Part 2 (1/2)

”Father Max,” Valentine called into the house without taking his eyes off the men.

”Strangers coming.”

The men paused, smiling with tobacco-stained teeth. The taller of the two spoke: ”Don't let the guns scare you, boy. I know your people.”

Father Max emerged from the house and stepped out into the rain-soaked yard with arms outstretched. ”Paul Samuels,” he half shouted, walking out to embrace the tall man in his gangly arms. ”You haven't come this way in years! Who is this with you?”

”My name's Jess Finner, sir. I've sure heard about you, sir.”

The Padre smiled. ”That could be good or bad, Mr. Finner. I'd like you both to meet my ward, David. He's the son of Lee Valentine and Helen Saint Croix.”

”I knew your father, David,” said the one named Samuels. Valentine saw memories lurking in the brown pools beneath his wrinkled brow. ”Bad business, that day at his place. I saw you after the funeral. Took us four months, but we got the men that-”

”Let's not dredge up old history,” the Padre interrupted.

Valentine caught the looks exchanged between the men and suddenly lost interest in the race and the shotgun.

The Padre patted his shoulder. ”We'll talk later, David- that's a promise. Get going! But give my regrets to the Council at the public tent, and get back here as soon as you can.

We're going to crack the seal on one of the bottles from the woodpile, and then you may have to put me to bed.”

”Not likely,” Samuels guffawed.

The Padre gave David his ”I mean it, now” look, and Valentine headed off down the road.

He still had time to look over the two-mile course if he hurried. Behind him, the three men watched him go, then turned and walked into the house.

The smell of cooking food greeted him at the campgrounds. The public tent, a behemoth, six-pole structure that saw weddings, baptisms, auctions, and meetings at the start of every summer, was hidden in a little glade surrounded by lakes and hills, miles from the nearest road and out of sight from any patrol in vehicles. The Hideout Festival featured sports and contests for the children and teenagers. A wedding or two always added to the celebratory atmosphere. The adults learned crafts; held riding, shooting, and archery compet.i.tions; and then feasted on barbecue each evening. Families brought their special dishes for all to share, for in a region of dreadful, cold winters and summers spent in hiding, there were few chances for large gatherings. With the festival's conclusion, the people would scatter into the woods and lakes to wait out the summer heat, hoping that the Reapers would comb some other portion of the Boundary Waters in search of prey.

The race felt less a sport and more of a ch.o.r.e to Valentine by the time he reached the crowd. The people, horses, wagons, and traders' stalls normally fascinated him, but the arrival of the two strangers held his thoughts in a grip that startled him. His desire for a ribbon and a shotgun in front of an applauding crowd seemed meaningless when compared with meeting a man who had known his father.

He resigned himself to running the race anyway. The course looped out in a horseshoe shape around Birch Lake. Usually a mud-rimmed half-swamp by mid-May, Birch Lake had swollen with the heavy rains until its fingers reached up almost to the public tent.

Valentine greeted Doyle and a few other acquaintances from school. He had many acquaintances but no close friends. As the Padre's live-in student, responsibilities in keeping the house and school running prevented him from forming attachments, and if that weren't enough, his bookish habits made him a natural outsider on the occasions when he did mix with the boisterous teenagers. He wandered off into the woods along the two-mile trail. He wanted time to be alone and to think. He had guessed right; the ground on the big hill to the west of Birch Lake was slick with clay-colored mud. He stood on the hill and looked out across the rippled surface of the lake toward the public tent. A thought sprang from the mysterious garden in his mind where his best ideas grew.

Fifteen boys partic.i.p.ated in the race, though only a handful had enough points from the other Field Game events to have a chance at the prize. They were dressed in everything from overalls to leather loincloths, all tan and thin, tangle haired and wire muscled.

”One to be steady,” invoked Councilman Gaffley to the rocking a.s.sortment of racers. ”Two to be ready, and you're off!”

A few of the boys almost stopped a hundred yards into the race when Valentine made a sharp right turn off the trail, heading for Birch Lake. He sprinted out onto a long spit of land and thrashed his way into the water.

Valentine swam with l.u.s.ty, powerful strokes, sighting on a tall oak on the other side. This neck of the lake was 150 yards or so across, and he figured he would be back on the trail about the time the rest of the boys skidded down the muddy hill.

And he was right, lunging dripping wet from the lake and pounding up the trail before the lead boy, Bobby Royce, could be seen emerging from the woods. David broke the string at the finish line with a muddy chest to a mixture of cheers and boos. Most of the boos came from families who had their boys in the race. A frowning Councilman grabbed it off him as if it were a sacred icon being defiled and not a piece of ratty twine.

The other boys. .h.i.t the finish line two minutes later, and the debate began. A few maintained that the important thing was to race from point A to point B as quickly as possible, and the exact route, land or water, didn't matter. The majority argued that the purpose of the race was a two-mile run cross-country, not a swim, which would be a different sport altogether.

Each side increased its volume under the a.s.sumption that whoever made the most noise would win the argument. Two old men found the whole fracas hilarious, and they pressed a bottle of beer into David's palm, slapping him on the back and p.r.o.nouncing him a first-rate sport for getting Councilman Gaffley so huffy he looked like a hen with her feathers up.

A hasty, three-councilmen panel p.r.o.nounced Valentine disqualified from the race, but the winner of a special award in recognition for his ”initiative and originality.” Valentine watched Bobby Royce receive the shotgun and sh.e.l.ls and wandered out of the tent. The barbecue smell made him hungry all over again. He grabbed a tin tray and loaded it from the ample spread outside. The homemade beer tasted vile. Had beer been this bad in the Old World? he wondered. But somehow it complemented the smoky-tasting meat. He found a dry patch of ground under a nearby tree and went to work on the food.

One of the backslapping oldsters approached him holding a varnished wooden case and dangling two more bottles of beer from experienced fingers.

”Hey there, kid. Mind if I sit with you a bit?”

Valentine smiled and shrugged.

Almost seventy years of creaky bones eased themselves up against the trunk of the tree.

”Don't have much of an appet.i.te anymore, kid. When I was your age, give or take, I could put away half that steer. Beer tastes just as good, though,” he said, taking a pull from one of the open bottles and handing the other to Valentine.

”Listen, son, don't let 'em get you down. Gaffley and the rest are good men, in their way; they just don't like the unexpected. We've seen too much unexpected in our days to want any more.”

Valentine nodded to the old man, mouth working on the food, and took a companionable pull from the fresh beer.”My name's Quincy. We were neighbors, once. You were a squirt then. Your ma used to visit, especially when my Dawn was in her last illness.”

Valentine's tenacious memory, jogged, came to his rescue. ”I remember you, Mr. Quincy.

You had that bicycle. You used to let me ride it.”

”Yeah, and you did good, considering it didn't have any tires. I gave it away with everything else when she pa.s.sed on. Moved in with my son-in-law. But I remember your mother; she used to sit with her. Talk with her. Tell jokes. Get her to eat up. You know, I don't think I ever thanked her, even the day we put my wife in the ground...”

The old man took a long pull at the beer.

”But that's water under the bridge, we used to say. Ever seen a real bridge, boy? Oh, of course you have, the one on old Highway Two is still up, isn't it. Anyhow, I'm here to give you something. Seeing you with your hair all wet and s.h.i.+ny made me think of your mom, and since those old dorks won't award you the prize you deserve, I thought I'd give you one.”

He fumbled with the greenish latch on the case and raised the lid. Inside, nestled on formed blue velvet, rested a gleaming pistol.

Valentine gasped. ”Wow! Are you kidding? That gun would be worth something at the wagons.”

The old man shook his head. ”It was mine. Your daddy probably had one just like it at some time or other. It's an automatic pistol, an old United States gun. I've kept it clean and oiled.

No bullets, though, but it's a nine millimeter, which ain't too hard to find ammo for. I was going to give it to my son-in-law, but he's a putz. He'd just swap it for liquor, most likely. So I brought it here, figuring I'd trade it for some books or something. All at once I wanted to give it to you, where maybe it would do the most good. It's not too handy for hunting, but plenty comforting on a lonely road.”

”What do you mean, Mr. Quincy?”

”Look, kid, er-David, right? I'm old, but not particularly wise. But I got old by being able to read people. You've got that look in you; I can tell you're hungry for something besides your food. Your dad was that way, too. You know he used to be in what we called the navy, and they went all over the world, which just suited him. After that, after all the s.h.i.+t came down, he did other things. He fought for the Cause just like the Padre. Did things he maybe even didn't tell your mother. You are a rolling stone, too, and all you need is a little push. What that push is gonna be, I can't say.”

Valentine wondered if he had been pushed already. He wanted to talk to Paul Samuels, wanted to talk to him alone. He might as well admit it to himself, he had been thinking about asking to go with the men when they left the Padre's.

”This world is so c.o.c.ked up I sometimes can't believe I'm still in it. You can do two things when something's wrong: fix it or live with it. All of us here in the Boundary Waters, we're trying to live with it, or hide from it, more like. We've gotten good at it. Maybe we should never have gotten used to it, I don't know, but there were always hungry kids to feed and clothe. Seemed better to hide, not rock the boat. But that's me, not you. You're a smart kid; that little stunt at the lake proved it. You know that the ones really in charge don't bother with us because we're not worth the trouble. Living with the Padre, you probably know that more than most. It's only a matter of time before they get around to us, no matter how deep in the woods we go. It's them or us. Us meaning human beings. Getting rid of them is work for the Cause.” David swallowed his food, but swallowing his mixed emotions was a much tougher proposition. Could he just take off? His vague plans for living in a lakesh.o.r.e cabin in the company of books and fis.h.i.+ng poles no longer applied or appealed, ever since Samuels and Finner had mentioned killing the patrollers who had turned the only world he'd known into piles of butchered meat. Odd that this old neighbor spoke as though he were privy to secret, half-formed thoughts. ”Are you saying I should leave, join the resistance, take up the Cause?”

”A few of the boys your age are. It happens every year. Folks are quiet about it. If word of a son or daughter leaving got to the patrols, there'd be trouble. So it's usually 'Joe got married and is living with his wife's folks near Brainerd,” or some such. The councilmen discourage it, but Gaffley's own daughter ran away two years ago. Letters arrive every year, but he won't show them to anyone.”

In a fit of contrariness, perhaps to show Quincy that he wasn't as astute a judge of human nature as the old man credited himself for being, David shrugged. ”I can't say what I'll do, Mr. Quincy. I was thinking of going up to Lake of the Woods, building a boat... I love fis.h.i.+ng, and they say next to no one lives there.”

”Sure, son. And maybe twenty years from now, a patrol will come through, just like-”

”Hey,” Valentine flashed, ”that's not... fair.”