CHAPTER 30

JAN AND GINNY DROVE to the ranch from the graveyard, arriving late in the afternoon.  Melissa was buried in Jan’s family plot next to Emma.  The two would lie in silent vigil, overlooking the dusty little river town.  Melissa’s parents were not able, they said, to attend.  Jan marveled at that.  Father Aidan Sullivan had done the funeral.  He had phoned Jan upon hearing of the events at Dead Horse Gulch and the Medicine Wheel, asking how he could help.  What about the “little girl—Melissa?” he had asked.  At the funeral itself, Jan could detect no sense of condemnation from the priest, although Jan’s own mind was still deeply troubled.

After the funeral he pulled Sullivan aside.

“Aidan,” he said, “I have a friend in Montana who was raised a Catholic.  A couple of years ago he went through a catechism to study the foundations of the faith.  It didn’t work out for him, but it interested me when he spoke of it.  I remember I went through a similar kind of class when I was twelve.  Do you still do that, and is it something I could attend?”

The old priest looked deeply into Jan’s eyes as if to say “I wasn’t wrong about you.”  Instead he said, “Would you object to sitting in a class with three or four twelve-year-olds?”

“Not if I wouldn’t intimidate them.”

The priest snorted, “Nobody intimidates twelve-year-old catechism students.” 

***

The burned-out ranch house looked like a bomb crater.  A thirty-six-foot Pace Arrow motor home was parked next to the building, twin air conditioners humming on its roof.

“You got a big job here, cowboy,” Ginny said, eyeing the debris-strewn basement of the former house.

“I thought maybe you’d help me?” Jan said.

“Probably, but we need to talk about it.”

Jan looked at her quizzically.

“Look, Jan.  You have some decisions to make.”

Jan was silent.

Ginny continued, “You have a lot to think about.  Such as how we have been thrown together in all this.  I’m glad we have been and I hope it works out.  But I just think we need to back off and come at this again in a more…well, normal way.”

Jan smiled.  “You mean we should begin dating?”

Ginny smiled back.  “Yeah, I think that is what I mean.  But, you know what?  I think we ought to have a moratorium on that as well.  I saw you talking to Father Sullivan.  Why don’t you work on your foundations for the rest of the summer?  Let’s see where we are when the pumpkin frosts.”

Jan looked down at the ground.  Ginny reached out her hand and he took it.  Jan looked up again at Ginny, admiration filling his heart.

They walked down to the boathouse.  Huge cottonwoods shielded the sun, and a breeze off the river was actually cool.

“Last quarter moon tonight,” Jan said.

They sat on the old couch in silence.  After a few minutes, Ginny spoke.  “How were things at the compound?”

“Well, the Red Cross is helping Hansen’s and Campbell’s wives cope with their losses.  The leadership out there seems to be numb.  George Olson told me he thought he could engineer a breakup of the cult.  I’m not so sure, however.  These things, if my reading is correct, don’t ever end.  Somebody will step up to the plate, a new leader will emerge.”

“Did you say there was some grisly business come to light in Utah?”

“Yeah, seems like Hansen had a cabin down there in the Manti Mountains.  Apparently a half-mile out in the woods they found a rock with lots of recently-spilled human blood.  The investigators said the volume of the blood would be consistent with a blood atonement.”

“There seems to be no bottom to this stuff.”

“That’s what Monster thinks.  And by the way, Monster said that Akers told him Hansen killed one of his lieutenants in Jackson on the Saturday afternoon before we met him at Dead Horse Gulch.”

“No!”

“Yeah, Monster took that a little hard, because he made the decision to encounter Hansen after the Jackson trip.”

“How about Monster?  How’s he doing?”

“I worry about him.  I think he’s a man who could go his own way pretty easily.”

“Hasn’t he always?”

“To some extent.  But this little adventure is like nothing he has encountered before, especially the Melissa part.  He blames himself for her, because he allowed her to get involved.  Add all this to what he went through in ‘Nam…Someday I’ll tell you about that.  He got sort of confused over there.”

“Who didn’t?”

“Anyway, now, watching George Olson struggle with his politically correct superiors…I don’t know.  I think the sheriff is about to retire from law enforcement and go into Monster enforcement.  He has amassed a nest-egg that will cover his finances for the rest of his life.  He doesn’t need a job.”

“Scary, if you ask me.”

“Will definitely be interesting.”

The shadows from the cottonwoods lengthened out into the brown water.  A warm breeze stirred up a dust devil in the badland bluffs across the river.  Jan stood up and took down a bottle of whiskey from the shelf of the boathouse.  He unscrewed the cap and walked over to the edge of the dock.  He poured the bottle slowly, regretfully, into the river.  He doubted that it would work, but he was going to try it anyway.  He threw the bottle far out into the water and walked over and sat down on the couch.

A breeze broke whitecaps on the river.  The late afternoon heat warmed Jan to his bones.  He closed his eyes and leaned back on the soft couch.  He was thinking of Emma and Melissa and Monster and Bill Campbell and Ronald Hansen.  The images floated together as though drifting by on the slow, dark water of the river—Emma was smiling peacefully at him.

Ginny watched him for awhile.  When he began dozing, she stood, looking down at him.  She reached out and touched his hair.  Then she turned and walked up the path to her car.

T H E  E N D