Riders in the Sky - [Millennium Quartet 04] Page 19

  Reed choked, Cora coughed into a laugh, and he saw in the distance what looked like flags and banners moving along the highway. The march, he thought; I’ll be darned, they’re really doing it.

  * * * *

  “There was this guy once. In Kentucky? He wanted to make me a hooker. Said I’d make lots of money. Reed said go ahead, he was tired of begging.”

  “I did not.”

  Lisse reached over and covered Cora’s hand. “Did you kill him, sugar?”

  “Kicked him in the balls.”

  Lisse nodded her approval. “Good choice, dear. Men are like that, you know. You hit him in the head, he wouldn’t feel a thing.”

  “Hey,” Reed protested, and Lisse rapped a spoon against his skull.

  * * * *

  John could see the marchers, a hundred of them, maybe more. He couldn’t hear what they sang or chanted, could only see them from the chest up because of the hedge. They seemed to be having a pretty good time. The parking lot cops were gone, joining a score or more others he could see who were lined up on the shoulder. They didn’t appear very concerned. A couple of the children spotted them and clamored to go outside to see the parade.

  The fat man complained again, louder, telling his waiter that he didn’t much appreciate eating in a fish bowl.

  * * * *

  “He was my favorite customer,” Lisse said, nodding at John. “I knew he was kind of sweet on me because he kept tipping me half the stupid bill.”

  “You did?” Cora said.

  John nodded. It was true. Almost, anyway.

  “Took me on a picnic on a ferry boat. One that goes across the Mississippi, down by the hotel.”

  That was true, too.

  Lisse sat straight, fluffed her hair. “Defended my honor when a scumbag from hell tried to deflower me.”

  “Tried to what?” Reed said.

  “Wow,” Cora said. “Kind of romantic, huh?”

  Another truth, but not all of it. Not by half.

  “Hey, come on,” Reed protested, “I helped you out a lot of times.”

  Cora blushed fiercely, suddenly, and became fascinated with the slice of pie the waiter slid in front of her. Her cheeks fairly glowed.

  They’re in love, John decided; they’re in love, but they’re afraid. He didn’t blame them.

  * * * *

  The marchers, evidently confined to a single highway lane, began to pass the hotel. Several children pressed against the restaurant wall to watch, calling to their parents, who called them back to their tables to eat their dessert and stop making a scene.

  Lisse looked over her shoulder, watched for a few seconds, and looked back with a disinterested shrug, then grimaced when the fat man demanded to see the manager. John made a face that made her smile; Cora and Reed suggested several things the fat man could do to take care of the sun, none of them even remotely physically possible.

  A young boy appeared at John’s side, fair hair slicked back, clip-on tie decorated with tiny spacemen and a few drops of gravy. “Mister?” he said. “Mister, can I have your grapes?” and he pointed to the table’s centerpiece.

  “Edward Pearl,” the woman at the next table scolded, “you get right back here, young man. Now, hear? And stop bothering the nice man.”

  “But Momma—”

  John plucked a few grapes from their stem and handed them over. “Better git, Eddie,” he said in a low, man-to-man voice. “Your mother’s a little mad.”

  The boy took them quickly, stuffed them in his mouth as he hustled back to his table.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said as she gave the boy a halfhearted swat on the rump.

  “No problem,” he told her. And almost said, I know how it is, I have a son of my own.

  It was an effort to look away; it was an effort to pick up his fork and cut himself a piece of pie; it was an effort not to dress Eddie Pearl in a cowboy suit.

  “John?”

  He didn’t look up; he didn’t dare; he was afraid the bright sun would put a tear in his eye.

  “John.”

  He waved his left hand—I’m okay.

  “You know,” Reed said, “there was this woman, I forget where, Carolina or something, she—”

  “Oh, please,” Cora said. “She was drunk, okay?”

  “She was not. She liked me.” He looked to Lisse to plead his case. “We were in this little town—”

  He stopped when one of the kids called to her parents across the room at the top of her shrill voice, flapping her arms excitedly, telling them to come look at the other parade. Edward Pearl immediately climbed up on his chair and pointed confirmation, neatly swiveling a hip away from his grasping mother. The commotion instantly sent the other children running to the side wall, pressing against the glass, waving and shouting.

  John half rose to see what all the fuss was about, but Reed beat him to it when he said, “Holy shit.”

  * * * *

  Crows, John thought; oh my God, it’s the crows.

  crows in a flock, bright blue eyes, tearing out the throat of his—

  He blinked, rubbed his eyes hard and blinked again.

  “Damn,” he whispered.

  It wasn’t the crows at all.

  A dozen people, maybe more, wearing dirt-smeared black dusters and stiff cowboy hats, bright blue bandannas tied across their faces, only their eyes exposed, running full speed toward the hedge wall in front, spreading out quickly and expertly, their backs to the hotel.

  Ten paces away they reached into their coats and pulled out shotguns and rifles.

  “Lisse;” John said.

  The fat man rose and slammed his napkin onto his table. “‘I have had just about enough of this,” he bellowed. ‘“Where the hell is the manager?”

  The first shot turned a handful of the police around, and a flagbearer dropped below the level of the hedge, screaming, but not before John saw her spitting blood.

  There was no single second shot; it was a fusillade, from both sides.

  One of the black-coated raiders turned sideways as he ran, ignored the march, and aimed at the hotel.

  When the first bullet shattered the glass wall near the top, John grabbed Cora’s arm and yanked her from her chair, yelled to Lisse and Reed, and spun around, intending to make a run for the lobby. At the same time, the other customers panicked, parents racing for their children, others for the exit.

  The wall exploded inward in half a dozen places.

  A waiter went hard to his knees, fumbling at a spear of glass embedded in his side; more shards brought a woman down, draping her facedown across a table, the glass sparkling in her back; the children scattered, shrieking, screaming, stumbling over upended tables and toppled chairs, while hands frantically grabbed for their arms; at the back of the room another waiter slumped against the salad bar, gleaming red hands clasped across his stomach; the fat man plowed through tables and chairs toward the exit, still bellowing, kicking aside a crawling man, stepping over another.

  The screams inside matched the screams outside.

  John saw two men fall near the exit, knew he’d never make it, and threw Cora to the floor behind a long serving table, tipped it onto its side, and dropped beside her with a heavy arm across her back. He couldn’t see anything now, not without lifting his head, not without taking his arm away as Cora lay there, shrieking, kicking her legs.

  Pitchers and vases exploded, knives and forks danced and spun, a light fixture in the ceiling flared and threw sparks, and there were sirens inside and out, blaring above the explosions, above the gunshots, above the screaming.

  He looked to his left, over Cora’s head, and saw Eddie Pearl’s mother sprawled on her back, arms outstretched, one hand clutching a napkin, nothing left of her face; and next to her he saw the boy, staring at the ceiling, legs twitching, a gaping hole in his throat and blood drowning his clip-on tie; he looked to his right and saw a little girl hobbling as fast as she could into the lobby, one shoe off, her white sock bright pink, wh
ile behind her a heavyset man tried desperately to scoop her up with one arm, the other hanging dead at his side.

  He couldn’t find Lisse.

  Wood splintered over his head, and he felt needles slam into his back and the backs of his legs.

  “Reed!” Cora shouted, and scrambled out from under his arm and to her knees, trying to see over the table, a cut on her cheek running red to her jaw.

  “Down!” John yelled. “For God’s sake, get down!”

  He pulled at her hip, but she shook him off. “Reed! Reed, where are you?”

  When he lunged for her and missed, he cursed and grabbed the table’s edge, hauled himself up, and squinted through the bright sunlight.

  Into silence.

  A long, deep, warm silence.

  No flags or banners left on the highway; bodies in the parking lot; bodies in the restaurant.

  When the moans began, he thought he’d go deaf; when the crying began, he staggered to his feet and stumbled across the floor, not caring about the wounded, not looking at the dead.

  “Lisse,” he said. “Lisse?”

  Cora screamed.

  He whirled, nearly fell over, and saw Lisse standing dazed just inside the lobby, the sleeve of her dress torn at the elbow, her hair falling disheveled over her eyes. Swaying. Someone’s blood fresh on her shoulder and the side of her neck. Calling to him without speaking, pointing mutely at the body that lay at her feet.

  “Reed!” Cora screamed, and began to run. “Reed!”

  * * * *

  3

  1

  M

  oonbow Levin was supremely unhappy.

  First, she had, a year or so ago, lost her best friend in the whole world. She had been his princess, her mother was going to be his queen, and they were going to live in a seriously large castle someplace that wasn’t anywhere near the desert, and he would fight dragons and demons every night just for her.

  Then she had lost her home in the desert, because she and her family had to run away from things she still wasn’t quite sure she really understood. Only that it cost her the best friend she’d ever had.

  Then Starshine, the stuck-up creep, had turned thirteen only a few weeks ago, and suddenly she was this high and mighty hotshot, smartass teenager who was, to hear her talk, the greatest thing that ever walked the earth on two legs, and Moonbow had suddenly become the baby of the house.

  Then ... and then there was her name.

  Moonbow.

  Living in the desert outside Las Vegas, it didn’t matter. People may have looked at her a little funny once in a while, but no one ever really made fun of her. Not even in school, where some kids had names as truly weird as hers. There was one kid named Goldust, for crying out loud, and another who called himself Snakeyes and swore it was his real name. So she was who she was, and was called what she was called, and no one cared, no one bothered her.

  Once Nevada had been left behind, however, everyone ... just everyone looked at her and Starshine as if they’d crawled out of some big old mountain cave in the middle of the night, and she was getting real sick of hearing them say, “Hey, kid, your mother a hippie or something?”

  Last week Starshine announced that she wanted to change her name to Tiffany, and it was the only time Moonbow ever saw Momma lose her temper as bad as that. She’d grabbed Star by the shoulders and shook her, hard, and yelled that she had to be proud of her name, that it was what made her special, and if she ever even thought about changing it, Momma was going to whomp her within an inch of her life.

  If Moonbow hadn’t been so scared, she would have laughed at the terrified look on her sister’s face.

  The memory didn’t change the fact, though, that she was still awfully miserable.

  She sat on a log on the bank of some stupid river she didn’t even know the name of, shivering a little in the coat that was too long, the one Beatrice had bought for her just last week. Her jeans were new and so they were too stiff; her sneakers were new, and they were stiff too, and would probably give her blisters before they were broke in. Their Thanksgiving dinner had been in a nice little restaurant that had cut-out turkeys and Pilgrims and Indians on the walls, and it was all right, she supposed, for a store-bought meal, but it wasn’t the same as having Thanksgiving at home.

  Which she didn’t have anymore.

  In serious misery, then, she hugged herself, watched her breath float away in the sunset’s golden light, and hunched her shoulders when her sister sat beside her, buried in her own too-long coat. She wore a baseball cap pulled as low as she could get it, trying to hide the haircut she’d given herself the night her mother had lost her temper.

  Somewhere out there, some kind of strange bird made some kind of strange noise; Moonbow didn’t think it sounded very happy at all.

  “This,” said Starshine, “sucks.”

  “I know.”

  “Big-time sucks.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean, who does old Harp think she is, ordering us around like that?”

  “Momma’s dream. That man, remember?”

  “Screw Momma’s dream, and screw the man, too. We all have dreams, Bow, but they don’t take us all the way across the country.” She stomped her feet to keep them warm. “This really sucks.”

  They watched the sluggish water lose its rippling sunset streaks, watched mist rise from the surface and slide into fog that crawled and puffed along the banks. The trees on the other side hardened into an uneven dark wall; a flock of geese called their way south overhead. Behind them, the dirty white wall of the lousy motel turned grey, then brown, then black, with only lighted windows to mark the fact that there was a wall there at all.

  They listened to the river; they listened to their heartbeats.

  “I’m gonna run away,” Starshine said at last.

  Moonbow gasped, shook her head violently. “You can’t, Star. God, you can’t do that.”

  “I’m thirteen, I can do what I want.”

  “You’re only thirteen,” Moonbow told her. “If they don’t catch you right away, somebody else will and they’ll... you know. You know?”

  “I don’t care. I can’t take this stupid crap anymore. I want to stay in one place, Bow. I want to take Momma’s gun and go back to Missouri to that place we had, and I want to stay there forever. And if anyone tries to make us move, I’ll blow their stupid heads off.”

  They heard voices in the distance, men laughing. Moonbow figured they were going into that crumby-looking bar across the road from the motel. She didn’t remember what it was called, but there was nothing but old pickups and vans in the hard-dirt parking lot when she’d left the room to come out here, and the neon stag over the entrance was missing two legs and an antler. She had overheard Beatrice say something to Momma about how this motel maybe wasn’t such a good idea after all, and that had only added to her misery.

  “If you go,” she finally said, “I’m going with you.”

  They shifted closer to each other, bumped shoulders, and maybe, she thought, Star wasn’t really so bad after all.

  The fog rose and slipped into the trees.

  A honky-tonk bar band blasted the night each time the bar door opened.

  “Damn,” Star said, kicking at the ground. “It’s freezing out here. Let’s go inside and watch some TV.”

  “They only get three channels. I checked.”

  “Better than sitting out here, freezing our butts off.”

  “Momma still mad at you?”

  Star didn’t answer.

  Quiet footsteps behind them, and when a long leg in jeans stepped between them, they moved aside to make room for their mother.

  “It’s cold out here,” Jude said, rubbing her arms even though she wore a heavy coat. “You girls should come in where it’s warm.”

  Her hair was waist-long and unbraided tonight, but her weighted veil was still on, only her large dark eyes showing, shining in the dark. Moonbow knew that sometimes, when it was real hot, she took it off w
hen she was in bed. Never anytime else. Not even when they were the only ones in the room, not even though they’d often told her that they wouldn’t mind it if she did.

  Momma never showed her face to anyone.

  Not even to the man who would have made her his queen.

  “So,” Jude said, clasping her hands in her lap. “What do you think?”