The Big Dark Sky (61)

He kicked the framed photograph that he had thrown down. “Take it. Take it and get out.”

Although Jimmy had rebuked her instead of attacking her, Joanna believed he had the capacity to commit horrendous violence, not just in the name of retribution, but for reasons quite irrational. Though she hadn’t harmed anyone, she felt no safer here than her homicidal father had been when he’d ridden Spirit into the farther reaches of the ranch on the last day of his life.

Nevertheless, when Jimmy shouted at her—“GET OUT!”—she said, “No,” and walked past him to the only window, where she raised the pleated shade and let in some welcome light.





48


The brick came free in a sudden crumbling of fractured mortar, and pale daylight shaped the vacant space.

A surge of emotion filled Colson Fielding, something better than grief, healthier than anger, far cleaner than a thirst for vengeance. This small success with one brick gave him a profound sense of connection with his lost father, because his dad had been so knowledgeable about so many things, so competent by nature; and he felt as well close to his grandfather, who still lived, who still built houses and knew about mortar and had given him the Swiss Army knife years earlier; and in his mind’s eye, he saw his mother’s kind face, she whom he loved above all, she for whom he must survive to give her strength when she received the news of her widowhood. Not for the first time, though more powerfully than ever before, he understood the value of family, the comfort and power of generations who, whatever their faults, shared a history and were devoted to one another as much as human nature allowed. The weight of the brick in his hand was a small fraction of the weight of the Fielding family in its many generations; a healthy family was a fortress.

Ophelia switched on the Tac Light. The beam found the brick, and she said, “One down, like just two hundred to go.”

“More like a hundred sixty.”

“Gimme the knife, and I’ll dig one out.”

“The next will be a lot easier,” Colson predicted, placing the first brick on a nearby pew, as if it were a sacred relic that must be treated with reverence. “And the third is gonna be easier than the second.”

Switching off the flashlight and setting to work with the blade in the dim glow—and the whispering draft—that entered where a brick was missing, Ophelia said, “Why easier?”

“In a bottom row like this, the horizontal stability, frame to frame, declines faster with the loss of each masonry unit.”

“Where’d you get that?”

“My grandpa. In other words, the bricks in this row not only hold up the bricks above them, but they also hold each other in place, more than the mortar does.”

“What’re the odds I’d be locked in here with a kid who knows masonry?”

“What’re the odds I’d be locked in with a Jane Hawk clone?”

The second brick came loose in maybe three minutes, and the next one in about two.

Frame to frame, there were nine bricks in the bottom row. The blade dug at the rotten mortar, which had so little bond strength that it was less like bricklayer’s batter than like the crisp substance of a fresh-baked biscotti. In quick succession, four additional units were removed.

With a brick in hand, Colson said, “Bad sand and too much lime. He’s a total amateur. Stand back, out of the way.”

“Why? What’re you doing?”

“If he didn’t know about mixing mortar, for sure he didn’t know squat about anchors and ties. Now that the bottom row is gone except for the two end units, this thing is held up with spit and a wish.”

The window started two feet off the floor and continued almost five feet above Colson’s head. He wished that he had a sledgehammer with a long handle, but he didn’t. This was going to be risky. If a single falling brick beaned him just right, it could maybe crack his skull, and an avalanche could do worse damage.

Ophelia stepped back, and Colson slammed the brick in his hand against the remaining window infill. The sound was a flat clap, not as loud as he expected, but still maybe loud enough to have been heard by Optime if the freak was on the veranda of the saloon rather than inside. He rapped the hanging curtain of masonry again, and a single unit fell out of the second row. Shock waves were starting to numb his hands, but he struck a third time, a fourth, and then he danced back as a cracking-grinding noise warned of collapse. Bricks cascaded out of the window, clattered onto the sill, spilled onto the floor, clouding the air with clay dust and cement dust and powdered lime.

There had been no glass in the window in perhaps more than a century, and the muntins had broken out a long time ago. Nothing barred their way to freedom. As Colson climbed the brickfall that shifted under his feet and clambered across the windowsill after Ophelia, into the last hour of daylight, he wondered if he would hear the shot that killed him or if the bullet would be faster than the sound.





49


The 1955 Studebaker E7 pickup was a pleasure to drive, a time machine that left the troubled twenty-first century behind. Wyatt Rider almost wished that it was taking him to a quieter past, sans the internet and the insane ideologies of the modern world, where life moved slow enough to be savored. He drove too far, more miles than he intended, because Hector Alvarez, proud of the truck, encouraged him to go faster, then even faster, as did the open road and the endless vistas.