Читать книгу A Virgin River Christmas - Robyn Carr, Robyn Carr - Страница 8

Marcie’s thirty bucks—$28.87, to be exact—lasted another thirty-six hours. Twenty-five of them went in the gas tank; she could hardly afford the gas even with the great mileage she got in her little green bug. Three dollars for a loaf of bread and two apples and she finished off the peanut butter. Then she went back to that little Virgin River bar and asked if she could use the phone to make a call to her sister—she’d almost exhausted the phone cards because she wasn’t supposed to be gone this long, but there was a little time left on one. Erin, seven years older than Marcie, had taken charge of the family long ago, and she was growing extremely irritable by Marcie’s time away.

The cook, a guy they all called Preacher, let her into the kitchen.

Marcie called Erin and, though it made her stomach clench, she asked for money. “Call it a loan,” she said. She lied and said she was getting so close, that Ian had been seen.

“We had a deal, Marcie,” Erin said. “You promised you’d only be gone a couple of weeks and it’s been a month. You didn’t even come home for Thanksgiving.”

“I couldn’t. I explained about that. I had a tip—”

“It’s time for you to come home now and think about another way to find him.”

“No. I’m not stopping. I’m not giving up,” Marcie said resolutely.

“Okay, but come back to Chico and we’ll try it my way—we’ll get a professional to find him for you—then you can go from there. Really, the only way I know to get you home and through with this madness is to say no. No money, Marcie, for your own good. The only money I’ll wire you is enough to get home. Come home now. Right now. This is scaring me to death.”

“No,” she said. “I’m not done!”

Marcie then called her younger brother, Drew, who might not agree with what she was doing any more than Erin did, but he was a softer touch. He said, “Marcie, I can’t. Erin’s right, this has gone on too long. You have to give this up now. Come on, I can’t stand to think about what you’re doing. You’re going after a friggin’ lunatic, by yourself!”

“Please,” she whimpered. “We don’t know he’s a lunatic—he could be perfectly normal. Or maybe just sad. Please, just a few more days. Please. I’m so close.”

Drew let out a breath, defeated. “I’ll wire you a hundred bucks, then you come back, you hear me? And don’t you dare tell Erin what I did.”

“I won’t tell,” she said, wiping at her cheeks, smiling into the phone. “Thank you, Drew. I love you so much.”

“Yeah, well, I’m afraid I’m not showing you how much I care by doing this. I worry about you.”

“Don’t worry, Drew,” she said with a sniff. “Can you just put some cash in my checking account? I’ll go to Fortuna and withdraw it from the branch there. I’ll be there in less than an hour—and I’m running on fumes. Fortunately, I can coast downhill most of the way.”

“Where was he seen?” Drew asked.

“Um … He was seen … um … out in a cabin off the highway a ways. I’ll check out there later to see if it’s really him,” she said, and then her cheeks actually flushed. She said goodbye, disconnected and fanned her face, saying, “Whew.” She looked up and found herself staring into the fierce eyes of the giant in the kitchen. She actually started.

“He hasn’t been seen,” Preacher said, his thick dark brows furrowing. “Has he?”

“Well, maybe he has. And I’m just about to find out.”

“Sometimes a man just wants to be left alone for a while. You account for that?” Preacher asked. While he was talking, he pulled a plastic grocery sack out of a drawer, then turned to get something that looked like a wrapped sandwich out of the refrigerator and put it in the sack. Then a second one went in.

“It’s been longer than a while,” she said. “But I’ll certainly give him a chance to tell me, if that’s the case. If that’s it, I’ll have the opportunity to thank him for his friendship to my husband, then I’ll go back to Chico and tell his father and anyone else who cares that he’s just a man who wants to be left alone. But isn’t there something ‘off’ about that? That he’s been out of touch for years now?”

Preacher took a big bowl out of the refrigerator, flipped the lid and spooned potato salad into a smaller plastic container, then sealed it. “You’re real insistent on this, then?”

She didn’t want to admit that, for no accountable reason, she’d been obsessed about Ian Buchanan’s disappearance. She’d written him a couple dozen letters—at first for him, updating him on Bobby and whatever else was going on in her family, her life, giving information and reassurance. Then, it was more for herself—like keeping a journal. She didn’t know exactly why, but he had been with her a long time. So she shrugged. “There are a few of us who want to know. Well, there’s me. I want to know.” Quietly she added, “Have to know.”

Preacher added the container and a spoon to the bag. Then he got out a huge jar of pickles and picked out three big ones, putting them in a handy ziplock bag. “Well then, I guess you’re not going to quit early.”

“I guess not,” she said.

He pushed the whole business toward her. “Don’t let that potato salad sit and get warm. It’s cold enough outside to keep it all day if you leave it in the trunk and not in a warm car. Just remember, old warm potato salad has a nasty reputation.”

“What’s this?”

“The car can coast,” he said, lifting one of those menacing black brows. “You, on the other hand, can only run on fumes so long.”

Her mouth dropped open a bit and she stared at him. She wondered if he’d done that because he’d seen the way her once-tight jeans hung off her fanny. “That’s nice,” she finally said. “I’ll … ah … bring back the spoon.”

“If you drop by, fine. If you don’t, we have plenty of spoons.”

“Thanks,” she said, accepting the bag.

“Good luck,” Preacher said. “I hope it goes the way you want.”

“Me, too,” she said with a sheepish smile.

Several hours later, as the day drew into afternoon, she was driving up her fifth or sixth unmarked dirt road, but she was a hundred bucks richer. Well, eighty bucks richer, the Volkswagen belching on a good, healthy half tank. She’d had half a ham and cheese sandwich, a pickle and some of the best potato salad she’d ever eaten, thinking The guy’s a genius with a boiled potato.

The roads all backed into the trees and most were in godawful condition. Her little bug was bouncing and struggling, but hanging in there like the little champ she was. Marcie wished she could have found a way to get a Jeep or some other all-wheel-drive vehicle. If she could have waited longer to embark on this search, it might’ve been possible to have saved enough for a down payment, but she couldn’t wait that long. She took what little she’d put aside for this exact purpose and planned her route. Despite what she’d told Erin and Drew about being away for a couple of weeks, she’d taken an unpaid leave of absence from her job until the first of the year. She had worked at the insurance company since Bobby went to Iraq—five years ago—and her boss had been understanding.

Erin had been completely against this wild notion that she had to find Ian from the very start. It took months of arguing to convince her there was some purpose for Marcie in this search. Then Erin had come up with a hundred better ideas that she’d offered to take care of herself—a people search, a private detective, anything but Marcie going after him alone. But there was a driving force in Marcie to see him, know him, talk to him, connect again, like she thought she had before.

Bobby’s family wasn’t much in favor of the idea either, but it didn’t involve any ill will toward Ian—they barely knew about him. Bobby had written Marcie about Ian all the time, but in his short letters to his family he’d only mentioned him a few times. The Sullivans suggested that, if Ian hadn’t been around while Bobby was in the nursing home, the bond was not as solid as Bobby thought. Then there was Ian’s father—one of the nastiest and most negative old men Marcie had ever met. He told her she was wasting her time; he had no interest in finding his only son. “He left without a word and never got in touch. That’s enough message for me.”

Through perseverance, Marcie learned that the elder Buchanan had not experienced good health in the past few years. He’d had a mild stroke, was being treated for high blood pressure, prostate cancer, Parkinson’s and, she suspected, a tish of dementia.

“Don’t you miss him?” she asked. “Wonder what’s become of him?”

“Not on your life,” he said. “He’s the one burned his bridges and run off.”

But when he said that, there was wet in the folds under his old eyes and she thought: He can’t give much more than this, but he would love to see his son once more, or at least know he was all right. Wouldn’t he?

Ian’s former fiancée, Shelly, was still angry about the way she’d been abandoned, even though she’d married someone else three years ago and was pregnant now with her first baby. She had not a kind or sympathetic word for the man who’d run through sniper fire, taken injuries to save a comrade, won both a Bronze Star and Purple Heart. She pretty much hated Ian for the way he’d dumped her and bolted. A thought came to Marcie—if Shelly was happy with her life now, why would Ian’s obvious troubles cause her such prolonged hate? Couldn’t she see how war would shift his thinking, cause his emotional confusion? After having a life-limited husband for so long—a hopeless invalid who couldn’t even smile at her—giving a little patience and understanding to a man who’d been through a lot of trauma seemed a small thing.

But, Marcie had reminded herself, I don’t know the weight of anyone else’s burdens—only my own. She didn’t judge. She didn’t feel smart or strong enough to judge.

It was beyond important to Marcie to look at Ian’s face and ask him how he could save her beautiful young husband’s life and then never respond to her letters.

Maybe Ian couldn’t give her answers that would make everything feel settled for her, and to that end, she thought it made sense for them to talk about it. Talk it through. They called it “closure” in the shrink club.

As she pulled up to a small, roughly hewn house, she caught sight of a man coming around the corner, his arms laden with firewood. He was clean shaven but stooped, his legs bowed with age, his head bald. He stopped walking when he saw her. She got out of her car, then went toward him. “Afternoon, sir,” she said.

He put down the logs and the scowl on his face said he was suspicious of her.

“I wonder if you might be able to help me. I’m looking for someone.” She pulled the photo out again. “This was taken about seven years ago, so he’s obviously aged and I hear he’s got a beard now, but the rumor is, he’s living somewhere out in these hills. I’m trying to find him. Thirty-five years old, big man—I think he’s over six feet.”

The man took the photo in his bent, arthritic fingers. “You family?” he asked.

“More or less,” she said. “He and my husband were good friends in the Marines. I should tell him, my husband passed.”

“Ain’t seen him. Ain’t seen no one looks like that, anyway.”

“But what if he was kind of gone to seed?” she said. “I mean, older, maybe heavier, bearded, maybe bald, maybe has a pot belly or is way too thin—who knows?”

“He grow weed?” the man asked, handing her back the picture.

“I don’t know,” she answered.

“Only folks I know around here about that age grow pot. And even if he’s family, you might wanna cut him a wide berth. There’s trouble around the growers sometimes.”

“I heard that, yeah. Still—you know anybody like that I should just have a look at? Just to rule them out? I’ll be real careful.”

“There’s a guy up on the ridge, kind of hard to find. Could be twenty, could be fifty, but he’s got a beard and he’s good-sized. You’d have to go back where you came, down 36 a mile or so and then up again. It’s a dirt road, but halfway up the hill there’s an iron gate. It ain’t never been locked because you can’t see the gate or the house from the main road. Only reason I know about it, is a guy I used to know lived up there in one room. Nice big room, though. He’s been gone a couple years at least. Guy who lives there now was with him at the end.”

“How will I know what road?”

He shrugged. “No markers. It goes right and about a half mile up, you’ll either come to a gate or turn around and try the next road.”

“You want to come with me maybe? Show me where? And I’ll bring you back?”

“Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “I got no business with him. He’s odd. Talks to hisself, whistles and sings before the sun’s up. And he thinks he’s a bear.”

“Huh?”

“Heard him roar like an animal when I was out near his place. You prob’ly ought to just let him be.”

“Sure,” she said, tucking her picture away. “Right. Thanks.”

And off she went, encouraged about another whack job who almost fit the description. It was hardly the first time; she’d been to VA outreach, homeless shelters in Eureka, hospitals, the Gospel Mission. She’d followed bums down alleys and country roads, traipsed around the forest, met up with ranch hands and lumberjacks. But it was never him; no one had heard of Ian Buchanan. All she’d have to do was look into the eyes.

She’d never forget his eyes. They were brown, same shade as his brown hair, except they had a ton of amber in them. She’d seen them both soft and almost reverent, and then fierce and angry—all in the space of fifteen minutes—the one and only time he’d come to see Bobby. Ian was on leave and Marcie had brought Bobby home to Chico to care for him while they waited on a facility that could take him. She watched as Ian ran his huge hand over Bobby’s brow and head, murmuring, “Aw, buddy … Aw, buddy …” Of course Bobby didn’t respond; he had been unresponsive since the injury. Then, after a few moments of that, he turned almost-wild eyes on her and the gold in them flashed. “I shouldn’t have let this happen to you. This is wrong, this is all wrong.”

Ian’s visit had come five months after Bobby was wounded in Fallujah and it lasted less than half an hour. She always thought he’d be back, but that was it. She’d never seen him since.

If he’d read her letters, he would know that, soon after his one visit, they’d moved Bobby into a nursing home. Over time, she felt Bobby had had some recognition—there were times he’d turn his head, seem to look at her, even move his head closer as if nuzzling her, then close his eyes as though he knew she was there, as though he could smell her, feel her. She might’ve been the only one to think that way, but she believed that, somewhere inside that completely incapacitated body, he lived a little bit, knew he was with his wife and family, knew he was loved. Whether that was enough for a life, she didn’t know. His family wanted the feeding tube pulled so that he’d die, but she couldn’t do that. Ultimately, she took peace in the fact that it wasn’t up to her, she wasn’t in charge. Her job was to stay with him, do her best to comfort and love him, make sure he had everything he needed. She wasn’t a real religious person and she rarely went to church. She prayed when she was afraid or in trouble, and forgot when things were going all right. But beneath it all, she believed God would take Bobby home when it was his time. And what would be, would be.

What had been, had been.

It was her fourth little dirt road that finally presented a gate, and she sighed in audible relief because her little bug was churning, burning oil, straining over the bumps and up the steep grades. The gate wasn’t closed and she pressed on further, praying it wasn’t going to be far. And who knew how far it actually was? She was only going ten miles an hour. By the time she got close enough to spot a small house with an old pickup parked outside, it was growing late in the afternoon. This time of year, dark would descend before long.

Marcie was tired enough that she never gave a thought to what she would do if this turned out to be him; it had not been him so many times. She pulled right up to the house and gave the horn a toot, the country way of announcing yourself. Mountain people didn’t have doorbells. They could be inside or out in the yard or woods or somewhere down by the stream. The only way they knew there was a visitor is if someone hollered, shot off a gun or blasted the horn. Poor little VeeDub didn’t have a blast, but a pathetic bleep.

She got out and looked around. The house, a cabin really, had to be more than fifty years old. It looked as though it might have once been painted orange, a long, long time ago. The land around it was cleared of trees and there was a large stack of logs under a tarp near the house, but no corral or livestock or barn. No porch; the windows were small and high. There was a small chimney, an outhouse and a storage shed that might’ve measured eight by ten. How does a person live out here like this, so far from humanity, so far from all conveniences?

She would go to the door in a minute, but she waited to see if the guy who lived here showed himself first. She should’ve been all spooled up, hopeful. But hell, she’d totally lied to Erin and Drew—no one had sighted Ian and she’d talked to dozens if not hundreds of people, in the towns, in the country, in the mountains. She was just plain tired and ready to eat the rest of that sandwich and more potato salad, hit a gas station bathroom and find a place to park for the night.

Then he came around the corner of his house with an ax in his hand. He was scary-big, his shoulders were very broad and his beard was bushy and reached inches below his chin. He wore a dirty tan jacket that was frayed at the hem and sleeves; some of the plaid lining was torn and hanging out. His boots had worked hard; his pants were patched on the knees. At first glance, she thought, damn, not Ian. The beard was burnished red, though the hair on his head was brown—long and tied back into a ponytail—and he had both eyebrows, so it couldn’t be him. “Hi,” she said. “Sorry, don’t mean to bother you, but …”

He took several long strides toward her, an angry scowl on his face. “What the hell are you doing here?”

She looked way up into those eyes and the amber came alive in them, on fire, glowing. Dear Jesus in heaven, it was him.

She took a step forward, stunned. “Ian?”

“I said, what the hell are you doing here?”

“I’ve been … I was … I’m looking for you. I’m—”

“I know who you are! Now you found me, so you can go away.”

“Wait! Now I’ve found you, we should talk.”

“I don’t want to talk!”

“But wait—I want to tell you about Bobby. He’s gone. He passed away. Almost a year ago now. I wrote you!”

He pinched his eyes closed and stood perfectly still for a long moment, his arms stiff at his sides and fists balled. Pain. It was pain and grief she saw.

“I wrote you—”

“Okay,” he said more softly. “Message delivered.”

“But Ian—”

“Go home,” he said. “Get on with your life.” Then he turned and walked into the little cabin and slammed the door.

For a moment, Marcie just stared at the cabin, at the closed door. Then she looked over the ridge to see the sun lowering. Then at her watch. It was only five o’clock and she was standing at the top of a hill, so the descending sun was giving them a little more daylight on this December afternoon. If she were down the mountain, the tall trees combined with sunset would have already plunged her into near darkness.

She didn’t relish having unfinished business between them after dark, but after all she’d been through, she wasn’t about to let him get away now. She took a few deep breaths, remembered that he was probably just troubled and not crazy, and stomped toward the house. She rapped on the door. Then she moved back a few steps to be safe.

The door jerked open and he glowered at her. “What do you want?”

“Hey! Why are you mad at me? I just want to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk,” he said, pushing the door closed.

With inexplicable courage, she put her booted foot in its path. “Then maybe you can listen.”

“No!” he bellowed.

“You’re not going to scare me!” she shouted at him.

Then he roared like a wild animal. He bared his teeth, his eyes lit like there were gold flames in them, and the sound that came out of him was otherworldly.

She jumped back, her eyes as wide as hubcaps. “Okay,” she said, putting up her hands, palms toward him. “Maybe you do scare me. A little.”

His eyes narrowed to angry slits, and he slammed the door again.

She yelled at the closed door. “But I’ve come too goddamn far and gone to too much goddamn trouble to be scared for long!” She kicked the closed door as hard as she could, then yelped and hopped around from the pain in her toes.

It obviously had no effect on him. Marcie stood for a moment, staring at the closed door. She took a second to decide what to do next. She wasn’t likely to turn tail and run just because he roared—the big bully—but then again, she wouldn’t confront him right away. Apparently he needed a little time to calm down—and to realize she wasn’t giving up. So she decided her best course of action was to wait. And eat.

She went to the little bug and got the rest of Preacher’s lunch out of her portable refrigerator—the trunk. Then she got into the backseat, pushing the front seats up as far as they’d go, and spread out her sleeping bag to sit on. It was like a little nest; she settled in. And she thought about his glower and his roar, as she slowly opened up the bag and took out the second half of her sandwich.

All right, she thought—it was not supposed to go like this. In every fantasy she’d had about finding him, there had been many possibilities. He could be glad to see her, embracing her in welcome. Or he could be withdrawn. He could even be a raving lunatic, on another planet, totally out of touch with this world. But never had she imagined he would take one look at her, cringe in obvious despair at the news of Bobby’s death and cruelly, heartlessly, meanly, scream at her to go away.

Her mouth was a little dry for eating and she tried some of the water out of her thermos—bottled water had become too expensive. She kept an eye on the front door of the cabin. She could feel the heat on her cheeks, furious that he’d do that to her after she’d looked so hard for him. All she wanted in the world was to make sure he was all right. The asshole. And then she felt her eyes cloud with tears for the very same reasons. His reaction really hurt her. What had she ever done to him? It made her absolutely enraged and broke her heart at the same time. How could he do that? Roar at her and slam the door like that? Without even hearing her? All he had to do was invite her in, tell her he was just fine, explain he wanted to be alone, accept the baseball cards and …

She just let the tears roll soundlessly down her cheeks for a moment. It had been a while since she’d cried. She realized then that her hopes for how this would turn out had been too idealized—exactly the reason Erin had wanted to hire a professional to handle this. Ian Buchanan had gone away, because he didn’t want anything to do with anyone from his former life, not because he needed help. Especially her help.

With a hiccup of emotion, Marcie admitted to herself—she might need his help. This business of moving on, it might have to do with Ian helping her understand his relationship with Bobby and with her, and how everything had changed. Ian’s growling and slamming the door in her face wasn’t going to get her where she needed to go. She was going to have to sit it out until he understood—she wasn’t done with him yet. And this whole business was going to get complicated, since there were good odds he was actually nuts.

She tried to gnaw at her sandwich, even though she now had no appetite. The sun sank slowly, and she ended up wrapping it up and putting it back in the grocery sack, unfinished. The thing was—if you didn’t eat that much, you didn’t feel like eating that much.

The sun dipped below the horizon, the lights in the cabin shone, and a thin curl of smoke rose from the little chimney. She leaned back against the sleeping bag, physically comfortable even if she was an emotional wreck. But the decision had been made—she was sitting right here until she figured out what to do.

On a more practical matter, she really hoped she wouldn’t have to pee in the night. She’d been choosing her sleeping spots carefully, so that if nature called in the dark of night, she wouldn’t have to venture far from the little bug.

She’d never been any kind of camper, never had been good at relieving a full bladder on a whim. Never had quite figured out that squat; it seemed like she’d always wet her right foot. But after a little over a month of searching the hills and sleeping in her car in various parking lots, quiet residential streets, rest stops and country roads, she had it figured out. She could squat, whizz, get the job done, jump back in the car and lock the doors in just over a minute. There were showers available at the YWCA and at workout rooms in community colleges where they didn’t check ID’s too closely. She’d indulged in motels the first week out and then quickly realized her money would go further if she slept in her car. And with no hints of Ian’s whereabouts, she needed to make her money last.

Then she remembered—that was an outhouse out there, wasn’t it? Wow, how hilarious to think she’d be glad to see an outhouse! Life had gotten real interesting.

Drew and especially Erin would absolutely die if they found out she’d been sleeping in the bug. She shook her head. I’m as nuts as he is, for sure. And then she noticed snow flurries against the window of the bug. Very pretty, light, fluffy snowflakes in the waning light with a narrow streak of sunlight in the west through the clouds—the flakes glittered as they fell. The view over the ridge was amazing—there was a rainbow shining through the snow drifting down onto the tall pines—it was magnificent. She just couldn’t be upset in this place. Not with Ian, in any case. Maybe he had forgotten they were friends.

He probably wanted her to think he was crazy, roaring like that, but she wanted to believe that, underneath the bluster, he would still be all the things Bobby said he was, all the things he’d been in their early letters, before Ian got out of the Marines—strong, compassionate, gentle, loyal. Brave. He’d been so courageous to do what he had done.

With the snow lightly falling, and the sun causing the rainbow to fade into dusk, she relaxed and closed her eyes for just a second. To think.