Machine-Gun Girls

by Aaron Michael Ritchey

  “I forgive you,” I said. “I can’t give you no penance, Pilate, but I forgive you. Go forth and sin some more.”

  I didn’t hear my own mix-up.

  But Pilate did. He laughed and laughed, laughed himself out of his chair and next to that flat fire of coals. All the logs were gone. Burned up.

  I kept asking, “What? What? What’s so funny?” I was getting vexed as he crawled back into his chair.

  Pilate wiped tears of laughter off his face. “You said, ‘go forth and sin some more.’ Not, ‘go forth and sin no more.’ It was perfect, Cavvy. I truly feel God’s love. And ...” his voice broke to splinters and new tears, different ones, went down his own cheeks. “And I feel forgiven.” He choked on those last words, then got up quick and grabbed his big, black duster. “Thanks, Cavvy, for listening. For hearing my confession. For forgiving me. Petal wants to get clean, and I’m going to do everything I can to help her.”

  I stood too. “Pilate, I need to know if you think I can lead.” I said it quietly so no one would hear.

  He turned and stepped up to me. He put out a hand and cupped my chin gently. “You are Cavatica Weller. Between Abigail’s genes and my genes, I don’t think there is anything you can’t do. I give you my blessing. And the nice thing about it, if you screw things up, Wren will just love to tell you all about it.”

  I felt a grin take over my face. “Yes, she will. Do you think we can get through this? Through the deserts, the Vixxes, the Psycho Princess? I don’t see how we’re going to get through her territory without facing her.”

  He nodded at my assessment. Then he shrugged. “I don’t do hope well, and I plan on sinning some more, against the Vixx sisters, the Psycho Princess, or whoever else gets in our way. Now that I have your permission.”

  He swung around and walked back to his tent, leaving me shaking my head. That was Pilate, crying over killing, and then vowing to do it some more.

  But I could ponder all that later. I had to get some rest, ’cause like it or not, I was in charge.

  I knew I’d helped Pilate with his burdens, and I felt grateful for his blessing, yet the weight of the responsibility of moving our cattle across the wastelands rested squarely on my young shoulders.

  (ii)

  Even before Aunt Bea shuffled her pots and pans to prepare breakfast, I was fully dressed. In the dim light, I got a surprise. Breeze and Keys were sleeping in the same bunk, cuddled together like two pieces of a puzzle. They were scared and taking comfort where they could. I was shocked at first, but their hugs and embraces sure made more sense than Wren’s nosedive into her broken-heart bottle of liquor. Or Petal’s medicine, the crutch that crippled her.

  Was gillian love wrong? If there was a genetic component to our sexuality, then it wasn’t like they chose to love other women. And sin involves choice. But the New Morality taught that sex wasn’t about our desires, but about following the will of God so the world could have babies. Sex was for procreation only.

  Then again, if church people didn’t talk about sexual morality, what would they talk about? Pilate said quiet churches led to lean collection baskets.

  So I didn’t know. But still, seeing Breeze and Keys together like that, I had my doubts about the New Morality’s stance on gillian love. It also made me miss the comfort of Micaiah’s arms. I adjusted the bracelet on my wrist and said a prayer for him.

  I quietly unzipped the tent to face a spring morning chill.

  Bea had breakfast going, sausage gravy on tortillas. We hugged again, and I went to wake people. Crete agreed to take over the remuda, but she wasn’t happy about it. I knew she thought it was beneath her, what with all her experience running cattle.

  For the rest of that day, it was, “Cavvy, do you think Sharlotte would want us to do this?” “Cavvy, would Sharlotte say we should do it this way?” “Cavvy, we lost a doggie over in a ravine. How long would Sharlotte want us looking for him?”

  I found it surprising everyone seemed so helpless. They all knew what to do, but it was like they needed someone to pat ’em on the butt and tell ’em, “Good job.” Which I did, even when my hand got sore and my mouth got dry.

  And funny, I knew what Sharlotte would say. I could hear her voice echoing through me. It was Sharlotte’s voice, also Mama’s, ’cause Sharlotte and Mama were so alike.

  Maybe Mama had run off when she was Sharlotte’s age, to go and work the salvage in the Juniper and get away from her family. Except Mama wouldn’t have run off in the middle of a cattle drive when we needed her the most. She’d have stayed on, even if it killed every part of her soul.

  Was that a good thing?

  Prolly not.

  I hit my rack that night exhausted, but we got a few more miles under our belt. Just a few. I wanted to go slow to give Sharlotte time to come to her senses and for Micaiah to contact us.

  Petal stayed clean. Wren stayed drunk. Another day, then another. More work. A couple days later, the Moby Dick found us with evening in the sky. Under Sketchy’s steady hand, the dirigible drifted down to the ground, and we tied her up.

  I was there to meet Sketchy, Tech, and Peeperz when they unlocked the back cargo door. It slammed onto the dirt, creating a ramp into the main bay. We used it to wheel big plastic two-hundred-liter barrels of water out onto the plain along with the collapsible plastic troughs we used to water down our headcount.

  Sketchy wrapped me up in a hug. Her goggles made her eyes look just as froggy as the rest of her face. She was a huge woman with a wide face and big pink gums and yellow teeth. A wool dress covered her—New Morality all right—though Sketchy cussed like a trooper and claimed to be an atheist. “Couldn’t find you girls, searched and searched. That blizzard knocked us back to Sterling. We got more water, got more hay, and we’re with you now, to the end. Goddamn Psycho Princess took some shots at us. We are smack dab in the middle of her territory. I get scared and Tech tells me to pray to Jesus, but I don’t believe in any of that.”

  She talked so fast and so much, I had to introduce her to Dolly Day. Of course they knew each other. Of course they tried to talk each other to death. Lots to talk about. June Mai Angel trying to take over the Colorado territory. Micaiah gone. Jenny Bell killed by our new enemy. Sharlotte supposedly scouting around.

  Tech, Peeperz, and I worked on unfolding and setting up the collapsible plastic troughs. Tech was a hard woman, but a brilliant engineer, and she wasn’t New Morality. Far from it. Tattoos inked up her arms, her neck, everywhere. She was smiley with me, and we both had great mutual respect for the other since we were both engineers.

  Peeperz tried to help, but he kept getting distracted. He was their adopted boy, not sure if he was viable or not, but he was little, only ten years old. He played with the dogs, running, chasing, and finally falling down and squealing when Bella, Edward, and Jacob licked his face.

  Real nice to see the boy so happy. But I still didn’t know why his face was so scarred up.

  My curiosity finally got the better of me. While I was tightening down a butterfly nut on the trough, I asked Tech, “I know it’s none of my business, but what happened to Peeperz?”

  She started with a sigh. “We were delivering a steam combine to a farm not too far from here, actually, on the border of the Psycho Princess’ territory. We arrived during an attack. The Psycho Princess and her crazies had already killed Peeperz’s father and taken away his mom and his sisters. A small group stayed behind to ...” She swallowed hard. “They wore dresses. All these women, in these big, ridiculous dresses and costume jewelry, covered in blood. We stopped them from killing Peeperz. I’d never seen Sketchy so upset. Since he was orphaned, we adopted him.”

  That was what the Psycho Princess did. Stole the girls. Killed the boys. And we were already inside her territory.

  “Horrible.” I felt sick and scared.

  Tech smiled sadly. “Yeah, but Peeperz still has a good heart. How else could he be so happy playing with your dogs?”

  Right on cue, Peeperz
giggled. Made me want to giggle, too.

  “What do you make of the U.S. government sending the criminals and Ladies in Waiting into the Juniper?” I asked.

  Another sigh. “That’s how I got here. I had a choice between the Dwight Correctional Center and the Juniper.” She smiled at me with white, even teeth. “Before I got clean and sober, I was a real criminal. Does that surprise you?”

  I had to think about that for a bit, and then I shook my head. “No, I guess not. Maybe the Juniper is a prison, but it never felt like it to me growing up. Still doesn’t. It’s a hard place, but there’s goodness here, good people. Like you.”

  The smile on her face was as joyful as Peeperz’s giggles. “I’ve been accused of a lot of things, but not of being good. Thanks, Cavvy. I try. I really do. I just wish I could be more like Sketchy.”

  At that, the airship captain spit in the dust and cursed at something Dolly Day said. The whole scene made us both laugh. I’d judged Sketchy harshly the first time I met her, but now I could see through to her heart, which was soft and kind. And she really was the best pilot in the Juniper.

  Since the night warmed us with a gentle breeze, and since the Moby had found us, I decided to celebrate with baths and a little banquet.

  Though it was dangerous to use water for anything other than drinking, I knew getting clean would improve our spirits. The women all took turns splashing themselves with water out of the plastic troughs. We teamed up to comb the snarls out of our hair.

  After our washing, it was mealtime. Aunt Bea parted with some of her dried fruit to make cobbler. It was sweet and crumbly—a nice dessert after big, thick steaks sizzled on a campfire. After spending ten hours in the saddle, hips and back aching, untangling cattle from leftover barbwire fences, riding hard to round up strays, such a meal made you feel like a queen instead of a hungry, work-weary cowgirl.

  Petal joined us as a shadow. Not even a shadow. The ghost of a shadow.

  Wren had run out of liquor and sat at the fire, eyeing us all like she’d rather fight than eat.

  Allie sang again, but not a war song, a drunk song. She said it was called The Fairytale of New York. Like her best songs, it was as tragic as a funeral.

  This time, Wren growled her to a stop. “Goddamn you, Allie Chambers. When you open your mouth, it’s like you want to kill us. Sing something happy for once in your dirty, mick life.”

  Pilate laughed. “Oh, Wren, that song was all about you. Your very own love song. What was the name of that gunslinger you were sweet on? I can never remember his name.”

  “Only one man I ever loved,” Wren said. Her eyes never left Pilate’s face, but she wasn’t talking about him. I could tell.

  Petal couldn’t. She jerked herself up and hit Wren like a second Yellowstone Knockout.

  It took all of us to yank them apart, but with Petal, it wasn’t that simple. She was cracked-up from withdrawals, full of hell, with Satan’s talons shredding her heart. She threw Dolly Day to the dirt, karated Keys back, and roundhoused Breeze down.

  Wren had the sense to skitter back, wiping at her bloody chin, eyes gleaming happily, ’cause for her booze was just teatime. Fighting was her fix.

  It wasn’t until Tech and Pilate wrestled Petal down, screaming into her face, “Do no harm! Do no harm!” that Petal went limp and started weeping. The shattered soldier girl, one-time smart doctor, lay like a child in the dirt, crying like the beat of her own heart was a torture far worse than what the Psycho Princess had done to Peeperz.

  I knew why Pilate had given her the Skye6 in the first place, how much sense it must’ve made, ’cause of how agonized she sounded.

  Crete wailed, “I can’t take no more of you Wellers. I’m sick of all your fightin’ and embarrassin’ us, and I gotta take care of the remuda when I should be runnin’ cattle. And we’re all gonna die. Them Vixx women are gonna kill us all, and if they don’t, the Psycho Princess, and if she don’t, the Wind River people, and if they don’t, the Mormons. They steal pretty girls like me and make ’em sleep with old men still viable. I wanna go home!”

  Aunt Bea held Crete as the girl wept.

  Dolly Day joined in. “Yeah, Cavvy, she’s right. Outlaw Warlords are one thing, but them soldier girls and this boy we’ve gotten mixed up with, well, that’s a whole different kind of mess. And your security has fallen to pot. We heard Petal won’t shoot no more, and booze has ruined your sister.” Dolly dared to let her eyes linger over Wren. “Most likely, the Wind River people will take our scalps. We gotta give up. We can head east now. East and south. Run our headcount to Buzzkill. Maybe prices are better there than Hays.”

  All eyes fell on me. I didn’t know what to say, so I decided to try and quote my sister like I’d been doing for days. “Sharlotte would say that Mavis Meetchum owns Northern Colorado. Just a nicer version of Howerter to deal with. We’ll only get pennies for our headcount from her. Yeah, we might make payroll, but we’d lose the ranch and everything Mama and Sharlotte—”

  Dolly Day cut me off. “Where is Sharlotte, Cavvy? I signed on to work for her, not you.”

  I wanted someone to come to my defense, but no one did. Everyone seemed poisoned by Dolly Day and Crete. That got my shakti fired up—those girls were trying to kill our spirits. I tried not to sound angry, but I did anyway. “You’re wrong, Dolly, you signed on to drive cattle for the Weller family. You all did. I don’t know where Sharlotte is. That’s the truth. All I know is that I’m a Weller, however young, and these are my beefsteaks. I’m going to lead, unless you want Wren.”

  My sister brayed laughter. Yeah, Wren wasn’t going to be doing any leading any time soon.

  “Right, so I’m in charge.” I stepped right in the middle of them all. My mama’s strength seemed to flow into me as I talked. “Crete says she wants to go home. Well, our home is under fire. Might even be all blown up. But I believe the worst is behind us. We wanted halfway, and after the last couple of days, well, guess what? We got it. We’re halfway. Look how far we’ve come. We made it through June Mai Angel, through a stampede on the highway, a bad blizzard, and through them Vixx sisters. Now is the time to ask for faith and keep on keepin’ on. Mama used to say, ‘Better to crawl forward than run back.’ Let’s keep crawling forward.”

  My heart thumped in my chest, and yeah, I was afraid, but saying Mama’s words, sent a shiver down my arms. “You know what I think? I think we’ll make it through to Nevada and we’ll sell our headcount for a fortune.” I smiled and appealed to Dolly Day’s pride. “We’ll be the first outfit ever to run cattle west. And if you wanna blow through your paycheck, well, you’ll be able to get any job you like, saying you can run headcount from Heaven’s Gate through the pits of hell and out the backdoor. When all is said and done, people are gonna whisper our names in awe.”

  Took a minute for my words to sink in, but then a crazy smile lit up Dolly Day’s face. “You’re right, Cavvy. We do this, people will take us serious. Ran headcount through the worst parts of the Juniper, that’s what Dolly Day did with them crazy Weller girls. That’s what they’ll say.”

  Kasey Romero spoke up. “Me and Allie been talkin’. We’re in this. Don’t see how we’ll make it, but we’re in this to the end.”

  Allie nodded right along.

  Pilate caught my eye, and he smiled at me with such fatherly pride, I had to look away or burst into tears. I’d just saved our cattle drive. Pilate took Petal back into their tent, but his smile continued to warm me.

  Dolly Day called over to Crete. “Hey girl, let’s not get fearful. Like Cavvy said, maybe we can make it. I just wish Sharlotte was here.”

  “Well, she’s not,” I said with some force, “but she’ll come back. I know she will.”

  Dolly shrugged. “Who am I to question the bosses?”

  That seemed to settle it for the moment, though I knew hands like Dolly Day loved to talk smack. Well, if she did, she’d find me there to correct her.

  With the fighting over, we divided up the night watches
, and people drifted off to their tents. I knew I had a victory, but I also knew, halfway or not, we had a long way to go. I couldn’t stop thinking about Sharlotte and Micaiah out there and alone. Maybe even picked up by the Vixx sisters or taken by the Psycho Princess. No way to know. No cell phones in the Juniper.

  As the leader, I needed to check on Petal and Pilate in their tent, but it was something I didn’t want to do. The hell in Petal was hard to witness, and entering her tent would be walking into a dark abyss.

  But I was determined to bring a little light in with me.

  (iii)

  Praying for help, I unzipped Petal’s tent and eased myself in. Cots, guns, and gear littered the floor. Petal still breathed hard, and Pilate held her, only it looked more like a wrestling move.

  “She gonna be okay, Pilate?” I asked.

  Pilate nodded, but his eyes told me a different story. “Yeah, it gets worse before it gets better before it gets horrible. Petal is okay. She’ll apologize.”

  “I won’t.” Petal went to struggle, but Pilate held her down.

  I crouched to get closer to her. I knew I couldn’t do much, but I thought maybe I could heal at least one of her wounds—her jealousy of my sister. “Rosie, I want to talk about my sister Wren. I grew up with her, and she’s trouble, yes, but there’s something you need to know about her.”

  Every cell in Petal went still.

  I talked softly. “Wren won’t show it, but she’s hurting like you. And like you, she needs Pilate, but not as a lover. She needs him as a father.”

  Still nothing from Petal. Only that ferocious light burning in her eyes.

  “The only reason why Wren didn’t kill herself was because of Pilate. He’s my daddy. In some ways, he’s a daddy to us all, even Sharlotte, though Shar would slap me for saying that.”

  Petal softened until she nodded like a toddler. Funny how pain can take us back to being babies. “Yes,” she said, “she would slap you. Sharlotte hates Pilate.”