You stirred when I laid you out on the couch, mumbling something unintelligible. I peeled off your jacket, pulling limp arms through worn sleeves. Your limbs were slender but your muscles were tight as cord beneath the skin, the lean physique of a long-distance runner. I wondered when you’d eaten last. Adjacent to your right shoulder was a puckered hole, a glistening crater of flesh and bloody, matted shirt.
I cradled your head against my chest as I lifted you up, hoping to find an exit wound. Whoever had shot you had done so from a high angle, standing above you; the exit wound was lower down, suggesting a diagonal trajectory. Clean margins. One hand cupped the back of your skull as I traced the radius. I pried at the shredded edges of your shirt, peeling it gently away from the wound. Your muscles tensed; if you weren’t so weak you might have fought me.
“It’s okay,” I murmured absently. Your dark hair was thick beneath my fingers, the matted pelt of a wild thing. “You’re safe now.”
Slowly, you relaxed, allowing me to peel away the fabric. There was blood on the couch, a faint scrim of dirt. Your lips moved against my skin, barely a whisper. It sounded like ‘thank you’.
You slept while I cleaned your wound and stitched the edges together—not a beautiful job, but good enough. I washed my hands, aware that I had only half a bottle of water left, no fuel, no way back to Wildrose. My nearest neighbours were two miles away. I didn’t want to leave you alone, but that half bottle wasn’t going to stretch much further. I didn’t know when you’d last eaten or drank. You’d need water far more than I would when you woke.
I sat on the porch and lit a cigarette; I blew smoke into the breeze, watching it dissipate. It was long past midnight and my bones felt heavy beneath the skin, my eyes weary; I hated the idea of sleeping only yards away from a stranger. I’d lived alone for years, long before I even considered relocating to the desert. I’d never been close to my brother as a child; my school reports bluntly stated that I did not play well with others.
The lunatic cry of a coyote cut through the night. The sky was starless, the moon obscured behind a thin veil of cloud. I’d smoked almost down to my fingers. When the sun rose, I would set out with my hat in my hands and ask the Burnetts for water. They’d be quietly scornful, but I could swallow that, and they wouldn’t deny me.
I stubbed the cigarette out on the step and came back inside. You watched me approach, and I saw how you cringed away from me—the simultaneous drawing inward of all your muscles, humble as a beaten dog. I hated you for that; I hated that pang of sympathy, that sharp, sudden ache in my heart.
“I’m not gonna hurt you,” I said. I sat down opposite. The foldout chair creaked under my weight. You flinched. “I promise you that. But you can’t stop here for long.”
Your eyes were wary beneath your sweat-tangled hair. You knotted your hands in the blanket, thick with dirt beneath the nails, black crescents on bony fingers. “I don’t want to,” you replied, curt. Your voice was water on gravel.
“Is there anyone you want me to call? I don’t have a phone here, but there’s a family nearby who do.”
You shook your head and looked away, staring sullenly at the curtains. It occurred to me then that you might be as unaccustomed to the company of other people as I was.
“All right. Well, as soon as the sun comes up I’m heading out. I won’t be gone long; I just need to beg a little fuel and some water from the neighbours. I’m running bone dry.”
“It’s going to rain.”
I laughed at that. “They’ve been saying that for weeks and I haven’t seen so much as a drop.”
You laid your head back on the pillow. “It’s going to rain,” you said, quietly now, a voice on the precipice of sleep. Your eyes were closed. “Not now, but soon. Can’t you smell it?”
The air smelled of stale cigarette smoke, the ripe rust stink of blood. “I won’t be gone long,” I said. “An hour, maybe. I don’t usually get visitors but I’ll lock the door just in case. You’ll be safe here ‘til I get back. You should rest until then.”
I rose from my chair. You were already asleep, or perhaps you were pretending. I imagined you were watching me as I left, peering through barely-parted lids. It was difficult to tell in the dark. I pulled the front door shut as I passed through the hall, turning the lock with a barely audible pop. I hadn’t locked my door in years. I resented you for this sudden uncertainty.
The bedroom window framed a nascent sunrise; rose gold blooming slowly outward. I lay back on the bed, fighting sleep. You were at the periphery of my vision, utterly still. You might have been dead, and in that moment I might not have minded.
I laced my hands behind my skull and waited for morning.
You were asleep when I left. I decided against locking the door behind me; it felt like imprisonment, shutting you inside that tiny house in the gathering heat of the day. And part of me hoped you’d be gone by the time I returned. That you’d wake up to an unlocked door and smell freedom.
It was barely six AM and already the chill of the night had dissipated, a thick heat building behind the blanket of cloud overhead. I set out with a five-litre bottle under one arm, a jerry can in my free hand. The Burnetts lived out towards the hills. They’d been out here a long time, had raised and home-schooled their kids and were now alone, enjoying the solitude of their retirement. The kids moved to San Francisco, got jobs in tech startups and organic bakeries and never came back to visit. I imagined they must still dream about sand; hear the whisper of the wind along the dunes even in the depths of sleep.
The Burnetts’ home was brick-built, a chimera made from parts scavenged over the best part of a decade and extended over and over, a tumorous mass expanding slowly into the scrub. They tolerated my presence; I was far enough away and suitably unobtrusive, not even a smudge on their wide blue horizon. I did not intrude upon their isolation.
Peggy was in the yard as I approached. High-waisted blue jeans slung on motherly hips, skin the shade and texture of old hide. “What brings you up here so early, Sadie?” She’d affected a perfect neutrality, but she glanced briefly down at the water bottle under my arm the way a rich man might glance at a beggar’s bowl.
“Real sorry to trouble you, Peggy,” I said. Humility was not my strong suit, but the shame that bowed my head was genuine. I had, after all, failed to prepare. I explained the situation without once mentioning you; as I spoke, the contortions of her face and haughty arch of her eyebrow reminded me so much of my mother it almost hurt. Serves you right, I imagined her saying, mouth twisted in spite. You’ll die of thirst, lazy girl. The Rapture will catch you with your pants down and your engine dry, and then you’ll be sorry.
She didn’t. She listened, and did not say a word until I was done. And when I was, she beckoned me wordlessly to the back of the house. Six blue water barrels sat lined up in the shade. A far larger rain barrel was just visible beyond the curve of the far wall.
“Don’t tell Dan about this,” Peggy said, taking the water bottle from me. I heard her knees creak as she squatted. I thought about offering to help and knew she’d be offended. “Lord knows he means well. He’s a big believer in tough love, you know? Says it’s a harsh world out there and young folks have got to learn to fend for themselves, ‘cause it’s only gonna get harsher.” Water spilled out of the tap, into the bottle. I realised then just how parched my throat was. “No doubt he’s right, but that don’t mean you can’t lend a hand every now and again. It’s about compassion, ain’t it? That’s what it’s all about in the end.” She shut off the tap, screwed the cap onto the bottle. A spattering of droplets fell from the tap, sinking without trace into the dust. Peggy stood, grimacing as her knees stretched out. “Smart girl like you, you’ll do better next time, won’t you?”
“I will, Peggy. Thank you.”
“There’s a little gas in the shed out back. Dan won’t notice it’s gone. Mostly it’s me who drives these days, you know, since my boys moved away.” She smiled then, and there was sorrow in th
e crease of her eyes, the starburst of wrinkles etched into her face. “Do you see much of your mother, Sadie?”
I blinked. In the two years since I’d shacked up in the desert Peggy had never once asked me anything about my life before. I thought about all the tinned food my mama had sent me over the years, always on the brink of expiration, piling up in the spare bedroom of my San Diego apartment because old habits died hard. “She passed away,” I said. “Eight years ago.”
“Oh.” She looked down at her feet. Then, with sudden brightness: “Well, let me get you that gasoline. I’m sure you’ve got better things to be doing than standing around, listening to me harp on.”
I stood in the shade as she went to the shed, gait slow and careful. I wondered if she might be lonely out here, with only wild beasts and a taciturn husband for company; whether perhaps the blissful isolation the Burnetts had worked so hard for was everything they’d built it up to be.
By the time I got back the sun was up high, and you were gone.
You’d folded the blanket and left it atop the pillow, streaked rust-brown with dried blood. It was the only sign you’d ever been there, and even that seemed vague, as though that carefully folded bundle might have been my own doing. I picked it up. The scent of you clung to the blanket: sweat, faintly sour but not entirely unpleasant. The sharp, animal smell of your hair. I realised I was a little worried about you—out there, exposed to the rising heat, weak and fatigued. The wound was still fresh. It might fester, the stitches might split, anything might happen to you and I had abandoned you. I swallowed down guilt as I put the blanket in the wash basket. I knew nothing about you except that someone had hurt you, and that you had been afraid, and that I had let you go. I hadn’t even asked your name.
I set the water bottle down in a pool of shade outside the house. Inside, I fished out a yellow legal pad from the stash under the couch; there was a half-written article scrawled in upward slanting script, and a deadline for the end of the week. I’d hand-write articles and drive over the state border into Nevada, where Jackie Emery would lend me the use of his computer and internet connection for five bucks an hour. A few articles a month would keep me in fuel and supplies. I’d come to live the kind of pared-down, uncomplicated life my parents might have considered too sparse and therefore doomed, ultimately, to fail.
Pen hovered over paper. Through drooping eyes, my handwriting warped into inscrutable hieroglyphs, marks without form or meaning. I hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours and my eyes were heavy with grit. Just a nap, I told myself, curling up on the couch. The cushions smelled of warm, old dust, and faintly of you. Empirical evidence of your invasion, a stranger’s presence yet to be erased. Strange, then, that I didn’t seem to mind.
A jaundiced afternoon light cast the room in shades of faded bruise. I’d slept longer than I’d intended. My damaged ribs seemed to groan as I stretched out. A glance at the clock on the windowsill revealed that despite the gloom it was just past three o’clock.
Outside, the sky sweltered behind still clouds. The water bottle was warm to the touch. I poured a little out, washing the sweat from my face and neck; cool water wound a slow path down my spine, coursing down my arms. There was no breeze, no movement; it seemed that the world had stopped without warning and curled in on itself, interminably paused, waiting for something terrible. There was only the mechanical whirr of cicadas in the long grass, the air as still and silent as a held breath.
The first raindrop hit the ground hard, like a thrown penny.
And then the rain came, violently, and all at once. I found myself soaked and winded; the curves and concavities of my face became a waterfall, hair clinging to my face like black kelp, the shock of water in my nostrils, my open mouth. A premature twilight fell and in that sudden darkness I saw you. You were a silhouette against the deluge, growing darker, gaining corporeal form; you were unhurried as you tracked barefoot across the gleaming hardpan, dangling something unseen in your left hand.
I finally found the wherewithal to retreat into the house. My boots left great puddles on the linoleum as I shoved into the tiny shower room, retrieving the only two towels I owned. When I returned you were at the doorway, expectant but still, as though awaiting an invite. In your sodden state you seemed very small, as though the meat of you had been washed away; as though beneath it you had only ever been an imitation of a girl, fashioned from wire and draped in skin. Your smile was almost shy as you handed me your prize—a pair of skinned jackrabbits, rose-quartz flesh wet and glistening.
“I was right,” you said, pointing to the sky. Your wounded shoulder drooped. You must have been in pain, but your face betrayed no hint of weakness; your lips retained a hint of a smile, a feral Mona Lisa.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“June.”
Your name conjured up vibrant wildflower meadows, a cobalt sky reflected in a smooth, still lake. A Pacific Northwest spring. “As in the month?”
You smiled again, baring bone-white teeth. “As in the month. But I was born in November.”
“Come inside,” I said. “You’ll drown out here.”
So you did.
I didn’t want you in my home. Except that somewhere along the way—pulling needle and thread through your open skin, perhaps, or your quiet belligerence, when you were hurt and afraid but still defiant—somewhere in among all of it I felt myself beginning to relent; a palpable sense that something inside of me had opened a little, exposing a glimpse of viscera, the hint of a rib. I hadn’t wanted you there, but there you were anyway, my borrowed t-shirt hanging loose from your shoulders, wound cleaned and freshly bandaged. Your hair hung half-dried and leonine: dark honey shot through with silver, though you could surely be no older than twenty-five.
“A boy got killed up in Wildrose,” I said.
You stared at the rain running down the window, silver rivulets like molten metal. “I heard an animal tore his throat out.”
“Do you believe that?”
You turned your head. Your confusion was tempered with a narrow-eyed wariness; an inherent mistrust of the path I might be leading you down. “Shouldn’t I?”
I sighed. “I know that man shot you, June. And he would’ve killed you if I hadn’t found you first. What kind of a man hurts a woman the way he did? What kind of man hunts a woman down like an animal? You think someone like that would flinch at harming a child?”
I saw the flinch in your limbs, the way you folded in on yourself; I saw the defiance bleed slowly from you and felt an answering ache in my chest. “Don’t,” you murmured. “Please.”
“What happened to you?” I wanted to grab you by the shoulders and shake you until the answers tumbled out. I wanted to hold you and soothe your ragged nerves. “It’s your business, June, I know that, and maybe I don’t have the right to ask questions of you. But I’ve never seen a person look as scared as you did that night.”
“Okay.” You had the look of a hunted thing, hunched and ready to bolt, but there was steel in the rigid set of your spine. “Ask me one question. Just one. But then you have to drop it, okay? Because I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I want it to go away.”
You’re in my house, I thought. If you’re in danger then I might be too. I deserve to know. Rain clattered relentlessly against the windows, washing away seven weeks of dust. Pouring into the rain barrels, better late than never. I should have felt trapped in that small room, forced by the elements into your sullen vicinity; I should have resented every inch of space your body occupied. “Why you?”
You smiled then, though there was no joy in it; you drew your knees up, planting bare feet on the couch cushions. A hint of slender ankle, of downy dark-gold hair. “Because he thought I was somebody else,” you said. The rain thrummed like an arrhythmia against the roof shingles. You closed your eyes and said nothing more.
Every morning I woke to find you gone. You were meticulous in your absence; the couch cushions were carefully rearranged, the blankets fol
ded and replaced in the hall closet. You moved like a ghost, silent despite the creaking floorboards; the sun would rise, and you would already be gone.
In the first few days I would linger at the windows, squinting through the heat haze at distorted shapes; I would sit smoking on the porch as the sun crawled across the sky, watching shadows shift and lengthen. I didn’t know if you would come back, at least in those first days; I found myself luxuriating in the space you left behind, glad of the silence but aware, unexpectedly, that something vital was missing. I would look up from my work and expect to feel your eyes on me; I would listen out for the hiss of your feet on dusty floor-boards and hear only silence.
You returned as quietly as you left. The sun would slink behind the distant mountains and you would emerge from the deep shadows as though you’d been born there. I never saw you coming, no matter how long and how carefully I watched for you. You came in on the evening breeze, smiling that clever half-smile and you would pause at the door, an odd formality, waiting for me to invite you in. I always did.
I never asked you where you’d been.
We sat side by side on the porch, the air redolent with the musty wet-weather scent of the creosote bushes. Against a spilled-ink sky sat a spattered multitude of stars, their light guttering like faraway candles. I told you I could navigate using the stars as guidance; that it was one of the first things my father taught me as a young girl, my earliest lessons in preparedness.
I pointed up. “You locate the North Star,” I said, plucking your hand from your lap. I guided your outstretched finger to where the North Star sat, bright and lonely. “You see? That’s Polaris. And just across from there—those stars—that’s the Big Dipper.”
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