In the Heart of the Wind Book 1 in the WindTorn Trilogy (32 page)

“I don’t know if I can drive in the snow.”

“Oh, merciful God,” Jamie whimpered. Gabe had followed him into his room. He covered his ears with his hands and pushed his face into the mattress, but he could hear the old man speaking softly to him, as though he had crawled inside Jamie’s head.

“Snow plows sure do make a mess of these roads, don’t they, Jamie?”

Jamie’s eyes opened.

“That’s right,” Gabe told him. “Think about the snow plows! They can cause a hell of a pothole, can’t they, Jamie?”

His breathing stopped.

“You don’t have snow plows in the South,” the black woman commented. “Don’t need ‘em. Ain’t no snow down here.”

His heart thudded hard in his chest.

“But you got snow plows up north, don’t you, Jamie?” the old man asked. “Up where it snows.”

His eyes widened.

“Or out in the Plains States,” Gabe injected. “Out in the heartland, Jamie.”

He drew in a hitching, gasping breath.

“Like out in I—O—way,” the black woman snapped.

Ahead of him, a patch of fog was lifting. He stared at the wall. The dimness was giving way to light. The darkness was receding. Slowly, but surely, the confusion was being pushed away.

“That’s it, Jamie,” he heard the black woman saying. “That’s it, baby. You can do it.”

“Just try, Jamie,” the old man encouraged him. “Just keep on trying.”

“He will, won’t you, Jamie?” the old woman asked. “You won’t let us down, will you?”

“Potholes in the roads, Jamie,” Gabe whispered urgently in his ear. “Potholes in the snow-covered roads.”

The mist wafted, a hole showing at its murky center. The mist pulled back, lurched, blowing away as though a breath of clean, pure air had whistled over it.

“Iowa,” he whispered, his heart aching.

“Yes, Jamie,” the old man sighed. “Iowa.”

He could see a bright, clear sky and rolling hills with every shade of autumn: red and gold, orange and yellow and every shade in between flowing softly across the landscape. An endless vista of clear, smogless, smokeless azure sky was stretching as far as he could see. Overhead, hawks soared on vagrant streams of ever-moving wind.

Back on earth, pheasants strutted proudly along rising and falling country lanes; wildflowers grew in profusion; willows spreading their lacy arms over meandering sun-shot silver streams and farm ponds, pussywillows standing sentinel proudly along the shore. Here and there were pastures of feeding cattle, squealing pigs and rollicking sheep.

Here and there were tall, shiny-roofed silos, red barns with gambrel roofs, white farm houses with lightning rods along the high ridges of their slate roofs, and white crossbuck fences stretching along the roadway, and barbed wire fencing in acres upon acres of lush pasture. Here and there were farmers on tractors, waving and smiling, tipping their caps, saying howdy in their slow midwestern twang.

Here and there were farm wives, feeding chickens, lifting a hand to acknowledge the beep of a horn. A wedge of Canada geese stitched across the sky, joining the clouds in a garment of wonder. There was the mighty river rolling, and iron spans of arching bridge connecting one glorious vista to another.

The sights of Iowa.

“Iowa,” Jamie said as a slow, painful tear eased down his cheek.

Fall festivals at the church with the smell of Iowa chops lingering in the air; community breakfasts at the Grange camp; volunteer firemen flipping flapjacks; Knights of Columbus frying fish during Lent; Polish suppers with brats and beer and kolaches, cherry-filled or plump with poppy seed; Amish raisin pie; Kiwanis barbecued chicken; orange roughie and fried cheese and mutton. Fresh corn on the cob and Muscatine melons.

The tastes and smells of Iowa.

Iowa: A Place To Grow. Iowa: Where The Heartland Begins. Iowa: his home.

The way became clear.

The way became solid.

The way opened for Jamie Sinclair like a rosebud blossoming.

“Potholes,” he whispered, slowly taking his hands down from his ears.

He saw county workmen, slow-moving and joking with one another, filling in the holes with buckets of tar; putting in their hours as they moved from one pothole to another along the road to Rock Creek.

He sat up.

“Potholes caused by the snow.”

Rock Creek—where he and Annie had lived.

Annie—the woman he loved; the woman who waited for him in Iowa. Who waited for him at home. The only real home he had ever known.

“Iowa.” It was more a sob than a word.

There was no mist in the room now. No mist clouding his eyes, his vision, his memory. A brightness had settled over the room, a lightness that shone like a beacon.

“Things flying.” His eyes narrowed.

Not the geese. Not the golden hawks or the kestrels.

“Rolling things, Jamie,” he heard Gabe whisper.

“Rolling away into that godawful snow, baby,” the black woman reminded him.

“What happens when you roll into a pothole, son?” the old man asked.

“Better yet, what rolls away when you hit a pothole, Jamie?” Gabe crooned.

Round things. Spinning. Shining as they rolled. Cartwheeling out. Becoming lost. Needing to be replaced.

Jamie’s eyes narrowed to thin slits of concentration.

“Think, Jamie,” Gabe insisted. “Think about things that have to be replaced.”

He was straining so hard to remember. There was something there, lurking just beyond his consciousness, waiting for him. Not hiding to jump out at him and hurt him, but to make him remember. It hovered there. Waited. Patiently. Benignly. Waiting to take him home.

“Iowa,” Jamie said aloud.

“Now think about those things that have to be replaced, Jamie,” Gabe insisted. “Think hard now.”

“There were stacks of them, baby,” the black woman reminded. “Stacks and stacks of them.” Her voice became urgent. “What were they, baby? What did you have to replace?”

What indeed?

“Those round, shiny things,” the old man whispered.

“Wheelcovers,” Jamie whispered back, his breath a hard shaft of tension in his chest.

“Wheelcovers for who?” the black woman asked.

Jamie looked toward his door. He saw the old woman and her son passing in the hall. Saw her glance his way. Smile uncertainly at him. Move out of his line of vision.

“Who is she, son?” the old man asked. “Who is that woman?”

“Miss Edna,” he sighed, her name like a talisman to ward off the evil surrounding him.

And with the name, full awareness returned to James Gabriel Tremayne.

The lush grounds
of The Chancel were lovely even in the dead, ash-gray light of winter. The tall sweeping oaks, laden with still-dropping leaves, arched over the brickway behind the mansion, and soughed politely in the errant breeze that played over the grounds. The shrubs were bare, but their shapes were still elegant, their plantings along the grounds in clusters of fours and fives gave evidence of just how beautiful the landscape would be with the return of spring.

A hiding sun peeked now and again from behind the gray sky, heating the ground as best it could, chasing away the briskness which made Edna Mae lean into the warmth of Kyle’s wool coat. Sunlight wove through the drapes of Spanish moss overhead and splashed over the two people.

“I don’t see any way to get into that bungalow,” Kyle said in a low voice.

Edna Mae looked at the red-tiled roof of the little building and shook her head. “Not unless we burst in there with Uzis blazing.”

Kyle looked down at her. “Uzis, Miss Edna?” He grinned. “Who’ve you been talking to?”

“Galen,” Edna Mae sniffed. “He showed me one of those little guns.”

Kyle chuckled. “It may be little, Miss Edna, but it’s loud!”

“I like my forty-four,” Edna Mae informed him. “That will stop a rogue elephant at twenty paces!”

Kyle, who was holding the old woman’s hand in the crook of his arm, leaned against her. “You’re a bloodthirsty little baggage, aren’t you?”

“I want my Gabe back,” Edna Mae said fiercely. She turned angry eyes to the bungalow. “He’s here, Kyle. I can feel it!”

Kyle sobered. “I can, too.”

“We’d better be headin’ back, Miss Elise,” Cobb called to them for they had ventured too close to the bungalow.

“Damn it,” Edna Mae swore beneath her breath. She turned, glowering at the black man. “I have to go to the ladies room, Martin. Can I use the facilities in this cottage?”

Cobb shook his head. “I don’t even have a key to that place, Miss Elise. Only Dr. Lassiter and the nurses go in there.”

“Who’s in there?” Kyle asked, letting go of Edna Mae’s hand and walking toward Cobb. “Is this where they’re keeping JFK? Or is Jimmy Hoffa in there?”

“I don’t think so, Mr. David. Just one of Dr. Lassiter’s special patients.” He lowered his voice as Kyle approached. “I hear the gentleman has leprosy.”

“Is that so?” Kyle turned his eyes to the bungalow. “They keep his face bandaged and all that?”

Cobb shrugged. “I don’t know, sir. I ain’t never seen the gentleman.”

“And no one else has either, have they?” Kyle asked. He schooled his face into a wide-eyed wonder of excitement and turned to grasp Edna Mae’s arms. “It’s Hoffa. That’s what happened to him, Mama! They’re hiding Jimmy Hoffa here! I bet they’ve given him a new face and he’s in there healing.”

“Oh, for the love of Pete, David,” Edna Mae said with feigned exasperation, rolling her eyes at Cobb. “Do come along before I soil my underthings!” She took his arm and began propelling him back toward the house before the amused look on Cobb’s face could settle to perplexity again.

He watched the
old woman saying goodbye to the blond-haired man. The man’s name was elusive, but he knew he knew it. It would come to him as the old lady’s had. It was only a matter of time.

And thought. Now that he was capable of thought.

Edna Mae Menke cocked her head to one side, waiting for the kiss the blond-haired man always gave her on her withered cheek. She fanned her fingers at those mulling around in the day room and left with her black chauffeur.

“Delbert,” Jamie thought. His name is Delbert and he’s the husband of the woman who hates snow.

“Be careful, Jamie,” the black woman had warned him as he had left his room earlier. She had come out of one of the rooms on his left.

Mary Bernice and Delbert Merrill.
The names flitted through Jamie’s mind like a firefly on a late summer’s evening.

The old man opened the door of one of the rooms on the right and fell in beside Jamie, walking along with him. “Don’t let them see you know these people, son.”

Jake.
Jake Mueller is his name and his wife’s name is Nora, Jamie remembered. She has this thing about snow shovels.

Gabe was following closely behind him, almost on his heels, whispering to him in that soft voice he was capable of using when he wasn’t angry at James.

“If you tell them who you are, they won’t believe you. Just look in the mirror and you’ll remember why.”

Jamie glanced at his reflection as he passed the glass door of the library. He didn’t look any different than he had that morning.

“It’s not Jamie they’re looking for,” Jake Mueller reminded him.

“They’re looking for me,” Gabe said.

“But I am you,” Jamie whispered, understanding making his heart throb with fear.

“You’re all of us,” a little boy’s voice sounded from far, far away. “You’ve got to help us all, Jamie.”

“Go on, son,” the old man told him. “Go on out there.”

Jamie walked down the corridor, his eyes never leaving the brightness that was the day room and the smiling, laughing face of Edna Mae Menke as she was getting ready to leave.

“Just remember we love you, Jamie,” Nora Mueller told him. “You and Gabe.”

Jamie stopped at the end of the corridor and looked back, aware that the others had stopped. He waited for them, but they shook their heads in unison.

“You don’t need us anymore, Jamie,” the black woman answered for them all.

Gabe lifted a hand. “See you around, old hoss.”

No, he thought, clarity and purpose chasing away the dullness in his mind. He didn’t need them anymore. Not as they had come to him. Not as they were as they began to fade in the corridor behind him. He smiled as the last outlines disappeared, then turned back to look at Edna Mae Menke.

“Come again, soon, Miss Elise,” Dr. Lassiter was telling her.

Not Edna Mae. No. Her name was Elise. Elise Boudreaux.
He had to remember that.

Edna Mae saw the young man staring at her from the corridor and waved at him. Her brows shot up when he lifted a hand and waved back. She smiled and he smiled back.

Jamie’s eyes followed her from the room, watching until the light green of her stylish wool dress coat was no longer visible. He walked to the window, looking out, wanting to see her car, needing to watch her for as long as he could, but he realized with a pang of sadness that he couldn’t see the driveway from this part of the house. He looked back at Kyle.