Fished alone, as I prefer, really nailed the browns on the East Walker, let the fish go free, ate canned food, and drank good bourbon. On the San Joaquin, I crawled out of my tent at sunrise just as a black bear swatted my coffeemaker off the fire-pit grill and into the trees, then lumbered away.
In Reno I took second place in the amateur all-ages category at the Reno Ballroom DanceDown, teaming up with a woman I found in the hotel bar whose regular partner had sprained an ankle just that morning. I’d been hoping for luck like that. Lenore was a delight to dance with, much better than me and utterly regardless about winning trophies, which, as a youngish male, I covet beyond reason. The trophy was a dandy. Our barely rehearsed country-swing dance to “The Last Worthless Evening” was good enough. Justine cut in for a few steps. Said she was proud of me for how I was treating Penelope and Daley. Sticking up for them. Giving them a second chance. Wished she could have a second chance, too.
Lenore, her partner Wayne, and I drank late on victory night, until Wayne, limping badly, took me aside and threatened to kick my ass all the way back to San Diego if Lenore looked at me like that again. I told him not to bother, I was headed home early the next day anyway.
As I drove from Reno back down to Bishop Airport through the fragrant sage and the spotty cell signals, Burt and Penelope brought me up to speed.
Federal prosecutors were readying charges against Alfred Battle and several of his SNR henchmen/-women for kidnapping, conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction. And more. Lark had declared the indictment would be “aggressive and comprehensive,” and there would likely be some very long federal prison sentences handed down. Lark told Burt off the record that Adam Revell was singing like a parakeet.
Penelope told me that Daley had been so shocked by her true bio/history that she had spent four days rocketing between belief, denial, and outrage. Threw a lot of things. The emerging mother and daughter had spent hours hiking the rolling hills of Rancho de los Robles, and hours in casita three cooking meals, listening to music, talking, arguing, crying, and remembering.
“My blood ran cold when she told me she’d sometimes wished that Reggie Atlas was her father,” Penelope said. “That he reminded her of someone wise and kind and probably a lot like the father she never knew.”
I’d wondered along those same lines: Might an unknowing daughter feel an instinctual recognition of her father? A blood instinct? Even dimly? And, believing that her father was another, what name would the daughter give that curious, strong, instinctual pull? Might she name it affection? Curiosity? Attraction, even? Might she pursue it? Was Reggie Atlas counting on blood instinct? Had he been using it against her?
“And, of course,” said Penelope through the static following me down Highway 395, “I have to forgive myself for taking a man’s life. Self-defense, yes. But still a man. A man whom I as a child once adored. Father of my daughter. A husband and father of his own children. My soul feels stained, Roland. I hope it fades some. The stain. I hope Daley can truly forgive me for what I did.”
“He came there to kill us both.”
“I know. But what I did changes everything about me. I think you know what I mean.”
Penelope went on to tell me she’d read to her daughter from some very long journals she had kept. She told me she’d waited a lifetime to do this. She told me that when the “waves of truth” had finally broken on Daley enough times, Daley surrendered her doubt and began to accept who she was and where she’d come from and the idea that, in some ways, she would be starting her life over again as a different person. With a different history and family. With a reviled father and a world eager to invade her past and exploit her privacy. Was there an upside? Penelope said the last few days had been better. And that Melinda and Daley had become close quickly, Melinda’s violent loss helping Daley handle her own wrenching changes.
Speaking for herself, Penelope said she was “elated and exhausted.” She and Daley would be returning home to Oceanside soon. Between Penelope and me there was much to be said, but little of it could be done by phone. She asked how the fishing was. Then ventured that she was glad her “second virginity” had ended with me.
Burt told me Connor Donald had been killed in a shoot-out with police outside the Newport Beach offices of Historical Review. On the link he sent me, Historical Review spokesperson Laurel Davis — the cool, bejeweled beauty who had harangued me at Alfred Battle’s White Power Hour — said that Donald was a security guard who occasionally worked for the Historical Review, and said the Review had no reason to believe he was involved in the Paradise Farm terror plot.
I came home a few days later to bad news: Frank, walking his bike up a narrow, tree-lined road in Fallbrook at the end of his workday yesterday, had been stopped by three MS-13 gangsters. He knew one of them from Puerto El Triunfo — El Diabolico, the kid he’d gone to school with who had connections to the people who had killed Frank’s father. The El Triunfo boys brought greetings from Frank’s two sisters in Salvador. They’d shown Frank machetes and a gun and asked him for eighty dollars to protect the girls. Gabriella was eight and Filomena eleven. Eighty dollars was exactly what he’d made that day, plus a sandwich, an apple, and a bottle of water for lunch. He’d told them he’d pay only this one time. Solo una vez. They had laughed and told him they’d see him here next week, and his old El Triunfo friend had given him back one of the twenties. He’d told Frank that he might want to change his mind about the one-time-only payment, then they had scurried off to their aging black Nissan.
“Thus, Frank has a meeting with them next Friday,” said Burt as we walked down to the patio that evening. “I’ve got some ideas how we should handle that, and Frank agrees.”
He gave me a mischievous but sincere welcome-home smile, leading the way to the palapa on short bowed legs.
The rest of the Irregulars greeted me with a smartphone concerto of the first verse of “Money for Nothing.” This, a common attack on my slowness to make improvements while still collecting the rent on time. There’s some small truth in it. So I stood there and took my medicine while four phones tinnily chimed the song so out of sync I could hardly tell what it was.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you very much.”
After the Irregulars had drifted off to their casitas, Penelope and I walked the pond in the minor moonlight. The October nights had lost their heat and the damp cool of fall hung around us.
“I’m taking Daley to New York tomorrow, early,” she said. “We have a nonstop out of San Diego.”
“I’ll take you, if you’d like.”
“I’d like. I hope I’m doing the right thing, Roland.”
“My offer stands,” I said. “You both can stay here. Dodge everybody, hang low for a few weeks, then get on with your lives.”
“They want me to do a silhouette interview on 60 Minutes, so nobody can recognize my face. I need to do this one thing, Roland. I need other people to know they don’t have to get raped and hide it forever. No matter how rich and famous and holy the rapers are. Just this one statement, then back to Daley and we’ll figure out our lives.
“Tell your story, Penelope. Daley will be fine here for a few days.”
“She wanted us to do this thing together,” said Penelope. “I wouldn’t let her.”
“Good call,” I said. “She needs to be a girl again. Not a cause.”
I thought of Jake, the young surfer at Old Man’s, who had looked through all of Daley’s inner turmoil and seen simply a cute girl he’d like to hang out with. I thought: She wouldn’t mind being that girl. Not at all.