Not a book to read or a stick to whittle.
Sal carried the folding chair in one hand and a pistol in the other.
He’d been despondent in the weeks since Nellie’s death. And that was certainly understandable, for they’d been married for a very long time. They’d been through a lot together. Mostly good, but a lot of bad too.
Sal thought he’d gotten used to death and dying. When he was on the road, steering his gutted Ford Ranger pickup truck halfway across the country, he’d seen more than his share of bodies.
Rarely a day went by when he and Nellie didn’t ride past a body or two.
They never left notes to explain what happened to them, but most of them looked the same. A lifeless corpse more or less intact except that half its skull was blown away.
“More or less intact” because sometimes the coyotes and wild dogs got to them and did their thing.
They also saw a lot of graves, and piles of burned remains. More than they could count.
After awhile they became desensitized. Toward the end of the journey they’d even stopped looking as they passed them by.
Sal thought he was beyond thinking about the corpses or how they died. Beyond feeling empathy about them or how they must have suffered. Beyond wondering what became of their loved ones. Whether they were able to keep going on.
He thought he was simply beyond feeling.
Then Nellie died. Not of a gunshot, but of natural causes. Her old and worn out body simply stopped working.
She died in her sleep, peacefully, and was thereby one of the lucky few. She never saw it coming, never suffered.
She was in a better place now. Sal knew that. But he still wasn’t sure he could live his own life without her by his side.
They’d been together for so long they’d become one.
“Sal!” Benny called out as he approached his brother from the rear.
Sal didn’t respond, although he certainly must have heard the call.
He tried again.
“Sal!”
This time Sal called back.
“What do you want, brother?”
“I’m just checking on you. To make sure you’re okay.”
“You mean have I come out here to kill myself?”
“Honestly, the thought crossed my mind.”
“It’s crossed my mind too, Benny. More times than I can count. Am I that transparent?”
“Possibly. You worried me when I saw you walking alone into the desert with a gun in your hand.”
“Don’t worry. The gun is for rattlesnakes. As much as I miss her, I’m not going to make you and the others feel what I’m feeling now.”
“That’s good of you. I appreciate that, my brother. I know the others do as well.”
“I’ve never understood the whole concept of suicide. It eases one’s pain, yes. It makes one’s troubles go away.
“But it brings even more of a burden down upon the loved ones he leaves behind. If you love someone, why would you want to do that to them?”
“I think when one gets to that point he is tortured beyond rational thinking. His mind is numb and unable to think through all the circumstances of his action. He only sees one need… the need to end his own pain. I don’t think he’s capable of realizing how his actions will affect others.”
“Does that make it right?”
“No. Of course not. I’m not trying to justify it. I’m just saying I understand how loving and caring people can do it and leave behind the ones they love to suffer their actions.”
I loved her. I loved her so much. I loved her more than life itself.”
“I know you did. We all loved her.”
“You don’t have to worry about me killing myself. I refuse to make any of you feel what I’m feeling now. I may not be very pleasant to live with for awhile. But I refuse to die until I make amends for the evil things I’ve done.”
“Are you talking about the girl again?”
“Yes. I’ve got to make things right.”
Chapter 9
Sal put a finger to his lips to tell his brother to be silent, then slowly picked up the handgun from his lap.
He zeroed in on a coyote, about fifty feet away, peeking at them from behind an ancient and twisted Joshua tree.
He tried his best to steady his own hand but couldn’t. Old age had been creeping up on him for several years, and with it came a shakiness he had trouble controlling.
He once had a hand steady as iron. But it was long gone.
So many things were long gone.
He pulled the trigger, but the shot went wide. The coyote was off in a flash. He seemed to sense he’d barely missed death, and wasn’t going to hang around to give old Sal a second try.
“Oh, it’s just as well,” he said. “There’s been way too much killing for sport lately. Coyotes are God’s creatures too, I guess. They have a right to live too.”
“We all do, Sal. God didn’t put us on this earth to die an early death at the hands of others. Life is a gift. It’s something to be treasured. To be cherished. It’s a sin to take a life. Especially your own.”
“Why especially your own?”
“If you take someone else’s life you can always repent and confess your sins and ask for forgiveness. You can get absolution.
“Taking your own life, though, will always be your final act. You can’t ask God for forgiveness because you’re already gone. Already on your way to hell for committing perhaps the greatest of sins.”
“I told you I wasn’t going to shoot myself, Benny. But I might shoot you if you don’t stop talking about it.”
Just in case his words came out unnecessarily harsh, Sal tempered them with a smile.
Then he changed the subject.
“Just how old are those Joshua trees, anyway?”
Benny looked out on the horizon. As far as he could see were gangly trees. They looked like no other trees on the planet. The kind of tree you’d likely get if a mesquite mated with a yucca plant. Trunks which twisted painfully in all directions. Clusters of long spiked leaves here and there.
They offered little shade, bore no edible fruit. Their only seeming redeeming quality their ability to survive for long periods of time in a desert environment.
A very long time.
“From what I’ve heard they live for several hundred years,” Benny answered. He too was glad for something else to talk about other than suicide and sinning.
He continued, “Someone told me some of them are over a thousand years old. Granted, they’re not much to look at. But they fit right in with the rest of the scenery around here.
“The desert has its own kind of beauty. Some people never see it, because they can never get over the notion the desert is brown and miserable and devoid of life.
“But in the springtime, when the wildflowers are in bloom, you see things here that grow nowhere else on earth. Pretty things, rich in life. So many colors you can’t begin to count them all.”
“I suppose. Apparently it has to grow on you. And I’m not quite there yet, I’m afraid.”
“It does indeed grow on you. And if you spend enough time here, you’ll start to notice it too.”
“You know, now that you mention it…”
“Yes…”
“I want to talk to you about borrowing a couple of horses.”
“Sal, I’ve told you time and again. You live here now too. You’re my brother. What’s here is yours as much as it is mine. You don’t have to ask my permission to use anything here.”
“I know you’ve said that before. And I appreciate it. It’s just that… well, you were smarter than anyone else in the family. Smarter than anyone else I know. When the rest of the world was falling apart, you were able to amass this… a ranch with many hundreds of acres of land. And all manner of animals to live on it.”
“I wasn’t smarter than anyone, Sal. I was lucky. I happened to take a weekend drive to Vegas and happened to put a five dollar bill into a pa
rticular slot machine. I was lucky enough to win a multi-million dollar jackpot on the very day they announced the closing of the Air Force base here. I was able to buy land for pennies on the dollar, and livestock even cheaper.
“The truth is I was no smarter than anyone else. Anything on this ranch is yours as much as it is mine. You don’t have to ask to use anything.
“Except for maybe my underwear,” he joked. “I’d prefer to keep that to myself.”
Sal laughed.
“Don’t worry about that, brother. I wouldn’t come within ten feet of your underwear.”
“I am curious, though,” Benny continued. “Why do you need two horses? You’re not planning on leaving us again, are you?”
“Not right away, no. My back is still hurting from that fall I took a week ago. I suspect it’ll take a bit of time to heal. My aches and pains take longer and longer to go away the older I get.”
“But you’re welcome here as long as you live. You and the girl have made a home here. Why leave? You know how brutal it is out there.”
“Because I’m not getting any younger. Most of my friends my age are already gone. I could pass tomorrow.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. The world no longer holds promise of a long life for anybody. Any of us could go at any time.
“The longer I wait the more chance I’ll die before I fix the greatest mistake of my life.”
“The girl?”
“Yes. I’ve got to make things right. I’ve got to take her back where I purchased her and give her back to her family. And accept whatever punishment they feel I have coming to me.
“It’s the only way I’ll ever be right with God. The only way I’ll ever have a chance to walk through those pearly gates.”
“And then what? After your mission will you return to us? Will you live out the rest of your years here, in peace?”
“Yes. If I survive the journey it’ll be my last.”
Chapter 10
The next day Sal was standing in front of the 1992 Ford Ranger he’d stripped bare right after the blackout. Convinced it would never run again, he decided to give it a second life.
Albeit it in a much uglier, much slower state.
He pulled the engine and transmission, removed the hood and windshield, and built a plywood deck on the bottom of the engine compartment.
Atop the deck he constructed an outrigger and a two-man bench, both fashioned after the wagons of the old west.
When he finished his rig was decidedly ugly and slow, but it worked. At least well enough for a two horse team to tow it halfway across the country.
She’d laughed when he’d called it a “rig,” Nellie had.
“Well, what else you gonna call it?” Sal responded. “It’s no longer a truck, and could never be called a wagon.”
The rig was now in sad shape. It sat exposed to the elements just off the front yard of the ranch house, pathetic and looking like a poor poor pitiful animal just begging to be burned or buried and put out of its misery.
One of the front tires was already flat and one in the rear was getting there.
The plastic tarp he’d used to cover the huge hole where the windshield once rested was gone now. A large wind storm had ripped it free two weeks before and blown it miles away. Now the interior was covered with half an inch of dirt and sand.
A mother scorpion made a nest under the wagon’s seat. She carried a newborn brood upon her back, as if to show them off to the world.
Sal crushed all of them, even the babies, beneath the heel of his boot.
As he pondered the sad rig and made a mental list of all the things to do to make it roadworthy again he got a visitor.
Sal had a tendency to attract company whether he wanted it or not.
It wasn’t always that way. He’d always been a rather solitary soul, frequently wandering off by himself to meditate or to think.
Before Nellie died everyone gave him his space, knowing he could be very grumpy when his thoughts were interrupted.
Not so of late.
These days everyone had noticed how despondent he’d grown. Rumors had gone around he might be contemplating suicide.
Nothing could be further from the truth, and he kept telling everyone that.
But they cared about old Sal, the people at the ranch did. And they were sick and tired of all the killing. They knew that at some point the world had to more or less get back to normal, and the killing would stop.
They figured this was as good a time as any.
So despite Sal’s protestations, they kept a close eye on him anyway.
No one told little Beth Speer to walk up behind Sal. To try to comfort him, to soothe whatever pain he was feeling.
She did it because she sensed he was hurting and might need someone to talk to.
And despite the nefarious circumstances which brought them together, she’d grown quite fond of old Sal.
She could never love the man who took her away from her mother and sister.
But as she realized he was duped into thinking she was an orphan and he was adopting her, she forgave him for taking her.
More or less. She still threw it back in his face when they argued. But all in all she understood he was a victim as well. He’d been bamboozled by a very bad man who saw the opportunity to sell a child who’d given him problems.
Once she forgave him, it became possible to like him. For despite his often gruff exterior, Sal was at heart a God-fearing and kindly man.
A gentle man with a hard exterior.
Grandpa material.
Chapter 11
“Why are you looking at that ugly piece of junk?”
Beth, as sympathetic as she was to Sal’s grieving process, wasn’t one to mince words.
The old man turned and said, “Hello, dear child. It is rather ugly, isn’t it?”
“The tires are going flat.”
“Yes, little lady. They certainly are.”
“Are you doing okay, Sal?”
“I’m hurting. A lot. I never in my life thought that Nellie would die before I did. Even when she was sick, she was only sick in her mind. At least that’s what I thought.”
“I know. I loved her too. I didn’t realize it until after she died. But she was nice to me, even when you weren’t.”
He picked her up and placed her on the wagon seat.
“I was going to find you and talk to you after supper today,” he said. “But we’re here now, so we might as well get it over with.”
“Get what over with? Talk about what?”
“When we were on that farm outside Kansas City, and the man told us we could pay money to adopt you, I should have asked more questions.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“Watch your language, child.”
“Sorry.”
“Especially when he told me we must keep the adoption a secret from you until we were too far away for you to escape and walk back. That should have sent up a red flag in my mind.”
“Yep.”
“When he said there was no paperwork to fill out I should have immediately walked away. Nothing the government is involved in can be done without a mountain of paperwork. It’s the government’s way. When he said that I should have known I was being lied to.”
He looked her directly in the face, and she noticed he had tears in his eyes.
“Please believe me, child. I didn’t follow through with the deal because I wanted to cause you harm in any way. It was just that… well, Nellie was convinced you were our Becky. It was the first time she’d spoken in days. The first time she smiled in weeks.
“I just couldn’t take you away from her after she was convinced she found you again. It would have killed her. She would have died of a broken heart.
“I know… that’s a terrible excuse for taking you away from your family. I know that now. And deep down inside, I suppose I knew it then as well.
“But I was blinded by my love for Nellie.
And my desire to ease her pain. My devotion and allegiance belonged to her, not to you.
“I did a very evil thing. For that I am very sorry. I know I can never ask you to forgive me. So the next best thing is for me to try to make it right.”
“Is that why we’re looking at the uglymobile? Are we gonna fix it up and are you going to take me back home?”
“Yes, child. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
She placed a tiny hand upon his shoulder.
“I understand why you did what you did. I didn’t like either one of you at first. But I fell in love with Grandma Nellie too. I let her call me Becky because I didn’t want to hurt her either.
“She was nice to me. Way nicer than most people I’ve ever met. I know she wasn’t quite right in the head and didn’t understand I didn’t belong to her. So I let her pretend. I did the same thing you did.
“I do forgive you, Sal. I understand and forgive you.
“But I want to go home.”
“I know you do, child. In a week, maybe ten days, my back should be healed enough for me to work on the rig again. I already spoke to Benny. He’s going to loan me his two best horses.
“When we start, I hope to move a little bit faster than we did before.”
“How soon can we get back to my mommy and my sister?”
“If all goes well, I’m thinking two months.”
She lost her smile. Two months in an eight year old’s world was an incredibly long time. She’d have preferred to see her family yesterday. Today at the latest.
Still, Beth was a bright girl. She understood the distance and the mode of travel wouldn’t allow for a fast journey.
She had but one request.
“Can I help you? Make the repairs, I mean? I’m a good worker. You know that. And with two of us working on it it’ll go much faster.”
“Of course, child.”
She did something he never expected. She leaned over to the old man and hugged him. He discretely winced, as she squeezed his injured back a bit too hard.
But he’d never tell her so, and he’d never complain.
He’d loved her almost from the start and had always desperately wanted her to love him too.
Payback: Alone: Book 7 Page 4