Guns & Smoke

by Lauren Sevier

  “You aren’t going to believe this,” I said, loud enough to be heard over the drums. “But I know this song!” It sounded different, more energetic and upbeat than when my mom would sing it at home, but it was definitely the same. I sang along for a while, until Jesse slowed the truck and turned to stare at me. The look in his eyes made me forget the words as he cut the engine and we were blanketed in silence.

  “What?” I asked, breathless.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said simply, in the certain way he said everything. My heart raced, and I kissed him with a breathy groan.

  “You have to stop sayin’ stuff like that or you’re gonna make me wanna pop my stitches, farm boy,” I breathed against his mouth. He kissed me again, quickly, before pulling away to help me out of the truck. We walked into the building slowly, dark hallways echoing with our footsteps as we passed beneath the faded eyes of kids that were likely long dead. Everything felt solemn here, beneath the fine layer of dust and memories.

  Jesse pushed into a room with long leather couches, cracked and fading from exposure to the light but still comfortable enough. After he’d scouted the area and deemed it safe, he went to gather the others. I slept, for how long I didn’t know, lulled by the silence. When I heard Jesse’s truck rumbling back, the sky was ablaze with the setting sun. Had it taken that long, or had I slept through multiple trips?

  Will and The Kid burst in a few moments later, one with a flask and the other with a book. The Kid sat at my feet, begging me to read the book again. I ignored him.

  “Time to clean your wound, mi cielo,” Will said, shaking the flask as Clara and Jesse came in a few minutes later. Clara had a sour look on her face, as usual.

  “Are you and Will going to kiss again?” The Kid asked, staring pointedly at Jesse, and my eyes slid to Jesse’s.

  “We hugged, Kid. I wouldn’t kiss Will if you paid me,” I said, laughing as Will clutched his chest dramatically.

  “You’re fucking mean, mujer,” Will said as I pushed my pants down so he could get to my wound. It was red and angry, the stitches holding together swollen, puckered flesh. Disgusting. “That’s gonna be another nasty scar.” He pressed the alcohol to the wound as gently as he could, but a pained gasp wrenched from me before I could bite it back.

  “Son of a bitch!” I swore, biting the inside of my cheek as the pain pulsed with my heartbeat. Clara glared at my foul language.

  “Sorry,” Will said, grimacing as I breathed through the stinging until it lessened. “It actually looks good, all things considered.”

  “Bonnie, will you please read this book with me?” The Kid asked again, and I ruffled his hair absentmindedly. He shifted on the couch and jostled me on my sore side. I choked out a cry before he moved away.

  “I’m fine,” I said, staring pointedly at Jesse, who’d begun to walk over.

  “I want you to read this with me,” The Kid said again, and I looked down at his excited face.

  “I can’t, Kid,” I said, turning back to watch Will fixing my bandage.

  “Bonnie, please—"

  “Oh my God!” Clara shouted in frustration, flinging her hands in the air. “Would you give it a rest already?! She can’t read you the damn book! She can’t read. They don’t teach slaves how to read.”

  Tension snapped tight within the room. Will finished and stepped away from me, pity clear in his dark eyes. I bit my bottom lip to stifle the unkind words on my tongue. She didn’t know my insecurities; she wasn’t trying to exploit them.

  “You can’t read?” The Kid asked. His words were colored with judgment, the kind only thoughtless kids with no knowledge of social niceties spoke aloud. His words forced shame, like a blade, deep into my ribs. “Even little kids know how to read.”

  I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t handle the disappointment I’d become to him. I swallowed down traitorous tears and shoved off the couch, fleeing on clumsy feet down the hallway. As the last rays of light faded from beyond the dirty windows, I lost myself in the maze of the building.

  Stupid.

  I found my way, clutching my throbbing side into a room with shelves piled high with books. As far as the eye could see. A dark laugh bubbled from between my lips as I fumbled through the drawers of a desk in the corner of the room. A bottle clinked as I slammed one open, and though I couldn’t read the label, I knew it was something that would numb the pain.

  Stupid.

  I walked among the shelves and drank deeply, groaning at the burn as it slipped down my throat. One of the walls had fallen away, and as I slid down a long row of shelves to sit heavily on the floor, I heard the cooing of birds nested amongst the shelves. The irony astounded me. Here I was, surrounded by books and not able to read a single one.

  Stupid.

  Jesse wouldn’t want me to go to Montana with him now. Sure, it was an impossible dream at best. Even that was tainted by my shortcomings. I could almost see it, the derision on their pious townsfolk faces as Jesse introduced the ignorant slave girl he’d spent a wild summer with. Laughable.

  “There you are.” Jesse’s voice rumbled through the room, and for some reason I wanted to giggle. So I did.

  “Here I am,” I said, waving the bottle at him before bringing it back to my mouth. I looked at him only to see his eyebrows raised in my direction.

  “Hitting it a little hard, don’t you think?” he asked, trying to mask the worry in his tone.

  “Nope,” I responded. “Drink with me.” He sat next to me, eyes flicking to my wounded side.

  “What is it?” he asked, holding his hand out for the bottle. I laughed, my lips clumsy.

  “I don’t know, can’t read the label,” I said, snorting. “It tastes like... clear.”

  “It’s vodka,” he said after taking a sip, then put the bottle out of my reach. He stared at me for a while, as if expecting me to say something. “They didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “It’s not like what they said was wrong. Can’t risk us slaves gettin’ any dangerous ideas. Better to keep us stupid,” I said, blowing a stray strand of hair out of my eyes.

  “You aren’t stupid,” he said, reaching a hand to my cheek. I knew Jesse didn’t think of me that way; he’d told me so before. I carried this shame a long time before him, and it would remain until the day I died.

  “Jesse?” I asked after a long time, both of us sitting in comfortable silence. He responded with a ‘hmm’ sound as he brought the bottle back to his mouth. “Can I ask you a favor?” There was a smallness to my voice that seemed to alert Jesse that this moment, this request, was no simple drunken favor. He straightened, looking at me with blue eyes that I could drown in. I tried to stay composed but had to force the words out.

  “Will you tell me what my scar says?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six - Jesse

  Bonnie wouldn’t have asked if she wasn’t sure. My heart pounded in my throat. I brought one of her hands to my mouth, kissing the back of it. I kept our fingers locked together as I rested our joined hands on my leg.

  “It says ‘Jones,’” I told her, trying to convey the words I couldn’t say. She wasn’t his property. She wasn’t something he owned. She was her own person. She was smart and cunning, kind and beautiful. She was everything I’d never imagined I would have. I loved her. Bonnie’s eyes fluttered closed, and she pressed her head back against the bookshelf.

  “Of course it does,” she whispered. I squeezed her hand.

  “You remember when you asked me what I’d do if I had a day to myself to do anything?” she asked, her voice quiet. I nodded. “I said I would read. You asked me why, and I didn’t tell you.” I watched her eyes close, and she let out a long breath. “I’d read anything I could get my hands on.”

  I didn’t understand it, then. There were a lot of things that I hadn’t understood at the time. Through this journey, Bonnie had given me pieces of herself, things that may not have made sense in the moment, but that made sense now.

  “I’m a survivor,” she sa
id. “That’s what I do. I survive. For as long as I can remember I’ve had to fight every single day just to keep goin’.” She seemed to choke on the next words. “I wanna be smart. Smart enough to figure out a way I don’t have to fight so hard anymore.”

  I put an arm around her shoulders, tucking her into that space made for her.

  “We can figure that out. Together,” I whispered.

  “I just wanna feel like I’m worth more than the two silver bits Jones paid for me. Like I’m worth more than that damn gun,” she said, the words heavy on her tongue. I watched her expression fall.

  “I wish you could see what I see when I look at you,” I said, tipping her chin up to make her look at me. “You’re worth so much more than some gun. You are smart. You’re the smartest person I’ve ever known. You’re also kind, and dependable. You’d do anything for The Kid, more than me sometimes.

  “And Bonnie, I—”

  She cut me off. Her mouth covered mine, and in an instant, it was like we were back on that embankment. Only, we weren’t. I tangled one of my hands in her hair, wishing that we were back there, that she hadn’t been shot, and that we could be alone forever. I pulled back, pressing my forehead against hers.

  “Bon, your stitches—” I said.

  “I know,” she whispered, her eyes still on my lips.

  “You’re drunk.”

  “Drunk or not, I still want you,” she said. I groaned regretfully, feeling the pain so starkly in my jeans. I wrapped my arms around her, tugging her into my lap, knowing that if I did nothing else for the rest of my days, I would die a happy man. I balled my hands into the fabric of her sleep pants, forcing myself not to rip them off of her soft curves. Her breasts pressed into my chest, and she broke her lips away to trail hot kisses along my jawline.

  When I tried to pull back, she reached a hand down between us to keep my attention. I wrapped my arms around her back, holding her flush against my chest. The world seemed to shift around us. I could easily get lost in her, in this moment.

  It’d been like this with Bonnie since that first day. Somehow, I managed to put an inch between us. She whimpered as we pulled apart.

  “Bonnie,” I said, reaching up to brush her unruly hair out of her face. Our hot breath mingled together, the desire evident in both of us. “We can’t.”

  With an insufferable groan, she pulled away. I adjusted my arms around her, holding her against my chest as we had in the wagon in those hours when I still wasn’t sure if she’d make it.

  “Tell me a story, Jesse,” she said, her words quiet. I pressed my lips to the crown of her head, inhaling her familiar scent. Home. In such a short time, this woman had become my home. I drew lazy circles on her back. Storytelling was never my strong suit. I wouldn’t deny her anything.

  “It was market day,” I said after pressing another kiss to her head. “Me and Pop went every Sunday we weren’t stuck in the fields. All of the usual folks were there. Clara and her family. The old man who worked the farm near ours, some that came from hours away to trade their crops. There was a little old couple that made the most beautiful things by whittling wood. Not that I could ever afford them.”

  I clenched my jaw at the memory of that day. The one that changed everything. Bonnie tipped her head back enough to press a kiss to my lips, as if she sensed it was hard for me to talk about. She always seemed to know everything about me without ever saying a word. I let out a long breath.

  “This day was different. There were two men I’d never seen before, sitting on a wagon made out of an old truck bed. One of them wore a ragged trench coat. They had these markings on their necks—” Suddenly, I remembered why that marking was so familiar. “It was the same one that Sixgun has. That crooked flower.” I should have connected it sooner.

  I refocused on the library, on Bonnie in my arms. I pressed my lips into her hair again.

  “Pop didn’t like it when strangers came through. I was going to talk to Clara when they stopped me. They weren’t selling anything. Instead, they were recruiting men to go to California for work. It seemed like a dream come true. All I ever wanted was to get out of Montana,” I said. “Pop interrupted us, apologized for me like I was a dumb kid. On the way back to the farm, I tried to tell him I wanted to go with them. I could go out, travel, like I always wanted to. Then when I got back, I’d take over the farm, marry Clara, pop out some kids, whatever he wanted me to do. I just wanted this one thing.”

  I was so angry at Pop that day. The devastation of his loss fell heavy on my shoulders as I sat there, holding onto Bonnie. I didn’t realize I was shaking.

  “What did he say?” Bonnie asked, pulling me back to her. I swallowed around the hard lump in my throat.

  “He said there was no way in hell he was letting me go off with men like that,” I said, feeling the silent tears spill onto my cheeks. “I told him I hated him and ran off into the woods as soon as we got back to the farm. I waited to go back until I knew he was in bed.

  “When I finally made it home, Mom was up, but all she said was goodnight. I don’t know if Pop even told her about the fight,” I said. My bottom lip quivered at the memory of my mother in her nightgown, seated in her rocking chair near the fire. Bonnie reached up to my face, using her thumb to gently brush away my tears.

  “That was the night those men burned down our house,” I said, the words a vice around my throat. “I never said I was sorry. I never told him that I didn’t hate him.” I gripped onto Bonnie more tightly than I should have. She tensed beneath my touch, but she didn’t make a sound, as if she knew how much I needed to lean on her.

  “He knew, Jesse,” Bonnie said after a long moment. “I promise. He knew.”

  The silence grew around us. Bonnie tucked her face into the crook of my neck, planting gentle kisses there. Eventually, she fell asleep. Her soft breaths were what eventually lulled me into my own dreamless sleep.

  Morning light filtered through the opening in the cavernous library. I blinked awake, realizing it was late. Though there was an ache in my back from sleeping sitting up, I felt Bonnie’s weight against my chest, and a smile crossed my lips. The Kid’s loud voice echoed from somewhere inside the school.

  “Bon,” I whispered, pressing my lips to the top of her head. “Wake up.” While I could have stayed curled with her like that forever, we had to get moving.

  There was an impending sense of dread around my heart. We weren’t far from Fort Hood, and Bonnie’s promise to get us there weighed heavily on me. I hadn’t told her yet that no matter what happened, I wouldn’t be letting her go. That I didn’t care if we found my uncle or not; I was staying with her.

  Bonnie’s blue eyes opened, sparkling as she looked up at me.

  “Hi,” I said, leaning down to kiss her.

  “Hi,” she said.

  This felt right in a way that nothing else in my life had before. Everything about it, everything about her made me feel like we would be okay. This awful world that scarred each of us in different ways didn’t feel so frightening when I held her. She was warm and pliant in my arms, a small smile perched on her soft lips. I leaned down again, covering her mouth with my own.

  “They’re up!” The Kid’s voice echoed through the room. Bonnie pulled back, but she didn’t look away; she just stared at me.

  “Sun’s been up for a while,” The Kid said. “We should probably get on the road.” Finally, I looked at my brother.

  “Since when do you make the decisions?” I asked, laughing.

  “Since the two of you decided to find a room to kiss in all night and sleep late,” he shot back at me. My eyebrows lifted as I looked at Bonnie.

  “You’re a bad influence on him,” I said with a smirk.

  “Me? He’s just like you,” Bonnie said.

  I enjoyed having her in my arms so much that it physically hurt when we separated. If she hadn’t been the one to sit up to grab her boots, I may not have had the strength to get up myself. I stood, stretching out the pain in my back. M
aybe we’d get the chance to sleep in a bed when we got to Fort Hood. I’d had enough of sleeping on the ground to last a lifetime.

  “What I wouldn’t give for a cup of Quanah’s coffee right about now,” I said, giving Bonnie a wry grin.

  “I wonder if they have coffee in Fort Hood,” my brother said, eyes lit up.

  “‘Course they do,” Bonnie said as she stood. “All of the towns have had it. You just can’t have none.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because you’re a maniac on coffee,” I said. “Did you think we were drinking whiskey in the mornings?”

  “Well... yeah,” The Kid said. I turned to Bonnie.

  “He thinks we’re alcoholics,” I said, incredulous. I flicked brim of his hat. It slipped from his head, landing in the dust-strewn floor. He grumbled beneath his breath as he picked it up.

  A smile plastered across my face. We left the library, my fingers entwined with Bonnie’s, toward Will and Clara’s voices. They seemed to be in good moods. Clara didn’t have the usual scowl on her face. Will put his hat on, looking at us as though he were gauging something between me and Bonnie.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothin’,” he said, laughing beneath his breath.

  Will wasn’t as bad as I thought. He’d come through when I needed him, when it came to saving Bonnie. I’d always be grateful for that.

  I went over the plan for today. If we pushed it, we might make it to Fort Hood by late tomorrow. We loaded some of the extra supplies from the horses into the bed of the truck in the hopes of lightening their load so we could make better time.

  “Jesse, can I talk to you?” Clara asked as I tied down the last of the supplies. I glanced toward Bonnie, who sat inside the truck.

  “Sure,” I said, walking beside her. When we were out of earshot, she turned to face me with serious eyes.