by J. D. Palmer
His men follow. Rita is pulled on a rope behind them. Her face is covered in dirt and what looks like bits of manure. Tear tracks give her an odd sort of war paint. As if she were trying to belong to this motley band in the middle of nowhere.
“Didn’t expect to see you today,” drawls Ghost, still sitting calmly on his stoop.
“Really? Really?”Julian spits. “I find that hard to believe.”
“No, you’re right. I guess I just figured you would have caught up to us last night. You sure took your time.”
Julian’s face reddens and he takes a limping step forward. “You think you’re tough shit. You think you’re better than everyone.”
Ghost hops down. His height causing Julian to take a step back. “I don’t. I don’t think I’m better than everyone. Just you.”
“Always with the jokes. You never show any fucking respect. Perhaps it’s time…”
He trails off, his bluster withering in the face of Ghost’s calm.
“Perhaps it’s time for what?” Ghost whispers, everyone in the shade of the rocks tensing.
“Give me the girl. I will kill you if you don’t.”
Julian’s words were meant to sound deadly. And they do, in the sense that he’s telling the truth. But his voice is all over the place, his chest darkening with heavy sweat.
“You would fight me?” Ghost says, a sardonic smile on his face.
Julian shakes his head. “I wouldn’t need to. And I wouldn’t waste my time. I would just have to say the word.” He gestures to the men behind him, a man with a pistol stepping forward with a nervous grin.
“You don’t have to walk this path.” Even now Ghost seems so calm. Sad. The bearer of bad news. “You could turn around and go. And we could talk about this, later.” Julian laughs, and his men laugh, but there is no humor in the sound. The cawing of crows over a carcass would have more mirth.
“You would disobey The Tribe? For what?” Ghost continues.
Julian spits. “I’m the one making sure the fucking Tribe’s decision is carried out. You ain’t.”
Ghost’s voice drops to something soft. Mellow. “You sure about that?”
Julian smirks. “Maybe not in the way my mother wants, but I’m doing what she ordered.”
“I am too.”
A derisive hiss from Julian’s men. “The fuck you are!”
“I am.” Ghost shakes his head at Julian, almost as if debating whether to say the next sentence. “Because she told me, should I meet you out here, I’m to send you to the ancestors.”
Ghost’s words are like a blow to Julian. He takes a step back, head cocked as if he’d been slapped. “No. You lie. She wouldn’t say that, this is one of your fucking jokes.”
Ghost doesn’t say anything, letting the truth of the moment sink into the group.
“You’re fucking lying!”
Ghost meets his gaze and holds it. Julian chuckles, a fake laugh that is low and soft and far too forced.
“You are funny, Ghost. But let’s say that’s true. There is no reason, then, for me not to kill you.”
“Perhaps you should. What are you waiting for?”
The words confuse Julian. He is not in control of this conversation and he knows it.
“You are in such a hurry to die?”
“No. I’m in a hurry to see if you’ll actually do what you say.”
Silence. Stillness. Small things taken account of; the heave of each breath. The smallest movement of hands. Of feet. Every rustle as someone inadvertently moves.
“You never could let me have anything. You never could.” Soft words spoken by Julian. Genuine words. Words only meant for the man standing across from him. “My family took you in, you piece of shit. Gave you a life. Why did you need to steal it from me?”
Violence is coming. Everyone gathered here knows that. But just for a brief second the two are united by a mutual sadness. By memories of a fork in the road that, perhaps, could have been avoided but for pride, or stubbornness, or anger. An alternate history in which there might have been closeness, or friendship, or love.
“I’m sorry,” is all Ghost says.
Julian pulls his knife and limps a step forward, anger masquerading as sorrow plastered on his face.
An arrow thunks into the chest of the man who had stepped forward with the gun. He stares at it as he stumbles sideways, incredulous eyes rising to meet mine, like an actor pushed out onto stage without knowing his lines.
Another arrow hits a man in the thigh, I look up to see a dark silhouette of a woman on top of the rocks. She raises her bow again as the men around me suddenly leap into action, darting behind rocks and raising their own guns. Explosions shatter the silence and echo around the rocks, bits of stone and dirt already make a halo of dust.
“Beryl!”
Ghost yells it as I turn. Julian has taken two steps forward, not towards his former compatriot, but to me. The knife is coming directly forward, a vicious lunge aimed at my face. I start to duck but it’s too late. Pain erupts above my temple, the knife digging a searing line down the side of my skull.
I tumble backwards, my knife slashing wildly as I try to give myself some space. A black blur as Pike leaps in between us. His teeth sink into the forward arm of Julian. His left arm. Deep, guttural growling as he jerks and pulls at him, seeking to either remove his appendage or get him away from me. Julian is howling in pain. I watch as he raises his knife to stab the dog.
“NO!”
He pauses, surprised by my voice. By my voice, unlocked, at its full power. I’m already striding towards him, knife extended, closing the distance between us.
Julian swings his own blade. Whipping it back and forth before reaching for the gun stuck in his waistband.
“Stop! Stop this now!” Ghost’s voice, clean of any humor or mockery, filled with fear for the first time.
Julian doesn’t hesitate, but I’m already next to him, forcing his attention. His knife moving from Pike to me, gun forgotten. He slashes. Erratic.
I do not claim to be good with a knife. Or good in a fight. But there is a huge difference between panic and being acquainted with violence. Not at home, but on a familiar path. And, as calm as I am, it’s far too easy to avoid his blade. Far too easy to move in, left hand pushing his hand into himself, my right rising to strike.
Only it doesn’t get there. An arm grips me around my waist and pulls me away. And that same arm stiffens, and Ghost lets out a little gasp as Julian’s blade sinks into his side.
Ghost stumbles away from me. Julian, now frozen, stares at the blood on his blade. Then he smiles, the grin of a man who knows he is about to win a game that he has never been allowed to play. And he moves in to finish him, slashing and jabbing while Ghost is backpedalling. All other combat has ceased. Everyone in Julian’s group dead or subdued. But no one steps in to end this last fight.
Honor, I guess. They are bound to it. Maybe it’s the whole “one tribe” thing. Or knowing each other. Knowing that this ends in a death that one side will have to live with. Ghost is injured, but they adhere to an unspoken code that keeps them from interfering. No one puts an arrow into this man who brought this catastrophe about.
To do so would, to them, be cowardly.
Not to me.
If I’m robbing Ghost of some sort of proper resolution… so be it. He will live. Priorities in shit like this should never get skewed. And like Sleeping Bear, like Julian, I too believe in no half measures.
I’d like to think Harlan would be proud.
This is my thought as I leap forward to plunge my knife into the side of Julian’s neck. Blood spraying both Ghost and me as Julian whirls away from us, stumbling in a circle before collapsing.
Minutes. Seconds. Who knows. But I have to sit, I’m suddenly dizzy, my head throbbing. And the silence bothers me. The intake of breath in a land that had a wind before all of this.
Pike’s snuffling nose at my side. My hand licked leaving a trace of white in all the red. Gho
st’s face. Furious. Sad. Furious again.
“You shouldn’t have done that.” Ghost’s voice is subdued, not angry. He might as well be saying “this shouldn’t have happened at all.”
I raise a hand and touch the gash on my head. Pain lances through my skull and I have to sit.
I close my eyes. Open them.
A bloody circle. The red is the only thing that sticks out. The lifeless faces and dark clothing blending in with the mottled rocks and the shadows growing longer. But the blood is everywhere. A painter gone mad.
Ghost’s clan clusters around him. It’s only at an angry word do they disperse. Slow steps around the corner of the rocks to wait with the horses. Even his woman is banished from the scene, a long pause as she levels a stare at him that goes unheeded. Then we are alone. Ghost, and Pike, and myself. And Rita. Forgotten in the chaos, crouched in the shadows, so covered in dirt and grime that only her sniffling gives her away.
“There is a road. Two miles that way. There are cars waiting for you.”
I don’t ask him how this is possible. “What will happen to you?”
“To me?” He sighs, his hand pulling away from the wound on his ribs, grimacing at the fresh blood that leaks down his side. “I don’t know. I guess I knew this would happen someday. I don’t know what happens afterwards.” He stares down at Julian’s lifeless body. “There has to be balance. There has to be, otherwise he would have been the cancer that ripped our tribe apart.”
“I’m… Sorry.”
“He always just… Wanted to win. To be the best. To lead. And he never saw the why. And that’s why he never did… He never could.”
I’m not sure what he’s talking about anymore. But we sit in silence, hands no longer held to our wounds, as if the blood should be allowed to flow. As if we could drain ourselves of the guilt and remorse, as well.
Eventually he stands and walks past me. Stopping only to say, “The place you are going. Tell the woman in charge… Tell Cyrene that we’re even. Tell her that she needs to leave. Beryl… she will help you. But don’t stay there long.”
Then he is gone. Pike approaches and licks my face.
Long past time we started walking.
Rita shuffles out from the shadows as we start down the hill. “Where are we going?”
I have been trying so hard to be… a better version of myself. To emulate the hope that Harlan always somehow finds. To try to retain some humanity even when it forces us into hardships. Harlan carries the weight of each death on his shoulders, and I strive to be more than a crutch for him. I want him to see that I, too, can care. That I will try.
So I hold back the anger. I hold back when all I want is to let loose the whirlwind of destruction on a world that has done nothing but push me down. I love the people I love. The rest are chaff.
I try to be better.
Not now. There are consequences. And I need to give voice to the malice that lives within me.
“Where are we going?” she repeats.
I step towards her. I reach into her shirt and rip the dog whistle from her neck. I stoop and tie it loosely around Pike. True freedom. The last shackle busted.
Second to last one.
“What are we going to do?” She doesn’t raise her arms, doesn’t take a step backwards. She doesn’t, I think, even see the knife until it’s already in her throat. She gives a little gasp as I wrench it forward, blood washing over me in a spray.
“We are going home.”
Pike trots alongside me as Rita sits on a hillside filled with death. One hand on her throat and the other pointing at me, as if she had one last thing she needed to say.
Maybe she did.
HARLAN | 13
THE WOMAN WHO climbs out of the back seat of the car is calm, her movements slow and measured, her gaze sweeping the tents, the people. Calm for someone holding a towel to her head, the white cloth stained a deep red, either from the wound or from trying to clean off her face. An attempt that left it streaked in odd patterns vaguely familiar.
Calm for someone coated in blood.
Calm for someone taking in the lingerie, the vehicles, the sheer gaudiness and opulence forced into such a small gathering.
The woman sees me and the stony mask crumbles, eyes widening and her mouth going into a shy smile that is kept for a chosen few.
“Beryl.”
I walk to her and she leans into me, the towel dropping to wrap her arms around me. And I hold her. And neither of us think about the physicality. If it would torment her. Or torment us. We are as we are supposed to be. And had her blood not made a slow trickle onto my neck we might have stood there, locked, for a longer time.
“You’re hurt.” The words come out angry, as if it’s her fault. I turn to Cyrene. “She’s fucking hurt. Do you have—”
“We will get her all fixed up. And cleaned. Come—”
My turn to interrupt. “I will fix her up. Just give the stuff to me.”
Dark eyes flash, an anger at being talked to so dismissively. Something that hasn’t happened in a long time. “Do you know how to stitch a wound?”
I don’t have to say anything for her to know the answer.
“You can sit with her. Come. You will have time to talk. And to rest. And prepare. You still have your debt to fulfill,” she says with a cruel grin, “and I would have you in peak condition.”
We all sit with Beryl as a petite blonde woman goes to work on her cut. Blue gloved hands slowly dab with wet cloths to get through the matted hair to the wound beneath.
“Ohhhhh no,” she says.
“What!” I’m on my feet, peering down at the top of Beryl’s head.
“I’m going to have to cut her beautiful hair.”
Beryl rolls her eyes. “Do it.”
The woman takes some scissors and an old-timey pair of shaving shears from her backpack, dipping them one by one into a bowl full of rubbing alcohol.
“This is gonna hurt, but I’ll do my best.”
“She doesn’t fucking care, just do it.” Sheila says from the corner. “You want some?” She holds a bottle of vodka up for Beryl to see.
“I… Okay.”
I’m shocked to hear her say yes, more shocked to see her and Sheila exchange grins. An unlikely friendship.
Well shit, all you have to do to get Sheila to like you is to bust her nose.
Beryl takes a pull, and though her eyes water, her face remains impassive. Theo is a statue, doing his best to contain another upwelling of emotions. When Beryl looks at him all he can do is nod.
“I knew you’d make it. But you don’t always have to go for the dramatic entrances,” Josey says.
“I… I’m glad to be back.”
She tells us her story, slow and measured, as the woman works on her. Small curls of her hair, some clumped together by blood, fall on her shoulders, and onto the floor, and onto the dog draped over her feet, worried eyes glancing up at her and his tail thumping every time she drops a hand to scratch his head.
The woman cleans the wound, a long gash that runs a straight line a couple inches above her ear and curves upwards at the end like a hook.
“And the woman. The one who took me. She is dead, too.” She looks at me, eyes boring into mine, the smallest hint of something sad turning the corners of her lips down. Then she winces as the woman begins to stitch. The needle dipping into swollen skin to knit the two sides together.
“Want some more?” Sheila says.
The stitching is done. More than two pulls of vodka. One swear word voiced so loudly, so precisely, that I could not help but grin. The woman left and shortly afterwards a large tub is lugged in, followed by bucked after bucket of steaming water that only partially fills it. The others, by some unspoken word, filter out of the room.
Beryl stands in front of me. The odd patch of bald hair and stitches look like a snake twining its way around her head.
“I didn’t… I was worried I’d never find you.” I say the words because I can’t k
eep the ache inside me any longer. I have to say these things, my mind and soul filled with too much pain for me to keep this to myself.
She gives me her lopsided smile. “I wasn’t.”
“You weren’t?”
She steps towards me. “No. You’re my pack.”
Huh?
What an odd thing to say. Why am I smiling? Why does it, in a way, make sense?
She steps one more time, bringing her into my space. I wrap my arms around her and we stand, holding each other, for as long as we both need. Longer than we should and shorter than we want.
She steps back, still wearing clothes stained with blood. Hers, and I now know, others. The angry line on her head. An upraised chin. Challenging me. Or challenging… Something.
She turns away and starts to take off her clothes. Her nudity is not anything new to me. But this is different. Not a baring of flesh, but the way in which it’s done. Not the stony silence of someone who needs, desperately, to wash themselves. But someone inviting someone else to stay.
The clothes are too solid. Crusted and stiffened by the fled lifeblood of others. I go to help her lift the shirt above her head. I see her wince in pain as we both try to force it over her ears. She shoves me away and, with a smile I’ve never seen on her face, points to her discarded boots. I find her knife and, with only the slightest pause, I cut the shirt off of her.
She shivers beneath my touch. But when I go to move away she pulls me closer. Closer. So that I’m supporting her weight as she lifts one leg out of her pants, then the other.
She steps into the water. Turns to me. Expectant. I pull off my shirt and step towards her.
We stand there, one in the water and one out. Fingers tracing the lines on our bodies. Scars old and scars that aren’t old but far deeper. We stand there and look each other in the eyes and we don’t need to speak a word.
She lowers herself into the tub, the water coming just up over her navel. I grab a towel and gently start to daub the blood from her neck. The dirt and grime and more blood from her shoulders and arms and wrists, the water in the tub slowly darkening as her pale, porcelain skin emerges.