39 PREPARATIONS

39

PREPARATIONS

Whoever comes next to kill Vida is not going to arrive on this fair Sunday. She has enough time to make preparations.

Nash Deacon had his experience of monkshood soup early Friday evening and was interred with his Trans Am before dawn Saturday. As sheriff, he is expected to be available to his office in the event of a crisis, but in this case he surely ignored that obligation. He would not have wanted anyone to know where he intended to spend his weekend or to what wicked purpose. Although arrogant and confident, he nevertheless considered that Vida, having dealt with Belden Bead before him, might be not merely obstinate but restive, incapable of the submission he demanded. The advantage of his size might ensure he could overpower and rape her, but he couldn't know that being brutally raped would break her spirit. Although he'd confiscated her guns, she might wound him or, failing that, might publicly accuse him of rape. If he couldn't break her, he wouldn't hesitate to kill her and use his power as sheriff to thwart an investigation or frame an innocent for the crime. He'd brought a disposable phone instead of the one at which his dispatcher could reach him, so whether or not to communicate with his underlings remained his choice. Even if Deacon expected to force her to submit as soon as Friday evening, he would have allowed himself the entire weekend to use, humiliate, and further psychologically shred her. No one is likely to be concerned about him until he fails to show up for work on Monday.

Even then, they won't know where to start looking for him. But in a day or two, Damon Orbach—the only son of the county's largest landowner, teenage druggie, and best friend of Morgan Slyke—might see a connection between the disappearances of the new sheriff and Belden Bead. He might remember the phantom Connie Cooper about whom he'd told Bead, and he might share his suspicion with whoever is his current supplier of dabs and other drugs. If not Damon, then Morgan Slyke, who's out of school and working for Galen Vector, will think of Connie. Or someone of whom she's unaware could know something damning. She assumes she has a few days to prepare for whatever's coming, but it's best to get it done today, before nightfall.

She makes a demanding trip into the forest, bearing the weapon and ammunition she'd bought in an adjacent state eight months ago and had hidden behind her supply of lumber and plywood. She brings as well one thing she is loath to be without if she cannot return—the drawing of her uncle that has hung in the library. She removes it from the frame, rolls it, and inserts it in a cardboard tube after stripping from the tube what Christmas wrapping paper remained on it. She travels three miles to the damaged twin-engine airplane. From what she'd read about the crash when it happened, she does not expect the vessel to be grounded at the end of a debris trail, as in the dream. It's wedged in a pair of immense pines, twelve feet above the ground. Its speed had diminished when it shredded the uppermost branches of other evergreens. As it angled toward the massive and interlaced pines, it lacked sufficient velocity either to shatter through them or be fully deconstructed by the impact. Smaller branches were shorn away, but the larger limbs held fast to trunks and snared the aircraft. The tail assembly is mangled. Both wings are bent and broken but still attached to the fuselage. The nose wheel remains with its fairing, although the wing wheels are gone. Even as the tragic essence of the scene inspires pity, it's such a compelling juxtaposition of thriving nature and failed technology that it seems as if it might be an installation by an artist.

No one seeing her in other circumstances would imagine she has the strength to haul forty pounds on her back, up steep slopes, across such distances, while also attending to demanding tasks at the plane, seldom resting more than two or three minutes at a time.

To most people, she appears to be nothing more than arm candy. She is often dismissed as being as shallow as the Hollywood beauties who lay claim to intellectual substance by embracing causes about which they know nothing more than what image consultants tell them. Vida makes no effort to win over those who make that judgment. Life is too short to spend any of it justifying herself to people who shape their opinions of others on first impressions and biases.

Often in her isolate and quiet life, she has paused to consider how fortunate she has been to be profoundly known and appreciated by at least two people. Her uncle saw the true and deepest Vida on his first encounter with her and always loved her for who she was in all her complexity of mind and heart. José likewise knew her soul; she believes he would have wished to marry her even if she had been plain of face and form. Although charismatic, he wasn't classically handsome. Indeed, his round, pleasant face was like those of many comical sidekicks in numerous movies. But anyone wise enough to see past his appearance knew that intelligence, kindness, and compassion made him special. If Vida never knows another person the equal of those men, she's known more love than many ever do in this often loveless world. She'll be eternally grateful for the love she's received and given, regardless of what is to come.

By five o'clock, she returns to her house, having made all the necessary preparations on the mountain. Never before has she taken guidance from a dream, but what strikes other people as bizarre or inadvisable makes sense to her. The world is strange beyond knowing, and life is a journey through wonders, toward mystery.

Following the death of Belden Bead, these past eight months have been frustrating because she's dared not investigate José's death aggressively. She's had to be content with subtle inquiries, roundabout research, and theorizing from the barest facts, lest she raise suspicions among those who have the power to issue warrants and dig up what she has buried.

During that time, she's known the moment would come when events beyond her ability to imagine would suddenly accelerate her along a path leading to justice for José Nochelobo and perhaps ensuring the success of the cause for which he died at the hand of an assassin. The late Nash Deacon is the agent of that acceleration. Vida faces the future with new excitement. But she suspects that she'll unlock the truth and spare Kettleton from the intentions of Boschvark and his associates only at the cost of her life. She has seen signs and omens, more than just the wraithlike passage of Azrael while she dug the pit for Deacon and his car.

She prepares a simple dinner of fresh fruits, cheeses, jams, and bread of her own making.

She fills the house with music. Beethoven's Piano Concerto no. 2 in B-Flat Major, by Glenn Gould and the New York Philharmonic.

Soon, a vivid image arises in her mind's eye—herself sprawled dead in a forest glade where blue wildflowers nod in a breeze.

Sometimes, great music excites her mind not only to an intense enchantment with the beauty of this world but also to a spiritual yearning for the mysterious and even greater beauty of some world beyond life. And sometimes stress conjures macabre images of no importance or meaning. This blue-flower death tableau seems not to arise from either the beauty of music or the bane of stress. This feels like a vision of inescapable fate.

Whether that is true or not, the thick fig jam on French bread is exquisite with the Gruyère, the sliced apple crisp is sweet and well married with the gouda, and everything else on the table is to her liking. She will resist death with all her might, but what will be will be. And what will be cannot be allowed to detract from what is, from the beauty of the music or the flavor of the food, because all she has is the moment; all anyone ever has is the moment, and moments, each in succession, are precious.