by Alison Stine
I heard a whistle, high and piercing. Three short blasts.
I looked back at Dance and he shook his head, but he set the ax down, listening. The whistle did not come again. But below in the camp, people began to run.
Someone dumped a bucket of sand on the cook fire. Others pulled boughs and branches over the structures being built. The cooler and food supplies disappeared into a hole in the ground. The whistle was a sign. I started to break into a run down the hill.
The women from Skate State were scrambling up the bank from the stream, Jamey being led by a hand. Grayson stood frozen and I ran over to him. The women with Jamey knew the whistle was an alert, but then they must not have known what to do. No one at the camp had told them more—and no one had told us anything. We stayed by the stream together, looking around.
The man who had been splitting wood in the camp, the one who had stared at me, covered the whole chopping block with boughs. The camp started emptying. People were climbing into the trees, up onto the deer stands. They hauled up backpacks and baskets by ropes.
Mica strode through the camp, calm as it all collapsed around her. She blew more short blasts from the whistle around her neck. She saw us and spat the whistle out. “Get the kid in the trees,” she said.
Dance was at my elbow. He lifted Starla out of the women’s arms, and reached for my hand. I reached for Grayson. We ran together, slowed by the baby and Grayson’s cast. I saw hands appear from trees, ropes fall down like snakes. Someone lowered a big bucket and we loaded Starla inside. She clung to the handle and rose. Jamey clambered up the tree alongside her, helped by the handholds nailed to the trunk. I climbed after her, pulling myself to the platform at the top. I reached back for Grayson, and hauled him up, his boot clunking onto the tree stand. Dance was just behind him.
But then there was no more room. Where were the women, Jamey’s friends? I had thought they were right behind us. But they didn’t come up the tree. I waited, watching.
We were already crowded, all of us plus a stranger: the one who had lowered the bucket, a boy with a bright blue mohawk. Then Mica rolled onto the platform, smooth and effortless, like she was getting into bed. She lay on her shoulder on the edge of the deer stand, keeping us back from the ledge.
The women didn’t come up behind her. Maybe they had run to another tree.
“Don’t say a word,” Mica said.
The wind rattled through the treetops. It was strange not to hear even the pop of a fire. Something, a sheet of metal from one of the half-built houses or a loose plank of wood, beat against a trunk. It reminded me of a school flagpole, clanging in the breeze.
Voices came from below. Shouting, a whistle through fingers. Over Mica’s shoulder, I could see only a small square of the camp. But I could see when the men walked into the clearing.
Two men. I didn’t recognize them, but Jamey did. She sucked in her breath.
Mica said, “Shh.”
Jamey looked away from the edge. She had lifted Starla from the bucket and was holding her tightly, hiding her face. If she couldn’t see the men, maybe they couldn’t see her.
I knew that trick. I had done it so many times when Lobo came home. Hiding from him in the woods. In my own house, hiding from men—not even wanting to glimpse them at the door, believing, though I knew this not to be true, if I couldn’t see them, they couldn’t find me.
These were Jake’s men, then.
“Hellooooo?” one of the men called from below.
“Swear to Jesus, I smell a fire.”
“That tree fence sure didn’t make itself, whatever the fuck that was.”
I heard boots kicking rocks, scattering leaves. One of the men threw something and it bounced off a tree. Then I heard a shriek. Female.
Dance jerked like he was going to do something, but the boy with the blue mohawk stilled him, touching his arm and shaking his head. Blue Mohawk’s hand moved to his side. Starla was silent as a doll.
The women from Skate State, Jamey’s friends, had not made it into a tree.
I saw them stumble into the clearing below us, pushed forward by the men. One of the women wore a nightgown, so thin I swore I could see her heart beat. The other woman was barefoot.
They had braided Jamey’s hair. They had painted the face of her daughter. Now they were kneeling before the men in boots.
“Where are the others?” a man said.
“There ain’t any others,” one of the women said.
We heard but did not see the slap. On the platform, Starla whimpered. I saw Jamey squeeze her tighter, slip her hand over the baby’s mouth.
“There’s a fire. We know there’s a camp here,” the man said. “We know you’ve got people.”
Another woman’s voice. “It was our fire.”
“You’re stupid, then.”
“Let’s just go,” the second man said.
“We didn’t get what we came for.”
“They’re not here.”
“You believe these cunts?”
“Look, man,” the second man said. “Nobody would stick around here. It’s a bad spot. Spooky. I don’t like it.”
“Scared of the woods?” the first man said.
But he must have pushed or yanked the women forward, pulled them to their feet. The three of them began to move. A scuffling of boots and leaves. The second man came into view. He glanced around for a moment. I saw him pause, peer up at the trees.
I turned my face from the edge. I lowered my head and squeezed my eyes like Jamey. A trick to make ourselves a small stone. Make our bodies inoffensive, forgettable, of too little consequence even to kick.
“It’s too quiet. Like the trees are watching me,” the man in the clearing said.
But he moved away, following the others.
“We are watching you. Freak,” Blue Mohawk said after a moment.
Mica shot him a look. She leaned off the edge of the deer stand to see that the men had gone for certain, then she turned back. “Emergency meeting,” she said.
No one was running. No one was clambering down the trees to follow the women, to confront the men, to ask them what the hell they were doing.
“Aren’t you going to go after them?” I asked.
“We’re going to have a meeting.”
“By the time you do that, they’ll be long gone.”
“We all know where they’re going,” Mica said.
That was it. No one on the platform raised their head to meet my eyes. No one spoke up for the women, not even Jamey.
“You can’t just let them kidnap those women,” I said.
“We don’t have guns,” Mica said. “Those men do. A lot of guns. Just spread the word about the meeting,” she said to Blue Mohawk.
He nodded. It was only when he rose off his knees that I saw what was at his side, what he had reached for when the men came into the clearing: it was a knife, half as long as Starla.
11
The meeting was for everyone in the camp but us. We were banished to the truck to wait, led back to the spot by the man with the blue hair.
I should have felt relieved to be returning to my house and my things, but I didn’t. The men were out there. The women were missing. We had seemed far away from the main road, from other houses or camps—but the men from Skate State had found us. I could see smoke through the trees. Was it theirs?
Just before the fence, Blue Mohawk tapped the hood of the truck, sweeping off a pile of leaves. He said, “I have to get to the meeting. Can I trust you to wait here?”
“Of course,” Dance said.
“Someone will come for you afterward.”
He turned back. For a time, his blue fin stuck out, vibrant in the brown and white hills, then it, too, dipped from view. I thought of blue jays. What I wouldn’t give to see one now.
“Why don’t w
e just go,” Jamey said.
“They still have our keys,” I said.
Jamey looked flat and pale. Her eyeliner had smeared. There was a fresh scratch on her face, and her hair was straggling out of its mermaid tail. She had lost her friends. The men had come for her and taken away her friends instead, her sisters: the ones who had waited with her in the meat house. The ones who had braided her hair.
At least the tiny house was unlocked. I held open the door for Jamey, and she slumped inside onto the couch with Starla, and immediately opened up her shirt. The sudden vulnerability: her skin appearing. Starla ducked her little head to nurse. I closed the door.
Grayson sat on the truck hood, his hurt leg dangling like an anchor. “What do you think this meeting is about?”
“Us,” Dance said. “Whether we can stay.”
“Not going after the women?” I asked.
“The women are gone.”
“We don’t want to stay,” Grayson said.
“They’re not gonna let us, anyway,” Dance said. “We’re strangers. We brought strangers in.”
The world had changed so swiftly into something from Lobo’s worst paranoias: everyone suspicious, fearful and armed, and out for themselves. It was no wonder the Pumpkin King had been killed. And for what? For nothing.
I felt for the pouch of seeds around my neck. I remembered the gas station where Dance had said the cashier in a bulletproof vest, shotgun propped behind him, had locked the door as soon as the power went off. The world was colder, in all ways.
“Why do you talk like that?” I asked Dance. “Strangers? We brought strangers in?”
“I’m just telling you what they’re going to say.”
“But they talk like that, the kids in the camp. Self-important. Playing at being a little army in the woods. It’s not a game. Jake has guns.”
I felt the heaviness in my pocket.
We had a gun.
Jamey appeared around the side of the house, buttoning up her coat. “Starla’s asleep,” she said. “I put her down on your couch, okay?” She leaned against the truck hood next to Grayson.
The past day had aged her—or maybe it was the woods that made the shadows stretch beneath her eyes, creased with little Xs. Her skin was so dry it looked like paper. Grayson was thinner than I remembered, his coat bunching up at the shoulders. Did I look like that? All of us were covered in a thin brown scrim: dust from the road, from sleeping on the ground, and from the deer stands, dust the color of a dirty river. Snow clouds swarmed the branches of the trees, as if the woods were filling up with smoke.
“Jake’s gonna come back,” Jamey said—and I couldn’t tell if it was resignation or stubborn respect in her voice, the admiration you’d have for a rodent stealing your tomatoes, a stray dog that wouldn’t leave your porch. “He won’t give up. He’s bad like that. Once he gets an idea—”
“What is his idea? What’s his deal?” Grayson said. “Why is he so possessive?”
“But Jake wasn’t here,” I said. Two different men had come into the clearing. “Maybe you hurt him, Jamey. Maybe you took him out.”
Jamey didn’t seem concerned—or optimistic. Her face turned into that blank slate it got, as expressionless as I remembered first seeing her, outside the shed when we pulled into Skate State. She shut down, wiped the feeling from her face, a window slamming closed. She looked toward the direction Blue Mohawk had disappeared, down a path so slight it was like the trees had closed up after him. “Does anyone have a cigarette?”
No one did.
* * *
Mica was the one who came back, not Blue Mohawk. She walked briskly with her head down, trying to book it back to camp as soon as possible, I thought; she didn’t want to waste too much time with us. I thought again of how the woods were like a trap, a closing hand. The trees knitted themselves into shadows all around her. She was carrying a loaf of bread.
“It’s a no, right?” Dance said.
“I’m sorry. We had an open discussion. I spoke up in favor of all of you. But we put it to a vote. And consensus rules.”
No one else said anything.
“Can I ask a question?” I said. “Why are you camped here? Why here? You’re so close to Skate State, they’re always going to find you and hassle you. Why not ‘defend’ somewhere else?”
“This is our home,” Mica said. “Most of us grew up around here before...” She didn’t need to say more.
But I couldn’t let go of it. “Don’t you people have jobs? How do you get your money?”
“Wil,” Dance said.
Mica said, “I kinda think this is our job now. Don’t you?”
“What’s with the bread?” Grayson asked.
She held it out. It looked healthy and hard, probably some whole grain, birdseed thing. It might be useful as a weapon if someone came swinging at us in the night.
But Mica walked past Grayson and held it out to Jamey. “For you,” she said. “For you and your daughter. For your journey.”
Jamey stared at the bread as though it was a snake.
“Don’t we get bread?” Grayson joked. “What about our journey?”
Mica turned. “Oh, you can stay. You and Dance and Wil? You’re welcome to camp here as long as you like. You’re useful. You have things to contribute. Only the Skate State people have to go. I thought I made that clear?”
“What?” Grayson said.
“We’re not Skate State people,” Jamey said. “We came from there, but we’re not like Jake. That’s not our fault. That’s not my baby’s fault.”
“Hold on,” Dance said.
“You can’t live next to Skate State and just close your eyes to what happens there. What happens to women.”
I took Mica’s bread. “We’re not going anywhere without Jamey and Starla,” I said. “That’s it.”
Mica stared at me. How long had she been in the woods, really? How long had she slept on the ground—or on one of the deer stands, wrapped in waterproof down? How cold would it get before she left? Maybe I was all wrong. Maybe Mica and Blue Mohawk and the others were here for keeps. Maybe they were protecting something I didn’t even know needed to be protected, for all of us: the pines, the scarred birches. I had assumed they would always be here, some part of them somewhere, living on. But I had assumed that about a lot of things.
Given the choice, I almost expected Dance to stay. I thought he belonged someplace like this camp, where he could make a difference. Mica turned to him, maybe thinking the same thing. But Dance didn’t move.
I slapped the hard loaf of bread in my hands like a baseball bat. “This looks really good, Mica. Healthy. Thank you. Can we have the keys to my truck back, please?”
Her eyes snapped away from Dance, shrinking like crow’s eyes. She was not going to act like she wanted anything from us, even her old companion. She passed over the keys and I took them in my free hand. “It was for safekeeping,” she said. “You know the way to the road?”
“We can find it.”
Dance spoke up. “Good luck with your action.”
“It’s not really an action anymore, is it? This is just our life now. It’s just became our life.” Mica turned and went back through the trees. A few steps away from us, she snapped up the hood of her coat. A few paces more and she was gone.
I wondered how long they could make their stand. When the invaders came, would they look like men with shotguns? Or would they drive bulldozers and limousines?
“Thanks for sticking up for us. You didn’t have to do that,” Jamey said. We all looked at her and she looked away. I saw her face switch off again, into nothingness, not being hurt, not feeling. She had sparkly makeup and a dirty face. I remembered thinking the camp would be a good place for her and Starla.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay here?” I asked Dance.
He re
ached for the truck keys. “I’m sure. This place is doomed.”
We cleared the brush off the truck, stashing some of the camouflage in case we needed it later. We drove back across the fields slowly.
Nothing was chasing us now.
It was getting dark; it was always getting dark. Or maybe it was just going to storm hard. Dance drove. Starla slept in the back over Jamey’s lap. We were quiet and tired. The truck lights swept over the fields, barren and white. Then the lights hit something larger.
“Slow down,” I said. And when he didn’t: “Dance. Stop.”
He hit the brakes hard enough for Starla to wake. In the middle of the field, we halted. Frozen mud and the corn stubble from two years ago made a mush of the ground. There was something moving amid the waste.
Dance turned on the high beams. A figure hurried past the truck. It brushed the side of the hood—so bulky the whole vehicle shuddered.
Grayson leaned over the front seat. “What the—?”
“Cows,” I said.
It was a herd. Large and red and white, with tagged ears and faces like masks. They looked big, but thin. I saw the ribs on one, like a corset spreading wide and sharp under its hide. The cows trudged past us. They were headed, determinedly, elsewhere. I counted a dozen, mostly full grown, a few stunted calves galloping along to keep up.
Then Dance said, “Beef cattle.”
“We could take one,” Grayson said. “Slaughter it. Use the meat.”
“Don’t hurt the cows,” Jamey shrieked from the back seat.
“Just let them go,” I said. “They’re starving.”
We watched the animals in the fading light. What compelled them, what announced to them that it was time to go, other than their own desperation? Where were they going to? Except onward. On through the freezing night. Their breath made clouds around them, white scrim the stragglers walked through.
“Do you think they escaped from a farm?” Grayson said.
“Maybe someone just released them,” I said. “Couldn’t feed them. Couldn’t bear to watch them starve.”