Although the volume was set low, the radio beside me was a constant buzz of Charter’s growing presence, and even though nothing was said aloud, I heard the tension building in the various voices chiming in with those reports. Something bad was coming, growing closer with each passing minute.
“I don’t know if it’s safe outside.”
“I want to see the stars, please Jack, it’s important to me.”
The weakness in her voice pained me. As she sat up, she looked so frail. I couldn’t deny her, not now, not ever. I helped her to her feet. “Can you walk?”
Stella nodded. “I think so.”
I tucked the Ruger into my waistband (a skill I had finally mastered), put the radio in my pocket, and placed both pairs of headphones around my neck so I could free both hands to help Stella.
She smiled for the first time in days. “You look ridiculous.” She grinned. “Like a horrible white rapper who misplaced all his gold chains and decided to go for a new look.”
“True dat.”
The bunk room was empty. No sign of my father, Cammie, or Darby. One of Dunk’s men stood sentry in the hallway, and at first I thought he might try to keep us in the room, but he didn’t. Instead, he followed silently a few paces behind us as I helped Stella negotiate the hallways and stairs to one of the catwalks outside, this one overlooking Carrie Furnace Boulevard, the railroad tracks, and the trees in the distance. Although I knew Charter was busy grouping beyond those trees, the area immediately surrounding the steel mill seemed oddly peaceful.
We sat on the edge of the catwalk, our legs dangling over the side. “Where are the others?” Stella asked, her fingers still in mine.
“On the roof, I think.”
“And Charter?”
“All around us.” I told her what I knew while pointing back at the trees.
She looked around, studied the open fields. “Seems so quiet.”
And itwasquiet. The air was perfectly still, hovering somewhere in the sixties. A nearly full moon, at least three quarters, coating everything in a bluish white blanket of light.
Stella tilted her head up and smiled. “Of all things, I believe I’ll miss the night sky most of all. The absolute vastness of it, the unknown. While we’re down here fighting our pesky little battles, we’re really just a speck on the shoe of the universe. Any problem life may present seems so small, so insignificant, when you simply look up and realize your true place in all things.”
“You have a lifetime of night skies ahead of you.” I said the words knowing they weren’t true. I think I said them not only for her benefit but my own. As if speaking such a thing out loud would make it so.
“Thank you for the last few days, Pip. For all you’ve done for me. You’ve been one of the few constants in my life, perhaps the only bright spot. I never thought I’d know love, to be loved and to love another, and yet you are all those things to me. You have been all those things to me my entire life, forourentire lives. If I have any regret, its that I shied away from you so, that I held you at such a distance rather than embrace you years ago. I didn’t want to expose you to what I was, what I did, and what I knew I would continue to do. It was easier for me to push you away, to tell myself that was the right thing to do. I regret the talks we never had, the lost nights we never shared.” Stella looked back out over the fields and leaned her head on my shoulder. “Do you remember the paintings in my house? Landscapes and cities, far-off wonders and places?”
I nodded.
“As I painted each one, I pretended you and I were there, visiting each of those places together—the Golden Gate bridge, the Grand Canyon, the lights of Paris and the pyramids of Egypt, the streets of New York and the wilds of New Orleans, far open fields and hidden lakes lost among ancient trees. My hand in yours or your arm around me—you taking me in your arms and kissing me at each new place, my illness nonexistent in those wanderings of my mind. In many ways, we’ve already spent a lifetime together, and I’m grateful for that but I am grateful for these past few days most of all. My Pip, my wonderful John Edward Jack Thatch.”
Stella shivered, and I pulled her closer. I considered going back for a blanket, when a deep-throated rumble filled the night.
“We’ve got a car approaching. Came over Rankin Bridge, just turned on Carrie Furnace Boulevard. Moving fast. Let it pass or take it out?”
Static.
Dunk’s voice followed.“Single car? How many passengers? Can you tell?”
“I only see one, just the driver.”
My father’s voice, then,“Get those headphones ready. It might be Pickford.”
I had set our headphones down beside me. I reached over, turned on the power switch, and handed a pair to Stella.
Dunk again.“Let it pass. Shooters on the roof, standby. I give the order, I want a rain of bullets on whoever steps out.Onlyif I give the order, copy?”
A dozen voices replied in confirmation.
I spotted it, rounding the bend at the far end of Carrie Furnace Boulevard. The car went over the railroad tracks, then picked up speed on the straightaway, with dusty rooster trails at its back.
