by Ann Christy
He shakes his head and says, “This isn’t how things were supposed to be.”
“Maybe not, but it’s the way things are,” I say. There’s no point in debating history because it doesn’t change the present. The present is controlled by those who win in this life and we’re not them.
“I don’t have your good excuse, but I did what I did for a good reason. Or what I thought was a good reason,” he says.
“Mom said you rustled cattle,” I offer to get the ball rolling.
He nods and says, “I did. It would be more accurate to say that I rustled back some cattle.”
That’s new information to me. Once he was gone, the only version anyone was going to get was the one provided by the Texas Army, though I knew there had to be more to it. Maybe some part of me just wished there was more to it.
He gazes toward the shadows behind the house where the others are still sleeping inside. Then he asks me, “Are you and that boy Jovan an item or something?”
The look on my face must be answer enough because he laughs again and says, “Okay. I guess not. It just seems like there’s something there. There’s the whole “pretty eyes” comment, and the way you two look at each other is very telling.”
“Huh…well, it’s telling you a lie then,” I answer, though that heat is back in my face again and I’m pretty sure I’ve turned as red as a sunset. I hate that I do that.
“It doesn’t matter now, I suppose. He’s in the same boat as the rest of us,” he says, then cocks his head as if he’s just had a thought. “Or maybe not. He’s a Foley. They might be able to fix it.”
He hops back up on the narrow wall and looks around again but keeps talking while he does. “I’d bet, now that I think about it, that those two soldiers have either met with unfortunate accidents, died of wounds we gave them or mysteriously disappeared.” He suddenly squats next to me on the wall and adds, “And that those patrols are now looking for a captured Jovan rather than a criminal one.”
My mouth drops open while he speaks and he taps it shut with a forefinger under my chin. All I can say to that is, “But we didn’t hurt those soldiers.”
“So naive, Karas.”
“No,” I insist.
“Yes,” he says.
I don’t want to think something like that could be true, but deep down I feel the ring of truth in his words. All citizens are theoretically equal, but the more land a person possesses, the more equal they seem to become. In Bailar, we have a handful of families who own most of the land and are, without question, living life under very different rules than the rest of us. Jovan is from one of those families.
That’s fine to think this an unjust state of affairs, fine to wish it would change, but it doesn’t answer my question about Jordan’s strikes.
“What does that have to do with what we were talking about? The rustling?”
“Oh, a lot,” he says and sighs again. It’s a heavy sigh full of old burdens. “You know that my family used to own the parcel of land just east of Robin’s waterway?”
I nod. I’ve never been there, but I have an old photo of a small house, a faded barn and the smiling child that was my father. “Your family lost it when I was a baby.”
“No,” he corrects. “My father lost it when Jovan’s father decided he wanted to increase his acreage and the Robin waterway was closed. No water for our cattle.”
That doesn’t make sense. The smaller waterways are closed now and then when the river runs low or the lake isn’t filling well, but no one is left without water. Right of way is never terminated. I shake my head.
“The details don’t matter. What matters is that over time all the viable land came into the hands of just a few families and water was how they did it. Foley did it to my father. My father brought water from the canal using horses. I brought water, too, but it was never enough. We went down to just the breeding stock and tried to wait it out, but you can’t pay your bills off breeding stock that can’t be slaughtered or sent to market. When some of those cattle followed the dry waterway onto their property, they kept the calves. I went and got them back.”
This is a very different story than the one I’ve heard. Not just different, but fundamentally so. It turns the young man who was branded a thief into someone trying to save his family’s legacy. It sounds like a story from the creation of the Texas Republic, a hero’s story. That makes it pretty hard to believe.
“So you say,” I shoot back and even I can hear the challenge in my voice.
He purses his lips and his eyes grow distant. “Believe what you want,” he says and I know there won’t be any argument from him.
“Is that really what happened? Is that why your family left Bailar?”
“You’re my family,” he says, “but that’s why my parents left, yes.”
“And this?” I ask, holding up the pendants around my neck. They’ve been hanging there like hot coals the whole time. Every time they clink together against my skin I’m reminded all over again that he had one made for me. And I’m forced to wonder what that means.
His fingers are warm against mine when he lifts the pendants from them and turns them around to check their condition. He smiles and drops them so that they make a musical tinkling sound against each other.
“I haven’t just been running around in the wild lands for all these years, you know,” he says. “I got a message to your mother and waited, but I never got a response. Truth is, I never expected one.”
He takes one more look around then sits next to me on the wall again. I’ve not looked once since we’ve been on watch, leaving all the real work for him. I’m not being a very good partner.
“At the time, I thought you’d be better off in town. I didn’t know anything about what was out there in the world or what was possible beyond Texas. You were just a baby,” he explains. The way he says it, the way his eyes light up when he says the words, makes me think that there’s a lot more out there than the wild lands and wild people I’ve grown up hearing about.
“And when you did know?” I ask.
“By then it was just easier to think of you growing up happy, settled, with a family you loved. I always intended to figure out a way to come for you when you were eighteen and free to do what you wanted with your life. Or at least give you the option to come. I left word at the border that I’d pay for news from any Strikers coming out of Bailar. Over the years I’ve gotten just two bites since not many Strikers make it as far as the border between the Riverlands and the Southeast. One didn’t know you, but you would have been just a little thing then. The other knew of you and told me you were doing well. Happy,” he finishes and looks at me as if he’d like to know if that was ever true.
“Until Maddix came?”
He nods and I can tell it’s a sad nod. I can only imagine what Maddix told him given how long he’s known me. He’s a year and change older than Connor and me, the same age as Cassi, but we all played together and he’s seen marks on me plenty of times. It would be a hard thing for Jordan to hear, especially if he’d built up an idea of a happy daughter growing up safe in Bailar.
“So you came back to get me?” I ask finally. This is what I really want to hear from him. I want to hear that he couldn’t sit still for one moment after knowing what my life was really like, that all he could do was hurry to rescue me.
“Basically, yes. There’s more though,” he says and picks up one of my hands to hold it between his two rough ones. He takes a deep breath and then looks me in the eye. “You have a little brother.”
*****
By the time Cassi and Jovan come to relieve us on watch, the sun is at its mid-afternoon strongest in the hard blue sky and the wall has grown almost warm from soaking up its rays. It’s still cool, but nice.
At my almost absent-minded turnover of the watch Jovan gives me a look of concern, then shoots a hard look at Jordan as if he might be the cause of my distracted demeanor. It’s true, but not the way Jovan thinks. I wave his look away and
give him a smile, though a somewhat weak and unconvincing one.
What I really need is time to go over all that I’ve learned and make sense of it. Though I know there’s no way I’ll be able to fall asleep, I’m looking forward to lying down and being alone with my thoughts. Maybe then I can process everything when there’s no expectation of my interacting with others.
Maddix and Connor are lying near each other, both with an arm flung over their faces to shield them from the bright light leaking in through all of the broken windows and doors. With their straight hair and similar sleeping postures, there’s no mistaking them for anything but brothers.
My little nest is waiting for me so I lie down without saying anything more to Jordan. He seems to understand because he doesn’t press me for conversation and simply sends a whispered “Sleep well” my way. I don’t respond to it other than to give him a quick nod.
Sleep seems miles away, though I know the night will be a long and hard one of walking on terrain I can barely see. I should at least try to drift off but it’s not happening. The concept of a brother keeps rolling around in my head. Jordan told me he looks a bit like me and, like me, has a problem with smart talk when he’s upset. The way he smiled while he talked about him, this ten-year-old named Quinton, brought a flush of feeling over me that I recognized as jealousy.
I think it’s only natural to feel some resentment. Quinton has spent his whole life with a mother and a father, both of whom love him and provide him a safe home. What have I had?
That’s not a good place to go so I shake it off, my deep exhalation blowing a little cloud of dust up in front of my face. As shocking as the idea of a little brother is, everything else he said is even more shocking.
Yes, there are wild lands to the north and there are people there to avoid, but to the east—not that far east if he’s to be believed—the land is no longer dry. To the east of us is the rain line, past which the rain is more plentiful and water not hard to find. Texas has places like that too, south of Bailar, but I’ve never seen them. Those are places for people with more to offer than we cattle breeders and ranchers here in the north.
He says there are cities and normal life and opportunity. Other than the wild lands to the north, the land is divided into territories: the East, the Southeast, the Northeast, the Gulf Cooperative and Florida. Not all of them are friendly with each other but one thing they all share is enmity toward Texas. He told me that there’s too much to explain until we get somewhere safe because I’ll never believe him until I see it with my own eyes.
He ended our talk with the enigmatic words that all those lands were one huge nation long ago, that Texas was the cause of the breakup, and that the threat of loosing whatever weapon Texas used the first time—the one that made empty ruins of the cities—is what keeps the other lands at bay.
It’s a lot to take in. Too much, really. Instead, I focus on what comes next. That’s something I can understand and work toward. We’re going past the rain line, past the flat lands and to Jordan’s home far away near a forest. To a place called River Oaks where I will find a home and a brother waiting for me.
Chapter Seventeen
I’m starting to think that Jordan, who I’m still leery of calling Dad, is right about soldiers coming after Jovan to bring him home.
The night has been long and frightening. Even with the pace we’ve been keeping, we’ve not made it to the Benton outpost. Between hiding in brush while vehicles with searchlights go past and spending a breathless hour dug into the sandy soil so that only our noses and mouths were clear, we’ve fallen behind schedule.
It’s near dawn and we’re starting to run out of time. We need to find a place to lay low during the day because we have no chance of remaining hidden in this flat land without cover. There are a few old barns ahead but those are obvious and sure to be searched.
I’m so tired and thirsty that I’ve stopped being hungry. All I want to do is lie down, shake the sand out of my boots and sleep.
“I’ve got an idea, but I don’t think you’re going to like it,” Jovan says quietly out of nowhere.
Jordan, who is far enough ahead of me that he’s just a darker shadow, answers. “Anything is better than what we’ve got now.”
“Let’s just bury ourselves again. All day.”
I stop in my tracks, about to tell him exactly how stupid that is when Cassi does it for me. “Uh, no. What if one of us rolls over in our sleep or has to pee or something? It’s wide open here.”
We trudge a few more steps in silence. I can’t imagine trying to stay like that for the whole day. It’s still cool but the sun is strong and I’ll be fried crispy red by the end of the day. How could any of us stay still for that long?
I suck in a breath when I see Jordan turn on his flashlight again, his hand carefully cupping the lens so the light streams toward the ground. We’ve not been passed in about an hour, but we have no way of knowing if there might be a vehicle, dark and silent, lying in wait just down the road.
“There,” he says, and I follow the thin line of light to a shallow depression. From here it just looks like a fold in the ground and not like something that would hide us, but at this point, my feet are hurting enough to make me believe anything will do. Even an anthill.
The noise level rises a little as we hurry across the loose ground toward it. While it isn’t yet dawn, the pre-dawn twilight is almost upon us and we have very few choices left.
It’s just as I thought. Some long-dry remnant of a streambed littered with old stones and a few scraggly short bushes drying out slowly between rains. It’s perhaps four feet deep at its deepest and ragged along its length.
Jordan tosses his bags into it and scrambles down, a rain of pebbles and loose rock coming down behind him. He grabs a few loose handfuls of grit and grins up at us. “This will do.”
“No!” Cassi exclaims. Even her sunny nature has been overcome by stress and exhaustion.
I feel the same way as she and I barely suppress a groan. There’s no way this will work.
Jordan looks at our faces in the dim glow and then turns off the flashlight, turning us into shadows again. His words come out as a harsh whisper, meant to convince us as much as instruct us. “Come on, get down here. This whole area is loose and rocky. No one’s going to bring a horse across here. They’ll cross further down, where the ground is firmer. Come,” he says, and motions for me to join him.
I slip off my pack at the bottom and he smiles encouragement. He digs out our last water carrier and holds it out to me. “Drink up, but not so much that you’ll need to pee.” To the others, he says, “If you think you might need to go, go now and then lie down. Break up your patterns with dirt and rocks. Get as comfortable as you can because once you’re down, you need to stay still unless we’re absolutely sure it’s safe.”
All of us disappear a little way away from the streambed for a moment of privacy and then drink again. When I upturn the carrier for one last drink, the temptation to wipe my face clean is almost unbearable, but in this case, the dirt will work for me and I resist. The feeling of grit in my teeth and on my tongue is at least relieved by that last drink and a sigh escapes me.
When I hand off the carrier to the next hands, I look up to see Jovan smiling down at me as he lifts the carrier to his own lips. The twilight has begun and his face is defined in shades of gray. His throat bobs when he drinks and for some reason I can’t explain, it’s a fascinating sight I can’t seem to tear my eyes away from.
The moment is broken when Jordan grips my hand from below and urges me down into the shallow ravine. I settle, then shift and dig a sizable field of small stones from beneath me until it’s bearably flat. The moment I nod, he tucks my pack near my arm as a brace and then piles sand and pebbles around and on top of me to break up the pattern of my body. It’s a terrible feeling, like being buried alive, and I’m not sure how I’m supposed to bear this during the long day to come. My only hope is that we find it’s clear often and long
enough that we can get up and move now and again.
The first rosey hints of dawn are showing on the horizon when the last of us is covered and still. I can feel the press of Cassi’s foot next to my calf. She’s stretched out opposite me, her head somewhere beyond my feet.
A torn piece of burlap covers my face, the natural color blending into the surrounding soil enough so that I can open my eyes and breath through the rough weave. I’m not sure where everyone is specifically, except that Jordan is on the other side of the body next to me. I find it disturbing and a sudden need to sit up and catalog everything around me makes my breath come faster and my heart pound. I can hear it, harsh and rasping, but I don’t seem to have any way to control it.
The sand shifts next to me and I feel the touch of warm fingers through the cool grains of sand. They aren’t rough like Jordan’s, but the hands are big, the fingers long as they coil around mine until we’re palm to palm. It’s Jovan, I realize, as the fingers squeeze my palm to his. In the space of a few minutes, as the light filtering through the burlap brightens with a new day, I feel calm seep into my body through our linked hands.
When I wake, it’s to Jovan’s hand squeezing mine with enough force to hurt and the sound of a quiet “shh.” In the distance, I can hear loud voices exchanging shouted words and the harsh jangle of tack on many horses.
The shouts aren’t the urgent ones of discovery but rather of people communicating over distance with no concern about being heard. It can only mean they haven’t seen us yet.
At my leg, I feel Cassi’s foot press into my calf but other than a brief patter of falling grains of sand and small pebbles, I hear no sounds of movement in our dry streambed.
“We checked every one of the barns and Bravo just radioed in that they’ve got 100% completion in Benton. They aren’t here. Anywhere,” a deep voice shouts.