The Jeep was parked in front of the house. Messenger drew up alongside it. There was no one in sight, but he could hear a dog barking furiously inside the house. He started past the Jeep to the porch.
“That’s far enough, mister. Hold it right there.”
Male voice, young, and as hard as Dacy Burgess’s. Messenger stopped, turned slowly toward the sound of it. A gangly kid of fourteen or fifteen, sweat-stained cowboy hat shoved back on his head to reveal a mop of sun-bleached brown hair, had come out at the far corner. The rifle in his hands was similar to the one the woman had carried, and he held it with the same competence and authority. The sight of it and its aimed bore didn’t bother Messenger as much as it would have before the shooting at Anna’s ranch. He thought: Gun-happy people. Then he thought: No, that’s not fair. If I lived alone in a place like this, and had the recent history they’ve had, I’d be leery of strangers and keep a weapon handy, too.
The kid said challengingly, “What’s the idea chasing after my ma?”
“I wasn’t chasing her. Just followed her home, that’s all.”
“What happened? What’d you do to her?”
“Nothing. Didn’t she tell you about it?”
“Didn’t tell me anything. Just drove in all lathered and went inside.” His mouth worked as if he were about to spit. Instead he said, as though explaining something, “She’s never lathered.”
“I gave her some bad news.”
“Yeah? What bad news?”
“Lonnie,” Dacy Burgess said, “leave him be. I’ll handle this.”
She had come out onto the porch, was standing there in that ramrod posture. Her hands were empty now. She’d shed the broad-brimmed Stetson too; her hair, short and windblown from the open Jeep, a thick lock jutting like a topknot, was the same sunbleached brown as her son’s.
The boy, Lonnie, said, “Handle what? What’s going on?”
“Your aunt Anna’s dead.”
“What?” Nothing changed in his face. “When?”
“Three weeks ago in San Francisco.”
“So that’s it.” Then, flatly, “Well, good.”
“Lonnie. She killed herself.”
“Did she? Who’s this guy?”
“Never mind that now. Go on back to your chores.”
“You okay with him?”
“Yes. Go on now, I mean it. We’ll talk later.”
No argument from Lonnie. He lowered his rifle, slow-walked toward the barn without looking back.
Messenger said, “He must really hate her.”
“Well, he’s got cause. He loved his cousin.”
“Tess.”
“That’s right, Tess.”
“Do you hate Anna, too? Even now?”
“No. Maybe I should, but I don’t.” She ran a hand through her hair; the topknot bounced back up again. “I shouldn’t have run off on you that way.”
“It’s all right. I understand.”
“Do you?”
“The news hit you pretty hard and you needed time to recover.” Time to cry a little, too: Her eyes looked red and a little puffy, even though she’d washed her face afterward. “You’ll want to hear the rest of it. That’s why I followed you.”
“Might as well know. Come inside.”
She led him into the house. On one side of a narrow hallway was the kitchen, on the other a living room with plain furniture, Indian rugs, books on homemade shelves; no television set, but a home computer on a desk. The computer seemed out of place, anachronistic in these surroundings, though of course it wasn’t. He wondered what she used it for.
It was not quite as hot in here; a noisy rooftop swamp cooler stirred the air sluggishly. Over the rattle of the cooler, the dog’s frantic barks seemed to thud like solid things hurled against a wall. “That’s Buster,” she said. “Doesn’t like strangers any more than we do. Go on into the kitchen. I’ll settle him down.”
The kitchen had an old-fashioned look that appealed to him, dominated by a huge black cast-iron cookstove — the kind that sold in Bay Area antique stores for upward of two thousand dollars. A bulky refrigerator-freezer was the only newish appliance. A dinette table sat next to the window with the cracked pane; as he drew out one of the three chairs, the dog’s barking cut off into a shrill whine and then silence. Half a minute later Dacy Burgess reappeared.
She took glasses from a cupboard, a jug of ice water from the refrigerator, and brought them to the table. “You look dry,” she said. “Help yourself.”
“Thanks.”
She sat down and watched him drink thirstily, not touching the glass he’d poured for her. Up close and without the broad-brimmed Stetson, she bore a faint resemblance to Anna. The same facial bone structure, the same pale gray eyes. But her eyes were full of life, even dulled as they were at the moment. He wondered if Anna had been a woman of mood and temper and passion once too, long ago, and decided that she probably had.
“I’m sorry about your sister, Mrs. Burgess.”
“You already said that.”
“I want you to know I mean it. Really very sorry.”
“So am I. Now Lonnie’s all the family I’ve got left.”
“What about your husband?”
“I don’t have a husband.”
“Lonnie’s father...?”
“Him. Long gone, and good riddance.”
He started to say, “I’m sorry,” again, bit the words back. Meaningless. And she wouldn’t want to hear them anyway.
She pinched a pack of Marlboros from her shirt pocket, lit one and coughed out smoke, grimacing. “Shit, that tastes awful. I’ve been trying to quit but it’s not easy. Not when you’ve had the habit more than half your life.”
“No, I guess it isn’t.”
“Don’t smoke yourself?”
“Never have, no.”
“Smart,” she said. Then, “What was Anna to you?”
“Somebody I wish I’d known better.”
“She didn’t make friends easy.”
“We weren’t friends.”
“Bed partners?”
“Not that, either.”
“No, you’re not her type. Only man she ever wanted was that son of a bitch she married.”
“Dave Roebuck.”
“God’s gift to women, to hear him brag on it. We sure could pick ’em, Anna and me.” She sucked in more smoke, made another face and exhaled gustily. “So you met her in Frisco.”
“We lived in the same neighborhood. Ate every night at the same café.”
“Surprised me at first, to hear that’s where she went.”
“You had no idea she was living there?”
“Before you told me? No. Not a word from her since she up and left here. I figured she’d gone somewhere in Nevada or Arizona. Born and raised in the desert — desert rats usually stay close to home. More I think about it, though... makes some sense that she’d head for a city. Get as far away from here as she could, in miles and surroundings both. Frisco was the only city she ever visited that she liked.”
That isn’t why she went there, Messenger thought abruptly, with an insight so clear he had no doubt it was true. Contraction of self in the city: easier there to wrap loneliness and despair and resignation tight around yourself, weave a smothering cocoon of it all; easier then to put an end to the pain. Anna either thought that out or intuited it at some level. In any case, she went to San Francisco to die.
“Just how well did you know her, Jim?”
“Hardly at all,” he admitted. “I tried to talk to her once but she didn’t want any part of me or anyone else. She’d cut herself off from all human contact.”
“Never even had a conversation with her?” Dacy Burgess squinted at him one-eyed; smoke from her cigarette had closed the other one. “Then why’d you come here? Beulah’s a long drive from Frisco.”