Ken Follett - The Hammer of Eden

That was when Priest had met her. She and Dusty had been wandering in the forest and got completely lost. Melanie was a city girl and could not even find her way by the sun. Priest was out on his own that day, fishing for sockeye salmon. It was a perfect spring afternoon, sunny and mild. He had been sitting on the bank of a stream, smoking a joint, when he heard a child crying.

He knew it was not one of the commune children, whose voices he would have recognized. Following the sound, he found Dusty and Melanie. She was close to tears. When she saw Priest she said: “Thank God, I thought we were going to die out here!”

He had stared at her for a long moment. She was a little weird, with her long red hair and green eyes, but in the cutoff jeans and a halter top she looked good enough to eat. It was magical, coming across a damsel in distress like that when he was alone in the wilderness. If it had not been for the kid, Priest would have tried to lay her right then and there, on the springy mattress of fallen pine needles beside the splashing stream.

That was when he had asked her if she was from Mars. “No,” she said, “Oakland.”

Priest knew where the vacation cabins were. He picked up his fishing rod and led her through the forest, following the trails and ridges that were so familiar to him. It was a long walk, and on the way he talked to her, asking sympathetic questions, giving his engaging grin now and again, and found out all about her.

She was a woman in deep trouble.

She had left her husband and moved in with the bass guitarist in a hot rock band; but the bassist had thrown her out after a few weeks. She had no one to turn to: her father was dead, and her mother lived in New York with a guy who had tried to get into bed with Melanie the one night she had slept at their apartment. She had exhausted the hospitality of her friends and borrowed all the money they could afford to lend. Her career was a washout, and she was working in a supermarket, stacking shelves, leaving Dusty with a neighbor all day. She lived in a slum that was so dirty, it gave the kid constant allergy attacks. She needed to move to a place with clean air, but she could not find a job outside the city. She was up a blind alley and desperate. She had been trying to calculate the exact overdose of sleeping pills that would kill her and the child when a girlfriend had offered her this vacation.

Priest liked people in trouble. He knew how to relate to them. All you had to do was offer them what they needed, and they became your slaves. He was uncomfortable with confident, self-sufficient types: they were too hard to control.

By the time they reached the cabin it was suppertime. Melanie made pasta and salad, then put Dusty to bed. When the child was asleep, Priest seduced her on the rug. She was frantic with desire. All her pent-up emotional charge was released by sex, and she made love as if it were her last chance ever, scratching his back and biting his shoulders and pulling him deep inside her as if she wanted to swallow him up. It was the most exciting encounter Priest could remember.

Now her supercilious handsome-professor husband was complaining. “That was five weeks ago. You can’t just take my son and disappear without even a phone call!”

“You could have called me.”

“I didn’t know where you were!”

“I have a mobile.”

“I tried. I couldn’t get an answer.”

“The service was cut off because you didn’t pay the bill. You’re supposed to pay it, we agreed.”

“I was a couple of days late, that’s all! They must have turned it back on.”

“Well, you called when it was cut off, I guess.”

This family row was not bringing Priest closer to that disk, he fretted. Got to get Michael out of the room, some way, any way . He interrupted to say: “Why don’t we all have some coffee?” He wanted Michael to go into the kitchen to make it.

Michael jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Help yourself,” he said brusquely.

Shit .

Michael turned back to Melanie. “It doesn’t matter why I couldn’t reach you. I couldn’t. That’s why you have to call me before taking Dusty away on vacation.”

Melanie said: “Listen, Michael, there’s something I haven’t told you yet.”

Michael looked exasperated, then sighed and said: “Sit down, why don’t you.” He sat behind his desk.

Melanie sank into a corner of the couch, folding her legs beneath her in a familiar way that made Priest think this had been her regular seat. Priest perched on the arm of the couch, not wanting to sit lower than Michael. I can’t even figure out which of those machines is the disk drive. Come on, Melanie, lose the damn husband!

Michael’s tone of voice suggested he had been through scenes like this with Melanie before. “All right, make your pitch,” he said wearily. “What is it this time?”

“I’m going to move to the mountains, permanently. I’m living with Priest and a bunch of people.”

“Where?”

Priest answered that question. He did not want Michael to know where they lived. “It’s in Humboldt County.” That was in redwood country at the northern end of California. In fact the commune was in Sierra County, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, near the eastern border of the state. Both were far from Berkeley.

Michael was outraged. “You can’t take Dusty to live hundreds of miles away from his father!”

“There’s a reason,” Melanie persisted. “In the last five weeks, Dusty hasn’t had a single allergy attack. He’s healthy in the mountains, Michael.”

Priest added: “It’s probably the pure air and water. No pollution.”

Michael was skeptical. “It’s the desert, not the mountains, that normally suits people with allergies.”

“Don’t talk to me about normally!” Melanie flared. “I can’t go to the desert — I don’t have any money. This is the only place I can afford where Dusty can be healthy!”

“Is Priest paying your rent?”

Go ahead, asshole, insult me, talk about me like I’m not here; and I’ll just carry on fucking your sexy wife .

Melanie said: “It’s a commune.”

“Jesus, Melanie, what kind of people have you fallen in with now? First a junkie guitar player—”

“Wait a minute, Blade was not a junkie—”

“—now a godforsaken hippie commune!”

Melanie was so involved in this quarrel that she had forgotten why they were here. The disk, Melanie, the damn disk! Priest interrupted again. “Why don’t you ask Dusty how he feels about this, Michael?”

“I will.”

Melanie shot Priest a despairing look.

He ignored her. “Dusty’s right outside, in my car.”

Michael flushed with anger. “You left my son outside in the car?”

“He’s okay, my dog’s with him.”

Michael glared furiously at Melanie. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he shouted.

Priest said: “Why don’t you just go and get him?”

“I don’t need your fucking permission to get my own son. Give me the car keys.”

“It’s not locked,” Priest said mildly.

Michael stormed out.

“I told you not to tell him Dusty was outside!” Melanie wailed. “Why did you do it?”

“To get him out of the goddamn room,” Priest said. “Now grab that disk.”

“But you’ve made him so mad!”

“He was angry already!” This was no good, Priest realized. She might be too frightened to do what was needed. He stood up. He took her hands, pulled her upright, and gave her the Look. “You don’t have to be afraid of him. You’re with me now. I take care of you. Be cool. Say your mantra.”

“But—”

“Say it.”

“Lat hoo, dat soo.”