Two guns will be up front, locked in a box that Slade keeps behind his seat. But mine is here. Oh, god, thank you. The Colt .38. Salvador. It will still be unloaded, but the cartridge box will be wrapped in the same soft cloth. My hand searches by itself in the dark. I close my eyes to concentrate. There’s a scuffle outside, and I peer carefully out the window. People are being pushed down to sit near the fire. I can only see old Lupe, her hands tied behind her, hunched forward, and all I can hear is the wind, howling, dirt and pebbles hitting the side of the truck.
I make myself go slow. Count to ten. Think of Amber’s face. Slowly, I move my hand past flares and water-purifying tablets and finally over the smooth soft cloth. Unwrap it. Grab onto the gun.
I wrap my fingers around the small gun, think of the times that Slade has made me practice, how he always said, This gun is perfect for you, baby. But it’s dark, and my hands are shaking. Tears start to faucetdrip out of my eyes. Such a bad time for it. A bad time to feel. I need to turn the emotions off.
I hear Alejandra yelp. My body is going to buzz apart. Crack apart. Explode. Alejandra yells, Get off me, and I am calm. Calm with a rage inside me.
You were ready to die before.
Now do it with a purpose.
Hang tight, dearheart.
Do it, Tess.
Load it.
Slide and turn the cylinder.
Slide and turn the cylinder. Six times. Six shots.
Single action. Cock it with your thumb.
It will jump.
Left hand holds right hand,
right index finger near the trigger,
shoot for chest area.
(Slade said: It will be harder than you think,
not Hollywood.
Much harder if they’re moving.
Assume you won’t hit him unless you’re close.
Shoot to kill.)
(Get directly in front, as close as you can.)
(Lower aim a bit, you’re always high.)
(Once it’s cocked, it’s live.)
(If worse comes to worse, Slade used to say, you need to
know this, Tess: You need to shoot to kill.
It’s the life you’ve chosen, and you need to know it. And for
god’s sake, don’t forget about the safety.)
My fingers slide the bullets in.
Chapter Eighteen
I close my eyes to center myself with one last full breath, and the memory of Libby giving me this gun sweeps into my mind. Amber had been born, my bags were packed, my resolve was steady, and we were standing outside the old home. She handed me her Colt .38, which she’d gotten from her best friend Shawny, who had used it on herself, and she said, “Kidsister, learn to use it, because you’re heading out into a life that is bigger and scarier than you think.”
Lupe screams. No. NO.
And I’d said to her, “You’re heading into a life bigger and scarier than you think,” and as I said this, my eyes had drifted over to Amber, tucked into a car seat, sleeping, and I reached out and took the small gun in my hand.
Amber sobs, Please let me go home, please.
And Libby had grabbed my wrist and said, “Promise me on all that we ever shared together that you will not use this gun on yourself. Because that would kill me.”
And I’d promised.
And she’d said, “Tess, listen to me. If you ever get close . . . come home and visit me first. Promise me. I wish I had told Shawny that. If ever she got close . . . to talk to me first. We could have figured something out. So don’t you ever do that to me. You come to me first. Okay?”
And I’d promised again and thought, This bigsister has no idea what she’s talking about because I’m in for a life of fun and adventure. I’m in a life for all that is beautiful and bold and exciting. She’s the one who is dying.
And it is only striking me now: That she has known why I came back, and I have known why I came back, but neither of our minds believed it until right now.
*
I exhale the breath. Out the window I see dark figures gathered around a small fire, heads ducked against the wind, and I hear bits of discussion about moving people to a van that must be nearby. My eyes search the group. I need to identify where Amber is, where Alejandra is. I can’t make them out, and my eyes move from one shape to another, and finally I see Alejandra, on the outskirts, being tugged off to the side, toward a cluster of trees.
I cannot see Lobo, but I know he’s to the left. The man to my right is still pulling Alejandra. Slowly, slowly, slowly. I start to turn the latch; Lupe screams, Mi hija; and I hear a man saying, Fuck you, bitch. And right before the final click, I stop my hand. The universe is telling me something. Listen. Oh, I hear it: I know what the man is thinking at this very moment in time. He’d rather take her in the truck. Warm and comfortable. I watch him make the decision. Turn in the other direction. Toward me. Here, in the truckbed, with the topper, it will be better. He doesn’t want to be cold and windblown either.
I back away from the door with a certain silent speed. I get my gun up, cock it with my thumb, my left hand supporting my right. The man is struggling with the latch, struggling with the effort of holding a strong young person who is thrashing around, and she tumbles away from him. As he turns to catch her and heave her up, my body tries to shy away, to turn to the side, and I hear the universe loud and clear: Move toward the danger. I force my body back in front of him, and as he opens the window, I look him in the face and shoot. There is an explosion both of bullet and of bone, and I am sprayed with wet.
*
I jump from the truck in one move and turn toward Lobo, who is turning to me. I point the gun at him, lower it, and there is an explosion and he is still standing there staring at me and I know I have missed and now he is reaching for his gun and I walk toward him, straight up to him. I reposition the gun, reposition my hands on the gun, bring a gust of air into my body and hold it. I shoot, and he flies back.
I hear Slade, One more there’s one more! and then Slade is standing up, his hands tied behind him, and he is yelling, Run, girls! Sálvense! Corran! and he is barreling toward another man who I just now see, a man who had been sitting in the shadows, with his gun trained on me, and by the time I see him I know he has already fired and
Slowly, slowly.
Time moves this way, and you know that entire universes are held in the breath of a second.
The man pushes Slade off of him and is getting his balance. I am on my knees, sinking, I raise the gun to shoot. Left hand holding right hand, finger to trigger. Our eyes touch. Across space. He turns and starts running. Into the night. A scream. The wind, a woman, a human soul.
I stay on my knees. Should I shoot him in the back? No. I lower the gun. He is a no-one, like me, someone who couldn’t feel, who didn’t mean to start trouble, a fire or a death; he just hadn’t thought about it because he couldn’t feel about it, and he is gone.
*
Noises pierce me all at once:
The cracking of burning logs at the fire.
Slade writhing on the ground, moaning.
Lobo on the ground, gurgling.
A sound of weeping.
An owl somewhere in the far distance.
The buzz of silence from the night sky. The roar of stars.
I crouch down. There is no cell phone anywhere in the dead guy’s jacket. I move toward Lobo, alive and mumbling, and I think of the woman’s dead body that I did see,
the bones and red barrette,
Kay’s dead body, just lying there silent in a room.
I hold it all in my head, in my universe, and I move toward Lobo and kick away the gun near his arm, and though he is alive, I feel his jacket, over his chest, on his sides, and yes, there, next to him, on the ground, is the shape of what I’m looking for. I flick it on and my hands are shaking and the whole world’s thoughts crash on me at once:
Stop Slade’s bleeding,
find Amber,
check on the other
s,
there’s one more man out there,
keep the gun at your side,
stay low.
But I need to focus on the first thing on the list, this one call, reaching out like a prayer.
“It’s badbadbad,” I say into the phone, teeth chattering, bone crashing bone. “Southwest side of the dam.”
Dispatcher: “Where is the girl?”
Me: “I’m looking.” I walk on my knees to Slade and am taking off my shirt and holding it to Slade’s side, but my eyes are furious in their search to my right. “Amber. Where is she, where is she?”
Slade: “Oh fuck it hurts like fuck.”
Me into the phone: “The reservoir, west side, rock outcrop, ambulance, Amber.”
I am shaking so hard, and before I crunch down to die in it, I look around again. Where is everyone? Alejandra and Lupe and the others are gone. There is one extra shape and a noise I have not yet checked on.
Amber?
I crawl over to it, my kneebones against rock, and then say it again, but the shape doesn’t answer. I reach out and tap it with my hand. It is Amber, staring up at me. Not crying, not anything, just dead with fright.
“Oh, Amber.” I lower my gun, bend, curl up beside her. “They’re gone, they’re gone.” I hold her to me, and I think of me reaching in for that unborn baby’s skull, how the little bones fell like insect wings.
“I want my mom. I want my dad.” Her voice is faint, and her body is jerking and hiccupping and coughing and vibrating now, suddenly coming alive.
“She’s coming, Amber. They’re all coming. They’re on their way—”
I bend my body around her in the echoing darkness, and she is gasping for breath now between great sobs and screams.
There is a hand. I look up: Alejandra’s face right above mine. “We are fine,” she whispers. “We are leaving. The men got our wrists free. I hear the sirens, and help is coming. We cannot get caught and sent back now. We’ve tried too hard. Goodbye, mi mamá.”
I nod and put my head back down on earth and curl tighter into Amber. The endless murmuring of all my selves tells me that we are two creatures, not one. I could staunch Slade’s blood better, yell into the night and call for Alejandra to come back. But no. I will hold Amber, form a curve around her on these stones that fuse into a single planet, into the nest of my body. I will hold her as the cold pulses of the stars thrum in the sky. I will hold her tight on this red earth.
PART V
* * *
Earth
Chapter Nineteen
The highway has me thinking. A new theory sweeps into my mind as we pull off the pavement and park the cars and trucks at the farmhouse, and the simplicity of it makes me laugh out loud, randomly, startling everyone as we gather and hunch together in the chill of a clouded day. My theory is simply this: Here, at my mother’s funeral, at the moment we are honoring her departure from her body, I understand something about bodies in general. That a good-feeling body clarifies the brain in wondrous and elemental ways. Who knew? That one was so dependent upon the other? Oh! I keep thinking over and over. Of course! This is what it feels like to be in a body that doesn’t hurt, this is what it feels like to have the brain clear, of course! Medicines and rest have taken away the blur and roars and stings that lived in my tooth, in my crotch, in my stomach, in my bones. The nerves have calmed. Weight has lifted. Such a strange, radiant surprise. There is more sweeping that needs to be done in my body, yes, more to be released or attended to, but it keeps surprising me. I forgot what it feels like to be in a body that has been cleaned. For too long, I have lived in a cluttered, messy home, full of too many pangs and aches.
When I laugh, everyone turns to me: Libby, Amber, Ed, Charlene from the grocery, a few of the ranchers from nearby, and Miguel, who had overlooked the fact that Libby had whispered to him about the others involved, people who had disappeared into the night. Who knows what the law will discover, but our story is a solid one, the truth except for the existence of Alejandra and Lupe and the others. The wind has taken away their footprints, the stories have taken away their presence. Funny, how so much can remain invisible.
As Libby and I walk away from the others for this last final gesture, out into the pasture with the urn, I wonder if Planet Earth ever feels the same as my body does. Lousy, but then, at some moments, a little clearer and calmer. For example, how the winds brought in a snowstorm that hit in the mountains that very night, and the wildfire is now contained. Not out, but contained, and with new snowstorms on the way. I wonder if the earth feels how, for at least a while, some elemental order has been established.
Perhaps the people of the mountains are feeling better, too. It’s true there have been great sorrows: The remains of the homeowner have been found. She had received a reverse 911 call but had refused to leave. The body of Oscar will be returned to his family in Mexico. A small group of people near Alamosa have made new signs, No más cruces en la frontera, to acknowledge and mark the problem, to say, We notice. Ranchers are in the process of finding their animals, people are starting the process of rebuilding their homes. The grief is alive and burbling, I am sure, but at least things have calmed enough to allow for the grief.
Libby and I walk over sage and grass and cottonwood leaves that are dusted in a light small-flaked snow. As soon as we’re out of earshot, I say, “Libby, I’m sorry. Thank you for not abandoning me completely.”
Libby releases a strange sad laugh and keeps her eyes on the blue urn she is carrying. “Well, Tess. It’s gonna take a while. You nearly got my daughter killed. Let’s just get through this funeral. Let’s just get through today. We can at least do this together.”
I watch shoes, mine red, hers white, step over sage, cactus, yucca. “Well, there’s one thing I know how to say: I love you. And I ask to be forgiven. I know such a thing won’t come now, or easily, or maybe ever, but I still need to ask. I never thought Lobo would come—”
“I know.” Her voice has the edge of bitterness in its quiet murmur.
“I’m going to try harder. If it’s any consolation.”
Ringo has darted from the group behind us and is now circling our legs, tail wagging. He trots ahead, his pads leaving sweet marks on the frost. He looks back, grows impatient, and comes back for us.
Libby holds Kay’s urn up a little, as if raising it for a toast. “Remember that time when we jumped off a tractor and landed on some old metal? And we both had deep cuts on our legs? Blood all over the place. We tried to hide it, to rub it off with our socks, but it kept going. We needed stitches. So finally we ran back to the house, to Kay, and we were so scared. She was standing on the porch, smoking a cigarette, and even though I was the older one, you approached her first and said, ‘You can get mad at us later, but help us now.’”
I laugh quietly. “That’s kind of how I felt, coming back here,” I say after a pause. “Get mad later, but help me first. Must be the call of those in true distress.” Then I nudge her gently with my elbow and nod to the red thrust of a rock outcrop. “Is here where she wanted?” Here, near a small creek, a cluster of cottonwoods gather, and the last yellowed leaves flutter like a pirate flag on an old ship.
“Yes, here.” Libby looks at me; we both nod. “Ready?”
“Hang on a second.” I stand and do a slowmotion spin to look at the pasturelands and cluster of outbuildings and the earth around me and then settle on looking west. There is the blur of mountains, now dusted in white and hard to distinguish from the white sky. Up above them, I know, are stars, even though they are obscured by light, and above them, the universe, spiraling in a galaxy full of spirals and sequences, of lost and found blooms of red stars and possibility.
I tap my chestbone. Inside is something just as vast. Inside is a galaxy, and it accounts for the emotions that make a mother scream, that make a child cry, the yearning for connection, the rise of lust, the ache of lonely, and, yes, the constant-burn energy of whatever it is that heals, whatever it is that makes us laugh
in joy.
I nod to Libby, and we both put our hands on the urn. When we fling the ashes up and away from us, a gust of wind picks up the ash and takes it right back into our faces. I gasp, duck. The grit slaps me across my cheek, flies into my eyes. I stand there stunned: Kay’s bone dust in my mouth, in my eyes, in my nostrils, and I circle around, pawing at my face and tongue. Ringo runs over to me, bounding around my legs in my own confusion, jumps up hard enough to claw me through my jeans, and then I am doubled over with the pain of that. I rub my face, my scalp, my hair. But then I look over at Libby, and she is bent over, her body heaving, so I stumble over to her and pull her to me to help. That’s when I see she is laughing.
“That’s so Kay,” she’s gasping. “That’s so Kay.”
I blink, and we stand there, holding each other and rocking back and forth, me muttering Fuck, and her laughing, and the both of us spitting dust from our mouths. Our faces are streaked with whitegray, her eyelashes especially. We back up, eventually, and brush off each other’s shoulders and hair. She tilts her head at me, holds her palm to my face. “Tess, this will be hard to work through. It’s not going to be easy. Amber can’t turn out like you. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“You need to help her. Don’t go running off on me now. You need to stay and be a warm presence, a steady influence, a good person. If you leave, I want you to know, you’d no longer have a home here. You’d no longer be welcome.”
I hold her hand that is holding my cheek, look her in the eye. “Yes. I feel that too. I got my feet pointed in the damn right direction, and that involves staying put.”
Then we hold hands and look back at the others. We pause for a moment to watch the rest of Kay blow off of us and out of the urn and off the sage and grass at our feet, mixing into the white dust of the frost. The larger bits settle in among the dirt and rocks, a beetle scuttles away, a cottonwood leaf drips from a tree. The temperature is just rising enough that the frost is starting to bead into moisture. The ancient impatience of water, right next to the ancient impatience of the human heart.
Red Lightning Page 15