by Alison Stine
Or a child.
I had spent my life around shirtless men with skeleton tattoos, men too arrogant to put on shoes in the cold, men who would take it too far, who wouldn’t stop at weed, who wouldn’t stop, who wouldn’t ask how old I was, who didn’t care, who rattled the tiny house door, a quick shudder that shook me forever.
I waited for the unzipping. I heard it.
Then I sprang.
I hit Jake before I could see him. I jumped out of the trees, hammered the air, and collided with bone, thwacking, then soft, sick flesh. I gripped the barrel of the gun and beat with its heavy handle. I hit his face, surprising him and knocking him off balance. Beat his groin to bring him down, his throat so he couldn’t scream, then knees—one, two—then eyes—one, two. That part was easy; he was half-crouched already in the ditch—his narrow, seeing eye; his dark, bottomless patch. Then his nose: a spray of bright red, which I jumped to avoid, straddling the ditch and him below me. Then I hit his throat again, silencing his voice, which had only grunted.
“You’re a predator,” I hissed at him, hardly above a whisper. I didn’t have breath beyond the work of hitting him, which took everything, all I had. I didn’t want the other man to hear, and the words I said, I said for me: “Jamey was a kid. She was just a little girl. You ruined her life. You took her life from her. You decided.”
Lobo had decided I would be tough. I would be a grower, a fighter. Any child of his, under his roof, would know these things. I had seen him: how violence needed to be fast, surprising, and followed through. A darted punch, followed by a kick to the stomach, followed by a lot of kicks. Once a man was down, he needed to stay down, Lobo said.
Lobo had taught me, had made me practice, springing on me when I came home from school, or with my arms full of groceries, grabbing me from behind.
I knew these things. Groin, knees, eyes, throat. Where to hit, how to hit. To hit until I heard the sickening crunch, the wet sounds of blood, the gurgling—and then to keep hitting and kicking. Keep going beyond what I felt was safe. Nothing was safe. Nothing would ever be safe, not for me.
Jake was down in the wet, red snow. I was kicking him after I hit him, my hand burning, striking at the giving surfaces of his body with my boot until he curled into a ball too tight for me to find a space to beat. And then I hit his head again until he uncurled, useless now, relaxed and bloody. He barely cried.
I put the heaviness back in my pocket. A string of blood leaked from it. My gloves felt sticky and the smell was overpowering, salt and mineral mixed with the clean scent of snow. It made me want to vomit.
I didn’t look at Jake. I staggered back through the trees.
The man was still standing in the road, looking at our stuff. He was paging through one of our books, shaking the leaves, checking for money. Grayson had forgotten to take the book with him, or maybe he had left it for me. Maybe it was Jamey’s, another one she had never returned from the junior high library when she dropped out of school—when would that have been? When the lost spring came, or when her pregnancy started to show? When she was thirteen? What was the title of the book the man held? I would never know it now.
I stepped from the trees and pulled out the gun. “I’m just here for Jamey.”
The man turned. He dropped the book and held up his hands. “Shit. Where’s Jake?”
“I just want my friend. My family. Then I’ll go.”
I kept the gun trained on him. The barrel of the gun was red, leaking a stringy line. I sidestepped to the truck without looking at it, staring at the man. The back door of the truck hung open. Still keeping my eyes on the man, I opened the driver’s side door.
“Jake’s dying. You should fucking see to that,” I said. I waved the gun at the man, dismissing him.
“Fuck.” He dropped his hands. He ran to the edge of the trees, then ran away.
I climbed into the truck. Jamey lay where I had left her, tipped over awkwardly on her side, across the front seats. There was blood on her shoulders and her neck, blood flecking her hair like bits of red ribbon. I remembered her story about derby night, the girl with the bows who Starla had been named for. I remembered our fight about the firewood. I wished we had stopped and stolen all their wood. I wished we had taken a different way, stayed on the back roads forever.
“Jamey?” I touched her arm. “Jamey?”
The man would be back in a minute. Maybe Jake was alive, or maybe Jake was dead, but the man would be back, angry. I tried to pull Jamey across the seat to me. She left a red streak on the cushions.
I looked for a wound, not exactly sure what I was searching for, and afraid to feel for it. I pushed the hair back from her head. A lump was rising on her forehead; she must have struck it on the steering wheel. I couldn’t see any rips in her clothing. My fingers trembled, looking, until...there: the side of her hip had a red gash, torn and raw.
When I found the wound, her body shuddered with a breath that almost made me scream.
She was alive.
It was a small gash. The bullet had just grazed her; she must have been knocked out when she hit her head. I propped her onto my shoulder. She was heavy but not as heavy as I thought.
And she was breathing.
It was too hard. It was too much weight. I couldn’t do it. I was trembling. I took her down off my shoulder, resting her on the truck seat again. She made a rattling sound. Her eyes stayed closed, but her chest moved, up and down. I had to do this. I put my hands under her arms, trying to avoid touching her wound, then dragged her.
I pulled Jamey around the front of the truck to the ditch, then balancing her back on my shoulders again, I took a breath, stepped over the ditch, and hauled her up the hill. At the first sapling, I paused to breathe. I set her down, then began to drag her again. I couldn’t rest for long.
From the direction of the truck, I heard a cackling, like Lobo coming up the stairs to grab one of us, whoever was closer would do. Things never sounded like what they were: guns, fire. Everything terrible sounded much more innocent.
This wasn’t laughter. Not at all.
A fuel line in the truck must have been cut in the accident. The tank had punctured, was dripping gas. It found its spark. It caught.
From the woods, I heard the whoosh of the flame finding fuel, finding the box of matches in the glove box, or the last cans of gas. The truck caught fire, then the house did.
The kerosene lamp would burst. The woodstove would glow for one last time. The little stained-glass window would shatter into a million shards. All the books would burn, all my pictures of Mama and Lisbeth. The loft where I had made love, the window where I had looked out on the woods and wanted more. The maps, the dead phones, the last grow light, the postcard with the address in California.
I turned away from the fire and carried Jamey up the hill. No voices called back to me. No one ran after me.
It was quiet in the grow room, I remembered. And though I preferred working outside, feeling the sunbaked soil in my hands and the light warm on my back, the dirt in the basement room was warm, too, heated by the lights. When I cupped a tiny plant with its root webs and thick, dark globe of dirt, warmth radiated through me. I would hold each plant in my hands longer than necessary, each time I transplanted them to a bigger container. It was like holding a baby chick, something alive and beating with hope and potential. I imagined I could feel them breathe. I imagined that it mattered that I was down there, that I mattered. And when I was in there, in the grow room, I couldn’t hear the shouting from the farmhouse above. I couldn’t hear my mama crying, or smell the vomit or smoke or worse. I was making medicine, I told myself. I was making medicine.
I was a witch, I had told myself when I was even smaller, not too much older than Starla, the first time my mama had taken me out to Lobo’s farm, to meet the magic man. I was a witch girl, and only I knew the secrets of the wild plants. They whispered to m
e, like wind through the long grass. Slippery elm bark for sore throat, boneknitter for sprains, jewelweed for poison ivy, elderberry for cold.
I broke a pebbled leaf of spearmint for Lisbeth to chew the first time we met, in the fields behind the elementary school. She trusted me, took the sweet taste from me. The bright surprise of lemon balm, the peppery wild onion. Only I knew where the nettles grew, gathered willow bark by the stream. Only I could heal the maiden’s heart, find the warmth in the cold cold room, deep underground.
I carried Jamey.
Over the hills, the greenhouse glowed in the distance like a lighthouse, leading me onward, getting us there where the heater was warm and the seedlings grew, where the radio might work. Tonight I would tend to our wounds. In the morning, I would bury the gun in the snow. The people in the camp on the hill would cook us breakfast, if this was a good place. I would let them help. I was ready. Inside the greenhouse, Starla was stirring. She reached for the seeds at her feet.
* * *
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Eric Smith, who is a champion among agents; to Margot Mallinson, my dream editor; and to everyone at MIRA. For their friendship, encouragement, and assistance with this story, thank you to Ellee Achten, David Dodd Lee, Angel Lemke, Geri Lipschultz, Robert N. Solomon, Michael Stearns, Christina Veladota, and Carrie Ann Verge. I am grateful to Alyssa Stegmaier, Erin Perko, Erin Glaser, Katie Miller, Morgan Hyatt, Angie Mazakis, and Sophia Veladota for their time and patience. Thank you most of all to my family, especially Andrew Villegas and Henry. I’ll take first watch.
ISBN-13: 9781488056499
Road Out of Winter
Copyright © 2020 by Alison Stine
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either 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.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
For questions and comments about the quality of this book, please contact us at [email protected].
Mira
22 Adelaide St. West, 40th Floor
Toronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canada
BookClubbish.com