“Nothing. There’s not going to be any time.”
Connor slid up close to his mother, choking back tears. He took one of her hands and placed it next to his flushed cheek and began to whisper to her.
“Mom. You can’t leave us now. We’ve been through too much. You promised me when this was all over we could go to the beach...”
Peggy didn’t move. He face was turning the color of ice.
She was dying…
****
It got quieter outside.
Will crawled out of the cave to see what was happening with the chopper. He saw a man connecting a line between the chopper and the sled, while another man finished tamping down something in the snow. Even in the wavering spotlight beam he could tell what it was.
Dynamite.
Once they have what they want they’ll start an avalanche to cover their tracks.
Will quickly scrambled back to the others.
“They’re going to blow the place up!”
He froze as he got close enough to see their faces.
Robert and the boy looked at him with vacant eyes. Peggy lay still on the ground next to them. Will didn’t even have the courage to ask if she was still alive.
CHAPTER 64
Robert could barely hear his friend’s warnings. It was as if Will’s voice was coming from miles away. At the moment Robert’s head was filled with the ghosts of dark-skinned old men with bone white beards explaining something to him in crude sign language. There was a riot of screams coming from a jungle filled with animals watching him in the dark, and poles stretching the curing faces of men next to a blazing fire.
He heard several voices chanting. But as he listened they changed to a gentle, sweet song.
Healing music...
Without questioning himself as to why, Robert shoveled up some snow with his hand and placed it on each of Peggy’s eyes. He then leaned down and kissed the wound where Peggy had been shot before dipping his finger tips in her blood and pressing them into his forehead to create a cluster of four wet dots. He took a knife he’d had hidden inside his boot and held it over Peggy’s chest. Will stared at him in shock.
“Jesus Robert. What are you doing?”
“Put out a hand,” Robert said in a voice that no one had ever heard before. It caused the hair on the back of their necks to rise. Will and Connor tried to resist, but an invisible force pulled each of their left hands over Peggy.
Robert slit his palm and the palms of the others. He gripped their hands in his and squeezed until Will and Connor begged that he’d let them go. Robert chanted softly, his mind stripping down the truths of life and death and especially love to their most simple elements, to ribbons of pure light weaving themselves in and out of space and time.
Their blood dripped down on Peggy’s wound until it seemed to slow and scab over. Robert stared closely, expecting fresh blood to erupt from beneath the newly formed crust but nothing happened. Then Peggy gasped for a breath of air and her eyelids moved and knocked away the snow Robert had laid there, reminding him of the wet cherry blossoms on the day he’d proposed to her. She shivered, and Robert wrapped her with her jacket and kissed her on the cheek.
Will and Connor sat back and stared.
“Is mom going to be okay?” Connor asked.
Robert turned his head and smiled. “I think she’s got a chance, son.”
Outside, they could hear the chopper’s engine starting up.
“Stay with her,” Robert said.
He got up and walked to the entrance of the cave. From below a shelf of ice he watched the chopper as it raised the sled up on the line. He stepped out from the shelter and into the open. Distant shouts soon followed and the rifleman in the chopper started firing again. Shards of ice spit up and cut Robert’s face, but as much as the shooter tried he was incapable of hitting him. Robert looked inward, traveling by his mind’s eye into the chopper where he saw the face of the man who’d shot Peggy in the back as well as the corrupt Sheriff who’d given the order.
He heard them laughing. Laughing over Marsh’s misfortune and the strangers below who had no idea what was headed their way. It wouldn’t be the first time people in the sheriff’s jurisdiction had become victims of some tragic accident, Robert knew. All it took was a small town where people kept their mouths shut and a corrupt sheriff could do just about anything he pleased.
Robert had just proven to himself he could heal.
Now it was time to exercise the opposite end of the power spectrum.
He wanted those men to pay…
Still standing out in the open with his head raised, he slapped his hands together in front of him like he was killing a mosquito. The chopper hovering above him suddenly coughed and thick black smoked poured out of its engine. He heard screams as the chopper fell toward the glacier, pulled into it even faster by the gold-laden sled. Robert felt as if a bolt of electricity was shooting through his body. In his mind’s eye he could see the horror on the men’s faces as they saw themselves dropping into a most certain inferno.
He remained still and watched. A few breathless moments passed before there was an enormous explosion and the sides of the crevasse caved in, bringing down with it the bundle of dynamite yet to be ignited. But just before he turned to avoid the impending explosion, Robert heard a voice speak to him from some distant place:
We may need to live in the dark when it is absolutely necessary, but we must always return to the house of light after we’ve completed what was needed…
He ran back to the cave. Nugget growled at him, but when he got closer to her he reached out and she nosed his hand cautiously. Something had changed since he’d left to take care of the chopper, in ways that he himself was unaware of. Peggy was sitting up now and when she glanced at his face he saw it there to, her fear of him. Only when he crinkled his eyes and smiled at her in his secret way with her could he be sure she realized who he was, that he was still the man she loved.
“Don’t worry baby, I’m still me,” he said to her softly. He lifted her up in his arms and the entire party hurried deeper into the cave before the second explosion brought down a thundering avalanche of snow.
CHAPTER 65
They were walking on the beach, looking at things left behind by a crashing high tide they’d heard while still in their beds early that morning.
Robert kept in front of Peggy and Connor so he could turn and watch the excitement on their faces as they played a game of who could find the most sand dollars. Nugget quickly caught on to what they were doing and began to swipe the shells off the sand before they could reach them.
“That was mine thief!” Connor yelled. Nugget looked up at him and crunched the shell between her teeth, then turned to go find another. Connor ran to keep up with her, laughing as they fought for the next prize. Peggy tried to distract Nugget with a throwing stick, but the dog seemed too intent on munching shells.
Without these wonderful beings in his life, Robert felt he could have easily given up. It was their love that had kept him from surrendering to the cold arms of the void. They were the buoys in the fog who continually reminded him of who he was, who kept him from drifting off course.
Together they’d survived another nightmare. After they were flown back to Portland, Robert spent a week in the hospital being treated for his injuries, where the doctors were only cautiously optimistic he’d be able to fight off life-threatening infections. His fever caused him to slip into coma and it was hit and miss for several days before he regained consciousness. And yet he still wasn’t completely free of trouble. The fact that a police officer stood outside his hospital room told Robert all he needed to know.