The Winslow Incident

TUESDAY AFTERNOON

QUARANTINE

It didn’t take long for Hazel to pinpoint exactly where the high-pitched whine of the dirt bike had terminated. When she spotted the motorcycle parked next to the porch of Ben Mathers’ mansion on Park Street, disappointment skidded through her: It wasn’t Sean’s Yamaha; it was Tanner’s Kawasaki.

She was halfway up the walk to Mathers’ porch when Tanner came out the front door, not bothering to close it behind him. He carried a paper sack, which Hazel guessed to be their joint venture. Every summer since Jay Marsh first introduced them to Cyclone Clyde, Hazel, Patience and Sean could count on the carny to bring them decent weed. This time Tanner had gone in with them on a bag and they’d stashed it here because even if Ben Mathers found it, he wouldn’t know what he was looking at. Samuel Adair would, her dad definitely would, and pity Tanner if their Uncle Pard found it: he’d have his ranch hands draw and quarter his nephew in the center of Prospect Park. Over the past few days, Hazel had been so preoccupied that she’d forgotten all about the ounce they’d hidden in Mathers’ basement.

Tanner paused on the top step with a busted look on his face, blond hair tangled from riding the bike. Then his usual smirk returned.

At least he looks normal, she thought.

He tucked the bag into the waistband of his shorts and continued down the steps. “Thought I’d better retrieve it for safekeeping. You know Patience’s old gramps is gonna find it and smoke himself silly.” Looking her over, his face tightened in apparent disapproval.

Self-conscious, she glanced down at herself: shoes covered in dirt, legs scraped, knees pasted with bits of leaves and gravel, sling encrusted with dried blood. “I look sick.” She returned her eyes to his. “But I’m not.”

His grimace held. “Good for you.”

“What about you?”

“Me? I’m getting the hell outta here—there’s seriously weird shit goin’ on.”

“Are you splitting now?”

“Hell yes, now.” He looked past her toward the sound of a truck rumbling along Fortune Way. “They’re quarantining us.”

“Who ordered quarantine?”

“Who do you think?”

“Not my dad.”

“Who else has the authority?”

“I don’t know,” Hazel admitted. Quarantine? She didn’t like the sound of that, not one bit. It made her think of cruel scientists in hazmat suits prodding people into white windowless buses, sick people bleeding from their eyes.

She wanted to talk to her dad again, needed to talk to him. But then he won’t let me go, she realized and her heart hurt even more. Not if he ordered quarantine.

Tanner got on his bike and started it up. “The weirdness is spreading fast. I just saw Tilly Thacker making it with Cal right on the sidewalk in front of the Fish ’n Bait.”

Hazel shuddered, then felt grateful she hadn’t witnessed that too. “What was on fire at the ranch this morning?” The exhaust from Tanner’s bike was making everything seem even hotter. “Did more cows die overnight?”

“Die? No. Killed? Yes.” His rising voice revealed a hint of fear. “Fifty head slaughtered and burned to a crisp.”

“You’re kidding, right? Why? Did they figure out why they’re sick?”

“Why wait? Once Uncle Pard’s damage control machine kicks in there’s no stopping it.” He revved the bike. “Which is why I’m outta here!”

They were shouting at each other over the Kawasaki’s engine, so she walked closer to where he sat on the idling bike. “Take me with you.”

“Get your YZ, why don’t you?”

“Can’t.” She pointed to her wounded arm. “I have to ride with you.”

“I’m not taking you anywhere.”

“Why not?”

“You totally blew it for me with Patience.”

“How could you think I wouldn’t tell her? Especially when you were so creepy about it? She’s my friend.”

“Since when?

He’s right, she thought. She always kept Patience at a distance—her and everybody else.

“Oh, and screw you, Hazel.”

“Fine. But you told her what I said too, so that makes us even. I also have my suspicions you’ve been talking shit about me to Sean.”

She could see him biting the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling.

“True?”

His half-assed shrug told her yes.

“Then we’re more than even. Come on, Tanner, I need your help.”

“Obviously.”

They stared at each other, neither of them moving, neither flinching.

Until finally he said, “Get on.”

She hesitated. “We can’t leave without Sean. And what about Patience?”

“Forget her—she’s completely wasted.”

Hazel hadn’t seen her since their fight in the tower of The Winslow last night, since she’d slapped Patience across the face. “Where did you see her?”

“In front of the Mercantile. Saw them both. Sean’s wasted too and man, was he all over her.”

“I don’t believe you.” She wouldn’t believe that. Couldn’t. But suddenly she wasn’t so sure she knew everything, wasn’t so sure she knew anything.

“Whatever,” Tanner said. “It’s nothing to me, just thought you’d want to know.”

Her foundation dissolved again. She hadn’t seen Sean since their fight outside the Crock. Who was left to fight with? Another round with Tanner, she supposed. And things weren’t even close to settled between her and Kenny Clark. “Do you know where Sean is now?”

“No, but I can take you by a piece of his artwork on the way out of town.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ll show you.”


On the back of the bike, Hazel held onto Tanner with her left arm and rested her head on his shoulder. She was spent and it felt good to have somebody else in charge, for the moment anyway. She closed her eyes against the dust kicked up by the motorcycle’s knobby tires.

The Percocet is wearing off, she thought as her arm resumed its miserable throb.

From memory of every twist and turn, she knew they were riding away from town on Winslow Road toward the bridge . . . darker and cooler here, the trees reaching for each other across the road.

Then the Kawasaki pulled them uphill a ways, bouncing over slight whoops before coming to a stop. Tanner placed both feet on the ground to keep them upright, and cut the engine.

Hazel could barely lift her head she was so tired. And when she did, she couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing.

They had stopped at the granite wall outside Matherston Miners Cemetery. It was tradition for townsfolk to write messages on the wall’s white stone face: MARRY ME JULIE or CONGRATULATIONS CLASS OF ’02. And when they’d played ghost hunt as kids, whoever located the grave first would write FOUND IT! so the other players knew to stop looking and meet up at the merry-go-round.

The wall had been clean when she and Sean were here Sunday afternoon. Now—chalked in scraggly, two-foot tall letters—there was a message: I’M SORRY—SA.

“I don’t get it.” She scuttled off the bike, knocking Tanner off balance, and walked to the wall for a closer look. Then she turned back to him. “What’s Sean have to be sorry about?”

“Beats me.”

“He didn’t say anything when you saw him?”

“He told me it’s worse than food poisoning.”

“Everybody knows that.”

“He said people are gonna get sicker.”

“How could he possibly know that?” Hazel looked again at the writing on the wall, then back at Tanner. “What is going on?”

“I’ve got no clue. And I don’t care.”

Hazel fished a Percocet out of her pocket and dry swallowed it. Then she plunked down onto a big boulder in the shade. “Okay, let’s figure this out.”

“No—let’s go.”

“No, wait a minute.”

“We can figure it out on the way down the pass.”

She didn’t budge.

“Okay, dammit.” When Tanner got off his bike she noticed that he was limping a little and sweating a lot.

She took a deep breath, then exhaled sharply. “I saw Gus Bolinger hit the floor of the ballroom just like that cow in the pasture Friday night. Same leg buckle, same sad sound on the way down.”

Tanner wiped his face with the back of his hand and blew out his cheeks. “So?”

“So I’m not sick, you’re not sick, Uncle Pard isn’t, Kenny Clark isn’t—is anybody at the ranch sick?”

“If you ask me they’re all pretty twisted, even on a good day.”

“Okay—so nobody at the ranch is sick. And Patience and Rose are vegetarians and are sick. So that definitely means people aren’t sick because they ate sick beef.”

“Right . . .” He joined her at the rock but remained standing and sweating.

“So whatever it is, it has to be something that affects both people and cattle because it’d be way too much of a coincidence if both came down with completely different ailments, yet with similar symptoms, at the exact same time.”

He bobbed his head and rolled his eyes as if to say, Can we hurry it up here?

“So what does that leave? The heat wave? The water? Maybe Owen Peabody is right.”

“But no ranch hands have it and we all drink the same water, don’t we? It comes from that piece of shit tank up there; the ranch doesn’t have a separate supply.”

“Then what could it be?” She briefly nibbled on her bottom lip. “Something in the air? A bug?”

“Wrong again, genius.” He blew hot breath at her. “We’d all have it by now.”

She waved her hand in front of her face. “I suppose we would.”

“Doc Simmons said Indigo had an inflamed something-or-other tract,” Tanner said. “Some sort of gut problem. He thought the bull might’ve gotten into a poison plant like jimsonweed. But people don’t eat jimsonweed and cows don’t eat coleslaw.”

“Huh?” She squinted at him.

“It’s gotta be something people and cattle eat.”

Hazel tapped her chin with one finger. “Zachary Rhone told Violet and Daisy not to eat any bread because it’s moldy.”

Tanner made a sour face. “Does moldy bread make people sick or does it just taste disgusting?”

“Makes me sick just thinking about it,” Hazel said.

“But what does bread have to do with cattle? Cows don’t eat bread either, they’re too busy gorging on grass.”

“And feed, right?” she asked.

“I guess.” He shrugged.

She glanced in the direction of the bridge. “Feed comes from Fritz Earley.”

“What the hell’s a ‘fritz earley’?”

“He’s the grain distributor from down mountain. Comes once a week to deliver feed to the ranch and—” Hazel’s stomach sank. She pressed her hand against her mouth and shot to her feet.

“And?”

She let her hand fall. “And flour to the bakery.”

“Moldy bread, moldy feed? Is that what you’re thinking?”

“Oh, my God—Sean told me he tried to tell Zachary something.”

“Me too.” Tanner wiped fresh sweat off his face. “He rambled on and on about bacon and deliveries and Zachary not listening.”

“Do you know what Sean was trying to tell him?”

“I tried to get that out of him but he wasn’t making any sense.”

“What did he say?”

“Something about mayo getting left out too long in the sun and turning gray and nasty.”

Hazel remembered Owen in the kitchen of the Crock holding up the slice of slightly gray-tinged bread. “Not mayo,” she told Tanner. “Flour. Sean must’ve been trying to tell Zachary there’s something wrong with the flour but he refused to listen. He told me Zachary bit his head off when he tried to ask him a simple question.” She scoured her mind—had she eaten any bread over the weekend? Not that she could recall. She usually tried to avoid carbs. “Do ranch hands ever eat stuff from Rhone Bakery?” she asked.

“Not that I’ve seen. Maggie Clark bakes up cornbread and biscuits at the ranch.”

Hazel flashed on all the French toast and catwiches she’d served at the Crock over the weekend—to her father, Patience, so many others. “We have to warn people,” she said.

“If the feed’s bad,” Tanner ignored her, “then what about the horses?”

“What about them?”

“Why aren’t they sick too?”

“Maybe they eat something else. Oats. Hell, I don’t know—do I look like a farm girl to you?”

“No, you look like a stoner chick. Which means no one’s going to believe you anyway, so what does this matter? Let’s get outta here.”

She glanced at the wall. “I still don’t get why Sean wrote that. It’s not his fault.”

Tanner looked unusually serious. “If you really think about it, Hazel, it is.”

“What?”

“He should’ve told Zachary. He said so himself.”

“He tried.”

“How do you know?”

“He told us,” Hazel replied.

“Even if he did try, even if he didn’t do anything on purpose, it’s still his fault.”

“Don’t say—”

“He knew the flour might be bad, but he delivered bread all the hell over town anyway.”

“Tanner! Don’t ever repeat that—swear you will never say that again!”

“Don’t worry.” He held up his hands as if to tell her, Back off already. “I’m completely out of here and I have zero interest in what happens after I’m gone.”

She shook her head. “There’s just no way. If Sean thought even for a second that the bread would make people sick, he never would’ve delivered it. Besides, he’s sick too, isn’t he? Why would he eat the bread himself if he knew it would make him sick?”

“Maybe he didn’t know it’d make people sick. Maybe he just thought the bread would suck and the bakery would take a hit. A way to pay back Zachary Rhone for being such a dick. But then he probably tried some bread and when it smelled and tasted okay, he figured that was the end of it.”

“Still . . . would he risk it? I don’t believe it.” But wasn’t everything unbelievable right now? And except for her grandmother and Violet, Tanner was the only sane person she’d talked to all day so it was hard to disregard what he was saying.

“What’s not to believe?” Tanner said. “You know how pissed he was at Zachary.”

The bakery was ruined, that was certain. And Sean did tell her he thought he might get fired, told her Zachary was drunk on power and he couldn’t take it anymore. Told her those things while they delivered the bread. Together. All over town.

She suddenly felt shaky. “No way. He wouldn’t take that kind of a chance. I know him.”

He narrowed his ice-blue eyes. “You sure about that?”

She thought about Sean shouting at her in front of the Crock and then disappearing off the face of the mountain like a shadow in shade. No, I’m not sure about anything anymore. Except for one thing: “We have to find Sean. We have to take him with us.” If only she could talk to him. This was the longest she’d gone without seeing Sean since she’d been quarantined with mono.

“We don’t have time,” impatience edged Tanner’s words. “Quarantine, remember? Besides, he won’t go. I already tried, for the same reason I agreed to bring you.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know the way.”

Hazel couldn’t help but laugh. “Go over the bridge and head downhill.”

“Shut up, I know that. After the pass—I can’t remember from the drive up which way to go after that, it’s a backwater down there too. Do I turn left after Hatfield’s tractor or right past McCoy’s barn? And it’ll be pitch black by then.”

“Okay, but—”

“We’ve got no time to argue, we have to go.” He got back on the Kawasaki. “Now.”

He was right. The bike had no headlamp and there was little daylight left to get down the mountain. She looked west toward the bridge. Just over the next hill . . . the way out, the way to help.

“You coming or not?” Tanner asked.

Without a word of acquiescence, she moved to get back on the bike.

Before she could, Tanner grabbed her by the wrist. “You do realize we won’t be able to tell anybody what’s going on up here.”

“What are you talking about?” She tried to wrench free. “Why not?”

“Because Sean told me not to say anything to anybody. And I know how to be loyal.”

The second Percocet was kicking in and it was becoming hard for her to think straight. And Tanner was holding and hurting her wrist just like Hawkin Rhone had. “But we have to get help. Isn’t that why we’re going?”

“No, we’re going because everything’s completely messed up and there’s no reason to stick around.”

“But if we can’t tell anybody, then we won’t be able to get a doctor up here.”

“Don’t need to—Simmons can handle it.”

“If one more person says that I’m going to scream!” She thought about poor Jinx and how Doc Simmons had shot at him. With her injured arm, she hadn’t been able to carry the dog off the road and into the shade of the trees. Jinx was probably still lying there, baking in the sun. What’s wrong with me? She suddenly felt sick and horrified. How could I leave him like that? What if somebody runs him over? She had to go back—right away—and give the dog water, help him into the shade, beg his forgiveness for leaving him.

Tanner squeezed her wrist harder. “If you tell, it’ll be the end of this tourist trap. Did you think about that? Then what will the Adairs do for a living? Uncle Pard? And everyone else around here? What about your dad, the Sheriff? How’s it gonna look for him? He’ll lose his job for sure.”

“You don’t care about any of these people.”

“You do?”

She wanted to screech at him to stop—to be quiet for a minute so she could think.

But he kept going. “And Sean’ll go to prison or be banished or pitchforked or whatever the hell else happens around here.”

“Why? It’s not like anybody’s died!”

His cool gaze chilled her. “Not yet.”

Or as far as we know, crept into her mind. What if all sorts of people were dead? What if there were corpses stacked behind closed doors all over Winslow? Swollen bodies collecting flies like the dead cows.

Alarm electrified her every nerve. Protect me, Hazel! Sean had joked at Three Fools Creek on Sunday afternoon. No joke now, she thought, her heart racing.

Abruptly, Tanner released her wrist. “Now or never, Hazel.”

“If we can’t get help, then I can’t leave,” she said. “So I’m staying.”

He scoffed angrily at her. “What good will that do?”

“Shut up! Shut up!” She placed her hand over her ear, panting in panic and frustration while a confusion of images flashed through her mind: Aaron floating around the hotel, chased by ghosts and waiting for her to come back like she swore she would; the Rhone sisters in their jewel-tone gowns, locked in her grandmother’s quarters needing a babysitter because their parents have gone missing (or worse—that blood); Rose and Owen Peabody lying dead still on the couch in the ballroom; and the unprecedented fear she’d read in her grandmother’s eyes.

Hazel shifted her feet in the dirt, widening her stance. “I have to go back to The Winslow. Nobody’s taking care of them. They need me.”

“Are you serious?” He couldn’t have looked more incredulous. “Like you give a shit? All I’ve heard out of you since day one is smack on this—and I quote—rotting leftover of a town.”

As much as she would have liked to, she couldn’t exactly argue with that.

“And quit pretending like you ever gave a shit about him either.”

“Stop it, Tanner. Just stop.” Tears stung at her eyes. She had no idea where or how sick Sean was, and her grandmother’s words kept pinging back and forth in her head: Blame will be placed.

Tanner scrutinized her for a moment before saying, “I’ll take you to your mother.”

Suddenly she couldn’t find air as her resolve was knocked completely on its ass. “You know where she is?”

“Of course. Aunt Anabel stayed with us for a while after she split here. Had to give her my room, which sucked. But it’s now or never, Hazel—a one-time only offer.”

He’s bullshitting me, she thought. But what if he wasn’t? She tried to read his eyes, but they revealed nothing except his impatience. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“You’ll have to trust me. And we’ve got even less time to argue now. Let’s go!”

Even if it were true, and even if her elbow really did require urgent medical attention, and even if her mother might—just might—be thrilled to see her, could she really just leave everyone here to fend for themselves? Could she really just leave them all baking in the sun?

“No.” Hazel pictured her father patrolling the banks of Ruby Creek, trembling and paranoid, worried over whether his daughter would keep her promise. “No,” she repeated. “I won’t leave him too. I won’t leave any of them. How could I?”

For the first time, she understood what a horrible thing that is to do to somebody. And that it was pure fantasy to imagine that her mother would be happy if she showed up on her doorstep, as if, miraculously, Anabel might suddenly regret she’d ever left at all. Pure fantasy. “I’m staying,” she repeated.

Dramatically rolling his eyes, Tanner said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Hazel shook her head fiercely, shaking off a dozen years’ worth of fear that when it came time to decide, she would have no choice. “I don’t have to be like her. I won’t do that to them.”

He threw up his hands in complete exasperation. “You’re outta your mind to stay here. So what? You’re gonna be sheriff now? Good luck. And have a nice walk.”

He started up the bike and peeled off, only to skid to a stop a few yards away and turn back to her. “Oh and by the way, Hazel,” he yelled over the idling engine, “when you do find Sean, be sure to tell him Zachary Rhone is looking for him.”

And then he was gone, leaving her standing outside of Matherston Cemetery in the orange light of the setting sun, wondering what he meant by that.

Finally, she turned to trudge back into town for the second time that day, glad to be rid of Tanner Holloway once and for all, certain she’d made the right decision.

After all, she thought, things are so incredibly bad, how much worse can they get?