Hummingbird Salamander(86)

“I can tell what you think,” she said briskly. “But we’re not like that. We want to save the planet from Man’s ruination.”

Two cars had pulled up outside, with the sound of more approaching. For the revival. For the worship of Mother Earth or whatever they thought would make a difference but didn’t.

“No thanks. I’m good.”

“Then I’ll ask you to leave for your next appointment.”

“Not until I talk to my father again and ask him—”

“No,” she interrupted, and I realized her hands were under the table. “No, I think not. We’re not stupid around here. We know what it’s getting like out there. I’ve got five strong, armed men outside. All it takes is a shout from me. And there’s a shotgun strapped to the underside of this table. You will leave now. And you will not come back.”

I stared into her gray, cold eyes. I’d been wrong. This place wasn’t a different reality. It was the same place. And I had to admire her. I had to admit that, in some ways, I might’ve preferred her as a mother.

“I could call the police when I leave,” I said. “Threatening me.”

“You won’t. We already know you won’t.”

“I could walk right back through that door to my father and you wouldn’t shoot.”

“We already agreed I would.”

Nothing about her aspect made me think she was lying. But it didn’t matter. The intent was enough to hurt me.

I raised my hands in surrender. I rose slow, relying on the cane, walked slow to the door.

Before I could close the door behind me, Lorraine said, “You remember that cabin halfway up the ravine?”

“Yeah.”

“Someone’s waiting for you there. Been there a month. When you see them, you can tell them time’s up. They need to leave by the end of the day. I don’t want to see them again. You, either.”

I looked back at her in confusion. The shotgun was above the table, all messy with duct tape, and she was looking down the barrel at me. I hadn’t even registered the sound of her wrenching it loose.

“Who is it?”

“Trust me,” she said. “You want to see him.”

Hellmouth Jack? Langer? The possibilities seemed limited.

“Trust me: I probably don’t.”

I left with Silvina’s letter shoved in my pocket, like it was meaningless. Not that it was the most important thing. Disappoint, horrify, or mean nothing.

Even as I was cast out.



* * *



I read Silvina’s letter in my car, in the driveway. People were emerging from cars all around me. Dressed normal, like normal country folk dressing up for an event. Walking to the big white tent. Ready for whatever Lorraine was going to tell them. Because I knew Lorraine must be a preacher. Somehow, it just made sense.

Wanted the words out of me. Wanted them cast out cast out cast out. Kept breathing them in anyway, like a contamination you couldn’t avoid. No mask would keep it out.

Aware but not aware of Lorraine’s bodyguards glaring at me from the tents. I could smell each and every burning animal skin from the warehouse. I could smell them all as I read. I read and reread until the words made no sense. Didn’t want them to make sense. Immolation. That’s what it felt like. Like I was burning. Burning up all over again.

The photo Silvina had enclosed fell out onto my lap. The tattered, folded-over photo. For the longest time, I couldn’t bring myself to pick it up, to see what it was. Who was in it.

Then I drove to the cabin.





[91]


Lorraine had been sharp, certain, so I borrowed that to survive. Even though I felt like I was drowning. Get through the next bit. Charge up one more hill first. Like something mechanical, just an extension of the car. With a head full of nails Silvina had put there.

I went back to the fork that led up the ravine slope in a series of sharp, steep switchbacks. The slope had, since I had last seen it, suffered a storm or disease or clear-cutting. Every time I came out of a bend, I saw the same spill of earth and broken cedars. A snarl and mess of rotting wood and then the clear gray-green light at the top, like a tunnel that was a telescope. I felt so small.

A crack in the car window to feel the cutting cold, the bitter cold. It had stopped raining. Maybe in an hour it would be balmy again. You could lose your mind just trying to predict the weather.

The lies I told myself. That I’d sneak back to the farm later, creep into their bedroom, wake my father. That we’d go outside to the porch and finish our conversation. That, freshly woken, in confusion, he’d finally give tongue to his inner self, in the face of Silvina’s letter. To some well of emotions. That we’d laugh together and cry together and forgive ourselves.

But I already knew he had an inner life. Lorraine told me that in everything she said and did.

He just would not share it with me.



* * *



The cabin had a wan yellow light on outside, fuzzy through the green dimness. An unfamiliar car. Not an obvious rental. I put my money on Hellmouth. I just didn’t think waterlogged, river-bound Langer had been here a month, driven down to kill me, then somehow made it back up. Unless Lorraine was mistaken and the place was vacant.

I parked in the shadows of trees a hundred feet downslope. I’d cut the headlights well before that. I opened and closed the door with the slightest of clicks. I hobble-crept up that steep slope of a driveway to that too-familiar place. Knew exactly which floorboard on the porch not to step on, to muffle my tread. My Fusk gun in my hand. I was in a mood to shoot first, ask questions after. But, in a pinch, I’d beat Hellmouth Jack to death with my cane.