Had he told anyone he’d be working this part of the ranch? Would anyone have an idea of where to start looking once he turned up missing? If he couldn’t remember how or why he had come to be there, would anyone else? Would Ivy realize he was hurt and institute a search, or would she simply shrug her shoulders and forget it, annoyed that her father was once again late for dinner?
At first, shock helped deaden the pain, but as that natural analgesia disappeared, increasing clarity brought with it excruciating agony. Even lying perfectly still, the shattered ribs still stabbed and poked at him with each ragged breath. He was aware of shards of splintered bone pressing and piercing where no bone should have been.
In addition to the pain, he grew increasingly aware of a familiar but fetid smell. It was some time before recognition crystallized in his brain.
The appalling stench - a combination of human excrement and urin - belonged to him. Both bowel and bladder must have let go at once. He had no control whatsoever.
Harold Lamm Patterson was an experienced stockman who understood the meaning of such things. If he was lying in a pool of his own bodily filth and waste with no muscle control and no sensory awareness from the bottom of his fractured ribs down, that meant his back was broken. It meant he was going to die.
That realization was too much for him. Merci fully, he again lost consciousness. For the time being, his physical pain eased, but not the mental torment, for soon the dream came again-the dream this time somehow layered in with nightmarish reality. The part of him that recognized it as a dream welcomed it, even though it was more vivid, more terrifying, than ever before.
The scene had barely opened-he was still crawling around, looking for a way out-when the rocks began to fall in a horrifyingly accurate barrage. At first, only small pebbles rained down on him, but the sizes of the rocks grew steadily larger and their weights heavier. He tried dodging out of the way, but he couldn’t. There was no place to hide. No place to get away.
“Em, help me. Please… please.”
IT TURNED out to be one of the longest days of Joanna Brady’s existence. Once Harold Patterson left her office, the morning seemed to drag. At lunchtime, she drove from Warren up to Old Bisbee for a celebratory, end-of-campaign lunch with Jeff Daniels and Marianne Macula.
Jeff-a full-time, stay-at-home, minister’s husband-had planned the event, weeks earlier-win, lose, or draw. With the election over, Jeff hoped life with his pastor turned campaign manager wife would return to some semblance of normalcy. Their usually neat parsonage had deteriorated to a shambles while Marianne masterminded the whole campaign and Jeff handled the mass mailings out of the room that usually served as Marianne’s study.
It was a great lunch, complete with an appropriate set of toasts.
Later in the afternoon, how ever, the effects of the champagne kicked in, and it was all Joanna could do to keep from falling asleep at her desk. As much as she hated the prospect of going to a beauty salon, she was grateful when it was time to abandon the office in favor of Helene’s Salon of Hair and Beauty.
Helene’s looked exactly like what it was - an ill disguised two-car garage that had been hammered-and-longed into a beauty shop by virtue of some very creative do-it-yourself plumbing and electrical work provided by Helen Barco’s retired handyman husband.
When Joanna sat down in the chair, Helen Barco took one look at her, shook her head, clicked her tongue sadly, and said, “Oh my, no. This will never do. Your mother tells me you’re going to be on the TV news tonight. We don’t want one of our girls looking like something the cat dragged in, now do we?”
“We certainly don’t!” And an hour and a half later, Joanna didn’t.
The remodel job on the building might have been amateurish, but the finished-product Joanna Brady who walked out the door of Helene’s at five-thirty that afternoon was strictly professional classic make-over. Her red hair had been cropped off in a short but stylish cut. Her makeup had been professionally applied. Lipstick and un accustomed nail polish matched perfectly. She’d have to remember to use the lip-liner Helen had insisted she take.
“Good luck,” Helen Barco said as Joanna headed out the door. “I hope you win. Eleanor’s very proud of you, you know.”
The fact that Eleanor Lathrop might be proud of her for any reason at all was a notion Joanna found somewhat foreign. It didn’t seem the least bit likely. In her whole life, she could count on one hand the other rare instances when Eleanor had been proud of her or had come out and said so.
Joanna sat in her Eagle, leaned back against the headrest, and closed her eyes. Her neighbor, Clayton Rhodes, was still handling the evening chores, so there was no need for her to rush home. It was a good thing, too. Working round the clock, she had driven herself to the very edge of exhaustion.
Cochise County measured eighty-five miles by eighty-five miles. In fighting to win the election, Joanna had covered damned near every inch of it. She had worked on the campaign tirelessly and with every ounce of her being. Yet even now, this close to the end, she still didn’t know if she wanted to win. That was crazy, especially now when there was nothing to do but wait. The polls would close at six-in twenty-five more minutes. After that, it was simply a matter of time, of letting the election officials count the ballots and eventually certify a winner-whoever that might be.
Sometime later, Jim Bob Brady’s knuckles rapped sharply against the window beside her head, jarring Joanna awake. Embarrassed, she sat up straight, pulled her coat around her, and rolled down the window.
“I just wanted to sit here and think for a while, she said. “I must have dozed off.”
“You coulda fooled me,” her father-in-law returned, standing with both hands on the window sill. “You were dead to the world, snoring so loud, it’s a wonder the glass didn’t break. And sitting out here in the chill like this, you’re liable to catch your death of cold.”
Obligingly, Joanna reached over and switched on the engine, but the air that blew through the heater seemed colder than that outside the car.
What time is it?” she asked.
Half-past six. Dinner’s on the table and getting cold. That mother of yours is tearing her hair out.”
“And so they sent you out looking for me. Sorry to cause so much trouble. Let’s go then,” Joanna said, but Jim Bob Brady refused to budge.
You’re still not sleeping so good, are you?” he said accusingly.
Joanna yawned and stretched. She was stiff with cold. “Only when I’m not supposed to,” she returned with a disparaging smile. “I have a hard time closing my eyes and keeping them shut when I m in bed at night, but I’ve spent a whole hour sitting out here in a freezing car, sleeping like a baby. Helen Barco’s neighbors must think I’ve lost my mind.”
“Helen Barco’s neighbors are too damn nosy,” Jim Bob Brady muttered under his breath, finally letting loose of the window and returning to his own vehicle.
Eleanor Lathrop met them at the front door of the Bradys’ duplex apartment on Oliver Circle.
“Where in the world have you been?” she demanded. “I tried calling Helen, but she was already closed. All I got was her answering machine.”
“I’m sorry,” Joanna said. “I fell asleep. In the car.”
“In the car!” Eleanor echoed. “In this weather? And with dinner already on the table!”
Eva Lou Brady brushed aside the controversy. “Don’t worry about it, Eleanor. No harm’s done. Go wash up, Joanna. And see if you can drag Jenny away from that TV set long enough to come eat. It won’t take but a minute to warm all this back up in the microwave.”
The dinner was vintage Eva Lou Brady, what her husband called “old-fashioned comfort food”-meat loaf, mashed potatoes, canned-from the-garden green beans, cherry Jell-o with bananas, and homemade pumpkin pie for dessert. Jim Bob and Eva Lou were still dealing with Andy’s death. Still grieving over their lost son but helping with Joanna’s survival seemed to give purpose to the elder Bradys’ lives. Joanna was only too grateful for their unwavering support.