The following begins the April 21, 1949 entry in the Rocky Stone notebooks:
I woke up in a pool of sweat and sat upright, my muscles tensed and stiff from the powerful visions that still plagued my thoughts. I had a short dream, so real and so vivid I had to question which side of sleep I had entered. The room appeared dark to my wide-open eyes. Maybe this was the dream and I had just fallen asleep.
Moments before, three of us sat in the front of a truck, winding down a trail that led to a place as far away from civilization as possible, out in the desert. I was behind the wheel and Marjorie sat next to me, dressed as she had been the last time I saw her. Nine Knuckles sat on the far side and held a gun to her head. The trail flattened out and we came to the center of a valley. The heat rose from the dust and made crazy patterns on the horizon.
Nine Knuckles told me to stop the truck. As soon as we stopped rolling, he pulled Marjorie out the door and threw her to the ground. She scraped her knee along the hard ground and a stain of blood skidded in the dust before her, but she made no cry, no pleas for mercy. Her resigned eyes never left the ground.
I reached for my gun but my holster was empty. I carefully pulled the door handle but it shrieked out a warning and Nine Knuckles turned his head to me. “This is not your fight,” he snarled.
Marjorie held her knee as he stepped closer. He yanked her to her feet and she landed gingerly, sweat glistening on her brow.
He pulled her close. “We had some laughs, didn't we? Pity you never told Max about the week in Vegas. You wouldn't have to face up to me, otherwise. Some joke.”
She spit at him and he didn't bother to wipe it away. It slowly trickled down the side of his face and he just stared at her with a hideous grin.
“Leave her alone!” I shouted.
“This is between her and Max,” he growled. “He left instructions. All he wants is his own back.”
“The money's spent, and you're going to leave her to die, anyway. Isn't that enough?”
“Max gave her everything. Her jewelry. Her clothes...”
With a swipe of his hand, he grabbed the back of her dress, ripped it from her body, and sent her to the ground again. He returned to the car, laughing a brutish laugh, as she rolled on the ground in pain. And I could see it all: three stripes along her back, ones from an incident long ago. A bruise near her knee. A patch of skin near the shoulder blade that had been burned by a cigarette. Another scar at the small of her back. And yet another now: four even marks down her spine from the hand that just uncovered all these wounds.
Nine Knuckles got in the car. “Forget about her,” he said. “She's only getting what's coming to her.”
And the worst part was I couldn't do a thing. I started the truck again and rolled it forward, all the while watching her in the rear view. Then I saw something. A man appeared at her side, and knelt before her. He wept to see her in such a condition. He took a blanket and covered her nakedness.
Then I woke up.
A light shone in the room from beside a chair, and suddenly I remembered: I was still in Marjorie's old house, in a bed that once belonged to her. The police had come and gone and in the matter of an hour had all but ruled the shooting of Mike Godatz as self-defense. Once the mess was cleaned up, Nine Knuckles paid off Gloria for her trouble and took off with Marjorie, leaving us behind. They would be halfway back to Max Blank, and here I was, still in the starter's gate, taking a nap.
I looked at the chair beside me and fully expected to find Gloria sitting there, grinning at me. Imagine my surprise when I saw a man, and not just any man: the same one who suddenly appeared in my dream. The Reverend Cornelius Hosea, sitting calmly with his hands resting in his lap.
How did the Reverend find Rocky? And can they rescue Marjorie from the clutches of Max Blank? Find out next week in The Lost Love, Part 17!
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