by Janel Kolby
“Oh, my King!” sings out a high-pitched, mocking voice. A drunk voice.
I grab for Jessiebel’s hand.
“I know you’re here, King! I can smell her ripeness through Heck’s stink! Got a lot to protect, don’t you?”
The rustling stops. They must be in the camp’s clearing.
“I have her boots!” he says.
Shit, Jessiebel mouths.
I look over at him and try not to be accusing.
“Don’t you want her boots? I know you do. You’ve shown you’d do anything for them. The boots do smell sweet, I gotta admit. Know plenty who’d like to try them.”
Gliding steps take to the center. King’s. “What you want, Lance?” His voice is heavy with control. “I know you’re not here cuz of Cook.”
“There you are. Yeah, now I can see you. You—under the stars. Kind of romantic. But you’re hurting my feelings, man. Cook was my friend. Just like you were.”
“Call that a friend?”
He laughs. “You’ve always been full of hell. I mean help. Always the one with a clean needle. I’m here for my Sabrina. She’s gone and run off on me—silver, loud, makes fun noises. Thought she’d be here.”
I point down at the gun King left in the tent.
“I’m feeling awfully empty without her,” he says. “Kinda like you would, I guess, without these boots.”
“What will you give me for it?” King asks.
“Just give us the gun!” a new voice shouts. Shrill. Scared.
“Shut up,” Lance says. “Me and King are doing ourselves some negotiating here. I was thinking I’d give you these boots.”
I crawl to the gun and pick it up. Jessiebel shakes his head at me.
“They’re boots,” King says. “What else will you give me?”
“Didn’t you smell how sweet they are? Take a whiff. Come. I’m telling you, it’s a bargain.”
The metal of the gun is warm. Not cold like I thought it’d be. My hands are moist and getting slippery.
“Ah, Heck!” Lance says. “There you are. How you been? Keep your dog at bay if you don’t want her to experience some of what you’ve had.”
Sabbath growls outside.
“Stay,” Heck commands.
“Ah, don’t look at me like that, Heck. I know you’ve got mad love for our brother. It’s cool. To each his own, I always say. Brother King’s startin’ himself a harem. Maybe two-spirited. Why ain’t you smiling, King?”
I squeeze the gun.
“I’ll give you the gun,” King says. “But you need to leave her alone. She’s had enough.”
“Enough? She’s a free agent, isn’t she? Or is she yours?”
“She’s nobody’s,” King growls.
I unzip the tent.
“What are you doing?” Jessiebel asks.
“Hand me the lantern,” I say, and he gives it to me.
I step from the tent and hold up the lantern. The gun in my other hand. I squint at the two across from King.
“You do exist,” the tall, bald one says. Must be Lance. The trees point him out as the lead. His clothes are clean. Expensive. He doesn’t belong here.
The other one—in the hoodie and tiny eyes—could be a mole that lives in the dirt. He has silver rings on all his fingers. No. He doesn’t belong here, either.
Lance smiles. “And here I was beginning to think Cook made you up. But he didn’t exaggerate. No.” He licks his bottom lip. “Not at all.”
King turns to me, eyes full of anger. Used to be I’d rather die than have him look at me that way. But now.
I step forward, and Lance’s face transforms in front of me. He’s not Lance. He’s Cook.
My breath catches.
“Don’t,” King says.
I blink, and Lance’s face turns into his own again.
“I just want him to leave us alone.”
“That’s right,” Lance says. “All I want is my gun and you can have your boots back.”
I stop. “You have any bullets?”
“Ah, she’s smart. No, I ain’t got any bullets. See, I’ll pull out all my pockets. Nothing in my jeans ’cept what’s supposed to be there if you want to check. Creed, show her what you got. He’s got less than I do.”
The other guy pulls out his pockets and wiggles his fingers at Jessiebel, who climbs out of the tent.
Sabbath keeps his eyes on Heck. Waiting.
King walks over to me, and the lantern lights up his eyes. They burn. “Hand me the gun,” he says. “I’ll give it to him.”
“If you don’t mind,” Lance says, “I’d like her to give it to me. In fact, I insist. You stay there, or deal’s off.” He motions to me. “Sweetie, come here.”
King grabs my arm.
“Let me do this,” I tell him.
He loosens his hand, and I give him the lantern.
I step forward again, and I keep taking steps until I’m several feet from him.
Lance looks me over. “You want your boots?” He holds them out and smiles. “Let me see that gun.”
I hold it by its handle, the barrel pointed at him.
“Maybe I shoulda asked if you had any bullets,” he says. “Do you like the feel of that gun? The power of my Sabrina?”
“There’s no bullets in there,” the other guy says. “I counted off the shots.”
“I trust her,” Lance says. “You trust me?”
I don’t, but I stretch my arm out farther. King grunts from behind like it’s his arm being stretched.
Lance takes a step forward, topples a little, and then holds out the boots some more. He reaches his other hand to the tip of the barrel and caresses it with his fingertips.
I reach over to the boots and touch the toes of them. Lance pulls them back a tad, and they escape me. He smiles and reaches them out again. I step forward and grab on hard to them. He doesn’t let go, and I don’t let go of the gun. Just a couple feet between us now, and I mind looking in his eyes but will never let him know. I stare hard.
“Let go of the boots,” King says.
“Don’t you worry. I’m just having some fun.” Lance pulls the boots more toward him, but I don’t let go, and I step a foot nearer.
“Let. Go.” King’s voice now louder.
“Now,” Lance says. “The bag.”
My voice trembles like my fingers on the trigger. “What bag?”
Lance smiles. “You like games, don’t you? Cook told me it’s you who has my bag.”
He couldn’t have told him. Not if he were dead.
“The bag is gone,” King says. “If you don’t believe me, talk to Matisse. Take your gun and go.”
Then I remember what Matisse said. Cook called her at work. She talked to him. King couldn’t have killed him when he got my boots.
“You killed him,” I say to Lance. “Didn’t you?”
Lance laughs and tugs on the gun, makes me lean into him. “He’s not worth my energy. I think you know what I mean.” He bends down, the tip of his lips and nose in my hair. He smells like beer and blackberries. I wobble. “Salty as the sea,” he whispers. “Salty. And fresh. You, Rain. Are worth it.”
King breaks loose.
Lance shoves me into King. The boots are in my hand, the gun is gone from the other, and I’m falling into King, who catches me as we go down. Sabbath barks as King’s arms pin me down.
Lance laughs so hard he can hardly stand.
“Are you all done here?” a voice booms from the far corner. He can’t be seen, but we all know it’s Hamlet. Sabbath quiets down.
“Thanks for the help!” King’s sarcasm calls out.
“Go on and leave now!” Hamlet says.
“Was just going to, sir!” Lance winks at me and stuffs the gun in the back of his pants. “Catch you later.”
King stands. “If you cross over, I’ll kill you. I mean it.”
Lance backs away from us. Casual. “Oh, I believe you mean it. You do care so much, don’t you?”
He smi
les wide before they disappear.
29
I SMOOTH DOWN THE top of my hair, which I’m sure has something tangled and alive in it, and my throat dries with each step back up the hill.
Juicy blackberries. He smelled like my blackberries.
He can’t. They’re mine.
Just a ways more. I can make it. But my head swims in purple pinpricks, and his blackberry-beer breath follows.
I sway.
“Whoa.” Jessiebel props me. “Hey, King.”
He’s by my side. “Hold on,” King tells me. “Rest a minute.”
Do they see my feet? I can’t see my feet. I go to the ground, but not under. I’m not under. And then King lifts me, and I can fall asleep.
I curl atop the ground. Sprouts of weeds poke my cheek to wake me. I open my eyes to the night, but I’m not inside a tent. I’m under the stars.
The clouds have cleared. Shadows of Jessiebel and King move beneath Mom’s star as they plant poles and stretch fabric. They’re making a tent. Remaking a tent. Jessiebel hums louder than the cussing from King, so I fix myself to the hum, but I’m so thirsty. My fingers dig into the soil. Bring me water. I dig, and the grit fills my nails. I keep digging.
“Hey.” King holds my hand firmly. “What are you doing?”
“Getting water.”
“Hold on.” He leaves me, and I put my fingers to my mouth, but there’s no water there. Only earth. I need the blackberries. They’re mine.
I sit up. King’s headed to the tent. I stand. Steady.
I walk through the trees. I don’t need to see to follow this path. One foot after the other is the way to anywhere, and it’s the way to my blackberries. King’s sure footsteps follow, but I keep walking.
“Drink.” He puts a plastic bottle in my hand.
I raise it to my mouth. A gulp and just one more. That’s all there is, and not enough.
“They raided us,” he says. “Must’ve been when they went back up. I should’ve followed them.”
I give him back the bottle. “I need my blackberries.” I need to know they’re mine.
“You should sleep,” he says.
I keep walking and stumble on something. I touch the ground to see what it is—a long, slender tube. Metal. The pipe we kept in our tent for protection. I pick it up.
“Let me see that,” King says.
I hand it to him and keep walking.
I push the dark purple to the corners of my eyes. My stomach is small and empty, but I know how to fix it. As I always have. Not far now. Around the fallen great-grandma tree who nurses her saplings, and around her daughter who spreads long and reckless. To the wild bush with my own fruit as swollen as my tongue.
King is still behind me. Staring at the pipe. He throws it down and wipes his hands on his pants.
I adjust my eyes, because what’s in front of me is wrong. The crossing is gone—I can’t tell one side from the other.
The stars gloat.
They show me branches in hacked heaps on the ground, weeping pulp and juice from exposed, splintered ends.
My throat closes. I fall to my knees and stain myself in the broken bush. “What did they do to you?” I grasp her limbs.
“It’s not your fault,” King says. “You didn’t do this.” He doesn’t sound surprised. He must’ve already seen.
I don’t want this to be real, but the wetness on my palms and knees tells me it is and that I’m the cause. This was planned. You would need a hatchet for ruin like this.
“This is because of me.” I reach for a small berry on a stem and squish it in my fingers. My stomach is not allowed to say anything.
“No,” he says. “They wanna provoke, but I’m not gonna let it. I can’t, and you can’t either. It’ll grow back. It’s wild. Has strong roots. It’s invasive. Nothing can keep it out, and it’ll grow fast, you’ll see. Everything grows here. And I’ll get some food tomorrow. We’ll eat tomorrow. I promise.”
The stars hang heavy over me. I laugh. “Tomorrow always belongs to someone else. Not to me.”
“If that’s true,” he says, “then you lied to me. You might as well be disappeared. You don’t want nothing no more?”
I hold up a stripped branch. “This is what happens when I want. You were right. Nothing will make a difference.”
“Then wanting’s not enough.” He licks his lips. Tentative. He looks up at the sky. “You’ve gotta wish.”
My face stings as if he struck me. “You know I can’t.”
“You can. You gotta. Don’t you dare disappear for real. Those stars are there for you, too.” His hand stretches up to them. “Choose one.”
Whispers.
From the sky.
I lift my head, and my eyes glide from one star to another. “I can’t tell them apart.” The stars are too many and too few. They’ll fall as they spit out my wishes. Bring others down with them. “None of them are strong enough. I can’t choose.”
His hand drops. “You used to know.”
The stars fade before my eyes. “Fairy tales.”
“They didn’t take your book. Do you want to read it? You can read like we used to. Maybe you’d remember.”
All these dying stars.
Wink.
I open the cover. The first page is missing. And the second—torn from the middle. The third is there. Not enough light to read the words, but I know what it says. Outside the castle there was a beautiful garden . . .
“There was a beautiful garden,” I tell them. A new story. “This one was guarded by a ring of thorns so thick they covered the sky.”
“What’s it guarding from?” Jessiebel asks.
My head hurts again. I lay it down against his shoulder. “The stars. They’re full of poison.”
King covers me with the blanket and takes the book. I don’t care. He can have it.
My rocks are out there. Undisturbed. Guarding what’s dead and buried—whispers from the past.
I wish. I wish.
She heard them, too.
My mother.
I roll onto my stomach and cover my ears. The rocks want me to tend to them, but I hate them. I really hate them.
I bring my hands to my face to smell the blackberries. Not even a ghost of a smell is left.
I wish.
30
I’VE BEEN HIT OVER the head. Most surely. I reach under my pillow for my pipe, but it’s not there. At least I’m in my bed. My tent. I sink in comfort. I’m just hungry. That’s why my head hurts. I know this hungry kind of hurt.
CRACK.
From outside. A green-tinted light invades my eyelids. I open one eye, and my head screams for me to stop, but my tent doesn’t look right. I open the other eye. The blanket’s not mine. Neither’s the sleeping bag. I look around. None of it’s mine. That’s right. I don’t have a tent. And I don’t have my blackberries.
Another crack from outside.
“I got ya that time,” King says.
“Yeah, but I have one more,” Jessiebel says, “and I’m aiming for you.”
I sit up. Which is a mistake, since my head might explode because of it. I spot a large bottle of orange juice next to the pillow. I twist and snap it open. I want to gulp, but I know to take a sip. The cool juice flows down my throat and through my chest. I wait until the chill is gone, and take another sip. Wait again, and then a big swallow.
CRACK.
“I hit you!” Jessiebel says. “That’s two points now.”
“No, it’s one. Mine’s closer.”
“Let’s measure,” Jessiebel says.
I don’t really care what they’re doing, since a blueberry, sugar-sprinkled scone is sitting next to me on a clean white napkin. I twist the cap back on the orange juice and reach for the scone. The flesh of an already-busted blueberry glazes my tongue and eases my head. King was smart not to get blackberry.
His clothes are thrown in a corner. Such a mess. I wish I had my hand sweeper. I pick up his blazer with one hand and, between bites,
fold it in a rectangle and stuff it in his duffel. I hold the scone in my mouth and pick up his jeans. I fluff them out in front of me to straighten out the legs.
A smear of rusty red shows across the front of the thighs.
Not from my blackberries, my weeping blackberries.
These stains are blood.
My brain rushes to last night. I don’t remember anything after the blackberries. But before—the blackberry-beer breath. And before that, I traded a gun for my boots. That guy—the one who smelled my hair—he thinks I have his bag. And before that? I touch my lips. Cracked, like King’s.
“See?” King says. “Mine’s closer. One point. I’m catching up. Better watch out. Let’s go again. Grab your rocks.”
Rocks?
I unzip the tent and climb out with the scone and King’s pants. Jessiebel is in a kilt—the one I first saw him in—and he and King are gathering rocks off the ground. They look like my rocks.
“Where’d you get those?” I ask.
They both turn to me.
King straightens up and smooths his hair back. He touches his mouth briefly. He hasn’t forgotten that kiss, either. “You’re awake,” he says. “How’re you feeling?”
“Those rocks look like mine,” I say. “From my garden.”
King scuffles his foot on the ground. “Is it okay if we borrow them? We’re not hurting them none, and we’ll put ’em back. We’re playing a game. Butchy.”
“Bocce,” Jessiebel says. “Do you want to play?”
I look to Jessiebel’s kilt. Then to the scone in my hand, and back to Jessiebel’s kilt.
“How’d he get his kilt back?” I ask King.
His eyes wander to the pants I hold in my hand. He tugs at the cuff of his long-sleeved shirt, and I take a big, nasty bite of the scone.
Jessiebel steps in. “I know. Can you believe she lied about trashing it? It’s even dry-cleaned.”
“What did you do?” I ask King.
He tosses a rock in the air and catches it. “We needed to eat. I promised we’d eat, remember? And now it’s tomorrow—imagine that—and you’re eating. I didn’t leave you alone. Jess was here with you.”
I take another big bite. It tastes of bile. “How did you get money?”