Keepers

by Brenda Cooper

  Lou finished her sandwich on the way to the barn. Something had changed in Coryn’s personal life. She had both more confidence and a harder edge.

  Angel looked up and greeted her as she approached the work party, before returning to pulling out rotted wood and salvaging nails. Blessing and Day joined them shortly, and Lou reveled in the sweaty teamwork of discarding old, rotted boards. With luck, they’d have fifteen or twenty horses soon instead of six. With luck.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Lou walked down the center of the street to the bar, Blessing and Day beside her. She hadn’t asked them to come, but they had been waiting at the end of the drive, watching the stars and joking, and had simply gotten up and flanked her.

  Now, in the dark street, she felt grateful for their presence. She had never expected them to stay so long. Surely Julianna would call them back sometime. They were her creatures, even though Lou had once thought Blessing was hers.

  She pointed out the door to the bar. “Here.” A pale yellow bulb spilled a soft circle of light onto the handle. She took a deep breath before opening it. Other than Valeria and her family, there was a good chance that everyone in here thought they were an enemy.

  Live music and conversation enveloped her as she slid inside quickly, followed by the other two.

  A crowd filled the space. Most of the women wore dresses and the men button-up shirts, probably the best clothes these people had.

  Valeria looked up from across the bar and offered a welcoming smile. She wore white, as always, bright in the dusky room. Lou shouldered through the crowd until she was close enough to speak without shouting. “It is as busy as you promised.”

  “Drink?”

  “Wine.”

  “I’ve only got two choices at the moment. Chardonnay or Merlot?”

  “Merlot.”

  Valeria poured the glass herself, a careful pour measured to about five ounces.

  Lou sipped the wine and nodded, turning so she could look over the room.

  Almost a hundred people crowded around tables or stood in small groups talking animatedly. Most were men. Most were white. A noticeable whiteness. Every one of Valeria’s family members stood out for their brown skin, except of course Felipe’s wife, Cheryl, who was as white as Lou, and Mathew, who either wasn’t there or was in the back.

  A complete contrast to the city, where skin color made a vast palette. This was a distinct whiteness, even for out here, where those in power were often white.

  It made Lou twitch. These were the people who had killed Paulette’s young, frightened husband, Rick, and made her watch. For disobedience and love.

  She couldn’t let herself forget that about them, not for a moment. They looked normal, but clearly they were not.

  In one corner, a tall white man wearing a black beret played instrumental music on a guitar, the music nearly inaudible over the sounds of the crowd. A drummer sat beside him, simply watching him and stroking the top of his drum.

  Valeria’s adult family all appeared to be here. That puzzled her until she heard the high slip of Alondra’s laughter from the kitchen and decided they might all be here. Even the children. Family business.

  She recognized the woman she’d passed in the group that Valeria had shepherded them through on the way to town. She turned to ask for her name, but Valeria had slid down the bar, talking to a young couple.

  The woman glanced up from her table, seeing Lou and nodding in recognition. Her square face, wide lips, and earnest hazel eyes suggested strength and power. A scar marred her nose, and another one her left cheek. She pushed up from her table and came to Lou, extending a hand. “It’s the woman with the balls to ride in here on the backs of wilding machines.”

  Even though the woman seemed genial, Lou took it as a test. She tried to sound casual even though adrenaline pounded through her system. “The ecobots? They come with my job.” She took the woman’s hand, a firm grip at least as calloused as her own. “I’m Lou. We’re running the Outside-N Foundation, working on restoration ecology.”

  The woman spat the term back at her. “Restoration ecology? Stealing is more like it.”

  Lou answered with a more measured tone than she felt like using. “We’re permitted. We’re Wilders. I wish you no personal harm.”

  “Once you’re established, you’ll take down everything that makes this a human place.” There was no question in her statement.

  No point in mouthing the tenets of her work at this woman either. She surely knew them. Instead, Lou simply said, “We’re not planning to work close to town. We’ll be light on deconstruction and heavy on survey and protection.”

  The woman tilted her head to the side. “Your choices here could be very important. We are well armed.”

  Lou swallowed a surprised response. “I see.” Most of the men wore visible weapons, some knives, some stunners, some projectile guns, and she felt certain the invisible weapons were far more numerous.

  “You don’t appear to be afraid of us,” the woman said.

  “Are you afraid to give me your name?”

  For a moment, Lou thought the woman might actually smile. She didn’t. She did say, “I’m Agnes.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  The look on the woman’s face suggested that was the wrong response, and Lou was suddenly certain this was Henrietta’s older daughter, the woman Valeria had told her ran the town. She took a risk. “It’s good to meet a strong woman.”

  Agnes nodded. She kept an even voice as she said, “Do not underestimate the ability of this community to survive.” She went back to her table, sitting down and raising a beer in a toast with her tablemates. The noise in the room prevented Lou from hearing it.

  Her own glass was still full. She sipped at it. She had considered not coming in tonight because she could be seen as a threat, could be killed easily enough. But that was true if she hid or if she didn’t, and there was her secondary purpose. Finding nukes. She had fled the city to be rid of it, all those years ago.

  But here was Julianna, pulling her with strings made of money and goods. The damned city she couldn’t escape. If she severed the strings she’d allowed to be put on her, she’d have trouble finding work. She might have to go feral. Ferals died.

  She watched the room quietly, marking who spoke to whom, noticing when people tried to glance at her furtively and failed.

  Blessing worked his way over to her, smiling. “I saw the queen of terror talking to you.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “Just of her. It’s something a woman I was talking to said. She’s afraid of her. Rumor has it she orders people killed.”

  “You’re always talking to the ladies.”

  He grinned and tipped his hat at her.

  “She was straightforward. Basically told me not to mess with her.”

  That wiped the smile off his face. She wondered if Agnes had ordered Rick’s death.

  The man with the guitar got up from the stage.

  Lou glanced around the room, locating her crew, and when she looked back, Sofia stood at the front of the stage, wearing a black sheath dress that probably came from some rich woman’s closet. It was demure and revealing at once, and it made her look older and absolutely stunning. She spoke to the crowd, her voice amplified by a microphone Lou couldn’t spot. Maybe a cheek mike. “And in five minutes, my mother, Valeria of the Hills, will sing for you. Please refill your drinks, order more food, and relax.”

  Valeria of the Hills?

  People began shifting chairs and checking their glasses. On impulse, Lou grabbed pitchers of cold water and moved through the tables, refilling water. She made sure she stopped at Agnes’s table, and that she smiled sincerely at her as she filled her glass. Agnes gave a short nod, but her eyes were hooded and filled with a cold silence.

  The overhead lights flashed. People rushed to find their seats and stilled, and the room suddenly felt like a theater.

  Lou stayed at the bar, and Day and Blessing stood agai
nst the wall on the opposite side of the room. A good choice. She didn’t want to look like she needed bodyguards.

  Sofia returned to the front of the stage, a sweeping look taking in everyone, as if making sure they were still and quiet. She said, “Please welcome Valeria of the Hills, who can sing the world awake in the morning and send it to soft dreams at night.”

  Lou blinked at the ritualistic description, but noticed that people grinned and settled more fully into their seats.

  Valeria hugged Sofia and just as Felipe helped Sofia off the back of the stage, Valeria reached the front. “Tonight I will tell you of peaceful living on the land.”

  Lou stiffened.

  “Amen,” one man said.

  “Yes,” a few other voices murmured.

  “I will tell you of the time of families farming, of the sun bringing the rooster to wake the hens to scratch in the dirt and shining upon us for hours before the chickens seek the safety of night and sleep.”

  She found Felipe near her, as rapt as the others.

  As Valeria began to sing, her voice sounded like it came from her toes and then worked its way up and out, and only then filled the entire room. It was a husky alto, a sensuous and serious sound.

  Lou had heard her sing before, had sung with her walking down the hill to town just last week. But she had not sounded this good, this full. That had been a playful moment.

  This was her soul talking with them.

  The song was about the sunrise. It felt like a morning at RiversEnd Ranch. She knew how the light would creep over the horizon as a softening of black to gray before a sudden infusion of yellow rays spilled momentarily through the sky and then faded in their turn as the ball of the sun rose and the soft light of true dawn touched the land awake.

  As Valeria finished, her voice rose higher and stronger, and Lou thrummed so with energy that she stood up from her barstool.

  A few others had done the same.

  She swallowed and forced herself to sit down.

  Valeria began to speak, her words measured, rhythmic.

  Horses stamp their feet and lift their noses,

  smell the timothy hay and oats

  dangling from my fingers. They snuffle

  from my open palm, fragrant with grass,

  full of pasture dreams of running free.

  The brown bristles on the brush flick dry dirt

  from their sides, sweep small yellow specks

  of fly eggs from their delicate hocks.

  The saddle smells of leather and soap,

  sweat and afternoons in dusty light.

  A simple poem that lulled Lou after the rousing song. There were eight stanzas, a steady rhythm that drew on her memories of getting ready for patrols in the morning.

  Sofia refilled her water glass.

  Valeria sang again, a song of watching over the animals, of caring for chickens and vegetables and goats.

  Lou almost expected her to talk of impossible things like cattle, which had been banned for a hundred years at the great taking, except for small survival herds.

  The things she sang of would be legal in Yakima. Not here. But they were imaginable, and positive, and full of messages about family and neatness and the importance of caring for animals. They were also enough out of place to worry Lou.

  When Valeria stopped for a brief break, Lou turned to Felipe. “Did she choose this subject for me?” she asked him. “Why is she singing to these people about ranching and small farms, and not about . . . I don’t know . . . not about things they might . . .” Her voice trailed off. Valeria couldn’t sing of revolution. Not to these people, and not with Lou. She couldn’t sing of equality. There was no protection for her. So she had chosen something that would appeal to them even if it wasn’t their goal.

  Felipe smiled, looking for all the world as if he saw her work it out and approved. “She is singing what she can. She chooses a theme for every night. Last week it was raising children, and she ruffled some feathers with that. This week, it’s something safer.”

  “Why do they love her so?”

  He shook his head, his expression a war between pride and worry. “Sometimes she sings of things that make me expect to find her in a ditch.”

  “Like?”

  “Like equality for women. Hispanic heritage.” He grinned, looking as if his mom were a child who had done well in school. “She’s the bravest person I know.”

  “She is brave.”

  Valeria started again, and this time she took them slowly down into the evening. Dinner was a poem, and after that she took the audience to the bar—right to where they sat now—and together they all sang a song. Two. Then three. These songs were almost like sea shanties, although they spoke of rolling hills and rivers and stars.

  Then she took the solo stage again and crooned of people speaking warm things to each other. As far as Lou could tell, she was making it up on the spot, a spontaneous half-talking, half-singing song that captured the exact moment it spoke of, and to some extent shaped the moment.

  Despite her fascination, Lou found herself yawning.

  Beside her, Felipe laughed softly. He leaned close to her and spoke in a hushed voice. “That’s how she wants you to feel. Next she will sing or tell you a lullaby to send you home peacefully. Don’t let her make you too sleepy.”

  He was laughing at her, although in a good-natured way.

  Felipe’s wife, Cheryl, came by and whispered in her ear, “Don’t mind him. He likes to tease his friends.”

  The comments sounded good-natured. “I won’t.”

  Cheryl went on to the next table, and Valeria started a lullaby. She chose a deep and melodious song that elicited a few more yawns from Lou, and a little more ribbing from Felipe.

  As the song finished, the lights came up. Valeria’s family was already picking up glasses and plates quietly, with only a little clatter. People began to file out of the bar.

  Lou got up to help clear as well, finding herself a little stunned. She would never have expected poetry to be so powerful. Maybe song, but never poetry. Right now, her sharpest memories of the evening were the poetry.

  There had been something vulnerable and tender between Valeria and her audience. And tense. The complexities of the bond between Valeria and these people were as amazing as the poetry.

  The topic Valeria had chosen rubbed at her. It described her life as a Wilder, although she usually had fewer domestic animals than Valeria had referenced. It had enchanted her, yet it was vaguely seditious.

  She stopped at a table near Felipe and pointed at the mural. “Alondra told me you painted that.”

  “I did.”

  “Tell me about Akita?”

  His lips thinned. “He is an alpha wolf. Strong. But I haven’t seen him for weeks.”

  “But you have seen the pack?”

  “A few times.”

  He was lying. He worked for her, and she couldn’t afford to have him think he could lie to her. But she didn’t want to rat Alondra out either. “Could you have found the wolves last week?” she asked him.

  “I looked for them with you.”

  She stopped right in front of him. He held dirty glasses in each hand and looked like he wanted to walk right around her.

  “Do you trust me?” she asked him.

  “With what?”

  “With this place?”

  “It is my home.”

  He was so frustrating! “I am supposed to work to save the wolves. I am paying you to help me find them.”

  “And I took you to try and find them.”

  His language was so careful. She didn’t want an argument. It had been a long and interesting night, and an argument with Felipe wasn’t her preferred way to end it. But she felt even more sure that he had led her away from wherever the wolves were. “I will find them.” She stepped out of his way and let him pass her and then followed him to the kitchen, where she stood in the middle of a drying line with a clean cloth. The repetitive, simple work calmed her
.

  Felipe scrubbed the floor in the main room. Blessing and Day helped him by moving tables and chairs. As they were nearly finished, Valeria came in dressed down in simpler clothes than she had worn on stage, her hair braided back loosely from her face, small wisps escaping from it. She looked as exhausted as Lou felt. “That was beautiful,” Lou told her.

  Valeria nodded. “Thank you for helping. It was a busy night.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  No one sang as they left the bar, but stars shone above them, and there was soft laugher and tenderness hovering in the air among them. Felipe carried his son, and Day utterly surprised Lou by taking Alondra onto his shoulders, her legs dangling almost to his knees.

  A shout came from the end of the street. A greeting?

  More voices. Horses.

  The caravan her sister had mentioned? She jogged a few steps to catch up with Day. “We should stay in town.”

  “Yes,” he said, lifting a hand up for Alondra to take. “Let’s get you down,” he told her. “Go to your mother.”

  Valeria noticed the conversation and must have read something in it, since she was too far away to hear. “Is everything okay?”

  “I believe this is the caravan Coryn told me to watch for. Go ahead and get the children home. We want to learn more.”

  Valeria stared at her, all the considerable force of her personality going into her words. “Come home with me.”

  Lou recognized the command but shook her head. “I can’t. We’ll be along soon.”

  “These people are dangerous.”

  “So are we,” Lou snapped.

  Valeria glanced between them and her family. Nodded stiffly. She turned and took up Alondra on her shoulders, walking fast as if the child weighed nothing. She and all of her family continued the way they had been, walking with purpose while also looking like there was nothing at all in the world to be worried about.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Day signaled them all to stop in a shadowed part of the street under an overhang. They waited in silence for Valeria and her family to reach the end of the road and turn. Before Lou could give an order, Day held up his hand. “This is the work I trained for. Blessing too. This is why we are still here.”