The Winslow Incident (52 page)

Yet all was still . . . no
vehicles approached, no breeze quaked the aspens, there was only the flat sound
of her tennis shoes hitting the road and the incessant drone of insects going
about the routine business of their unremarkable day.

She considered hiking to the fire
lookout. Sparks Brady would have his radio; her dad yakked with him all the
time. (“See those thunderheads forming east of the ridge?”) And Sparks was
certain to be manning the tower during this heat wave.

There was only one problem. When
her dad had taken her to see the tall tower and meet the rangy Sparks a few
summers ago, they’d traveled for hours by fire road in the Jeep. How long would
it take her to hike to the tower as the crow flies, along rough deer trails and
across raging creeks? Would she get lost in the forest?

I’ll lose my bearings, I know
it.
It’d be just a matter of time.

So the idea was abandoned by the
time she reached the church graveyard at the edge of town. She half expected to
see Sean and Patience among those headstones too and flashed on that awful
image: everything toneless except her hair, long and black down her back; his,
soft and brown across his shoulders. Hazel stared straight into the high sun.
Burn
it from my eyes.

Blinking away sunspots, she
entered town and started up Fortune Way, careful to avoid piles of road apples
left by horses.
Patience and Sean can rot happily ever after in this
shithole for all I care.
But no matter how much righteous indignation she
managed to drum up, it quickly drowned in her deep sorrow. Everything Hazel
thought she knew was turning out to be wrong. Everything.

Life moved up along Fortune Way,
ranch hands mostly. She avoided eye contact with them as though they were
vicious dogs, refusing to let them see her fear.

At least now that she was no
longer consumed with finding Sean, she could tend to other things. Such as her
broken body. She decided to hit the Mercantile for drugs—benzocaine for
her tooth, some aspirin, something stronger with any luck—and hoped that
Tiny Clemshaw wasn’t still wielding his shotgun with that same indiscriminate
rancor.

Up ahead, a woman who looked like
Tilly Thacker with gray hair gone wild gave Hazel a frightened gape before
dashing between Mathers Bank and the Crock. Though Hazel had no reason to think
this weirdness was directed at her personally, it left her feeling even more
unsettled all the same.

Because it felt different in town
now. And unnaturally quiet.

Everywhere, that is, except the
Buckhorn Tavern, which was raucous with country music and shouts and boot
stomps and compulsive laughter, as though all the noise in Winslow had been
rounded up and sequestered in that one establishment.

Two ranch hands exited Prospect
Park right in front of her. To join in the racket at the bar, she guessed. Both
men stopped to eyeball her, and after one mumbled something close to the
other’s ear, they both laughed—the same sort of forced laughter that was
coming out of the Buckhorn. Then they continued past her, one on each side so
that she was surrounded for several frightening moments.

This business bodes ill
, her grandmother’s words echoed.

As Hazel continued toward the
Mercantile, she grew angrier and angrier: at the cowboys and the fact that they
truly were scaring her and everybody else; at her uncle’s bullheadedness and
her dad’s incapacitation; and about nobody but her seeming to care that the
whole stinking town had capsized.

Worst of all
, Hazel’s heart wrenched,
what I most wanted to find
wants to stay lost to me.

Just past Cal’s Fish ’n Bait,
Hazel was jolted out of her anger when she noticed a still heap in the space
between the bait shop and Clemshaw Mercantile. She backed up and took two steps
toward the body lying prone in the passageway before recognizing him.

“Oh, Cal . . .”

He lay crumpled up in the dirt,
broken-looking legs tangled in fishing line, the pole snapped in two beneath
his hips. Cal still grasped his reel in one hand, the foam cup of worms crushed
inside the other.

Hazel groaned, heart-stricken.
“Did you fall off the roof?” When she stepped closer, she saw that a crack high
on his forehead gaped wide and oozed dark. She whimpered loudly in shock and
sympathy. Then she whispered, “I hope you caught the big one, Cal.”

She left him for the store. Tiny
Clemshaw no longer guarded the front of the Mercantile. In fact, he was nowhere
in sight even when she entered. Despite the ceiling fans spinning so fast they
looked about to launch, it was smothery inside. And while the store looked
empty, it didn’t feel it.
Make it quick
, she told herself
.

She hurried past the checkout
counter with its jars of beef jerky and racks of chips while the fan blades
continued their ineffectual
whomp, whomp.
Then she made a tight right
into the last aisle, which contained the medicine and elixirs and cleaning
supplies.

That was when she saw Tiny Clemshaw
on the second floor of the Mercantile, leaning forward against the railing that
overlooked the main floor. The man stood so stock-still—face waxen, eyes
void—that at first she mistook him for a mannequin.

He gave no indication that he’d
noticed her in the store below, only stared straight ahead, frozen in place by some
mysterious force.

Whomp, whomp, whomp.

She snatched a package of paper
tablecloths from the picnic supplies shelf and turned and hustled down the
aisle. Along the way, she grabbed a bottle of aspirin off the top shelf without
stopping or daring to glance up at the second floor. Then she left the
Mercantile without Tiny ever acknowledging that she was there.

Returning to Cal’s body in the
passageway she ripped the tablecloth out of its plastic wrapper. “You were safe
locked up, Cal. Who let you out of jail?”

Since her right hand operated only
as a flipper sticking out of the sling, she moved awkwardly as she unfolded the
tablecloth then flicked it out like a sheet above the body and eased it down to
cover him. She had never formally picnicked, yet the red-and-white checkered
pattern made her think of fried chicken and ants. Blood instantly seeped
through the white section of paper draping Cal’s head.

Trying to swallow the sadness
stuck in her throat, she walked away. As she did, she tucked away this
incident, completely incapable of processing yet another loss.

I should’ve gotten a drink too
, she realized once she was back out on the sidewalk
staring at the bottle of aspirin in her hand that she’d stolen from the store.
But she was afraid to return and risk rousing Tiny out of his stupor.

The din coming from the Buckhorn
had increased. Holloway Ranch headquarters, she figured.
Okay
, she tried
to steel herself. It was time for everyone to face facts: Melanie
Rhone—murdered, Zachary Rhone—most likely burned to death,
Cal—dead in the alley.
What’s next?

People are going to develop
gangrene. That’s what.
Maybe they already
had; she did not intend to go up to The Winslow to find out. But she was going
into that bar. And they were going to listen to her. And they were going to
agree that it was time to open the bridge and send somebody down for help.

As she approached, the voices of
men carried to her from the tavern, along with the easily recognizable,
annoying, high-pitched laughter of one boy: Tanner Holloway.

Sheer panic sliced through Hazel,
obliterating all thoughts except for one:
He didn’t make it out.

The realization froze her in place
because it meant that Tanner had been on the loose all this time, angry at her
for refusing to go with him, pissed-off and mouthy and out on the town.

She placed her hand over her
pounding heart.
He’s the only other person alive who knows Sean’s role in
all of this.
With sudden terror, Hazel understood just how dangerous that
made Tanner Holloway and his big fat mouth.

She pitched the bottle of aspirin
into the street and marched toward the bar.

After pushing through the batwing
doors into the Buckhorn, she spotted him right away. His back to the door, he
drank from a longneck bottle of beer next to Kenny Clark at the bar. There were
roughly fifteen ranch hands in the tavern, which meant most of her uncle’s men.
All of them, maybe, except Pard himself and Old Pete and Maggie Clark. Hazel
didn’t care.

They all watched—amused, it
seemed to her—as she stalked up behind Tanner and then struck him with her
fist on the side of his head.

He spun around on the barstool
with a stunned look on his face. “What the hell?”

“Why didn’t you leave?” she
demanded.

“Because
you
fiddle-fucked
around too long.” He smoothed his hair as if he still couldn’t believe she’d
hit him.

Somebody pulled the plug on the
jukebox and Hank Williams’ “Your Cheatin’ Heart” whrooed to a stop.

“Why did you lie?”

His mouth twitched upward. “Why
did I lie about what?”

“The quarantine, for starters.”

“I can’t imagine what you’re
talking about.” The mouth widened into a shit-eating grin.

He winced when she grabbed a
handful of his blond hair. “Why’d you bring up my mother?”

Tanner unfurled her grip on him,
then squeezed her hand so tight she marveled her bones didn’t crumble. “Thought
you’d want to know where she is.” He squeezed harder. “Don’t you?”

“Not anymore.” Hazel really needed
Tanner to let go of her hand. “She’s been lying to me all along. Letting me
believe it was my fault. She’s just like the rest of you Holloways. All liars.”

The men around the bar leaned in,
not wanting to miss a word. Kenny Clark sat cross-armed on the barstool beside
them, a smug look planted on his face as he lapped it up too.

“I’d never tell a lie.” Tanner
finally released her to make the Scout’s honor sign with one hand and a simple,
middle-fingered f-you with the other.

Kenny Clark laughed in her ear and
she batted her hand that direction but didn’t take her eyes off of Tanner’s
sneer. “I really wish you’d left,” Hazel said.

“It’s your fault I’m still here!”

“I wish you’d never come here in
the first place.”

Tanner squinted pale eyes at Hazel
before he got off his barstool to stand in front of her—his face only
inches from hers but she didn’t back off. Then he said loud and clear, “Just
answer me one thing, Hazel: Why’d that dumbass do it?”

Her stomach sank. She glanced
around the bar—the cowboys were quiet, staring at them.

She looked back at Tanner. “Shut
up.”

“Why?” He shrugged as if to say,
Sorry,
sucker
. “It’s a damn good question, you have to admit.”

“
Shut up.
” Her heart was
thumping so loud she worried they could all hear it. “Do not say another word.”

“But everyone wants to know.” He
gestured around the Buckhorn, grinning like the devil, and suddenly the men in
the bar were snickering at her. “C’mon, you remember what we talked about
yesterday. Here—I’ll refresh your memory: we talked a lot about flour.”

Her stomach dissolved completely.
She leaned closer to him and harshly whispered, “Like it or not—and I for
one do not—we are family, Tanner, and you
swore.
”

“Gee . . .” Tanner scratched his
head. “Now I’m the one who can’t remember. What exactly did I swear to again?”
He looked past her. “Do you remember what it was, Kenny?”

Kenny stood up from his cowhide
barstool and climbed onto the bar to better address the eager audience. “Sean Adair
knew the flour—”

Hazel sidestepped Tanner to the
bar and wrapped her good arm around Kenny’s left leg at the knee and yanked
hard. Caught completely off guard, Kenny’s balance buckled, sending him
crashing against the bar and then the barstool before he finally slammed down
on his back on the hardwood floor. Kenny yelped when he hit the floor, then
grunted as he tried to right himself like an overturned turtle.

Before he could recover Hazel
kicked him twice in the head, screaming, “I warned you, Kenny Clark. I warned
you that if you even
said his name again
I’d kick your ass!”

The ranch hands didn’t
interfere—but did, in fact, cheer her on to the accompaniment of Tanner’s
high laughter while Kenny tried to roll out of kicking range and she connected
with his ribcage.

Then over the blood rushing
through her ears she heard her uncle boom, “What the hell’s going on here?” and
everyone immediately simmered down.

Hazel gave a solid kick to Kenny’s
face and his nose went crooked and red. Even then she hardly felt through with
him. When she swung back her leg for another go, strong arms grabbed her up and
off her feet from behind, crushing her tender elbow in an explosion of fresh
agony. Then Pard carried her across the tavern as easily as if she were a
tantruming child. He set her back on her feet just inside the doorway where Old
Pete stood looking confounded.