Page 122 of The River We Remember

Evans left the jailhouse, and Brody went into the cellblock with Hector at his heels. Bluestone was asleep.

“Noah?”

He spoke quietly, but the man was instantly awake, up and alert in the blink of an eye. A lifetime of military training, Brody figured.

“There was trouble out at your place tonight.”

“Kyoko?” Although his face was stone, Bluestone’s eyes betrayed his fear.

“She’s fine. But your dog took a round from a twenty-two. He’s hurt, but he’ll recover.”

“Do you know who did it?”

Brody shook his head. “As nearly as we can figure, somebody was up in the loft of your barn, watching your wife shower. She spotted him, he ran. Your dog just got in the way.”

Brody couldn’t believe the iron in the man, the way his body and face held still. But those dark eyes showed everything.

“Not the first time someone’s gone after our dog,” Bluestone said.

“What?”

“Not long after Kyoko and I got married. This was in Okinawa. Wasn’t a popular thing to do, marrying a Japanese woman. I took a lot of grief for it. So did Kyoko, from her people, for marrying an American soldier. We got us a little shih tzu. Had him six months. Then somebody poisoned him. Never knew if it was my people or hers. Truth is we didn’t have a people, either of us.”

“When did you get Fuji?”

“After my transfer to the Marine Combat Center in Twentynine Palms. He’d been abandoned. Kyoko took him in. I think mostly because she knew what it was to have no home. Gentle dog, really, unless somebody or something threatens Kyoko.”

“You say you don’t have a people. Then why’d you come back here, Noah?”

Through the open window at the end of the cellblock came the sound of distant thunder. Bluestone glanced that way, and then Brody, but all they saw was the glow of moonlight.

“Tired of killing,” Bluestone finally said, “and tired, too, of making sure we had boys trained to do it. Thought maybe back here on my farm we could start new, a different kind of life.” His gaze returned to Brody. “Think it was Creasy out at my place?”

“I can’t say.”

“He said he’d get back at me. And it’s the kind of thing he’d do.” Bluestone looked down at Hector. “You probably ought to watch your dog close.”

Brody put a hand to one of the cell bars. The metal was cool against his palm. He leaned nearer to Bluestone. “You know, Noah, you could save everybody a lot of trouble if you’d just say what happened with Jimmy Quinn that night. Who are you protecting? Is it Kyoko?”

Instead of answering, Bluestone said, “You’re sure she’s safe?”

“Connie Graff’s out there with her. I don’t know a better man in this whole county.”

Bluestone seemed satisfied. “I hear you playing the guitar and singing upstairs at night. I remember when you were a kid, playing at the county fair. Sons of the Prairie, wasn’t that what you called your band? Still play with them?”

“No,” Brody said. “We broke up when the war broke out.”

“You ought to think about getting back together. You’re still pretty good.”

“I’m going for a walk,” Brody said. “I’ll be gone ten minutes. I’ll lock the jailhouse door behind me.” Bluestone went back to his bunk, and Brody said to Hector, “Let’s go, boy.”

He walked the streets of Jewel, past the lamps that lit the sidewalks in front of the shops on Main, into the darkness where the Alabaster ran. He came to the George Street Bridge, where Hannah Klein had thrown herself into the river. He’d known her well, and her husband, and he knew that Felix, because he’d loved her, had done his best to protect her. And still she’d died. He looked down at Hector and considered Bluestone’s warning. Then thought of the others he loved and all those for whom, as sheriff, he felt responsible. In a town where the hatred from wars long past and wars more recent still had hooks set in so many hearts, was anyone safe?

He was startled by a roll of thunder from the west, and he looked there and saw the black clouds rising, swallowing the stars. Once again in his life, he found himself thinking like a soldier: Find Tyler Creasy. Neutralize the threat. Whatever that takes.

IN HIS OWN war, what had once been called the Great War, Connie Graff had become used to lying awake listening for the enemy. In the last months of his marriage, he’d lain awake listening to his wife suffer. Now he lay awake listening because of Kyoko Bluestone.

She’d made a bed for him on the sofa in the living room. As Graff lay there, he thought that everyone had come from somewhere else. Even the Sioux had not always lived on the land along the Alabaster. They were all travelers. But he appreciated the idea that Bluestone’s people had never claimed to own the land, that they understood they were like the birds and the buffalo, all of them just passing through. There had been a time, a very long time, when there’d been no humans on this land, and Graff believed that someday it would be that way again. All that men had done to prove their ownership, their mastery, would be undone. In time as it was reckoned by humans, this might be a long while coming, but it would come. In the reckoning of the earth, it would take place in less than a heartbeat.