Fifty-two

They waited…and waited. It was another month, the end of August, when Peter showed up again at the J&L, this time with Jeff Truebridge. Once Jeff heard the story, he couldn’t resist being part of the search for Jake in Mexico. Not only was the subject of Jake Harkner’s possible demise a top nationwide story, but Jeff deeply cared. The whole family greeted him with hugs and handshakes, their tears mixed with Jeff’s when he and Peter brought them the bad news.

“We got next to nothing as far as cooperation from Mexican authorities,” Peter told them.

Jeff removed his ever-present wire-rimmed glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief, then wiped at his eyes. “It’s pretty obvious the law in that area is run by this Don de Leon,” he told them, “and he refused to talk to us. He sent some older man who worked for him to speak with us and the Mexican authorities. He told us…” Jeff hesitated, wiping at his eyes again.

“My God,” he continued. “Jake’s just about the toughest man I’ve ever known. Being his friend has been the best thing that ever happened to me. When I got to know him… I never dreamed he could be that good of a friend. Being able to say I rode with Jake Harkner is my proudest honor.”

“What did that Mexican man tell you?” Lloyd asked, fearing the answer.

“He said—” He put his glasses back on. “I don’t know how to tell you without just saying it flat out. The don accused Jake of stealing from him. We all know it was that girl, but he claimed it was horses, which he said gave him the right to kill Jake. He admitted Jake had a broken leg and was pretty battered from being dragged for a ways. They didn’t do a thing to wrap or set his broken leg, and the don ordered him—” He removed his glasses again. “God help me get over this,” he wept. “He ordered him…to be whipped until he passed out.”

“Oh, my God, Jake!” Randy bent over in her chair, her head in her hands. “Jake! Jake!”

“It’s a good thing we talked you into staying here and letting us go,” Peter told Lloyd. “You’re as bad as your father with that temper of yours, and you probably would have done something to get yourself in trouble too. You probably would have gone after that wealthy don and ended up missing, just like your father.” He sighed. “According to the old man, some of de Leon’s men took Jake into the desert to die a slow death,” he finished, his own emotional pain obvious in his voice. “The don’s words were to let the buzzards finish him off.”

“Daddy!” Evie groaned. “How could God let this happen?”

“But we still don’t have a body, do we?” Lloyd growled. He stood behind Katie, refusing to sit down or to cry. “Did anyone take you to where they left him to die?”

Peter reached over and touched Randy’s shoulder. “Yes.”

“And?” Lloyd looked ready to grab something and throw it.

“No body,” Peter told him. “The old man swore that’s where they left it, but they’d stripped him naked, so there were no clothes left to prove anything.”

“Not even any bones?” Lloyd asked, feeling ill at having to put it so bluntly.

Peter shook his head.

“Then my mother might be right. It doesn’t matter if it was buzzards or ants or coyotes or anything else. I’ve seen enough animals with their bones picked bare to know there is always something left. Always something! The only way there would be nothing left is if the body got moved—or if he lived.”

“Or was buried,” Peter reminded him.

“Who would bother, out there in the desert?” Lloyd argued.

“But how can a man survive something like that?” Katie asked.

“Father is no ordinary man,” Lloyd insisted. “Over time, I’ve come to think like Mom. She says she has felt Jake with her, and so have I.”

Randy looked up at him. “Lloyd, what happened?”

Lloyd nervously began smoothing Katie’s hair away from her face, his voice broken from the pain in his heart. “I heard his voice.” He held his chin high, his jaw flexing from a struggle not to completely break down. “Last night. I was dead asleep, and someone called my name, clear as a bell. I actually grabbed my gun, because I thought someone was in the room. I love you, son, he said. I got up and turned on a light, but no one was there. Katie slept right through it.”

Evie raised her head and looked at him. “I heard him too!” She wiped at tears. “I didn’t say anything, because I was afraid you’d all think I was losing my mind—or letting prayer give me false hope.” She turned and looked up at Brian, who stood behind her, grasping her shoulders. “Brian, I couldn’t sleep. I went downstairs to heat some coffee, and I could swear he was standing right behind me. He whispered in my ear. My angel, he said.” She jerked in a sob. “As God is my witness, someone spoke to me. I turned, and no one was there.”

Jeff shook his head. “I’d like to think you’re right, but from what we heard and what we saw where he was left…the condition he must have been in. There’s no way he could have survived. Not on his own. It was obvious the don is a powerful and ruthless man. He would not have allowed Jake to live.”

“I hate to say it,” Brian told them, “but an untreated broken leg goes wrong terribly fast. He wouldn’t have been able to walk on it, and lying out there in that kind of heat… Even if he somehow lived, he’d lose that leg to infection.”

“I’m so sorry to say this,” Peter said, “but hearing his voice—it could be his spirit talking. From someplace else. Evie, maybe you simply prayed him to heaven. We searched all the surrounding villages, and no one knew of him. Believe me, we did everything we could to try to find out what might have happened to him if he didn’t die. But it would have been virtually impossible for any man to survive what was done to your father. And maybe”—he squeezed Randy’s shoulder—“maybe coyotes or whatever did drag his bones away. Besides that, the desert sun can turn bones to dust.”

Lloyd turned away. “Not right away,” he insisted. “It takes years.” He leaned against a doorjamb and held on to it. “Pa! It can’t be this way! It can’t be this way! He should be buried here on the J&L, up at that line shack, where Mom wants to be buried beside him. It can’t end this way. Not for a man like Jake Harkner.”

“I don’t even know what to report to the newspapers,” Jeff told them. He swallowed and sniffed. “The man made me famous. That book earned me a writing award. Little did I know how unfinished it was when I had it published. Jake Harkner, The Legend and The Myth. Now the legend is—what the hell really happened to the man?”

“All we can do is pray for his soul,” Evie told them. “We have to behave as though Daddy were gone. He always said he’d have a hard time getting into heaven because of the life he led, but I’ve never feared for one minute that God would turn him away.”

“We should have some kind of ceremony,” Katie told them, rubbing at her now-growing belly. “And we need to remember that Jake Harkner isn’t dead. He lives in Lloyd and Evie and all his wonderful grandchildren and the one I’m carrying now. Jake never thought he would end up with such a big, loving family, so he…he died a happy man. That’s the only way we can face this and live with it.”

Lloyd turned from the pantry doorway and looked at his mother. “Somehow, we have to put this to rest. We need to go on as a family.”

Peter kept rubbing Randy’s shoulders. “Jake was definitely one of a kind,” he offered. “And he most certainly lives on. He’s standing right in front of us over there in that pantry doorway.”

Lloyd shook his head. “No. There’s nobody like my pa.” He turned and walked out. Katie quickly got up and ran after him.

Randy could hardly feel her own body. How was she going to go on? How? She’d never even slept in their bed in the loft since that last night they made love before Jake left for Mexico. Jake! You promised you would come back! You promised!

This wasn’t real. It simply couldn’t be. Her whole life had been centered around Jake Harkner. Who was Miranda Hayes Harkner? She’d melted into a man named Jake all those years ago in the back of a wagon, and she’d never emerged as just Randy since then. It had always been Jake and Randy.

Darkness engulfed her, a darkness that took away all reality.