Page 35 of Nomad

She smiled. “Okay. What can I do to help?”

“What did you have in mind?” he asked playfully in a way that could have been interpreted as flirtatious.

On impulse, she decided to test the waters, so to speak. “You heat and carry the water. I’ll undress you.” She wiggled her eyebrows.

He couldn’t help but laugh. The idea of being pursued and propositioned by an underage pregnant girl under his protection was too outrageous to be anything but funny.

“What’s so funny?”

“You.”

“Me? I’m not being funny, Johns. Are you gay?”

“Am I gay?” His eyebrows went up and his forehead wrinkled.

“Yes. That was the question. I once heard that, when people repeat a question they’re doing it to give them time to think up a lie. Are you trying to think up a lie, Johns?”

He couldn’t believe he was letting this child put him on the defensive. “Look. It’s not that you’re not attractive. You are. Of course you are. It’s that you’re pregnant, seventeen, and in a position to feel like you owe me. When you add all that together, it’s a bad combination for entanglements. And that is all we’re going to say about it. Except that, I know you were joking. Right?”

She decided retreat was the best course of action. “Right. Joking. Joking. Totally joking. Just kidding around. Ha. Ha.”

“That’s what I thought.”

That night Cann dreamed that Molly and the baby were in a field of bluebonnets on a bright spring day with an impossibly blue sky and an impossibly yellow sun. Molly blew him a kiss. She was talking, saying something, but he couldn’t make out what. When she picked up the baby and turned away, Cann felt panicked, even in his dream.

He tried to run after her, but couldn’t move. She turned around and began talking again. He still didn’t hear what she was saying, but he was left with the distinct impression that it was, “We love you. Now let go of us and live your life. We’re moving on to the next adventure. You should, too.”

When she walked away, she disappeared and there was nothing left in the dream but the bluebonnets lit by an impossibly yellow sun hanging in an impossibly blue sky.

Cann woke up feeling different. He couldn’t say how. He didn’t know how. He just knew things had changed somehow.

CHAPTER Seven

It was mid-morning when Cann thought he heard the sound of a different engine. Not Maria’s car.

He rushed to the window and looked out. “Somebody’s coming. Let’s go.”

He reached down and grabbed the backpack he’d so carefully stowed by the front door and ran for the shed without waiting to see if she was following. He knew he could pick her up on the way out if needs be.

She was right behind him and jumped into the passenger seat as he was starting the truck. He knew he didn’t have time to back out.

“Got your seatbelt on?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Put your head down.”

She did so instantly, and just before he drove right through the back of the shed. He circled in front of the house and headed cross country for the river. They were about fifty yards ahead of the two Ranger SUVs. Cann didn’t stop at the river’s edge but drove right in. They got about one third of the way across when the truck bogged down in mud.

“Come on,” he said. He jumped out, but she wasn’t strong enough to get the passenger door open against the current of the waist-high water. He pulled the backpack on, jerked her door open and helped her out.

The Rangers were standing on the bank of the river. One of them fired a gun. Cann suspected it had been fired into the air, but couldn’t be sure. One of them had a bullhorn.

“Bring the girl back or we’ll shoot,” he said.

Cann didn’t think they’d shoot at a Ranger’s daughter, but the sons-of-bitches might be that crazy. So he picked her up and cradled her in his arms. If they were going to shoot, they’d hit him. And not her.

Oddly, those were the random thoughts going through his mind as he was wading across the Rio Grande ready to give his life for a girl who’d been a stranger a few days before. Big eyes hiding behind a Mountain Dew machine.