Tombstone Courage (8 page)

A
S HE
drove home to the Rocking P, Harold Patterson found himself in a state of hopefulness that verged on euphoria. It was going to work. Holly would see him. The woman named Amy, who was Holly's therapist or nurse or whatever, had been genuinely helpful. That was something he had never anticipated. He had built her up in his mind, expecting her to be some kind of monster. Rather than throwing him out of the house as soon as she learned who he was, Amy Baxter had been almost cordial.

He had sat nervously in
Casa Vieja
's long, box-beamed living room, waiting for Amy to return from upstairs to tell him whether or not Holly would see him. When she first said Holly wouldn't be down right away, he had been crushed. Then, after learning she would see him later on in the afternoon, he was almost ecstatic.

Talking to Amy had given him some clues as to what he might expect of Holly's current state of mind. “Don't be surprised if she acts a little odd,” Amy had said. “She has these little spells. They come and go. Sometimes she's better, sometimes worse.”

No doubt, had the lawyer been there—had
either
one of the two lawyers been there—Harold was sure things would have gone in a far different fashion. He had been right to go on his own.

But now, with the prospect of finally confronting Holly only an hour away, he had to break the news to Ivy as well. He had two daughters, and if they were going to be neighbors on the Rocking P, if they were going to live in such close proximity, then one couldn't be privy to the terrible secret without the other knowing as well.

Harold pulled into the yard and was relieved to see Ivy's faded red four-by-four Luv pickup parked near the front gate. She was home. The only question now was would she listen to him? Would she give him a chance to talk?

Moving stiffly, slowly, Harold climbed out of the Scout just as the front screen door slammed open. A man named Yuri Malakov came out of the house, his arms stacked high with boxes.

“Hey,” Harold said. “What's going on? What are you doing?”

Harold knew the man to be a newly arrived Russian immigrant and a friend of Ivy's. Marianne Maculyea, the pastor up at Canyon Methodist Church, had hooked Ivy up with some kind of literacy program. For the past few weeks, the huge Russian and his stack of books had become a constant evening fixture at the Patterson kitchen table. By day, Malakov worked as a hired hand over at the Robertson place a few miles closer to Tombstone on Highway 80. By night, he and Ivy studied grammar and vocabulary.

Yuri stopped short when he encountered Harold standing on the porch. A few seconds later, the door opened again, and Ivy pushed her way out, a loaded suitcase in each hand.

“What are you doing?” Harold asked again.

Ivy shouldered past him. “Come on, Yuri. Those boxes should go in first. There's another stack in the kitchen that's all ready to go. Bring them, too.”

Obediently, Yuri shoved the boxes into a spot left in the back of the already loaded pickup. Then, without a word to Harold, he turned and headed back into the house.

Ivy was short, stocky, and solidly built—an exact duplicate of her mother. After years of hard physical labor, of digging fence-post holes and wrestling stock, Ivy Patterson was far stronger than she looked. She reached down and effortlessly tossed the suitcases into the bed of the truck.

“Are you leaving?” Harold asked, unwilling to believe the evidence offered by his own eyes.

“You could say that,” Ivy answered. She didn't look at him as she hurried past to retrieve the next stack of boxes Yuri was in the process of depositing on the front porch.

“But what's happening? Where are you going?”

“I don't think that's any of your business.”

“None of my business?” he echoed. “How can that be? I'm your father.”

“Well, pin a rose on you!” The cold bitterness in Ivy's usually kind voice shocked Harold as much as if she had slapped his face.

“Ivy, please. I've got to talk to you.”

“Don't bother. I already know. Burtie called and gave me the news.”

“He shouldn't have done that.”

“Well, he did. And if you think I'm going to live here and share my home with that woman, you're crazy.”

“But, Ivy, she's your sister, and you have no idea what she's been through. She's had some bad luck, some really hard times.”

“Haven't we all. Get the tarp, Yuri,” Ivy said, turning her back on her father. “I doubt it's going to rain anymore, but we'll lash it down just in case. That way, nothing will fly out of the truck once we hit the highway.”

Together they spread the tarp over the load. While Ivy began expertly tying it down, Harold limped over to the edge of the porch.

On either side of the top steps, framing the entrance to the porch, stood the knotted trunks of two huge wisteria vines. Harold had planted them himself when they were little more than twigs. Those two vines had been Emily's pride and joy, coming to the house with her when she first arrived as a bride. He had always teased Em by telling her that those vines with their generous summer shade and sweet-smelling flowers were the best part of her dowry. In actual fact, they had been Emily Whitaker Patterson's only dowry.

Slowly, struggling to steady his breath, Harold eased himself down against one of the trunks and looked up at the twining branches, leafless, now, and empty with the approach of winter. The twisted wood looked ancient, brittle, and lifeless—
as though a strong breeze would splinter it into a million pieces. Harold felt the same way.

“As soon as we unload this, we'll come back for the horses. Natasha Robertson said Bimbo and Sam can stay on their place until I make other arrangements. They sure can't stay with me at an apartment in town, and Yuri can look after them when I can't.”

“Ivy, please listen to reason. You don't have to leave home. It isn't like that. You've got to understand.”

Handing the rest of the lashing process over to Yuri, Ivy Patterson stalked over to the bottom of the step. “What do I have to understand?”

“Why I'm doing what I'm doing. I have to talk to you. In private. I can't say what I have to say in front of anyone else, anyone outside the family.”

She eyed her father coldly. “Yuri is family,” she answered. “We're going to be married as soon as we can make arrangements. Look.”

Ivy held up her left hand. Harold was astonished to see a ring where there had never been one before.

“Don't you recognize it?” Ivy asked. “It's Mother's. The one she gave me before she died. On what little he makes, Yuri couldn't afford to buy me a ring. It's lucky I happened to have one.”

Harold Patterson was dumbfounded. “How can this be? How come I didn't know anything about it?”

“Because you weren't interested,” Ivy responded. “Because you were so wound up wor
rying about what was going to happen with Holly that you couldn't see the nose on your face.”

Harold glanced at Yuri, who was standing by the truck. The Russian was looking up at them quizzically, his huge hands dangling awkwardly by his sides.

“But you haven't known him very long, have you?” Harold objected. “How can you be sure…?”

“How long did you know Mother?” Ivy countered. “And I'm a lot older now than either of you were then. I'm forty years old. I've got a chance to grab some happiness before it's too late, and I am by God taking it.”

“Does Burton know about this? Did you tell him anything about it?” Harold asked.

“No, I didn't tell Burton. Why should I? This isn't the old days, Pop. I don't have to ask permission from every male relative before I make a decision. It's my life. I've spent all these years putting other people first. Well, I've learned my lesson. I'm not going to do that anymore.”

“But what about the ranch? What about the Rocking P?”

“What about it?” she raged back at him. “Have Holly come take care of it.”

“She can't. She's sick. She's been sick for a long time.”

“She's sick, all right,” Ivy retorted. “Holly's a drug addict, Dad. Face it. She may have had talent once, but she's burned her brain up on booze and cocaine and God knows what else.”

“A drug addict? Are you sure?”

“She's been in and out of treatment half a dozen different times. That's one of the reasons Burton doesn't want you to settle with her. If it comes down to your word against hers, who's going to believe her?”

Without answering, Harold leaned back against the wisteria trunk and closed his eyes.

“You went to see her, didn't you?” Ivy flared. “You've made arrangements to settle, haven't you?”

“Not yet,” Harold murmured. “But I will. Later on today.”

“Why?”

“Because she couldn't see me right then.”

“I don't give a damn what time you go see her. What I want to know is why did you go at all? Burton told me what he thinks, but I want to hear it from you, from your own lips.”

Yuri moved closer to Ivy. Towering over her by nearly two feet, he put one protective hand on her shoulder. For years Harold Patterson had longed for someone to come into his younger daughter's life, someone who would honor her and care for her the way she deserved. Yet now that Yuri had showed up on the scene, he seemed like more of an enemy than a friend.

Harold was glad the letter was still safely stashed in his box at the bank. After all those years, now that he was finally willing to share the awful secret with his two daughters, this one demanded unreasonable conditions. He couldn't see spilling his guts after all these years with some
interloping stranger hanging on every word. Harold shook his head helplessly and didn't answer.

Ivy shrugged off Yuri's hand and moved closer, leaning forward until her face and her father's were only inches apart. “Is it true, then?” she demanded. “Is that it?”

“No,” he protested, holding up his arm as if deflecting a physical blow. “It's not that at all. You've got to believe me.”

“Well, I don't. And no one else will, either, not if you settle. If you were innocent, you'd go to court to prove it. In the meantime, don't bother splitting the ranch. Go back to Holly and tell her she can have the whole damn thing. I don't want any part of it. Let her come back home and take care of you the way I took care of Mother if it ever comes to that. She can be the one who keeps the doors locked so you don't wander outside without remembering to put your clothes on the way Mother did.”

“Ivy, please…”

But Ivy wouldn't stop. “And when it gets to the point where you can't feed yourself anymore, let your precious Holly be the one to ladle the soup into your mouth and change the filthy sheets and empty the damn bedpans. Tell her I've already done it once. Tell her I've already served my time, and I'll be goddamned if I'll do it again! Come on, Yuri, let's go.”

As afternoon sunlight warmed the wet yard, a few chickens, the peacock, and two peahens had ventured into the yard and were scratching for bugs in the damp dirt outside the fence. Harold
sat without moving while the Luv roared away, sending startled fowl squawking in every direction.

Only after the Luv was entirely out of sight did he get up and wander into the house. With a despairing gaze, he stood in the middle of the room and looked at the things that were missing—the things Ivy had packed to take with her—pictures, books, knickknacks that were probably every bit as much hers as they were his.

He stumbled over to the armchair in front of the fireplace where a small fire still burned on the grate. It was too bad he hadn't brought the letter with him. He could just as well give up and burn the damned thing. The fire would have been only too happy to consume the old yellowed paper saturated with candle wax.

But giving up would have been too easy, and that wasn't Harold's style. Instead, he lurched to his feet and hurried through the house. In his bedroom, he leaned into his age-mottled mirror and combed his sparse hair. He was old and butt-sprung all right but he could still take care of his ownself. So far, anyway.

After sprinkling on a dab of Old Spice, Harold Patterson clambered into the Scout and once more headed for
Casa Vieja
.

L
ATER ON
, when Burton Kimball tried to recall the exact sequence of events, it was difficult for him to sort out that long, emotionally troubling afternoon. What he did know for sure was that it had been right about noon when he strode into the Blue Moon Saloon and Lounge, and all he could think about was Ivy, poor Ivy. What could he do to help her? What would become of her if she lost the Rocking P? Where, for instance, would Ivy go looking for a job?

Cattle ranching was all Ivy Patterson had ever known or cared to know. Working with her father on the ranch had been her whole life, but if cowboys were a dying breed, cowgirls were even more so. When Trigger, Roy Rogers' old horse, went to the great pasture in the sky, someone had gone to the trouble of calling in a taxidermist to stuff the carcass. But whatever happened to Dale Evans' horse? Burton wondered morosely. The way the world worked, Buttermilk probably turned into a horsehide sofa.

The bartender at the Blue Moon, a young slender blonde Burton Kimball never remembered seeing around town before, came out from behind
the bar to take his order. Burton pulled himself out of the depressing morass of thought only long enough to order a Bloody Mary. As soon as the bartender walked away, he returned to his somber contemplation of Ivy Patterson's dismal future and Holly's treachery.

Because that's how Burton saw it—as treachery pure and simple. Holly's allegations of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her father were too much a part of current pop-psychology myth—a belief system that tended to blame everything from ingrown toenails to snoring on the convenient bogeyman of childhood abuse. The presence of Amy Baxter, a supposedly internationally recognized hypnotherapist, was designed to lend legitimacy to Holly's claims.

But Burton Kimball wasn't about to fall for the phony visiting-expert-therapist gambit. Amy Baxter's professional attendance on Holly's team didn't impress him any more than Rex Rogers' out-of-town lawyer act did. Despite Rogers' pious claims to the contrary, the expected courtroom confrontation with her father had been played up as a necessary part of Holly's recovery.

They could all claim until the cows came home that Harold Patterson was Holly's only target, but Burton Kimball knew better. Harold's destruction was only a means to an end. Holly's real target was Ivy.

It had been that way from the beginning, almost from the moment Ivy was born. Long before the baby could talk or defend herself, Burton remembered Holly pinching her baby sister when she
thought no one was looking just to hear Ivy cry. When Burton had tried to tell his Aunt Emily, he had been punished for being a tattletale; for making things up.

And if Holly had hated Ivy then, now she had far more cause. After all, Ivy was still “the baby,” still the well-loved child—the easygoing, cooperative kid who never gave anyone a moment's trouble. For someone who was a born troublemaker, whose entire family had been only too happy to see her leave home at sixteen, it had to be galling for Holly Patterson to come face-to-face with a sister who had never been thrown out of the nest; one who, at age forty, was still living happily at home.

It hardly mattered that Holly had gone off into the world, finding success in life and losing same. As far as Burton could see, her favorite role had always been that of spoiler, of someone far more interested in destroying someone else's happiness than in creating her own. It stood to reason that if Ivy wouldn't leave her comfortable nest on the Rocking P, if Harold couldn't be prevailed upon to give his daughter the necessary shove, then Holly would simply demolish it, making the ranch untenable and useless for all concerned.

That seemingly had been her intention, and Burton Kimball's only interest was to stop her. In attempting to do so, he had discovered the reality of what Harold Patterson only now suspected. Holly's much-vaunted success was nothing but a sham. Yes, she had an Oscar—at least she had won one once. But she had slipped a long way from
the pinnacle. In preparing Harold's defense, Burton had learned the truth about the extent of Holly's drinking and drugging; about her ongoing merry-go-round of treatment and relapse.

Burton could see now that he had been wrong to withhold that information from his client, but he had done so deliberately. He knew Harold too well. The old man was all wool and a yard wide. Burton had worried that if Harold had guessed how desperate Holly was, he'd simply give away the store. And now, despite Burton's scheming to the contrary, that's exactly what had happened. Burton had counted on going to court. Had banked on Harold's not caving in to Holly's demands; on his being able to demonstrate to the jury exactly what kind of person she was. Now the awful reality was slowly sinking into Burton's consciousness. He had been outmaneuvered.

Without paying much attention, he downed one drink and ordered another. The problem at the moment was finding a way to regain control. Harold had made up his mind to settle, and once Harold Patterson made up his mind about something, it would be a hell of a job to change it. The biggest difficulty with someone like Harold was the fact that his word was his bond, and so was his handshake. He'd do what he said he would do regardless of whether or not his name was on the dotted line. It was slimy bastards like Rex Rogers who never made a move until all contracts had been properly drawn, signed, and executed.

Suddenly, sitting there by himself in the booth, Burton Kimball wondered if Ivy knew she was
about to be run over by a train; wondered if she had any idea what her father intended to do.

Ethically, Burton didn't have a leg to stand on, but it wasn't fair for her not to have some warning. Burton waved to the bartender. This time, when she approached the booth, he asked her if he could use the phone. At first, he thought she was going to turn him down, but then she relented. Directed to the phone in the back room, Burton dialed the Rocking P. The phone rang and rang, but no one answered.

Leaving the phone, a slightly tipsy Burton Kimball returned to the table, where a new Bloody Mary was waiting for him. Now that he'd decided to do it, now that he'd decided to tell Ivy, he could hardly contain himself. He gulped that drink and hardly noticed that this one was much hotter than the other two. And much stronger. When it was gone, he tried the phone once more and ordered yet another drink.

By the end of the fourth drink, Burton Kimball was well on his way to being drunk. He was also more than a little worried. He should never have told Harold he quit. That was dumb. How would he ever be able to lobby on Ivy's behalf if he was outside the case looking in? He should probably track Uncle Harold down and unresign. Was unresign a word? Disresign maybe? There had to be some kind of word that said what he meant, but he couldn't think of it.

There may have been more drinks after that. Burton seemed to remember singing show tunes with a toothless old miner at the end of the bar.

By the time he finally reached Ivy by phone, Burton could barely talk. Mumbling incoherently, he blurted out the news. The dead silence on the other end of the line sobered him instantly.

“Ivy,” he said, when the silence persisted. “Say something. Are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” she said. But she didn't sound fine.

“Do you want me to come out? Can I do something to help?”

“You've done enough,” she said.

When he put down the phone, a subdued and surprisingly sober Burton Kimball paid his bill. The bartender had been very nice, so he left her a sizable tip. Unfortunately, as soon as he stepped outside, as soon as the bright sunlight hit him, he was drunk again.

Staggering, Burton managed to make it down the street without seeing anyone who knew him. He found his car and succeeded in inserting the key in the lock on the fifth try. Settling in the seat with his head against the backrest and telling himself that all he needed was a little nap, Burton Kimball passed out cold.

 

For a fleeting moment, when he first awakened in the shadowy gloom, Harold thought it was all a dream—the same one he always had, the terrible nightmare that had haunted his sleep and hounded him out of bed for more years than he cared to remember.

The dream was forever the same. Harold would find himself trapped in a glory hole, in one of those useless, abandoned exploratory shafts that
riddled the stony pastures of the Rocking P. And it always took place in the very same glory hole—the deepest one, the one nearest the summit of the Mule Mountains, high up among the red rockbound, scrub-oak-dotted cliffs called Juniper Flats.

In his sleep, Harold's nightmare prison was just like this real one, measuring eight feet in diameter by thirty feet deep. Uneven slide-prone sides rose in an almost perpendicular fashion from a dank, rain-puddled floor to the rounded lip at the top, left by a pile of excavated tailings. Rocks and other things—foul things he didn't want to think about—littered the floor and made footing uncertain.

In real life, a sturdy barbed-wire fence surrounded the tailings mound and separated it and others like it from the Rocking P's pastureland. The fence served as a lifesaving deterrent to thirsty desert-dwelling livestock that might otherwise be drawn to their deaths by the luring smell of water. In Harold's dream, the fence never did any good, because it never kept him from falling in and being trapped.

Each time the nightmare opened, Harold would find himself on his hands and knees, his desperate fingers groping and clawing along the steep wall, searching for some hold, some purchase, that would allow him to scramble up and out of his rocky cage. But each movement, each tentative touch, would jar loose stones and pebbles that would rain back down on his body, sending dirt and gravel spewing into his watering eyes and
mewling mouth, battering him into the ground like some shamed biblical harlot.

In his terror, he always cried out to Emily. “Help me, Em. Please help.”

Of course, Emily never answered his panic-stricken cries, and why would she? She'd been dead for five years now and marooned out of reach for many years before that. Emily Patterson was long dead but not forgotten.

On this day, though, once his brain cleared, Harold realized this waking nightmare was no dream. Instead of sopped, sweat-drenched bedsheets beneath him, when he came to himself there were rocks—real rocks—that were all too cold and sharp, especially the one that was biting painfully into his shoulder. This time he really was trapped in the dank depths of that very same glory hole, the one he had always avoided whenever possible.

He lay flat on his back and tried squinting up through the darkness at the distant blue far above him. That had to be sky, although he couldn't really tell for sure, couldn't actually see it. His glasses had somehow disappeared in what must have been a fall although Harold couldn't remember it. Without his trusty spectacles, Harold Patterson was as good as blind.

Blind, he thought grimly, but maybe not helpless. He tried to shift his weight then, to dislodge whatever it was that was digging into his shoulder. But even that slight motion was too much. A crushing wave of pain washed over him—a pain so intense that it flattened him, robbed him of breath, and rolled his eyes back into his head.

Ribs, he thought to himself when he struggled back to wavering consciousness. Shattered ribs. No telling what damage they might do if he tried to move again, if they poked into something vital—a lung perhaps, or maybe even his wildly pounding heart.

So he lay still and tried to think, tried to imagine what he could do to save himself. The glory hole that had for years tormented his sleep was miles from the house, so there was no point in calling out for help. No one would hear him. Unless someone came out there deliberately. Unless they came looking for him.

He tried then to remember how it was that he had come to be near the glory hole in the first place. Had he been out doing chores? Feeding cattle? Working fences? Try as he might, he couldn't corral his memory into any kind of order. Whatever had happened earlier in the day, before he fell into the hole, remained a total mystery, as did the days immediately preceding that. It was as though his memory of the last few days prior to this terrible awakening had been wiped out of existence.

Had he told anyone he'd be working this part of the ranch? Would anyone have an idea of where to start looking once he turned up missing? If he couldn't remember how or why he had come to be there, would anyone else? Would Ivy realize he was hurt and institute a search, or would she simply shrug her shoulders and forget it, annoyed that her father was once again late for dinner?

At first shock helped deaden the pain, but as
that natural analgesia disappeared, increasing clarity brought with it excruciating agony. Even lying perfectly still, the shattered ribs still stabbed and poked at him with each ragged breath. He was aware of shards of splintered bone pressing and piercing where no bone should have been.

In addition to the pain, he grew increasingly aware of a familiar but fetid smell. It was some time before recognition crystallized in his brain. The appalling stench—a combination of human excrement and urine—belonged to him. Both bowel and bladder must have let go at once. He had no control whatsoever.

Harold Lamm Patterson was an experienced stockman who understood the meaning of such things. If he was lying in a pool of his own bodily filth and waste with no muscle control and no sensory awareness from the bottom of his fractured ribs down, that meant his back was broken. It meant he was going to die.

That realization was too much for him. Mercifully, he again lost consciousness. For the time being, his physical pain eased, but not the mental torment, for soon the dream came again—the dream this time somehow layered in with nightmarish reality. The part of him that recognized it as a dream welcomed it, even though it was more vivid, more terrifying, than ever before.

The scene had barely opened—he was still crawling around, looking for a way out—when the rocks began to fall in a horrifyingly accurate barrage. At first, only small pebbles rained down on him, but the sizes of the rocks grew steadily larger
and their weights heavier. He tried dodging out of the way, but he couldn't. There was no place to hide. No place to get away.