“Why her?” asks Holliday.
“Because I trust her,” says Cooper. “And she feels a certain loyalty to the town now. She’ll live out here in the world and work for you, but you don’t interfere with her at all or even contact her unless absolutely necessary. And then you never give our town another thought.”
“Calvin, there is no more Caesura, you need to accept that,” Holliday says, impatient. “It’s over.” Her face clouds noticeably, like she’s lost interest in his pointless meanderings.
“As far as you’re concerned, that’s true,” Cooper says. “Also, I want the files. All of them. On everyone.”
“I gave the files to those agents.”
“You gave copies to those agents. So make more copies. I want them all.”
“To do what with?” She seems genuinely curious.
“To keep them. And to show them to whoever wants to know. People have that right. To know. Or not. But it will be their choice.”
Cooper stands.
“And one last thing,” he says. “You tell Mark Vincent that we wish him the best of luck in his upcoming race. And you tell him that if he ever comes to our town again, or sends a proxy, or a proxy’s proxy, we’re going to kill those fuckers, too, and mail them back to him in pieces, and then Fran and I will get in a car and tell the world everything we know. About him, about you, all of it. So you tell him, we’re very sorry, but he needs to forget about his son.”
She laughs. “Forget a child? That’s not an easy thing to do,” says Holliday. “As you well know, John.”
“Well, maybe you can help him with that,” says Cooper. “That’s your specialty, isn’t it?”
Cooper turns to Fran, who’s still seated. Once again, Cooper wishes for a hat. This would be the perfect moment to put on a hat. Instead, he says simply, “Come on, Fran. We’re done here.”
But Fran lingers a moment longer, regarding Holliday. As though assessing some new species of creature she never imagined existed. A creature whose capacity for cruelty is so vast that it alters Fran’s conception of what’s possible. Of what you might one day have to deal with. This revelation doesn’t dishearten her, though, or paralyze her, or cripple her. Rather, like all revelations, it nourishes Fran, it strengthens her, because it further feeds her understanding of the world.
“Leave us alone,” she says finally to Holliday. “That’s all. But that’s everything. Do you understand? Leave us alone.”
She stands to join Cooper.
“And what about all this carnage you’ve caused?” says Holliday, from her seat, in her jewels, with her implacable smile.
Fran leans toward her.
“Just forget it,” she says.
And only then, in the ensuing quiet, do the three of them hear the first crisp whispers of the fire.
They look up from the patio to see Spiro and Hannibal, each holding an empty gas can, their faces sweaty and their hands and clothes dirty and stinking of splashed petrol. The fire rages higher behind them, flames pawing and slurping at the house. While Cooper, Fran, and Holliday talked, whiling away the evening hour, Spiro and Hannibal circled the compound, dousing the garden, soaking the foliage. The fire’s rising now. The vast garden cowers and withers under the heat. Fragile flowers bow humbly. Palm leaves clench like fists.
“You’ll see Eleanor Sung in a few days,” says Cooper to Holliday, over the sound of the fire’s snapping. “Until then, we’re headed back to see a friend in the hospital. So I can offer you a ride to Amarillo, if you like. Or you can stay here and watch this place burn to the ground.”
Holliday seems amused at the extent of this vast tantrum. She gestures toward the compound. “You know this is nothing, right? This is not even a fraction of our research and everything is backed up in any case. This is merely one of my many homes. This isn’t even where my work is stored. You can’t touch my work. And it will continue, no matter what. So all this accomplishes nothing. Except warming your childish faces, here for a moment, like children at a bonfire, telling stories. Like spoiled children, acting out.”
“That may be so, but either way, your ride’s about to leave,” Cooper says. “And I don’t suspect you’ll want to sleep out here tonight.”
The five of them head back to civilization. Cooper and Fran in the front, and fuel-soaked Spiro and Hannibal sitting in back, stinking, with Holliday wedged in the middle, her white linen top stained with smoke. They drive with the windows cracked to disperse the fumes of the gas. The miles pass silently between them. Like they’re a broken family fleeing a catastrophe.
It’s not long before the raging fire is hardly a flicker in the rearview, as they drive a hundred miles in the opposite direction, and leave the roaring plains to reclaim its ceded ground.
41.
IN THE MIDDLE OF TOWN, another fire is burning.
This is what greets the four of them when they return.
The blood-soaked files have been gathered up and swept into a pile and set aflame. The people have ransacked the intake trailer and collected all the agents’ armaments, pistols and ammo and a few assault rifles. The town has the look of a war camp. A few townsfolk now stand with rifles over their shoulders, like sentries, watching the fire. Others wear guns stuck in their belts. They stand ready, for whatever new siege might be coming. All the while, the bonfire burns. It dispenses its secrets to heaven in the form of sparks, which flutter and mingle above with the innumerable stars.
Cooper watches. There are graves yet to be dug. They’ll bury the bodies themselves. It’s long past time that Caesura had a cemetery, he thinks. No headstones for anyone, though. No official markers. Let each of the dead decide in the next life what name they choose to go by.
As for the town, he imagines they’ll survive. As a goal, survival seems like more than enough, at least for now, at least for tonight. Dawes will be the new sheriff, if she wants it, Cooper’s already decided that. They checked in on her at the hospital after leaving Holliday, and the prognosis was better. Hopeful, even.
She’ll come back, and she’ll be sheriff, and they’ll also open the gates. Maybe even take down the fences, and the residents will come and go as they please. If anyone cares to venture out beyond the town, to encounter whatever’s waiting for them, whoever’s looking for them, that will be their choice. They’ll always be welcome back.