Lost Souls

chapter 20

Returning to Rainbow Falls, Erika almost forgot the cinnamon rolls, but fortunately she had to drive past the Jim James Bakery, the sight of which reminded her why she had come into town in the first place.

She would have been distressed if she had disappointed Jocko. He was her only friend, but he was also the closest thing she would ever have to a child, and he was a perpetual child who would never grow up or grow away from her.

In a world that would regard him as an outcast or as a sideshow freak, or even as a dangerous monster to be terminated with dispatch, he depended on her not only for his home and sustenance, but also for his happiness. In turn, she depended on his dependence. They were each other’s defense against loneliness, a mutant child and his two-hearted mother, unrelated except by the fact that they were products of Victor’s hubris, pledged to each other at first by necessity but now by mutual affection.

In the bakery, as she stood at the counter waiting for her order, she hoped that however their lives might intersect Victor’s again, they would survive him as they had miraculously survived him before.

After she received the cinnamon rolls in a large white box that she carried with both hands, as she approached the door to the street, a tall man appeared at her side. “Let me get that for you, miss.”

His boots, jeans, checkered shirt, fleece-lined denim jacket, and Stetson were common working-man gear for Rainbow Falls and environs, but the man wearing them was unusual for a few reasons, not least of all because of his size. He must have been six feet four, wide in the shoulders, narrow in the hips.

As he spoke, he swept his hat off, nodding in a courtly manner, and she saw that he was strikingly good-looking, with blond hair and gray-blue eyes. His face was perfect for the kind of Western movies that once starred John Wayne but that no one made anymore.

“Thank you,” she said as he opened the door and ushered her out of the bakery.

Putting his hat on once more, following her onto the sidewalk, he said, “You must be new in town.”

“Not that new,” she said. “I’ve been here nearly two years.”

“Then I’ve been blind for a while and didn’t know it.”

She smiled, unsure of his purpose in saying such a thing. She decided against a reply as she crossed the sidewalk to the Explorer.

“I’m Addison Hawk. May I get the car door for you, Miss…?”

“Erika,” she said, but offered no last name. “Thank you, Mr. Hawk.”

He opened the passenger door, and she put the box of cinnamon rolls on the seat.

As he closed the door, Addison Hawk said, “It takes twenty years at least for locals to think of a newcomer as one of them. If ever you need to know anything about the way things work around here, I’m in the phone book.”

“I take it you’re not a newcomer.”

“I’ve lived here since nine months before I was born. Been to Great Falls, Billings, Butte, Bozeman, been to Helena and Missoula, but I’ve never seen any reason to be anywhere but here.”

“I agree,” she said as she went around the front of the Explorer to the driver’s door. “It’s a wonderful town-the land, the big sky, all of it.”

As she drove away, Erika checked the rearview mirror and saw Addison Hawk staring after her.

Something had happened that she did not entirely understand, something more than an encounter with a friendly local. She thought about it all the way home, but the subtext of the conversation eluded her.