Snowbound (37 page)

For the first few seconds after consciousness returned fuzzy and disjointed, Tribucci did not know where he was. Someone was holding his hand, chafing it briskly, and there were faint garbled voices, and there was softness beneath him and warmth over and around him. He had no pain, only a tingling seminumbness everywhere except in his face and in the hand that was being rubbed. Cain! he thought immediately, and made a noise far down in his throat, and wanted to sit up. Gentle hands held him still.

He fluttered his eyes open. Bright shimmering grayness, but then dissolving and images beginning to take shape—pale blue walls, fluorescent ceiling lights, face hovering over him as if disembodied and saying words that now he could comprehend: “Johnny, it’s all right. You’re in my emergency room, son, it’s all right.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, opened them again, and this time he could see more clearly. His throat worked. “Webb?”

“Yes, it’s Webb.”

“You . . . you’re out of the church. . . .”

“All of us, Johnny—we’re all safe. Cain too.”

“Thank God. But how? How did Cain . . . ?”

“There’s no time for explanations now. Sally and I are going to put you under anesthesia; you’ve got two bullets in you, and we’ve got to get them out. But we wanted you awake first, there’s something you have to know.”

Ann
, he thought suddenly. “Oh God, Ann, what about Ann, she—”

“She’s fine, she’s upstairs in my room; I gave her something to make her sleep. Johnny, listen carefully: Ann is fine. When she found out in the church what you and Cain had gone to do, she went into labor. And she gave birth; she gave birth there in the church to a healthy little girl. Do you understand, Johnny? Ann’s fine and the baby’s fine, you’ve got a daughter.”

The fuzziness would not release his thoughts, but he understood, yes, and he tried to smile, lips cracking and stretching faintly. “A daughter,” he said. “Ann’s fine and we have a daughter.”

“That’s right, that’s good. You’ve got everything to live for now. You’re badly hurt, but you’re going to live, you’re going to keep on fighting; you’re not going to stop fighting for a second, Johnny, do you hear me?”

“Not for a second,” he said.

Edwards sighed softly and his face retreated, and Sally Chilton’s wavered into Tribucci’s vision. He felt the sting of a needle in the crook of his left arm.

“She looks like Ann, doesn’t she?” he asked.

“Just like Ann,” Sally said. “Wait until you see her.”

Tribucci felt himself beginning to drift. “Marika,” he said, “we’re going to name her Marika.” Drifting, drifting—and his last thought before the anesthesia took him under was that if it had been a boy, they would surely have called him Zachary. . . .

The Reverend Peter Keyes waited in the adjacent anteroom, his now professionally, if hurriedly, bandaged right hand resting in his lap, left hand clutching his Bible. The shot of morphine Sally had given him minutes ago, to ease the pain, had also made him drowsy; but he would not sleep yet—not yet.

After a time, eyes tightly closed, he raised the Bible and held it against his breast. “Oh Lord my rock,” he said aloud, softly, “thank you for not forsaking us all. . . .”

In the parlor at the front of the house, Coopersmith sat in silent vigil with Ellen and with Vince and Judy.

As soon as Edwards came in to tell them Johnny was going to live—and he
would
tell them that, a man who had been through what Tribucci had would not be allowed to die now —Coopersmith thought he would find Cain and try to put into words some of what he felt in his heart. He had never had a feeling of love for a man before, other than his two sons; but now, tonight, he loved both Cain and John Tribucci. All the hate and all the pressure and all the terror were gone; tomorrow there would be pain and sorrow when he woke and remembered and saw the ravaged face of a Hidden Valley that would never be quite the same again—yet for what was left of this day, he would have nothing except love inside him.

Sitting there with Ellen’s head against his shoulder, he was very tired—a physical weariness, nothing more. When the hate and terror drained away, they had carried with them the inner tiredness and the last remnants of those earlier feelings of uselessness and incompetence and emptiness. And he would not let them come back, any of them. He was sixty-six years of age, that was true, but he had lived a long and rich and fruitful life, and he was
still
living it, and he had his health and all his faculties, and he had the capacity to love, and he had the reciprocal love of an unselfish woman who had shared his bed and his dreams and his rewards for more than forty years. He hadn’t realized it before, but that was so much more than some men had. So much more.

He smiled wanly across at Vince and Judy, gave them an encouraging nod, and they returned both in kind. Like him, they seemed to know that death and tragedy would not touch any of them again for some time to come.

And within the semidarkened church, sitting slumped and thinking about many things and about nothing at all, Cain did not hear the doors open or the soft steps come forward to the pew. But after a time he sensed that he was not alone and turned his head, and Rebecca was standing there watching him.

“Hello, Zachary,” she said. She was drawn and grave, but there was a kind of self-assurance, a kind of pride, in her eyes and in her carriage. “I thought you might still be here.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I was going to leave pretty soon, I want to find out how Tribucci is.”

“I just came from Dr. Edwards’ house. He’s operating now to remove the bullets. He wants Johnny in a hospital as soon as possible because of the threat of pneumonia; Greg Novak is taking one of the snowmobiles to Coldville at dawn, so there’ll be helicopters in some time tomorrow.”

“He’ll live,” Cain said positively. “He’ll live,”

“I know he will; we all do.”

“He’s a fine man. They don’t come any finer.”

Rebecca sat down beside him, turning her body so that she was facing him directly. “You look exhausted, Zachary.”

“I killed two men tonight,” he said. There was nothing, no expression, in his voice.

“And saved seventy-five other lives. That’s the only really important thing, isn’t it?”

“Yes—it has to be.”

“I don’t suppose any of us will ever really forget what happened today,” she said. “But I’ve got to believe that things do stop hurting after a while.”

“They do,” Cain told her. “After a while.”

“Will you . . . keep on living here in the valley?”

“No,” he said. “No.”

“Where will you go?”

“Back to San Francisco.”

“And then what?”

“See if I can get my old job back, or one like it. Start rebuilding my life.”

“I’m not so sure I can keep on living here either. Too much has happened, too many things have changed.” She paused. “What’s San Francisco like?”

“It can be a beautiful city—the most beautiful city in the world.”

“Would I like it if I came there?”

He looked at her for a long moment. “I think so,” he said finally. “I think you might.”

“I’ll be staying at the Tribucci house for a few days,” she said, “with Judy and Ann and the baby. Vince will go with Johnny. Now especially it’s a time none of us should be alone.”

He waited, not speaking.

“Will you come for dinner tomorrow?”

“Yes,” he said, “I’d like that.”

“Will you walk me there now?”

Cain nodded, and they stood together and strode slowly out of the church. It was still snowing lightly, but there was very little wind; the clouds overhead had begun dividing, and you could see patches of deep velvet sky through the fissures. The storm was nearly over.

In a few short hours it would be the day before Christmas.