce's condition, Jenny turned to the man on the floor. He was in more serious condition. The nurse had torn open his jacket and shirt; he'd been shot in the chest. He coughed, and bright blood sputtered over his lips.
Jenny sent the nurse for a stretcher and put in an emergency call for a surgeon. Then she noticed Kale was running a fever. His forehead was hot, face flushed. When she took his wrist to check his pulse, she saw it was covered with firy red spots. She pushed up his sleeve and found the spots extended halfway up his arm. They were on his other wrist, too. None on his face or neck. She had noticed pale red marks on his chest but had mistaken them for blood. Looking again, more closely than before, she saw they were like the spots on his wrists.
Measles? No. Something else. Something worse than measles.
The nurse returned with two orderlies and a wheeled stretcher, and Jenny said, “We'll have to quarantine this floor. And the one above. We've got some disease here, and I'm not entirely sure what it is.”
After X-rays and after his wound had been dressed, Bryce was put in a room down the hall from Timmy. The ache in his shoulder got worse, not better, as the shocked nerves began to regain their function. He refused painkillers, intending to keep a clear head until he knew what had happened and why.
Jenny came to see him half an hour after he was put to bed. She looked exhausted, yet her weariness didn't diminish her beauty. The sight of her was all the medicine he needed.
“How's Kale?” he asked.
“The bullet didn't damage his heart. It collapsed one lung, nicked an artery. Ordinarily, the prognosis would be fair. But he's not only got surgery to recuperate from; he's also got to deal with a case of Rocky Mountain spotted fever.”
Bryce blinked. “Spotted fever?”
“There're two cigarette burns on his right calf, or rather the scars of two burns, where he got rid of the ticks. Wood ticks transmit the disease. Judging from the look of the scars, I'd say he was bitten five or six days ago, which is just about the incubation period for spotted fever. The symptoms must've hit him within the past several hours. He must've been dizzy, chilled, weak in the joints…”
“That's why his aim was so bad!” Bryce said, “He fired five times at close range and only winged me once.”
“You'd better thank God for sending that tick up his pants leg.”
He thought about that and said, “It almost does seem like an act of God, doesn't it? But what were he and Teer up to? Why'd they risk coming here with guns? I can understand Kale might want to kill me and even Timmy. But why Tal and you and Lisa?”
“You're not going to believe this,” she said, “Since last Tuesday morning, Kale's been keeping a written record of what he calls ‘The Events After the Epiphany.' It seems that Kale and Teer made a bargain with the Devil.”
Four o'clock Monday morning, only six days after the epiphany of which Kale had written, he died in the county hospital.
Before he passed out of this life, he opened his eyes, stared wildly at a nurse, then looked past her, saw something that terrified him, something the nurse couldn't see. He somehow found the strength to raise his hands, as if trying to protect himself, and he cried out; it was a thin, death-rattle scream. When the nurse tried to calm him, he said, “But this isn't my destiny.” And then he was gone.
On October 31, more than six weeks after the events in Snowfield, Tal Whitman and Paula Thome (the nurse he'd been dating) held a Halloween costume party at Tal's house in Santa Mira. Bryce went as a cowboy.
Jenny was a cowgirl. Lisa was dressed as a witch, with a tall pointed hat and lots of black mascara.
Tal opened the door and said, “Cluck, cluck.” He was wearing a chicken suit.
Jenny had never seen a more ridiculous costume. She laughed so hard that, for a while, she didn't realize Lisa was laughing, too.
It was the first laugh the girl had given voice to in the past six weeks. Previously, she'd managed only a smile. Now she laughed until tears ran down her face.
“Well, hey, just a minute here,” Tal said, pretending to be offended, “You make a pretty silly-looking witch, too.”
He winked at Jenny, and she knew he'd chosen the chicken suit for the effect it would have on Lisa.
“For God's sake,” Bryce said, “get out of the doorway and let us inside, Tal. If the public sees you in that getup, they'll lose what little respect they have left for the sheriff's department.”
That night, Lisa joined in the conversation and the games, and she laughed a great deal. It was a new beginning.
In August of the following year, on the first day of their honeymoon, Jenny found Bryce on the balcony of their hotel room, overlooking Waikiki Beach. He was frowning.
“You aren't worried about being so far away from Timmy, are you?” she asked.
“No. But it's Timmy I'm thinking about, Lately… I've had this feeling everything's going to be all right, after all. It's strange. Like a premonition. I had a dream last night. Timmy woke up from his coma, said hello to me, and asked for a Big Mac. Only… it wasn't like any dream I've ever had before. It was so real.”
“Well, you've never lost hope.”
“Yes. For a while I lost it. But I've got it back again.”
They stood in silence for a while, letting the warm sea wind wash over them, listening to the waves breaking on the beach.
Then they made love again.
That night they had dinner at a good Chinese restaurant in Honolulu. They drank champagne all evening, even though the waiter politely suggested they switch to tea with the meal, so their palates would not be “stained.”
Over dessert, Bryce said, “There was something else Timmy said in that dream. When I was surprised he'd awakened from his coma, he said, ‘But, Daddy, if there's a Devil, then there's got to be a God, too. Didn't you already figure that out when you met the Devil? God wouldn't let me sleep my whole life away.'”
Jenny stared at him uncertainly.
He smiled. “Don't worry. I'm not flaking out on you. I'm not going to start sending money to those charlatan preachers on TV, asking them to pray for Timmy. Hell, I'm not even going to start attending church. Sunday's the only day I can sleep in! What I'm talking about isn't your standard, garden variety religion…”
“Yes, but it wasn't really the Devil,” she said.
“Wasn't it?”
“It was a prehistoric creature that—”
“Couldn't it be both?”
“What're we getting into here?”
“A philosophical discussion.”
“On our honeymoon?”
“I married you partly for your mind.”
Later, in bed, just before sleep took them, he said, “Well, all I know is that the shape-changer made me realize there's a lot more mystery in this world than I once thought. I just won't rule anything out. And looking back on it, considering what we survived in Snowfield, considering how Tal had just strapped on his gun when Jeeter walked in, considering how the spotted fever screwed up Kale's aim… well, it seems to me like we were meant to survive.”