I have a flash of magical thinking, that maybe I can heal her, with time and with my love. She’s young, right? Strong and healthy. But no. That leg is destroyed. It’ll never be right again. She’s still twisting, but she calms a little when she sees me approaching. I glance over the camp. More trucks are coming back from the fields. The workers are pouring from the backs and shouting for help.
What is happening here? We are all breaking. We are broken.
I look to make sure Bell isn’t around. Then I press the two barrels of the gun into the welt above Britain’s eye and pull the trigger.
THE NEXT DAY is devoted to burials. The workers go out early and pile the bodies in the backs of the trucks and take them miles away from the maguey fields and out past the trash heaps. If there are any personal effects, the workers take those from the bodies, so the dead can be identified by a friend or relative at camp, if they have a friend or relative. Most will remain anonymous.
The day after that, there are executions. The dozen or so jimadors who were accused of inciting violence during the bee swarm, of turning their fists or their coas against one another or, worse, the foremen, are given the briefest moment to pronounce their innocence before they are blindfolded and shot, right in the middle of camp. Among those put to death is Bruno. He stood there, hands behind his back, and remained perfectly and completely silent, even as the foremen raised their rifles.
Or so I’m told. I’m spared the sight of the burials and executions because I’m confined to my cot with fever.
I’m past crying and on to something else that feels worse. I don’t remember much after putting Britain down. I don’t remember the sound of the shot, but I do remember the kick of the rifle against my shoulder. I think I fell down. I remember being in my cot, stripped down to my tattered underwear. Eva was sitting next to me, skimming a brown-shelled egg across my arm. It’s a folk remedy, a way to draw out bad spirits from beneath the skin and trap them in the shell.
I remember trying to push her away. I didn’t want her to know how much bad stuff had soaked into my skin.
“Don’t touch me,” I said, but she wouldn’t stop.
I remember mumbling, “Where’s my money?” and Eva knowing exactly what I was talking about. She reached underneath my pillow and pulled out the edge of my bandanna so that I could see it.
“You believe now.”
This was not a question, and I didn’t reply.
Eva continued to run the cold eggshell across my forehead, and I went back to sleep, wondering where on earth she got that egg.
I wake again when I hear Eva announce that I have a visitor. It’s Farrah. I’m sure I’m imagining her. I thought she was gone, too, like James—to El Paso with her father. The fact that she’s not with James makes my heart skip. I’m hurting, but I’m happy. Farrah’s not wearing blank white, like usual; she’s in denim, a chambray shirt and jeans. There’s a tiny stain of something at her knee. It seems so strange to see her dirty, even if just a little bit.
Imaginary or not, I don’t want her here, but I can’t tell her that. She takes a seat on the edge of my cot and pulls something out of the small satchel she’s brought along with her.
“I have something for you,” she says. “From Bell.”
She holds out a single red button looped around and around with thin wire.
“It’s for protection.” Farrah’s voice sounds so light, like air, like music.
I can’t imagine that she’s ever raised her voice or laughed so loud and for so long that her throat has become hoarse. What kind of life must that be like?
“The button is supposed to be you,” she goes on to explain, “and the wire wrapped tight is there to keep you safe. My mother believed in things like this, little tokens and talismans. She used to stuff our pockets full of these buttons and bundles of herbs to either bring good luck or ward off evil. She taught Bell and me how to make them when we were little, even the bad luck charms made of teeth and bone. I’d forgotten all about it, honestly, but Bell has recently started stashing them around the house.”
“Your mother?” I ask.
“She was from out here. The desert.”
Farrah glances up at the silent, watchful faces of the other girls and women in the bunkhouse.
While she’s studying them, I’m studying her: trying to puzzle her out. If Leo was right, and James really does want to be with her, then there have to be reasons why. Is it that long swoop of her chin, or the fact that her fingernails aren’t crusted with grime? Is it her musical voice and the way in which everything she says seems so composed and considered?
I turn my head. It hurts. I’m trying to find Odette, but I can’t.
Farrah again reaches into her satchel, and this time pulls out a brown glass vial.
“A couple drops under the tongue every morning and night,” she says, putting both the vial and the button in my sweaty hand. “It helps with headaches.”
“Thank you,” I say. “Tell Bell I’m sorry about Britain. Leo, too. Tell him I tried to find him, but couldn’t.”
“We can’t find him, either,” Farrah replies. “No one’s seen him since yesterday morning—before the bees arrived. His things are all still in the stable. It’s possible he was out cutting maguey and his body’s still out in the fields, and no one’s found it yet. We’re short-staffed now, especially with James gone with Papá. You’re expected back at the house when you’re well. My father always insists that even during our most trying times, we do our best to keep order.”
“Trying times?” Eva growls, pouncing on Farrah. “Do you think that keeping order, as you say, will keep you safe? Safety is an illusion. That house up there, it is not safe. You and that little girl are not safe.”
I wish I weren’t feeling so weak. I have the overwhelming urge to launch myself in front of Eva and stick up for Farrah. It’s a strange urge, I know, but she’s sick. She needs protecting.
Or maybe she doesn’t.
Farrah stands, closing the space between Eva and herself.
“Hear this,” the copper-haired girl says, peering down into the prophet’s face in that stoic way of hers. So stoic it must be maddening. “You are not the first person ever to come to the Real Marvelous and spin wild tales. You are not even the first person to do so this year. Nor are you the only person claiming to have the ability to see the future and all the rot and death it holds.” Farrah pauses to scan the bunkhouse. “You’re right, though. My father and I are trying to maintain an illusion for my sister. We tell her every day that everything is going to be fine because that is what you do for children. You lie to them, so that they will feel safe in your certainty. Safety is an illusion, but there is safety in illusions, as well.”
Farrah doesn’t give Eva the opportunity to respond. She simply raises one eyebrow, backs away, steps from the bunkhouse and into the blistering heat of the late afternoon, and is gone.
THERE’S THIS TERM: fever dream. I’ve never understood what it really meant until now. In the past, my dreams were normal and coherent, boring really, when I’d compare them to other people’s.
Now I have this surreal one—wild spun, as Farrah would say. I’m in a maguey field during a dust storm. I see a horse come charging down the row on a collision course with a man and a young boy. The horse is out of control, but I know I can stop it. I step in its path and somehow keep my balance in the wind. I wave my coa to try and distract it, but that doesn’t work. The horse just rears up and cries out. I take the horse’s reins in the attempt to steer it away, but the wind catches the animal, and it falls, crushing its rider under its weight. The horse then rights itself, and there, broken, dead in the dirt, is me. My eyes are wide but lifeless. My lips are frozen in a hideous death-smile. I’m covered in dust, already half buried.
Then the dream starts over.
NINETEEN
Again and again, Eva preaches. My fever days are filled with Eva’s words, and there’s nothing to do but listen to her praise
the bees as if they were the gifts of an angry god.
They meant something, those bees, according to Eva. They were punishment. They were an omen of worse things to come.
You didn’t think that was it, did you? Eva asks her followers, who huddle around her. No, no. That was only the beginning. It will get much worse.
My fever burns off in two or three or four days. I can’t really tell, and it doesn’t really matter. On the morning I emerge from the bunkhouse, I can tell camp has changed. It’s all there in the weight of the air: there’s a slow-burn anger, tucked away behind a thin veil of disappointment.
I’ve learned the names of some of the jimadors who died during the bee swarm. I recognize a few: Jenna, a girl who bunked next to me, and of course Raoul and Bruno. Leo is never found, and so his name is added to that list. Most names, though, belong to people I don’t know or know only in passing.
I walk through a semi-empty camp, past the jimadors finishing their breakfast of powdered eggs and coffee. I see and hear things. Some say the fields will be shut down. Many have labeled the camp as cursed and have already fled for the trains. Rumors and conspiracies are whispered on the wind. The foremen are riding around looking for someone to step out of line so they can crack their whips. Their horses are hot and skittish. The kids in the mess crew, since they have fewer mouths to feed and clean up after, are playing this game that involves throwing kitchen knives at their own feet. Whoever gets closest wins.
I head up to the ranch house, passing first through the stables to check on King. Leo has been replaced by an older man named Ortiz who seems to know what he’s doing. King is brushed and clean. The stables are tidy.
Ortiz says he heard about the brown horse, and I nod. He doesn’t say “I’m sorry,” which I appreciate. Then, without standing on ceremony, he tells me I’m wanted in the main house and turns to lead the way.
It’s as I remember it: white, too white. Like last time, the windows are thrown open to allow the breezes to whip across the expansive tile floor. Ortiz tells me to wait in a large room off the entry and then disappears down one of the hallways.
I am, by far, the dirtiest thing in this house. I don’t know how the floors and the furniture aren’t coated with dust with the windows open like this. How are there no spiders or rows of ants crawling up the walls like in the bunkhouses? How is the floor so even? How does it smell like piñon pine and rosemary and not sweat and unwashed hair?
“Sarah Jac.”
I spin around and see Bell standing in one of the hallways. She’s wearing a dress. I’ve never seen her in a dress before. It’s white and made of thin cotton fabric. Her feet are bare.
“Before she left, Farrah told me you were sick,” she says.
Bell’s feet are bare. I look down to my boots, once brown but now dishwater gray. They’ve been re-heeled at least three times. One has yellow laces; one has black. I’ve had them forever. Over the years, there have been scorpions in them. I’ve stepped on nails, glass, and cactus spines while wearing them. I’ve waded through questionable bodies of water in them, and they were once stolen from right off my feet while I was sleeping—this was in Chicago. When I found them abandoned in an alley, someone had used them as a toilet. I stood by while Lane bravely sprayed them down with a hose. Despite all that, they are my boots, and they protect me. They cover broken toenails and healed-over blisters. They give me the ability to run. Going barefoot is a luxury I could never afford. The last time my feet were clean and bare . . . I can’t even remember. I was probably with James. He probably pulled my boots off himself. I close my eyes, shutting out the rest of that memory.
When I open them, there’s still Bell and her bare feet, and that old anger swells.
“Before she left?” I ask, wondering if Farrah’s visit was a scene from a fever dream.
Bell nods. “A couple of days ago she left to join Papá and James in El Paso. She’s going to see a doctor there. To get better.”
“Who will take care of you?”
“There are ladies here. They’re nice. They help around the house.”
“Show me your violin,” I command.
BELL’S ROOM IS small and full of more white things: white curtains, white bedding, white-painted furniture, dolls wearing white dresses that don’t look all that much unlike what Bell is wearing.
On top of her dresser is the violin.
“Have you been practicing?” I ask.
The little girl nods. “James helped a little.”
“Can I see it?”
Bell picks up the violin and hands it over. It’s wonderful. It looks even better in this bright room. There are a couple of minor nicks in the wood, but nothing that would affect the playability or the sound.
“I taught James his scales,” I say, caressing the neck and running my fingers along the strings. There’s a scab on my fingering hand, from where one of the many welts was. I must’ve picked it in my sleep.
“Can you play?” Bell asks. “Can you play something for me?”
“I can play.” It feels strange to say this again. “It’s been a while, though.”
“Who taught you?”
“My mother.”
“Play something,” Bell urges, taking a seat on the edge of her bed. “Play your favorite song.”
I think for a moment and can’t help but grin. Maybe I can teach this little girl how to play and she’ll learn how to put all the bad spirits to sleep, the ones that hover over the Real Marvelous. There’s a song I used to play for Lane—a dumb little ditty, more fit for a fiddle than a proper violin. The words that went with it had something to do with a man whose car broke down, and in pushing it across the country, he’d picked up all these random hitchhikers: a nun, a former president, a teenage runaway. The song went on as long as Lane could come up with characters for it.
I bring the instrument to my shoulder and ready the bow.
I make the mistake, however, of looking at Bell on her bed with her clean, bare feet swinging off the edge. She pushes her copper hair away, revealing an expectant expression. A breeze enters through the window, catches all the white fabric, and sends it billowing. There’s a view of the horse yard, but the blood is gone. I remember there being so much.
Bell got me once, asking me to show her how I could gallop. I may have pretended that triumph was mine, but she was the one who gave permission for it. She has some strange power over me. I won’t let her get me again.
“I’ve forgotten,” I say, giving the instrument back to Bell. She’s disappointed, but that’s fine. “It’s been too long.” I make a move for the door. “I need to get back to camp. I’m still not feeling well. I probably need to eat something.”
That’s not really true. I’m still a bit weak and queasy, but I’ve been faithfully taking the tincture Farrah brought me, and it has helped with the headaches.
Bell follows me out of her room and into the hallway. I hear her saying that there’s plenty of food here in the house, but I ignore her.
“I’ll tell Ortiz to have King ready tomorrow morning,” I say over my shoulder as I bolt through the courtyard and back to the open space that feels like mine—even though nothing out here is really mine.
Bell doesn’t follow me. She can’t with her bare feet.
I thrust my hand into my pocket and finger her button charm. When I was sick in my cot and feeling unbalanced, the repetitive action calmed me down. I like the texture of it, that it’s hard and solid and wrapped up tight.
But then I stop, and remember this: I don’t believe in signs or symbols, but in reality, facts, and the things I can see with my own eyes. A freak storm of bees is just that: a freak storm of bees. It is not some kind of reckoning. An injured horse must be put down. Britain is not a stand-in for me. The Real Marvelous is not cursed; it is just a ranch full of sad people. Headaches are caused by stress and lack of water and malnutrition; they are not signs of all the bad to come. I am not being punished by unseen hands for the death of that
foreman in Truth or Consequences. I just need to work. Work is all there is.
“I’ll be back tomorrow morning,” I say to Ortiz, who’s in the process of loosening hay with a pitchfork. “You can have King ready then.”
“I’ve been told Bell’s not riding,” he replies. “She’s too upset. You’re supposed to keep her company, though.”
“What am I supposed to do with her?” I point to the house and raise my voice, half hoping Bell will hear. “I wasn’t hired to be her playmate. I was hired to get her ready to be the replacement for her dying sister.”
“You’re just going to have to figure something else out,” Ortiz says, his tone flat. He stops working, plunges his pitchfork into the hay, and leans against it. A scar runs down the length of his exposed forearm. “Given that you killed her horse.”
Her horse.
“Tomorrow I’m going back to the fields,” I say. “Come get me when Bell wants to ride again.”
THE NEXT DAY, as I said I would, I go back out to cut maguey. I do the same thing the day after that and the day after that. No one comes to get me.
TWENTY
One night, after James has been gone almost two weeks, I’m awoken by the sound of quick footsteps advancing in my direction. For a split second I think they belong to James, that he’s come to wake me in secret, but then I realize they’re too light to be his.
Someone crouches next to my bed. My body tenses.
“Sarah Jac!”
It’s Odette. She places her hand on my shoulder, gives it a shake, and hisses my name again.
“There’s something wrong with James!”
“What?” I whip around. “What is it?”
She doesn’t say. Even though it’s dark, I can see her trembling lip and the tears pooling in her eyes. Whatever she says will be terrible. She leans up against the frame of my bed, reaches for my hand, and threads her fingers with mine. At first I appreciate the intuitive, tender gesture, but then I remember that first day in the field, when she was trying to coax information from me about James’ alleged girlfriend back in Chicago.
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