Hell was in the east. The clouds were gathering, black and gray armies eager for battle. I thought I’d seen some bad storms in Minnesota, but what this desert could muster felt worse, maybe because it still seemed so unnatural to me. Worse also because this was a landscape unused to the run of big water. The ground was baked so hard and dry the moisture couldn’t soak in and rushed instead across the surface, etching deep channels, flooding washes, pouring itself into rivers that appeared like magic for a brief while and then vanished, leaving behind long, empty graves filled bank to bank with nothing but dust and tumbled rock. It was a land, I thought, where even what seemed to promise life could just as easily deliver death.
We came down from the mountains slowly, carefully. Peter was quiet, and the sense I got from him, from the way he sat slumped, staring out the window, was one of despair.
“Why are you here, Cork?” he finally asked.
“Strange question.”
“Mom, my father, they make sense. They’re my family. But the truth is, you don’t really know me. I’m nothing to you.”
“Not true. You’re Rainy’s son. Rainy’s a part of who I am now. In my book, that makes you a part, too.”
“Like family?”
“No, not like family. Family.” I drove a little farther while he digested this, then I said, “But in a way, I suppose, it’s the weight of history.”
His face was blank. It was clear he didn’t understand. Why would he? But I understood. I understood myself better than I had since I’d come to that strange land.
“Even if you weren’t family, I’d probably be helping,” I said. “You’re one of the good people. I like to think I am, too. Good people help one another. That’s what keeps all the darkness at bay.”
He shook his head and set his mouth in a hard line. I knew there were demons inside him, whispering. If they were anything like mine, they were probably arguing seductively that trust only led to betrayal.
“I didn’t see a vehicle of any kind for you up there,” I said. “You always walk?”
“My Jeep’s parked in Jocko’s hangar. I put it there before he flew me out for the last rendezvous.” His words held a bitter edge, and I knew he was considering the deep betrayal of this man he’d trusted with his life and the lives of so many others.
“Maybe Rodriguez has some leverage over the old man,” I suggested.
“Maybe,” he said, but it was clear he felt that justified nothing. “My father was right. Trust no one but family.”
“Guarantee of a lonely existence.”
“It seems to have stood my father in good stead,” he said.
“Your mother would say trust your heart.” When he didn’t respond, I asked, “What does your heart tell you about Jocko?”
“I’m not sure anymore.” He stared ahead at the restless congregation of storm clouds, at the darkness they were spreading across the land below. “I’m not sure of anything anymore.”
He was not my son, not in any legal sense, and maybe I had no right to offer advice. But I’d put my life on the line for him, and I’d come to care about him deeply, so I spoke as I might have spoken if he’d been born to me.
“Do you give up that easily on all your friends?”
“Jocko.” The word spoke a depth of disappointment. “He’s the last person I’d expect this of.”
“You don’t know for sure it was him.”
“It makes perfect sense.”
“That’s your head talking.” Which was something his mother would have pointed out, had she been there.
“Look where my heart got me,” he said.
“Yeah, let’s look at that. You’ve saved a lot of desperate people from being preyed on by the likes of Carlos Rodriguez. You’ve helped them find sanctuary. Maybe you haven’t exactly changed the world, but you’ve changed the lives of those folks, changed them for the better. That’s where your heart has got you. Tell me you regret it.”
“That’s over now.”
“Is it? What about Arweiler Bosch?” I said.
His shoulders had been hunched, but the name made him sit up straight. “Mom told you.”
“And she showed me the photo you kept pinned to your bedroom wall all those years.”
“What I do isn’t about Arweiler.”
“I agree with you there. You’re half Ojibwe. Do you know the Ojibwe word ogichidaa?”
“Warrior,” he said.
“That’s one way to translate it. I prefer the more complex interpretation. One who stands between evil and his people. I think in your heart you’re ogichidaa. I think it’s what you were born to be. And whether it’s Arweiler Bosch or Guatemalan refugees or God knows who, there will always be people who need your help. You have a calling, Peter, a duty that you can’t turn away from.”
We bounced and jolted our way down the mountain for a while, then Peter said, “And you don’t give up on the people you trust.”
I glanced at him, saw a calm resolve in his dark eyes. “You’re going to be all right, son,” I said.
We finished our drive out of the mountains in a comfortable silence.
At the hospital in Sierra Vista, we found that Robert Wieman had checked himself out.
“DAMA,” the nurse at the desk said.
“Dama?” I replied.
“Discharged against medical advice.”
“But he looked to be on death’s doorstep last night,” I said.
The nurse shrugged. “Apparently he had a dramatic turnaround. We can’t keep someone here against their will. If he wanted to leave, as long as he signed a release form, we had to let him go.”
“Who drove him?”
“The man who was with him. A Mr. Harris, I believe. His name’s on the form, but I don’t have that.”
When we were back in the pickup, I said, “Maybe you’ve been hard on the wrong guy. What’s your heart say about Frank Harris?”
“Frank’s a good man,” Peter replied carefully.
“But?”
“He’s often been a troubled man.”
“How so?”
“He has this vision of creating a world-class vineyard here, producing wines that will measure up to anything California or the Willamette Valley offers. It’s been a hard road for him. He lost so many vines a couple of years ago, a lot of us thought he was done for. He’s fought back, although it’s taken a toll.” Peter stopped talking, but he hadn’t quite finished. “I’ve had the sense, sometimes,” he finally went on, “that he and Jayne have been at odds. Not that they really fight or anything, just that they struggle. Different goals, maybe. I think Jayne hasn’t been happy out here, and I think that’s been troubling to Frank.”
“A troubled man, particularly one who’s struggled financially, that might be a decent target for someone looking to corrupt a few morals. I don’t agree with a lot of things your father says, but I do agree that money can buy just about anything.”
“Or anyone?”
“Let’s find out. What do you say we head to Jocko’s place?”
*
We were halfway there when my cell phone rang. It was Frank Harris, desperate.
“They’ve got Jayne and Jocko.”
“Who?”
“Rodriguez,” he said, the name so obviously vile on his lips.
“Where are you?”
“Jocko’s place.”