“Yeah,” Dan said, and he smiled again. “That’d be great.”
“I take you to a lake, fulla cat — huuuuwheeee! — big like you never did saw!”
“Dan?”
They looked to their left, toward the voice. Arden had come out on the porch. Her wavy blond hair shone in the late sunlight, and she was wearing a clean pair of khakis and a green-striped blouse. “Can I talk to you for a few minutes? Alone?”
“Oh, well, I gotta shake a tail feather anyhow.” Train stood up. “I’ll talk at you later, bon ami.”
“See you, Train,” Dan said, and the Cajun walked back through a slatted door into the hospital. Arden took his chair. “What’ve you been up to?” Dan asked her. He saw she no longer carried her pink drawstring bag. “I haven’t seen you for a while.”
“I’ve been busy,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“I believe I am.”
She nodded. “It’s a beautiful place, don’t you think? A beautiful island. Of course … that’s not sayin’ it doesn’t need work.” She reached out to the railing and picked off some of the cracking paint. “Look there. The wood underneath that doesn’t look too good either, does it?”
“No. That whole railin’ oughta be replaced. I don’t know who’s in charge of the maintenance around here, but they’re slippin’. Well” — he shrugged —” they’re all old buildin’s, I guess they’re doin’ the best they can.”
“They could do better,” Arden said, looking into his eyes.
He had to bring this up. Maybe he’d regret it, but he had to. “Tell me,” he said, “did you ever find out who the Bright Girl is?”
“Yes,” she answered, “I sure did.”
Arden began to tell him the whole story. Dan listened, and as he listened he could not help but think back to his meeting with the Reverend Gwinn, and the man giving him the gift of time and saying God can take a man along many roads and through many mansions. It’s not where you are that’s important; it’s where you’re goin’ that counts. Hear what I’m sayin’?
Dan thought he did. At last, he thought he did.
It occurred to him, as Arden told him her intention to stay on the island, that Jupiter had been right. He had a lot to think about in the time ahead, but it seemed that he had indeed been the man God had sent to take Arden to the Bright Girl. Maybe this whole thing had been about her and this hospital from the beginning, and he and Blanchard, Eisley and Murtaugh, Train and the drug runners, and all the rest of it had been cogs in a machine designed to draw Arden to this island for the work that had to be done.
Maybe. He could never know for sure. But she had found her Bright Girl and her purpose, and it seemed also that he had found his own refuge if he wanted it.
He could never go back. He didn’t want to. There was nothing behind him now. There was only tomorrow and the day after that, and he would deal with them when they came.
Dan reached out and took Arden’s hand.
Out in the distance, on the shining blue Gulf, there was a sailboat moving toward the far horizon. Its white sails filled with the winds of freedom, and it ventured off for a port unknown.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1991 by McCammon Corporation
cover design by Thomas Ng
978-1-4532-3157-9
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
Robert R. McCammon, Gone South
(Series: # )
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