“We’re not going to play around in an avalanche,” Lila said. “We’re going to play around in the wreckage from an avalanche.”
“And see if someone is still alive in there,” Tiffany added.
“Are you kidding?” Janice’s nose was beet-red in the cold. She appeared ever more oracular, her white hair floating out behind her, the color in her rawboned cheeks as bright as road flares. All that was missing was the gnarled staff and a bird of prey to perch on her shoulder. “They went down the side of a mountain, and the prison landed on top of them. They’re dead. And if they saw a woman in there, she’s dead, too.”
“I know that,” said Lila. “But if they did see a woman in Lion Head, it means there are other women outside of Dooling. Knowing we’re not alone in this world, Janice… that would be huge.”
“Don’t die,” the warden called after them as they rode up Ball’s Hill. Lila said, “That’s the plan,” and beside her, Tiffany Jones chimed in, more conclusively, “We won’t.”
Tiffany had ridden all through her girlhood. Her family had run an apple orchard with a playground, goats to feed, a hotdog stand, and a pony ride. “I used to ride all the time, but… there was some other stuff with the family—downsides, you could say. It wasn’t all ponies. I started to run into some trouble and got out of the habit.”
This trouble was no mystery to Lila, who had personally arrested Tiff more than once. That Tiffany Jones bore startlingly little resemblance to this one. The woman who rode astride the massive roan beside Lila’s smaller white mare was a full-faced, auburn-haired woman in a white cowboy hat that would have suited any John Ford rancher. She had a self-possession about her that was utterly unlike the wretched drug addict Truman Mayweather had regularly tuned up on in the trailer next to his meth lab so long ago, and so far away.
And she was pregnant. Lila had heard Tiffany mention it at a Meeting. That, Lila thought, was where at least part of her glow came from.
It was dusk. They would have to stop soon. Maylock was visible, a spread of dim dark buildings in a valley a couple of miles distant. The exploring party had been there, and found no one, male or female. It seemed that only Dooling held human life. Unless there really had been a woman in the men’s prison, that was.
“You seem like you’re doing pretty well,” said Lila carefully. “Now.”
Tiffany’s laugh was amiable. “The afterlife clears your mind. I don’t want dope, if that’s what you mean.”
“Is that what you think this is? The afterlife?”
“Not really,” said Tiffany, and didn’t pick the subject up again until they were lying in their sleeping bags in the shell of a gas station that had been abandoned in the other world, too.
Tiffany said, “I mean, the afterlife, it’s supposed to be heaven or hell, right?” They could see the horses through the plate glass, tied up to the old pumps. The moonlight gave their coats a sheen.
“I’m not religious,” Lila said.
“Me neither,” Tiffany said. “Anyway, there’s no angels and no devils, so go figure. But isn’t this some kinda miracle?”
Lila thought of Jessica and Roger Elway. Their baby, Platinum, was growing fast, crawling all over the place. (Elaine Nutting’s daughter, Nana, had fallen in love with Plat—an ugly nickname, but everyone used it; the kid would probably hate them for it later—and rolled her everywhere in a rusty baby carriage.) Lila thought of Essie and Candy. She thought of her husband and her son and her whole life that was no longer her life.
“Some kind,” Lila said. “I guess.”
“I’m sorry. Miracle’s the wrong word. I’m just saying we’re doin all right, right? So it’s not hell, right? I’m clean. I feel good. I got these wonderful horses, which I never in my wildest dreams imagined could happen. Someone like me, takin care of animals like these? Never.” Tiffany frowned. “I’m making this all about me, aren’t I? I know you’ve lost a lot. I know most everybody here has lost a lot, and I’m just someone who didn’t have nothing to lose.”
“I’m glad for you.” She was, too. Tiffany Jones had deserved something better.
They skirted Maylock and rode along the banks of the swollen Dorr’s Hollow Stream. In the woods, a pack of dogs gathered on a hummock to observe them as they passed. There were six or seven of them, shepherds and Labs, tongues out, breath steaming. Lila took out her pistol. Beneath her, the white mare rolled its head and shifted its gait.
“No, no,” Tiffany said. She reached a hand across and brushed the mare’s ear. Her voice was soft but steady, not cooing. “Lila’s not gonna shoot that gun.”
“She’s not?” Lila had an eye on the dog in the middle. The animal’s fur was a bristly gray and black. It had mismatched eyes, blue and yellow, and its mouth seemed especially large. She wasn’t a person who typically let her imagination run away from her, but she thought the dog looked rabid.
“She certainly isn’t. They want to chase us. But we’re just doing our thing. We don’t want to play chase. We’re just getting along.” Tiffany’s voice was airy and certain. Lila thought that if Tiffany didn’t know what she was doing, she believed she knew what she was doing. They paced along through the underbrush. The dogs didn’t follow.
“You were right,” Lila said later. “Thanks.”
Tiffany said she was welcome. “But it wasn’t for you. No offense, but I’m not lettin you put a fright in my horses, Sheriff.”
They crossed the river and bypassed the high road the others had taken up the mountain, continuing instead on the lower ground. The horses descended into a dell that formed the gap between what was left of Lion Head on the left and another cliff face on the right, which rose up at a sharp, splintery slant. There was a pervasive metallic stench that tickled the backs of their throats. Crumbles of loose earth shook down, the embedded stones echoing far too loudly in the bowl created by the rises on either side.
They tied up the horses a couple of hundred yards from the prison ruins and approached on foot.
“A woman from somewhere else,” Tiffany said. “Wouldn’t that be something?”
“Yes,” Lila agreed. “Finding some of our own still alive would be even better.”
Fragments of masonry, some as tall and wide as moving vans, were embedded higher up along the back of Lion Head, stabbed into the earth like enormous cenotaphs. As sturdy as they appeared, Lila could easily imagine them breaking loose under their own weight and tumbling down to join the pile at the bottom.
The body of the prison had hit bottom and folded inward on itself, forming a vaguely pyramid-like shape. In a way, it was impressive, how much of the building’s body had survived the slide down the mountain—and hideous, too, in its decipherability, like a dollhouse smashed by a bully. Spears of jagged steel jutted out from the cement, and massive root-knotted clods of earth had settled on other parts of the debris. At the edges of this unplanned new structure were tattered breaches in the cement that offered glimpses of the black interior. Everywhere there were smashed trees, twenty- and thirty-footers snapped into raw shards.
Lila put on a surgical mask that she’d brought. “Stay here, Tiffany.”
“I wanna come with you. I’m not afraid. Let me have one a them.” She stuck out her hand for a surgical mask.
“I know you’re not afraid. I just want someone able to go back if this place falls in on my head, and you’re the horse girl. I’m just a middle-aged ex-cop. Also, we both know you’re living for two.”