29

Ed asked her questions, which she parried, about her husband and where she lived. She explained that she was widowed and comfortable. At first she had the suspicion that Ed was interested in her in a bluntly sexual way, but then she recognized the garrulousness of a man who liked people and spent most of his time alone.

A dog-eared multiple listing book fluttered at her elbow and small calendars advertising North Coast Realty scattered across the dash. A business card bearing a blue-tinted photograph of a thinner Ed Garfield floated in water on the floor.

The car smelled of worn upholstery and the deep dust and oil scent that cars develop, as an attic develops the scent of mildew. A metal clip held a sheaf of notes in a scrawled hand, as if Ed had trouble remembering the small details of his life, and recalled all too vividly the larger ones, the families and the deaths.

“What, exactly, is the trouble your wife is suffering from?” she asked gently.

“Oh, a thousand things. A thousand things that might have killed a weaker woman a long time ago. But she’s a fighter. A real fighter. I wish I had a fraction of her spirit.”

Fenceposts held barbed wire up into the rain, and No Trespassing signs were punched with bullet holes. Even the speed limit sign was gouged with ragged tears, and the skull of an animal, elegant and pale, stared off across the road as they passed.

“Coyote,” Ed said.

“I thought they should be larger, somehow.”

“They’re small, really. Small and quick.” He said it as if sad, and when he turned off the road she thought that he had been overcome by a private grief.

They passed a sign: McCORCKLE VINEYARDS. A gray horse watched them, and then turned away, up to his withers in gray grass. Ed stopped the car without any explanation and got out, squinting against the drops of rain that trickled down his face like sudden sweat.

He motioned her to follow, and she did, extricating her umbrella from the back seat. Ed’s manners, she reflected, were a little shabby, but she could not manage to be offended.

A huge place, dark, and smelling of wine. Or of the wine process: a sweet decay everywhere. Her steps resounded off the concrete floor, and were lost in the quiet of the barrels.

“Ed,” echoed a voice.

A young man put down a book, and Ed shook his hand and made a casual introduction. Complaints about the weather, the lack of business, and human frailty in general.

“I sent someone out to the old Parker place a few days ago.”

“I know,” said the young man, whose name was Randolph. “They stopped by and did some tasting. They bought some. Seemed pleased with it.”

“Of course they were pleased with it. This is one of the very best. Bar none.”

Randolph turned a page in his receipt book. “Two of our sauternes. I could tell he liked it from the moment he tasted it.” He looked from one to another of them. “There’s something wrong, isn’t there?”

“That’s what we want to know.”

“I hate that place!” said Randolph with such vehemence his voice resonated in the darkness above them. “I wish the place would burn, except burning would probably cast the evil all over the valley.”

Mary was stunned.

“Anyway, you won’t be able to get in there,” Randolph continued. “The road has never been much. More of a rough sketch than a road. There’s a landslide right where it meets the highway. Mud and boulders and roots. There’s no way.”

“We can borrow your jeep,” Ed replied.

“The jeep won’t make it over those boulders.” Randolph said this as if he didn’t want it to.

“We can try,” Ed snapped.

“I’ll be glad to compensate you for the trouble,” Mary said, twitching her purse.

Randolph laughed. “There are limits to what a jeep can do. It’s not a helicopter. It’s not a magic carpet. This thing is just a battered tin can. A four-wheel-drive tin can, okay, but it has big miles on it, and you just can’t expect—”

He met their stares, and looked down.

“I’ll snap an axle,” he murmured, finally.

“I’ll buy the jeep. Whatever you ask. Money is not an issue.”

Randolph eyed her.

“So, you see,” Ed said, clapping a hand on Randolph’s shoulder. “You can’t lose!”

Randolph tossed the receipt book to the desk. “I can always lose.”

“No time for pessimism. This lady’s worried about her son. You’ll loan the jeep, and you’ll drive it, too.”

“The sheriff says it’ll take them a week, and they might as well not bother. They started to push at it, but the crew gave up, or got called somewhere else. Just scraped it off the main road like so much sh—” Randolph stopped himself, and for a moment Mary thought that under very different circumstances she might be able to tolerate him.

“It’ll be dark in another hour,” Ed said quietly. “We might as well get started.”

Randolph laughed. “Get started going nowhere.” But he picked up a yellow slicker lying on the floor in a puddle of its own making. “Get started letting my jeep sink to the bottom of a mud pile.”

“You go on and get the jeep,” said Ed quietly, “and lock this place up, or whatever you have to do. We’ll be waiting outside.”

They stood under the edge of the roof. The horse watched them, as if he could not believe they were real. He put his head down to the grass, and then looked up again, glistening with water.

A sliding door groaned, and a lock rattled. Rain fell as far as she could see, until the hills across the road rose into the low clouds. An engine rumbled, and a white jeep rolled around the corner of the building.

Except that it wasn’t entirely white. Rust holes gaped along the bottom of the chassis, and red rust divots scarred the hood. Rust had wept from the sores in the paint, and the tires were gouged. There was no top, and already water pooled in the valleys in the seats.

Randolph grinned from under a yellow rain hat like an inverted dish. “You’ll see what I mean. We’ll be back in ten minutes.”

Mary erected her umbrella, and sat in the back of the jeep, facing sideways. She gripped the umbrella hard, and lurched with the jeep as it bounded over ruts. She barely noticed where they were going.

She found that she had closed her eyes. When she opened them, fenceposts blurred past, and she had to fight her umbrella and finally close it. Rain ran through her hair like icy fingers, but she didn’t mind it. She was going to be cleansed of all the bad things.

The jeep wrenched to a stop. “See!” cried Randolph. “There’s no way.”

The side of a mountain had collapsed, leaving a cliff-face like a sliced loaf. Gray-blue stones the size of human heads scattered across a pudding of smaller, more jagged stones, and black roots stitched the surface.