The Wishing Garden (34 page)

They breathed in sync, in shallow, jerky breaths. When Doug fell asleep, he dreamed animal dreams. He had paws instead of feet and ran faster than he’d ever imagined, through forests so heavily timbered, his fur was scraped off by pine bark. He had amazing spring to his legs, he could leap over granite boulders twice his height.

He spotted his prey just a few yards ahead, a white rabbit, gone still with fear. He growled from deep in his throat, but when he went to charge it, he couldn’t move. His chest was on fire; his paws twitched, then slipped out from under him. He fell to the ground, pine needles piercing his belly. His tongue lolled out the side of his mouth. He looked up to find a frail, white-haired man bending over him.

When Doug opened his eyes, Sasha was curled into him. His own chest rose and fell evenly, but hers labored, and her tongue hung out of her mouth. Doug reached over and scratched behind the ears.

“Nothing to be afraid of,” he said. “Just a bit of dying, old girl.”

She pressed her head against his hand, then dropped her chin to the ground. She shuddered, but when he put his ear to her chest, he could still hear the shaky beat of her heart.

He got to his feet, then reached for a tree to hold on to. He could walk a mile now, but the corners of his vision were going black. The tips of his fingers were numb. As he headed back to the cabin for Jake, he had to feel his way through, tree to tree.

Sasha saw colors now. Before, the world had been black and white, but now the good man’s face was lavender
and chartreuse and mustard and a marvelous lime green. He came in and out of focus, but when he got close enough, Sasha managed to lift up her head and lick his bearded chin.

She could hear the good man crying, saying her name, but she was floating now, dancing on air. Her bones no longer ached; in fact, she couldn’t find her paws, or any fur to lick. She’d been snatched by the wind and carried up over treetops. She growled at a robin flying by, then looked down and saw her old body, which the good man was hugging fiercely.

She swooped down and looked up through her body’s eyes at this man she loved. She was afraid to leave him, afraid he might not know how to love anything but dogs, but the air smelled of a hundred irresistible scents, all the colors were Day-Glo, and devotion didn’t stop here, no matter what the man might think.

Her legs jerked in release, the man cried out, and she wished she spoke his language so she could tell him it didn’t hurt at all.

The man’s tears fell on her snout and slipped into her mouth. She drank them down, but her throat was still parched. The man clutched at her, but she was already floating again. Gabe and Rufus were circling her now, howling. They would mourn her for a day, then get on with things, the way dogs did. Life for a dog was too short to do otherwise.

Sasha sailed up past the detestable chipmunks, up over the hundred-year-old ponderosa that had withstood a dozen lightning strikes. When she looked down again, past the splintered crest, she saw the good man’s bent head. She tried to swoop back to take him with her, but the air was too light and the colors too mesmerizing, and soon she was sucked up into the sky.

*  *  *

Jake crouched over his dog, his chin pressed into her fur. Savannah had come to the meadow with him and now she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. He must have let something awful out of his throat, because she squeezed harder, and Rufus and Gabe howled.

“This is your good world,” he said. “You love one thing and then it dies.”

Savannah squeezed him tighter. She was crying, too. He could feel her tears sinking through his shirt, but he made no move to comfort her. She was just going to leave him anyway.

She rocked him back and forth. She pried his hands out of Sasha’s fur and looped her fingers through his.

“I loved her,” he said.

“Well, thank God. You just stand here and thank God for that.”

She was stronger than he’d thought; she yanked him right to his feet. She wore a red gauze dress and straw hat and, even through his grief, Jake knew she had him, like a pebble in her hand she could play with or toss away.

“We’ll bury her on your mountain,” she said. “That’ll give Roy some unexpected company. Dogs are the best ghosts, you know. They come on full moons and bark like crazy. They don’t take any crap.”

He had the strangest thought: He needed her to make him real. He’d been only a shadow on his mountain and hadn’t materialized into substance until she looked at him head-on.

“You never lose them, that’s what I’m saying,” she said. “You never lose what you love best. That’s why I haven’t lost Emma, no matter what she might think.”

He was never going to get an invitation, he saw
that now. She wouldn’t be able to stand the silence here much longer; she certainly wasn’t going to stick around to watch her father die. She would return to sea level, where people didn’t hallucinate about ghosts and love, where the air was so dense, no one could take a deep breath of anything. She would never ask Jake to come with her. There was no reason she should, no reason to think he could ever give up his little, damaged life. But if he just stood here, the ground might open up beneath him. The only way to keep from falling in was to hold on to her.

He leaned down and stroked Sasha’s fur once more, then stood up as straight as he could. “When you leave, I’m coming with you.”

She leaned back to look at him. If she didn’t take him now, he would go into the woods and not stop walking. He would be one of those men backpackers found beside streams in the spring, the meat stripped from his bones long after he’d died of some mysterious hunger.

He wanted to state his case, to plead, but all he did was stand there. When she just went on staring at him, he looked into the sun. “Please. Say something.”

She put her hands on each side of his face and pulled him down to kiss him.

Bronco Liquor was just outside of Prescott, off Highway 69. The owner was a sixty-year-old named Bob Simon, who had made the mistake, a few years back, of hiring Rick Laufer’s older brother Phil, despite his felony record. Phil had worked at the liquor store for two years, with full access to the safe. He had repaid Bob Simon’s trust by selling cocaine from the storeroom and, right before he was arrested for dealing,
slipping the combination of the safe to his younger brother.

Late Thursday night, Rick sat beside Pippen in the front seat of his Mustang, waiting for the one car in the parking lot to pull out. Emma was in the back with Eli and Jack; she’d been smoking Marlboro reds nonstop for an hour. Her throat was raw, and that was just as well, because if she said anything it would probably be about right and wrong.

They all had purple auras, Rick and Eli and Jack and Pippen. Even worse, when they rolled down their windows, most of those auras blew away. Whatever those boys were, or wanted to be, was so weak the slightest breeze could change it. When their auras grew back again, they were just outlines and even darker, almost black.

The car finally pulled out, and Rick parked down the street. “Okay,” he said. “You know what to do, Emma?”

She nodded. She had thought being bad might excite her, but it only made her sick to her stomach, and a little bit green. Eli grabbed her hand and brought it to his lips. Even though the guys would ride him later, he just looked right at her.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said.

That’s when she knew she did. She had something to prove, and it wasn’t that she was daring enough to rob a liquor store. It was that she was brave enough to love a lost cause. She was willing to give up everything.

She got out of the car and walked to the door of the liquor store. She turned around and gave the sign.

Then she took a deep breath and walked inside. She went to the back, searched for a six-pack of Michelob, and brought it to the counter. Just as they
had known he would, Bob Simon took a good look at her and shook his head.

“Yeah, right. Not even a fake ID is gonna work, little lady.”

She was able to smile right over the flip of her stomach. “Come on. It’s just a six-pack. I’m not driving, I swear it.”

He took the six-pack off the counter and walked back to the refrigerator. “No way. You know what the fine is now? I can’t even sell you cigarettes.”

“Look, I won’t tell.”

The man laughed. He looked a lot like her grandfather might have, if he hadn’t gotten sick. Bob Simon was reaching out to give her a sympathetic squeeze on the arm when the guys, all covered in ski masks and carrying sawed-off shotguns, burst in.

One of them, Rick she thought, shot a round into the ceiling. “Give us the cash!” he shouted.

The man looked at her, but she couldn’t meet his gaze. One of them came up behind him and jabbed the barrel of the gun into his back. “Hurry up, old man.”

Emma looked from one to the other, but the worst part was, she couldn’t tell which was Eli. They all wore jeans and black sweaters. Beneath those ski masks, all their eyes looked black.

Bob Simon was remarkably calm as he walked back to the counter. Rick had pointed out that Bronco Liquor had been robbed three times in the last year. It wouldn’t even faze the old man, he’d said. Bob Simon pushed a few buttons on the cash register and Rick ran around behind him and grabbed the cash. “This is it?” he shouted, holding up a few twenties.

“You idiots,” the man said. “You think I’m gonna keep a lot of cash on hand? I’m no fool.”

Rick slammed the butt of the gun into the man’s neck and Emma screamed. Bob Simon crumpled to
his knees and one of the boys shot a hole through the shop window.

“Neither am I.” Rick grabbed the man’s arm and dragged him toward the back.

Emma fell to her own knees and started rocking. Suddenly Eli was there, crouched down and holding her. His eyes through the holes of the mask were not black, as she’d thought, but a deep, bottomless green. She looked over his shoulder in time to see Bob Simon get to his feet and press a button near the back door before he went through. His eyes met hers, but all she did was take a deep, long breath.

“This is crazy,” she said, and then she was laughing. She was laughing so hard, urine seeped through her panties.

“Hold on,” Eli whispered. “Just a few minutes more.”

It wasn’t just a few minutes. It was forever, time enough to change indelibly, before Rick ran out, waving the cash in the air. Bob Simon was not with him, and Emma laughed harder.

“Grab her,” Rick said. “She’s losing it. Come on.”

Eli grabbed her arm and pulled her outside. The others were far ahead; Rick had already leapt in his car. Eli dragged her along, but her feet kept slipping out beneath her. Somewhere along the way, when they heard the sirens, she slipped right out of his grasp.

“Come on, Emma. Come
on.”

He ran faster, but she slowed. By the time Eli had jumped in the Mustang, she was a hundred feet behind him. She couldn’t have moved if she tried.

She heard Eli screaming for her, but Rick just took off. Someone threw a twenty out the window and it landed right at her feet.

Bob Simon ran out then, his lip bleeding, but not suffering from any bullet wounds that she could tell.

He reached her side just as the police car pulled up. She expected the man to beat her, but all he did was hand her over gingerly to Cal Bentley and his partner.

“Got herself mixed up with the wrong crowd,” Bob Simon said. “But that doesn’t mean there’s no penance, little lady.”

Emma looked up at Cal Bentley’s somber face. He had to know who was behind this, but he was never going to prove it, not if she had her way. She hadn’t given up everything after all. She hadn’t given up Eli.

“Come on.” Cal escorted her to the police car. “I’m telling you, Emma, you’ve given me one hell of a headache.”

Savannah and Jake planned to leave for San Francisco on Saturday. Sasha had been buried, and Savannah was not sticking around to bury anyone else. She was going to leave while her father seemed healthy, while there was still a chance everything might work out fine.

Jake was determined to go with her, but she noticed he didn’t box up any furniture. Even though he packed a few suitcases, he still did not look like a man capable of going anywhere. He had lived at his cabin so long, he coughed up yellow pollen in springtime, and in autumn the tips of his dark hair turned gold. His skin had deepened to the color of fifty-year-old ponderosa pine, and probably his roots ran just as deep. Probably, if she tried to move him, he’d die.

She was only slightly better at pretense. She went through the motions of leaving without her daughter, of going on without any idea where Emma was or what she was doing, but only the childless were fooled. The mothers she passed in town took one look at her and burst into tears. She gave off some kind of panicky
stink that made fathers clutch their toddlers and vow to cut back their hours and stop wasting time. There had been plenty of moments over the years when she’d bristled at being a mother, when all she’d wanted was her own life back. Well, now she had it and it didn’t fit her. It was a twenty-year-old’s life, tight and flashy, and she was a thirty-six-year-old with twenty extra pounds of devotion and a preference for loose clothes. The only kind of life she was interested in now was the type she could cut into pieces and serve as lessons and comfort to her daughter.

Early Friday morning, when her car was fully packed, she could have gotten behind the wheel, but instead sat down on the porch steps. Jake came up from his workshop, the dogs at his heels, moths and red earth clinging to his shirt, as if they could make him stay.

“He’ll be one lonely ghost,” he said, sitting down beside her. Savannah took a deep breath, because otherwise she was going to start telling the truth. She was going to look straight in his eyes and tell him this had never been meant to last. She could put him up in a whitewashed apartment in San Francisco, but he was still going to reek of despair. You can’t cure a man of sadness, but worse than that, Savannah had the feeling heartache was contagious. Whenever she sat this close to him, she felt on the verge of either tears or loving him, and both were unpleasant, both stung going down.