Full Wolf Moon (25 page)
"Mrs. Tebbe."
Doris returned her attention to Mr. Alma Curar. He was watching her cautiously.
"Is there anything wrong?" he asked.
"No, of course not."
He watched her a moment more before asking, "You haven't changed your mind, have you?"
Her stomach knotted. "I came back, didn't I? Alone."
"Nothing's happened to make you rethink ..."
"No," she lied. "Nothing."
She looked toward the shack again, and this time saw Pierce standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. He didn't look the way he had that morning, when he was pale with anguish. There was steeliness to his eyes, magnified by the spectacles. Doris hated him even more.
Chapter 31
David Alma Curar's Shack
Dusk. New Moon.
Max could hear David shooting in the distance. He sat on the shack's warped little step, thinking about another cup of coffee, but that would only make him more restless. He wasn't used to isolation and the sedentary; and he felt as though he was losing his identity. Not daring to return to his cabin at the detention center, he was forced to wear the civilian clothes David brought him. Heavy denims, flannel work shirts.
Reading the newspapers that came with the clothes didn't help things. Max's disappearance was still worthy of the front page. The rhetoric from the Army spoke of hope, but it was easy enough to read between the lines. Everyone thought he was dead. He wrestled with the paradox of being both disturbed and comforted by this.
Maybe another walk. Another long hike might help settle him. But then he wouldn't be here when David and Mrs. Tebbe returned from their respective target practices, he with the revolver, she with the bow. Max didn't want to worry them.
At least, David would be worried. Max didn't think the healer quite believed he was past the crisis point, past the place where he could have taken his own life. As for Mrs. Tebbe...Max still didn't understand why she was there at all.
It had been almost two weeks, now. since her carefully orchestrated visits had begun. Mrs. Tebbe had plotted them like war maneuvers. Days and nights patterned to appear like arbitrary jaunts away from Tulenar. A full day at the shack. A two day absence that Max assumed she spent at Tulenar. A few half days, some mornings, some afternoons, a full overnight stint. All designed to keep that Shackley's suspicions to a minimum. Once Mrs. Tebbe even arrived in a different car, one she said she had rented from someone in Shelton. Shackley had had a man following her.
Max had learned all this mostly as a third party listener to Mrs. Tebbe's and David's conversations. She spoke to Max only when she couldn't avoid it. And it was agonizingly clear that she wished he were in prison, waiting for execution.
So why wasn't she acting on that wish when she could so easily make it come true? Neither Max nor David could or would stop her. Every time she drove away, she had it within her power to come back with a battalion of F.B.I. Once or twice, after she had been away for a couple of days, Max hsd thought she was on the verge of doing just that. God, what was she waiting for!
He heard their voices before he saw them, emerging from the conifers just east of the shack. They were talking earnestly, David still looking uncomfortable with the holstered gun strapped to his thigh, Mrs. Tebbe seeming quite at ease in her archery garb, bow in hand.
Max was finally getting used to seeing her in women's trousers and flannel shirt, apparently bought at Disjunction Lake's camping store. He caught the new, store smell even from here. Her hair, though, was still bound in a snood, since she always drove up in her standard skirt and jacket, changing into her woodland togs in the shack. At this distance, Max couldn't see her face clearly, but the way she stiffened when she lifted her head told him that she saw him. He stood up and stepped down to let them into the cabin.
It had been getting cool for the last hour, so Max already had the stove going and the coffee was ready. He made them a supper of macaroni and cheese with canned vegetable soup. Afterward, coffee steaming before them, David fetched the first aid kit, then untied his bandanna to change the bandage at his hairline.
Mrs. Tebbe looked at the uneven stitches, four in all, without wincing. "It's looking good. Not a bit of infection."
David shrugged. "I'd be a poor healer if I couldn't take care of a simple cut."
"That happened at the captain's cabin, didn't it? That was your blood I saw."
Max cringed a little, where he sat beside David. "You were there?"
Mrs. Tebbe gave him a quick glance and nod, addressing David again, who was taping the fresh bandage in place. "What happened?"
Irritated, it was Max who replied. "Are you asking if I bit him?"
"Max was a little reluctant to listen at first," David said, and looked at Max with wry amusement. "It was touch and go for a while, but he came around. He didn't mean to throw me so hard, I think."
"Oh yes, I did."
"It must have been tough, stitching yourself up," Mrs. Tebbe said, still ignoring Max.
"That's my handiwork," Max replied, still determined to be counted.
Mrs. Tebbe barely looked his way. David went to the cedar chest near the door, replaced the first aid kit, and pulled out the cigar box filled with silver arrowheads. Max's throat pinched. When David brought the box over to the table, Max took his stool and moved to sit next to the door.
Perhaps Mrs. Tebbe was equally uncomfortable watching David work the silver with pointed little instruments, the tiny hammer tapping the precious metal into deadly shape. She stood abruptly.
"Look, I better go. It's getting tougher to convince Shackley I'm not up to something. I'd better stay at Tulenar for a few days. It wouldn't surprise me... it wouldn't surprise me if he had me tailed again."
Lie. It was in her voice. That wasn't really what she meant. Did David feel it, too? He was looking up at Mrs. Tebbe, but Max couldn't read his face. After a moment, the healer bent over the arrowheads again.
"When will it be?" David asked. "Saturday, then?"
"Same time," Mrs. Tebbe replied.
David nodded, still at his work. "I'll have some new targets mounted by the time you get here."
She said pointedly to David, not to Max, "Good night."
But Max followed her out the door.
"Why don't you just do it?" he said.
Mrs. Tebbe kept walking. "Do what?"
"You know what. ou believe less in David day by day. Something's changing your mind."
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"I can hear it in your voice. Damn it. I can smell it in you."
Mrs. Tebbe turned and slapped him.
"I mean it," Max persisted, ignoring the sting, the pain-provoked tears. "I can sense these things. You're scared."
"The hell I am. I'm looking forward to this."
"You don't act like it."
"How should I be acting, Captain? Do I lack the right etiquette for the situation?" She looked disgusted as she turned toward the car. "You're imagining things."
"Mrs. Tebbe. Don't let David down. I swear to God, I'm not asking this for myself. I'm asking for him. Jesus, if I could change what happened. If I could give you Arthur Satsugai back...
This time, as she whirled toward Max, she slapped him hard enough to leave his glasses dangling from one ear. She slapped him again before he could recover, but he blocked the next blow and told himself he was yanking her close to avoid another.
But if that were so, why was he sobbing into her shoulder, why was he sinking to his knees, his glasses still dangling? His voice was coming from somewhere else, it seemed, begging her for forgiveness, clutching at her legs like a bereaved child.
He heard Mrs. Tebbe whispering through all his pleading as she made a half-hearted effort to pull away. "Stop it. Stop it, Max. Please."
He let his arms fall away and listened to her all but run to her car.
Chapter 32
Alma Curar's Shack
Early morning. New Moon.
Doris stopped to change into her trousers and shirt just after pulling onto the path that lead to Alma Curar's little hideout, then drove up to park in her regular place. She left the car as quietly as possible. After the way they had parted two nights ago, she wanted to avoid seeing Pierce. She was much earlier than usual and hoped, at this hour, that he wouldn't be awake.
That, and she thought it prudent to leave Tulenar just before dawn, before Shackley might think to have her followed. Fortunately, the rapid succession of demonstrations and rallies Jesse Haku was organizing kept Shackley's attention diverted. But Doris saw no reason to take chances.
She began walking toward the practice area, the blanket of pine needles whispering against her mannish, flat-soled shoes. But thoughts of Tulenar slowed her pace. Time. In spite of Mr. Haku's efforts, Doris knew Shackley was beginning to understand what was happening. And Doris was running out of tricks. Soon, she would run out of time. She would have to decide.
The trek to the target was long and, after a while, she found it soothing, striding the hill. The birds were awake, sweet in song. Doris's breath plumed faintly before her. She heard tentative scuffling here and there, glimpsed a chipmunk scampering away from the edge of sight. It was target practice she was headed to, after all, regardless of its ultimate goal. The feel of the bow, the arrow nocked, poised between tension and release. At her command.
But when she broke into the clearing Mr. Alma Curar had made for them, she stopped cold. Leaning against the simple hay bale targets, waiting to be mounted, were two big wooden boards, about six high by ten long. One was painted with a large wolfish shape on all fours, in profile. The other was wolf-like, too, large, too, as if on hind legs, forelegs reared. Leaping at her. Each had a red line painted where the end of the rib cage might be.
Beastly shapes to help Doris understand what she would be aiming at with her silver arrows. She had an instant recall of the healer pulling Pierce's lips away from those fangs. The forest didn't seem soothing and peaceful now.
In a sudden flurry she nocked an arrow, drew her bow and let it fly, knowing her target was below the red line, any lethal hit into the pelvic basin. The arrow missed horribly, striking the hind foot of the leaping beast. Okay. Okay. She did that frantically, from a burst of emotion.
Doris was breathing too fast. She deliberately controlled her breath, carefully prepared her bow, loaded the arrow. She drew it up, closed her eyes and managed to calm herself. Then, eyes open, she released. The arrow struck the board between the hind legs.
"Damnit, godamnit!" Doris gripped the bow so tightly her knuckles whitened and she paced the clearing, restless as a thing caged. "I can't do this. I can't do this."
Around and around she went, then stopped, tilted her head and shouted to the pines, "I can't let those boys go to prison!"
She whirled to face the targets, and in several motions so fluid they felt as one, she sent an arrow flying into the chest of the leaping beast.
/ / / /
"We've lost her."
From his bedroll, Max watched David walk away from the door's threshold, still in his undershirt and shorts. The healer had leapt up before Max could, and had run to the door at the sound of tires spinning frantically away from the shack. For the first time since Max had known the man, David's expression was haggard as he came back to his cot, sinking onto it heavily.
Max put on his glasses, climbed out of his bedroll and stepped to the door, careful to peer around the jamb as he watched the dust settle back to the ground. "Did you see any others?"
"I didn't even see Mrs. Tebbe. Just the back of her car."
"What was she doing here so early? Why didn't she come in?"
"Who knows? We may never."
"She seems to have been the only one."
Max looked back at David, the healer's head sagging, tendrils of loose, gray hair veiling the sides of his face, the white streak brilliant in the dimness of the shack.
"It always was a long shot, David. But it was worth a try."
David looked up, the pain of failure still in his face, but he said, "What do you want to do now, Max? It's up to you."
Max moved to the stove and began stoking it with fresh wood from the small, indoor pile. "Give me some options."
David was quiet a moment. He reached to the well-worn Farmer's Almanac sitting on the cot's wooden crate and thumbed it idly. "We could leave here. The full moon's barely two weeks away. Establish a temporary camp somewhere, carry on as best we can, try to take this to its end before getting caught."
"Okay, what else?"
"I could try to contact Mrs. Tebbe, talk her into coming back."
Max shook his head. "No. No. If she's headed back to camp, we couldn't catch her before she's gotten her troops together. Too risky."
"Everything we've done or plan to do is too risky."
"I know. Let her be. What else?"
David stood, tossed the Almanac on the plank table as he walked to the supply chest and pulled out the coffee. He took the empty pot from its place on the stove and began ladling water into it. "We could stay."
"Wait for the authorities and surrender," Max clarified.
"Yes. You could hope for execution, but there's no way that will happen before the next moon. We could put up a fight and force them to shoot."
"We?"
David looked up from his task, set the prepared pot onto the heating stove. "Did you think I'd sneak out the back door?"
Max was surprised to feel himself smile. "There is no back door."
Doris returned her attention to Mr. Alma Curar. He was watching her cautiously.
"Is there anything wrong?" he asked.
"No, of course not."
He watched her a moment more before asking, "You haven't changed your mind, have you?"
Her stomach knotted. "I came back, didn't I? Alone."
"Nothing's happened to make you rethink ..."
"No," she lied. "Nothing."
She looked toward the shack again, and this time saw Pierce standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. He didn't look the way he had that morning, when he was pale with anguish. There was steeliness to his eyes, magnified by the spectacles. Doris hated him even more.
Chapter 31
David Alma Curar's Shack
Dusk. New Moon.
Max could hear David shooting in the distance. He sat on the shack's warped little step, thinking about another cup of coffee, but that would only make him more restless. He wasn't used to isolation and the sedentary; and he felt as though he was losing his identity. Not daring to return to his cabin at the detention center, he was forced to wear the civilian clothes David brought him. Heavy denims, flannel work shirts.
Reading the newspapers that came with the clothes didn't help things. Max's disappearance was still worthy of the front page. The rhetoric from the Army spoke of hope, but it was easy enough to read between the lines. Everyone thought he was dead. He wrestled with the paradox of being both disturbed and comforted by this.
Maybe another walk. Another long hike might help settle him. But then he wouldn't be here when David and Mrs. Tebbe returned from their respective target practices, he with the revolver, she with the bow. Max didn't want to worry them.
At least, David would be worried. Max didn't think the healer quite believed he was past the crisis point, past the place where he could have taken his own life. As for Mrs. Tebbe...Max still didn't understand why she was there at all.
It had been almost two weeks, now. since her carefully orchestrated visits had begun. Mrs. Tebbe had plotted them like war maneuvers. Days and nights patterned to appear like arbitrary jaunts away from Tulenar. A full day at the shack. A two day absence that Max assumed she spent at Tulenar. A few half days, some mornings, some afternoons, a full overnight stint. All designed to keep that Shackley's suspicions to a minimum. Once Mrs. Tebbe even arrived in a different car, one she said she had rented from someone in Shelton. Shackley had had a man following her.
Max had learned all this mostly as a third party listener to Mrs. Tebbe's and David's conversations. She spoke to Max only when she couldn't avoid it. And it was agonizingly clear that she wished he were in prison, waiting for execution.
So why wasn't she acting on that wish when she could so easily make it come true? Neither Max nor David could or would stop her. Every time she drove away, she had it within her power to come back with a battalion of F.B.I. Once or twice, after she had been away for a couple of days, Max hsd thought she was on the verge of doing just that. God, what was she waiting for!
He heard their voices before he saw them, emerging from the conifers just east of the shack. They were talking earnestly, David still looking uncomfortable with the holstered gun strapped to his thigh, Mrs. Tebbe seeming quite at ease in her archery garb, bow in hand.
Max was finally getting used to seeing her in women's trousers and flannel shirt, apparently bought at Disjunction Lake's camping store. He caught the new, store smell even from here. Her hair, though, was still bound in a snood, since she always drove up in her standard skirt and jacket, changing into her woodland togs in the shack. At this distance, Max couldn't see her face clearly, but the way she stiffened when she lifted her head told him that she saw him. He stood up and stepped down to let them into the cabin.
It had been getting cool for the last hour, so Max already had the stove going and the coffee was ready. He made them a supper of macaroni and cheese with canned vegetable soup. Afterward, coffee steaming before them, David fetched the first aid kit, then untied his bandanna to change the bandage at his hairline.
Mrs. Tebbe looked at the uneven stitches, four in all, without wincing. "It's looking good. Not a bit of infection."
David shrugged. "I'd be a poor healer if I couldn't take care of a simple cut."
"That happened at the captain's cabin, didn't it? That was your blood I saw."
Max cringed a little, where he sat beside David. "You were there?"
Mrs. Tebbe gave him a quick glance and nod, addressing David again, who was taping the fresh bandage in place. "What happened?"
Irritated, it was Max who replied. "Are you asking if I bit him?"
"Max was a little reluctant to listen at first," David said, and looked at Max with wry amusement. "It was touch and go for a while, but he came around. He didn't mean to throw me so hard, I think."
"Oh yes, I did."
"It must have been tough, stitching yourself up," Mrs. Tebbe said, still ignoring Max.
"That's my handiwork," Max replied, still determined to be counted.
Mrs. Tebbe barely looked his way. David went to the cedar chest near the door, replaced the first aid kit, and pulled out the cigar box filled with silver arrowheads. Max's throat pinched. When David brought the box over to the table, Max took his stool and moved to sit next to the door.
Perhaps Mrs. Tebbe was equally uncomfortable watching David work the silver with pointed little instruments, the tiny hammer tapping the precious metal into deadly shape. She stood abruptly.
"Look, I better go. It's getting tougher to convince Shackley I'm not up to something. I'd better stay at Tulenar for a few days. It wouldn't surprise me... it wouldn't surprise me if he had me tailed again."
Lie. It was in her voice. That wasn't really what she meant. Did David feel it, too? He was looking up at Mrs. Tebbe, but Max couldn't read his face. After a moment, the healer bent over the arrowheads again.
"When will it be?" David asked. "Saturday, then?"
"Same time," Mrs. Tebbe replied.
David nodded, still at his work. "I'll have some new targets mounted by the time you get here."
She said pointedly to David, not to Max, "Good night."
But Max followed her out the door.
"Why don't you just do it?" he said.
Mrs. Tebbe kept walking. "Do what?"
"You know what. ou believe less in David day by day. Something's changing your mind."
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"I can hear it in your voice. Damn it. I can smell it in you."
Mrs. Tebbe turned and slapped him.
"I mean it," Max persisted, ignoring the sting, the pain-provoked tears. "I can sense these things. You're scared."
"The hell I am. I'm looking forward to this."
"You don't act like it."
"How should I be acting, Captain? Do I lack the right etiquette for the situation?" She looked disgusted as she turned toward the car. "You're imagining things."
"Mrs. Tebbe. Don't let David down. I swear to God, I'm not asking this for myself. I'm asking for him. Jesus, if I could change what happened. If I could give you Arthur Satsugai back...
This time, as she whirled toward Max, she slapped him hard enough to leave his glasses dangling from one ear. She slapped him again before he could recover, but he blocked the next blow and told himself he was yanking her close to avoid another.
But if that were so, why was he sobbing into her shoulder, why was he sinking to his knees, his glasses still dangling? His voice was coming from somewhere else, it seemed, begging her for forgiveness, clutching at her legs like a bereaved child.
He heard Mrs. Tebbe whispering through all his pleading as she made a half-hearted effort to pull away. "Stop it. Stop it, Max. Please."
He let his arms fall away and listened to her all but run to her car.
Chapter 32
Alma Curar's Shack
Early morning. New Moon.
Doris stopped to change into her trousers and shirt just after pulling onto the path that lead to Alma Curar's little hideout, then drove up to park in her regular place. She left the car as quietly as possible. After the way they had parted two nights ago, she wanted to avoid seeing Pierce. She was much earlier than usual and hoped, at this hour, that he wouldn't be awake.
That, and she thought it prudent to leave Tulenar just before dawn, before Shackley might think to have her followed. Fortunately, the rapid succession of demonstrations and rallies Jesse Haku was organizing kept Shackley's attention diverted. But Doris saw no reason to take chances.
She began walking toward the practice area, the blanket of pine needles whispering against her mannish, flat-soled shoes. But thoughts of Tulenar slowed her pace. Time. In spite of Mr. Haku's efforts, Doris knew Shackley was beginning to understand what was happening. And Doris was running out of tricks. Soon, she would run out of time. She would have to decide.
The trek to the target was long and, after a while, she found it soothing, striding the hill. The birds were awake, sweet in song. Doris's breath plumed faintly before her. She heard tentative scuffling here and there, glimpsed a chipmunk scampering away from the edge of sight. It was target practice she was headed to, after all, regardless of its ultimate goal. The feel of the bow, the arrow nocked, poised between tension and release. At her command.
But when she broke into the clearing Mr. Alma Curar had made for them, she stopped cold. Leaning against the simple hay bale targets, waiting to be mounted, were two big wooden boards, about six high by ten long. One was painted with a large wolfish shape on all fours, in profile. The other was wolf-like, too, large, too, as if on hind legs, forelegs reared. Leaping at her. Each had a red line painted where the end of the rib cage might be.
Beastly shapes to help Doris understand what she would be aiming at with her silver arrows. She had an instant recall of the healer pulling Pierce's lips away from those fangs. The forest didn't seem soothing and peaceful now.
In a sudden flurry she nocked an arrow, drew her bow and let it fly, knowing her target was below the red line, any lethal hit into the pelvic basin. The arrow missed horribly, striking the hind foot of the leaping beast. Okay. Okay. She did that frantically, from a burst of emotion.
Doris was breathing too fast. She deliberately controlled her breath, carefully prepared her bow, loaded the arrow. She drew it up, closed her eyes and managed to calm herself. Then, eyes open, she released. The arrow struck the board between the hind legs.
"Damnit, godamnit!" Doris gripped the bow so tightly her knuckles whitened and she paced the clearing, restless as a thing caged. "I can't do this. I can't do this."
Around and around she went, then stopped, tilted her head and shouted to the pines, "I can't let those boys go to prison!"
She whirled to face the targets, and in several motions so fluid they felt as one, she sent an arrow flying into the chest of the leaping beast.
/ / / /
"We've lost her."
From his bedroll, Max watched David walk away from the door's threshold, still in his undershirt and shorts. The healer had leapt up before Max could, and had run to the door at the sound of tires spinning frantically away from the shack. For the first time since Max had known the man, David's expression was haggard as he came back to his cot, sinking onto it heavily.
Max put on his glasses, climbed out of his bedroll and stepped to the door, careful to peer around the jamb as he watched the dust settle back to the ground. "Did you see any others?"
"I didn't even see Mrs. Tebbe. Just the back of her car."
"What was she doing here so early? Why didn't she come in?"
"Who knows? We may never."
"She seems to have been the only one."
Max looked back at David, the healer's head sagging, tendrils of loose, gray hair veiling the sides of his face, the white streak brilliant in the dimness of the shack.
"It always was a long shot, David. But it was worth a try."
David looked up, the pain of failure still in his face, but he said, "What do you want to do now, Max? It's up to you."
Max moved to the stove and began stoking it with fresh wood from the small, indoor pile. "Give me some options."
David was quiet a moment. He reached to the well-worn Farmer's Almanac sitting on the cot's wooden crate and thumbed it idly. "We could leave here. The full moon's barely two weeks away. Establish a temporary camp somewhere, carry on as best we can, try to take this to its end before getting caught."
"Okay, what else?"
"I could try to contact Mrs. Tebbe, talk her into coming back."
Max shook his head. "No. No. If she's headed back to camp, we couldn't catch her before she's gotten her troops together. Too risky."
"Everything we've done or plan to do is too risky."
"I know. Let her be. What else?"
David stood, tossed the Almanac on the plank table as he walked to the supply chest and pulled out the coffee. He took the empty pot from its place on the stove and began ladling water into it. "We could stay."
"Wait for the authorities and surrender," Max clarified.
"Yes. You could hope for execution, but there's no way that will happen before the next moon. We could put up a fight and force them to shoot."
"We?"
David looked up from his task, set the prepared pot onto the heating stove. "Did you think I'd sneak out the back door?"
Max was surprised to feel himself smile. "There is no back door."
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