Diana almost reached him. But not quite.
Blake threw the thing into the hole of the number five outhouse.
“What is going on?” Pat demanded, rushing up.
Blake was silent.
“He had some kind of…” Diana began. She made a face, then added, “I don’t know what it was.”
“It was a monster,” Blake said.
“Jeez, dude, you scared me half to death,” Patrick said. “I mean, enjoy your game or whatever, but don’t be screaming when I’m doing my business.” He stomped off down the hill toward the lake.
Diana didn’t yell at Blake. “Where’s the other one of you? What’s her name? The girl?”
Blake shook his head dully. A veil went down over his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess she’s gone.”
Orc sat reading.
That fact, the sight of Orc sitting on a rock with a book in his hands, was still inexplicable to Howard.
Orc and Howard had gone with Sam to Lake Tramonto during the Big Split. Sam was a pain in the butt, but he wasn’t likely to decide to throw you through a wall, like Caine might.
The only problem with the lake was that most of the drinking and drugging population had stayed in Perdido Beach. Howard operated a whiskey still at Coates, but traveling from Coates to the lake was not exactly an easy trip. And Howard couldn’t do it with more than about a dozen bottles in a backpack.
Orc could carry far more, of course. But Orc wasn’t helping anymore. Orc was reading. He was reading the Bible.
Orc drunk was depressed, dangerous, unpredictable, and occasionally murderous. But Orc sober was just useless. Useless.
Orc had been given the job of guarding Sinder’s little farm. Mostly this involved sitting on a rock outcropping and reading.
Sinder’s farm wasn’t much bigger than a good-size backyard, a wedge-shaped piece of land that had once been a streambed back when rain still fell in the mountains and sent streams to replenish the lake. Orc had helped them dig a web of shallow canals that brought lake water in to water the neat rows.
Sinder and Jezzie spent all day, every day, planting and tending. Orc spent as much time. In fact, he had set up a little tent just beside the rock and he slept there most nights.
Howard had spent a couple of nights there as well, trying to keep alive his friendship with Orc, trying to get Orc past this whole newfound sobriety thing.
It wasn’t that Howard liked Orc drunk. (Orc had no money, so whatever he drank came straight out of Howard’s profits.) It was just that sober, Bible-reading Orc was useless to Howard. Useless for intimidation and debt collection, and useless for hauling booze.
“What’s ‘meek’ mean?” Orc asked Howard. Then he spelled it, because he wasn’t sure if he was saying it right. “M-E-E-K.”
“I know how to spell ‘meek,’” Howard snapped. “It means wimpy. Weak. Pathetic. Pitiful. A sucker. A victim. A stupid, Bible-reading, monster-looking fool, that’s what it means.”
“Well, it says here they’re blessed.”
“Yeah,” Howard said savagely, “because that’s the way it always works out: wimps always win.”
“They’re gonna inherit the earth,” Orc said. But he seemed doubtful about it. “What’s that mean, ‘inherit’?”
“You are sucking the life right out of me; you know that, Orc?”
Orc shifted and turned his book to get better light. The sun was going down.
“Where are the girls? Farmer Goth and Farmer Emo?”
“Went to get Sam.” Orc grunted.
“Sam? Why didn’t you tell me, dude?” Howard glanced around for a place to hide his backpack. He was on a delivery run. And while Sam didn’t go out of his way to try to shut down Howard’s business, he could get it into his head to confiscate Howard’s product.
“I think ‘inherit’ means take over, like,” Orc said.
Howard slung his pack behind a bush and stepped back to see if it was still visible. “Yep. Take over. The meek. Just like rabbits take over from coyotes. Don’t be an idiot, Orc.”
Howard would never have insulted Orc back in the old days. Back when Orc was Orc. Even now he saw Orc’s eyes narrow—they were one of the few remaining human parts of him. Orc was a slag heap of living gravel with a patch of human skin where his mouth and part of one cheek were.
Howard almost wished Orc would get up and pound him. At least he’d be Orc again. Instead Orc narrowed his eyes and said, “You know, there’s a lot more rabbits than there are coyotes.”
“Why are the girls getting Sam?” Howard glanced back toward the marina, the center of life at the lake. Sure enough, Sam, Jezzie, and Sinder were coming along at a quick walk.
“‘Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice,’” Orc read in his slow, laborious way.
“You want to ask me what that means, Orc?” Howard snapped. “Because I think justice may not be something you want to see so much.”
Orc’s face wasn’t capable of showing much emotion. But Howard could see that the shot had hit home. In a drunken rage Orc had accidentally killed a kid back in Perdido Beach. No one but Howard knew about it.
“What’s that?” Howard asked, pointing. He had just noticed a discoloration of the dome behind Orc.
“That’s why they went for Sam.”
At that moment Sam and the girls came up. Sam nodded to Howard and said, “Orc, how’s it going?”