When Jenkins opened his eyes, Hazel was beside him. She wore a blue nylon poncho he’d never seen. Her hair was wet and disheveled. She looked thinner and the habitual frightened expression in her eyes was noticeably gone. Apparition or answered prayer, he wasn’t sure.
Justice saw no child. He assumed Lucas was dead. His only son dead. It was Hazel’s fault. She’d wrenched him from the circle of his father’s love and protection. She’d exposed him to the storm. Justice turned away in disgust. When he looked again, she hadn’t moved. He could see her eyes were also filled with blame. She blamed him.
“Where’d you leave him?” he growled.
“I didn’t leave him, Mr. Jenkins,” she said.
“Where’s his body then?”
Hazel set her misshapen teeth on her lower lip. “He done got well. He got professional licensed help. Otherwise, he’d have died.”
Justice cast her a look of disbelief. If only to prove her wrong, she sensed he wished Lucas was dead. But she wasn’t wrong. Justice would be forced to admit she did the right thing.
“That’s good,” he sighed wearily. His son had come back to him like Isaac to Abraham, Joseph to Jacob. “But where is he?”
“He nearly died from fever but I found a doctor who saved him. The doctor got liquids in him. The doctor and Kate kept him alive. They stayed up all night. They saved our boy, Mr. Jenkins.”
As Justice listened, he guessed the boy had died and his wife lost her mind.
“What doctor, Hazel?”
“They did it with Jesus guiding them, the doctor and Jesus. He’s a Jew like Jesus.”
“What you talking about?”
“Jesus and Dr. Tanner.”
Justice twisted her hair.
“Maybe you didn’t know about all that,” she said, slipping out of reach.
“Where’s my boy?” he demanded.
“Doctor got him, making sure his vital signs are good before he gives him back.”
Hazel had followed Kate and David up Bargamin Creek and led them to the entrance of the camp. She left them with Lucas at the boulder. Against her husband’s will, she had taken Lucas away and returned with her own will. She believed she could intervene for Ruby.
The storm had blown east. The day was clear and warm. On such days, Kate thought only good was possible. Sometimes weather was how she sorted out good from bad.
“Let’s go in,” David said.
They squeezed between the crevice of rock and followed the path, stepping across the runnels of rainwater. In the wind, the wet trees showered a thousand drops to the ground. The sound was lovely. Nature laughing. Another sign, Kate thought.
Hazel and Justice Jenkins were at the end of the clearing when Kate and David appeared, Lucas in David’s arms.
Jenkins strode toward them, his eyes like sparks.
He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner.
Fear rippled through David. Justice Jenkins might prove too much for him. David was mostly reason and Jenkins was reason’s opposite. Madness, he supposed. A man possessed.
He responded with a prayer from his youth.
Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man: preserve me from the violent man; which imagine mischiefs in their heart: continually are they gathered together for war.
Jenkins’s lips curled.
My flesh and my heart faileth; But God is the rock of my heart and my portion for ever.
“We’ve brought back your son,” David said.
Justice stopped only inches away. “He’s all right then?”
“We’re watching him. His breathing isn’t normal yet.”
“His mother can tend him,” Jenkins said, reaching for the child.
“We haven’t come to bother your people here.” David held onto Lucas. “We’ve come to take Ruby and her cousin home.”
“They trespassed.”
“We’ve all trespassed,” David said.
“Where are they?” Kate cried.
“Let them go, Justice,” Hazel demanded.
Kate took David’s arm. They stood bonded with Jenkins’s child.
Justice Jenkins was confounded. He had again lost control. Within twenty-four hours, a third pair of strangers had invaded Patriot Park. Mongrels, charlatans, perverts, Jews, they’d poisoned Hazel.
David would have to be canny but he was tired. Jenkins had weapons and men, Ruby and Quinn. However, he had Lucas. He spoke.
The Lord said to Moses, ‘Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt; afterwards he will let you go hence; when he lets you go, he will drive you away completely.’
He watched Jenkins’s face, gambling he would understand the threat of the last plague. David held Lucas in the barter. To get his son, Jenkins would have to barter too.
Across the clearing, a white-haired man emerged from a tepee. A capote, cut and sewn from a Pendleton blanket, was thrown over his shoulders. He carried a staff. He was barefoot, his instep bandaged. He limped toward them. He nodded to his brother. He smiled at Lucas and Hazel.
“They come for Ruby and the boy,” Justice said.
Eli jerked his head toward the tepee. “Ruby’s gone.”