Barbed Wire Heart
Page 2
A life for a life. Ben’s life for Momma’s.
“Does that mean you’re not going after Springfield?” I ask.
Daddy shifts from foot to foot in the doorway. “I have to,” he says.
“But—”
“He took your momma away from us,” Daddy reminds me gently.
As if I could forget.
“But you said you wouldn’t hurt Ben’s family.”
Daddy straightens, rising from the doorframe. He looks huge, like a shadow himself. I still can’t see his face, but when he speaks, just two words, it’s like gravel: “I lied.”
Two
June 6, 7 a.m.
Each morning, I walk the land.
I take a rifle, slung over my back, because there’s always trouble of the animal or human kind brewing. I switch up my routes every few days. I can’t cover all six hundred acres. Some mornings, all I do is patrol the border fences that run along the north end, the slap of canvas against my legs like a heartbeat. Duke’s jacket is too big for me, but I wear it anyway, the sleeves rolled up three times so my hands are free.
This morning, I hike deep into the forest, Busy at my side. She bounds ahead of me, her whip of a tail lashing back and forth, snub nose glued to the forest floor, sniffing out the trails of deer and mountain lion.
I walk behind her, the crunching of my feet across branches and dry pine needles mingling with the squawks of the magpies waking up. The air is crisp in my lungs and the ground is steep, my foothold steady. Each step draws me closer, red dirt crumbling beneath the pressure of my boots as I climb.
When it comes to the land, to this stretch of forest, mountain, and volcanic stone I know like the back of my hand, I am Duke’s daughter through and through. I know this place better than anyone but him. Its dangers and its secrets. Some of them I’ll take to my grave—whether that’s forty years from now or forty minutes.
“Hey!” I call, snapping my fingers when Busy wanders too far, and she skids to a stop, running downhill back to me. Her eyes shine in the early morning light, and as I scratch behind her ears, her blocky head tilts back in bliss.
“Good girl,” I say. “C’mon.”
By the time we get up the hill, my boots are dusty and Busy’s tongue is lolling out of her mouth. As the ground levels out, she scampers after a squirrel, and I let her.
The oak’s trunk is thick with age, and its branches spread out low and high, making it perfect for climbing. But that’s not why I’m here.
I approach it slowly, like it’s a buck I’m getting ready to take down. It’s silly, but I can’t help it.
Some things are sacred.
Carved over a hundred years ago, the names in the trunk start high up, faded but still legible: Franklin + Mary Ellen. Joshua + Abigail. David + Sarah.
I trail my fingers down, over the names—there are more than thirty of them—the great loves of the McKenna family, from the Gold Rush days to now.
There was a time I dreamed about carving my own name here. But I try not to think about Will anymore. Thinking on him takes me down the shaky path that only ever leads to us. And there’s no us. Not anymore.
I have to be focused on other things.
Today’s the day. Time’s run out.
I trace the final names carved into the tree. They’re down so low I have to crouch to reach them.
Duke + Jeannie
I press my hand over Momma’s name and close my eyes. My head falls forward, forehead pressing against the rough bark. I breathe in the smell of sap from the nearby pines, and Busy rustles through the brush, searching for squirrels.
I think about Momma, of what I can remember about her. Flashes of bright dresses and cowboy boots, chunky silver-and-turquoise jewelry, the faint scent of lilies floating in the air around her. How she loved the forest and the little keepsakes she collected here: a gnarled twig that looked like a question mark, a clump of moss on a heart-shaped rock. Her smile, the way she’d wrap her arms around me and lift me off my feet.
I used to think about what it might’ve been like if she’d lived. But the older I get, the harder that is to do. My life is my life. My fate’s been set since the day she died. And now it’s time to take it back.
“I’m sorry,” I say to their names. To the promise the two of them made to each other. To her, dead because of that promise. Maybe even a little to Duke, because he loved her too much to let her go, and I understand that inclination better than most.
McKennas love hard and fast and only once.
I clear my throat and get up, because crying over it’s no use.
Today’s the day.
Only way, Harley-girl.
Three
I’m eight years old when my momma dies in front of me.
She’s been nervous since breakfast. Halfway through pancakes, she walks into the living room with the phone and leaves me alone with the syrup, which I manage to dip my braid in.
I’m trying to clean it up best I can when Momma’s voice rises from the living room: “Will, no, listen—I’m coming right now. You don’t need to worry. Forty minutes. Okay? I’ll be right there. Don’t be scared, honey. Don’t let Carl in. Don’t let your mom unlock the door. I’ll be right there, I promise.”
My hair’s making a sticky puddle on my shirt when Momma comes back.
“Harley,” she sighs, and wipes the ends of my hair with a wet paper towel. “Run and get dressed. We’re going into town.”
“It’s not Wednesday.” On Wednesdays, Uncle Jake drives us in his truck to grocery shop, and I sit between them on the bench seat. Momma likes to sing along to the radio, to ladies who sing about coal mining and broken hearts, and men whose deep voices remind me of Daddy’s.
“I know, sweetie. Just do as I say.”
She’s waiting by the front door when I come back downstairs, dressed in my jeans and boots. She grabs the pink-and-black cowboy hat Uncle Jake bought me at the fair and plops it onto my head. She keeps her hand on my shoulder after we get into the Chevy, and doesn’t let go until we’re all the way into town.
She won’t turn on the radio, and she rolls up all the windows even though it’s edging into summer. Every few minutes she glances at her phone, tapping it against her leg.
“Where are we going?” I ask when she drives past the grocery store.
“To see a friend.”
She turns the truck onto a street I don’t recognize, with dirt and patchy grass in the yards and jacked-up, rusted-out cars without tires sitting in the driveways. The houses grow sparser until there are acres between them and the road turns to dirt. Momma keeps driving until we get to the end of the road.
She doesn’t stop right in front of the rickety ranch house, spread low and sagging against the land. Instead, she turns the truck around and parks across the road. Then she leans over the seat to flip open the glove compartment. Her long hair swings across her shoulder and brushes against my arm, silky and smelling like flowers.
My eyes widen when I realize that she’s got her semi-automatic in her hand. I watch as she calmly snaps the magazine into place.
“Momma—”
She smiles reassuringly at me, stroking my head with the hand that’s not holding the gun. “It’s fine, baby,” she says. “You’ve gotta do something for me, okay? No matter what, you stay in the truck. A nice boy named Will is gonna come out of the house. He’s ten, and he’s gonna sit with you. You let him in, and then you two lock the doors. Don’t let anyone but me in. You got that?”
I nod unsurely. She’s smiling, but she looks weird, her eyes shiny and wet.
“Repeat it back to me,” Momma directs gently.
I do, trying hard not to let my voice shake.
Momma kisses me on the forehead and stares at me for a long second. “Good girl,” she says. “I love you. I’ll be right back.”
I watch as she strides up the road and to the house. She doesn’t even knock on the door, just turns the knob and walks in, leaving it wide open.
Movement in the house’s front yard pulls my attention back. A black-haired boy bursts out of the house, his skinny legs narrowing into bony ankles and bare feet. He pelts across the yard toward me. Dust flies behind him, and I pull on the door handle, pushing it open as he comes running up.
“You Will?”
He nods, panting. I hold out my hand, and even though he doesn’t need to, he grabs it and climbs up into the cab.
“What’s going on?” I ask him as he shuts the door and slams his palm down on the lock.
“The other one locked?” he asks.
I nod.
“You got the keys?”
I hold out the set Momma had pressed into my hand before getting out of the truck.
“Good,” Will says.
“What’s going on? Where’s my momma?”
“She’s with my mom,” Will says. “We’re gonna wait until Carl leaves.”
“Who’s Carl?”
“Mom’s boyfriend,” Will says, but he says it like it’s something dirty in his mouth. The skin below his left eye’s swollen and puffy, and there’s a trail of big circular scabs running up his left arm. “Don’t worry. Your momma’ll make him leave. She’s done it before. It’ll be okay.”
Almost as soon as the words are out of his mouth, it happens.
There’s a roar, so loud and unlike anything I’ve ever heard, cracking and shattering and popping all at once. I yell and clap my hands over my ears. And suddenly, the house just isn’t there anymore. All I can see is fire and black smoke, bits of wood flying up to the sky and then raining down on the truck like a hailstorm.
Will’s mouth moves, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. He’s leaning over, yanking the keys away, and he jams them into the ignition.
Suddenly, it all catches up with me, like the world froze and now it’s rushing forward. Fire. Smoke. Pieces of wood—pieces of the house—slamming down on the Chevy’s hood and roof.
Momma!
I scream for her and lunge for the door, scrabbling at the handle, trying to get it to open, but it’s locked. Will grabs my arm, fighting me with one hand. He yanks me toward him as he starts up the engine, stretches his long legs, and presses hard on the gas. The truck leaps backward, away from the pieces of wood, shingles, and plaster that fly everywhere, shaking the truck and cracking the windshield. Will steers one-handed as he jerks me against his side, practically pinning me there, and he doesn’t let go.
We spin away from the explosion, debris flying off the hood, and it’s too fast. The bed of the truck tilts off the road into a ditch with a thump, so the cab’s angled up, and then we’re stopped, far enough away to be safe. Will’s hand is still on my arm, and mine’s on his now, grabbing him back just as hard as we stare out the busted windshield.
And we watch whatever’s left of our mothers burn.
Four
June 6, 8:30 a.m.
As soon as we get back from the woods, Busy and I stop to load up my truck with what I need before we hit the road. She hops up in the cab, and we take off down the winding driveway toward the iron gates of the McKenna homestead. The tires kick up dust clouds behind us—the land’s so dry this time of year, one spark could be the end of us—and Busy hangs her head out the window, drooling into the air.
I punch my code into the keypad, and the iron gates slide open. Busy barks into the wind as I switch the stations until I get more song, less static, settling on our homegrown celebrity, Merle, telling us how his momma tried. I take it as a good omen.
We live forty miles from the nearest—and biggest—town in the Dirty 530. The sky’s smudged with plumes of smoke blowing in from Trinity County—the forest fires are raging toward us. But North County’s always walking through fire of some kind. Our little chunk of territory should’ve dissolved back into wilderness, like so many of the Gold Rush towns, but somehow it survived. Folks still make their living pulling gold from the creeks—trading old-school tin pans for sluice boxes and illegal dredges. Families are still farming on land that’s been in their blood for generations. We’re not exactly thriving as a community, but we make do, best we can.
Busy and I drive down the mountain into forest so thick there isn’t an end in sight, along red dirt cliffs and past the jagged slate crags that out-of-towners like to climb. The road snakes up and down, winding through the forest, and my truck takes the curves smoothly.
When we get to Salt Creek, I take the first exit, down Vollmer’s Pass. The courthouse and tiny hospital are at the top of the hill, along with the nicer houses—the ones that have been kept up. But go a few miles down the road, and you leave the neat hedges and tasteful rose gardens behind for the trailer parks, mobile homes, and motels with filled-in pools and dirty children wandering the halls.
I’ve got collections to make today. If I skip them, it’ll look suspicious.
To most of the world, the regular folks, Duke is a businessman who ran a trucking business with his brother-in-law for years. He owns a string of motels, a bar or two, a few diners, some land here and there, until he seems almost legitimate now.
But if you step a little farther into the backwoods, where we’ve got our own laws and where things get real bloody real fast, you’ll see who Duke McKenna really is.
For a long time, he tried to keep me away from the drug side of the business. Uncle Jake had insisted on it—it was one of the few things the two of them ever agreed on. So when I was sixteen, after I got my GED, instead of teaching me to cook or deal, Duke gave me a list of the people who owe him money and pay it back on a monthly basis.
It isn’t a short list. Mainly women, business owners who haven’t been able to get bank loans, so they go to Duke instead. He’d made a gamble sending out a sixteen-year-old girl to be taken seriously, but the power of the McKenna name in this town is absolute, and so far, I’ve had no problems.
I always start my collections at the Talbot Bakery, tucked away in one of the dingy, half-abandoned strip malls they built in the seventies, trying to pump business into the town.
I leave Busy in the car because I know Mrs. Talbot doesn’t like her. When I open the glass doors, the bells attached to them tinkle, and the smell of fresh bread and chocolate surrounds me. It reminds me of when I was little, of helping Miss Lissa, our housekeeper, in the kitchen.
Mrs. Talbot looks up from the glass case, where she’s arranging brownies.
“Hey, Harley,” she says. Her hair is tucked underneath a green bandanna, a few stray locks curling around her face. She’s got purple smudges under her eyes that come with the worry of having one kid in the Army and the other stuck in a nowhere town with too little to interest her.
Duke had been smart when he picked my collection list all those years ago. He chose women who are mothers. Who wouldn’t hate me or cause trouble, but instead feel sorry for me, because they’d see their kids in me.
But I’m not like their kids. My childhood wasn’t bikes and swim parties, it was full metal jackets and other men’s blood crusted beneath Duke’s fingernails.
“Hi,” I say. “How’s Jason?”
“Good. He might get some leave for Christmas.” Mrs. Talbot places the final brownie in the case and slides it shut.
“And Brooke?” I ask innocently. Mrs. Talbot’s never been thrilled about me being her daughter’s friend. But it’s not like she can do much about it now that we’re grown.
She couldn’t do much when we were teenagers, either.
“She’s got a temp job in Burney,” Mrs. Talbot says, walking over to the cash register and punching a few buttons so it opens. “They’re even paying for her gas. It’s leaving me short-handed here, but it�
�s a good opportunity for her.” She pulls an envelope from the cash register and hands it to me.
I take it, but I don’t open it to count the money. I’m not going to insult her, not after all this time. I look down at the envelope, feeling its weight in my hand.
She probably cleared out her entire cash register to fill it.
I push down the guilt. This is my job.
“Thanks,” I say, instead. “Do you want me to take the bread delivery to the diner? I’m headed that way.”
Some of the tension in her face unwinds. “That would be nice of you,” she says. She turns, grabs the three big paper bags on the counter full of dinner rolls and loaves of bread, and slides them toward me.
Her head tilts, her eyes narrowing as she looks me up and down. “You okay, Harley?” she asks. “You’re looking kinda pale.”
“I’m fine,” I lie as I shove the envelope in my pocket so my hands are free. I want to give it back to her.
I want to be the kind of person who would do that. But I’m not.
I grab the bags and head toward the door. “If you don’t find anyone to replace Brooke, one of the Rubies might be up for it,” I say over my shoulder. “There’s one lady, Sam, she’s new, real nice, three kids. Her cast’ll come off in a few weeks. Give me a call if you’d like her help in here.”
“I appreciate that, Harley,” Mrs. Talbot smiles blandly in a way that tells me she doesn’t think that’s the best idea. They know better than to say it to my face, but some of the locals don’t exactly cotton to the women who live at the Ruby. It’s bullshit, and a lot of it has to do not just with the Rubies, but with Mo, who runs the place with me. There’s nothing that chaps white women’s asses more around here than a Native woman having some power.
Mo protects all kinds of women at the Ruby, which makes them grit their teeth even more. The only kind of survivor in need of protection is the kind they deem as right and real. And most of the time, that means she needs to be white and never made a mistake in her life and whoever hurt her needs to be their idea of a predator. He can’t be someone they like or go to church with or work with, because then they’re uncomfortable with the idea. Then they look the other way. Then the woman is stuck without any help.