Stoneskin's Revenge

by Tom Deitz

  “Cheap and filling,” Brock volunteered, noting the way Calvin was sniffing for odors. “Some of it free, some of it borrowed from home ’fore we left, and—”

  “Some stolen,” Calvin finished.

  “No meat, though.”

  Calvin raised an eyebrow and hoped he didn’t look too disappointed.

  Brock caught the expression and puffed his cheeks in consternation. “Oh, we’re not vegetarians or any shit like that, I mean I love meat. It’s just…well…”

  “You don’t have money to buy it, the skill to catch it, or any way too keep it if you did. Yeah, I know, I’ve been there.”

  “I caught a fish, though,” Brock informed him, squatting to turn the potatoes with a stick. “But that was yesterday.”

  “I could probably hunt something up if you like—if I had my bow. It’s back at my camp.”

  “Don’t bother, this’ll do for n—”

  “Brock, you little asshole! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The woman’s voice was low, but with a sharp, nervous edge to it. Calvin whirled in place. He had not heard anyone approaching, which alarmed him, because picking up on that sort of thing was usually second nature to him.

  Brock’s sister, who was now pushing through the undergrowth at the northern rim of the pit, could have stepped out of a Joan Jett video—except that he doubted Joan Jett ever let herself be photographed in mud halfway up to her thighs, even if it was slathered over black leather. Calvin caught his breath in appreciation.

  “It’s cool, sis,” Brock called. “He’s okay—like, one of us, I guess. I invited him to dinner.”

  “Isn’t enough for the two of us, much less an extra,” the girl growled, slumping down grumpily and starting to tug at one of her boots—obviously expensive black items, as far as Calvin could tell under the muck. But not so uptown they didn’t look able to deal with a long day’s hike. Maybe the kind of thing a biker queen would wear. “Damn!” the girl continued, as she found herself thwarted. “Friggin’ things are waterlogged—probably ruined.”

  “Need some h—” Calvin began, but Brock had already scooted around to tug on his sister’s ankle while she yanked the other way.

  “No, I don’t need any help! Unless you can zap us outta this goddamned swamp!” the girl shot back acidly.

  “Sorry,” Calvin mumbled, beginning to wish he hadn’t accepted Brock’s invitation.

  Except then he’d have missed meeting this fox, and that would have been a shame. Not that he would do anything to risk his relationship with Sandy, he hastened to add. And certainly not while on a Vision Quest, ’cause anything unethical he did while on that would just come back to haunt him. But he could still look, couldn’t he? And he sure liked what he saw.

  No more than seventeen at the outside, Brock’s sister was slim and dark, most unlike her brother, though they shared the same pointed features and Calvin doubted her hair had been that black when she was born. It was cut fairly short and bound to her head with a black and white bandanna, but he supposed that when properly arranged it had a sort of fountain effect. Her face was full of dark eyes and full lips and strong cheekbones, all showing to good effect without the conceit of makeup. As for clothes, besides the boots and the leather pants, there was a wide leather belt complete with studs, some kind of pack arrangement on it (sort of Banana Republic-meets-Essdee Evergreen), and a sleeveless black tank top that covered breasts that were small by the standards of the world at large, but plenty enough for Calvin’s tastes. She wasn’t wearing any earrings, but Calvin could see multiple holes in both lobes. That was good, ’cause it meant she had sense enough to avoid frivolities that would jingle in the woods or get snagged on branches. Unlike her brother’s rather too intricate garb.

  “Shit!” Brock spat softly, as a particularly sharp tug freed the remaining boot, sending him sprawling and earning him an Olympic-level glare from his sibling.

  “Dammit, Brock, I told you not to cuss!”

  Calvin couldn’t help chuckling, which prompted a guffaw from Brock, who narrowly dodged the boot his sister chucked at him.

  “Uh, I’m Calvin,” Calvin managed awkwardly, trying to regain some sense of decorum.

  “Robyn,” the girl replied flatly. “With a ‘y’. That’s all I’m sayin’.”

  “It’s all I need,” Calvin told her civilly. “I, uh…well, I kinda gather it wouldn’t be too cool to ask questions, so I won’t. I’d appreciate the same—not that there’s anything you guys need to worry about—beyond the cops.”

  Robyn froze in the process of trying to scrape her pants clean. “Cops?”

  “’Fraid so,” Calvin admitted. “County Mounties, anyway.”

  “Lookin’ for you?”

  “I imagine.”

  “Gonna find you?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “Any reason we should worry?”

  “Not unless they find you guys too. That happens, the less you know, the better. Besides—from what Brock here tells me, they’ll have plenty to ask you about without draggin’ me into the deal.”

  Robyn glared daggers at her brother, who simply shrugged.

  “I trust him, sis. I don’t know why, ’cause I know he’s got a lot of secrets, but I trust him.”

  “I don’t,” Robyn replied. “Not yet.”

  “Well,” Calvin said, squatting down to inspect the baking veggies, “I’m mostly Cherokee, if you haven’t figured it out yet; and one of the things we say is that if you’ve shared food and fire with a person, he’s under an obligation to you not to harm you.”

  “Yeah, and Eskimo men are supposed to offer you their wives, too,” Robyn shot back. But there was a trace of softening in her voice.

  “I’m your brother!” Brock grunted in exasperation.

  “You’re a damned nuisance, is what you are,” Robyn told him. “And if I was you—both of you—I’d stay right where you are, and keep on looking exactly where you’re looking, ’cause I’ve gotta get outta these friggin’ britches.”

  Calvin and Brock exchanged an appropriate combination of winks, eye-rolls, and grins—but dutifully did as instructed, though Calvin did risk a glance across the clearing (which was away from the scrape of fabric and buzz of zippers) and noted for the first time what looked suspiciously like a holster amid the piles of gear. Empty, but he had an idea where the occupant was.

  “These ready?” Robyn asked, joining them by the fire a moment later, then reaching behind her to excavate a fork from her pack, with which she prodded the nearest foil-wrapped tidbit.

  “Oughta be,” Brock told her. “They’ve been cookin’ since three!”

  “Watch it!” Robyn shot back, but Calvin noted that she was finally taking time to give him a once-over, and apparently liking what she saw.

  “Wanta stay the night?”

  “Huh?” That had come so unexpectedly it shocked Calvin speechless.

  “Not afraid, are you?”

  Calvin finally found his voice. “Of course not. But it’s probably not the smartest thing I could do. Besides—well, there’s some things I’ve gotta do some hard thinkin’ about, and I just can’t do that with folks around.”

  “She likes you,” Brock confided under his breath, as Robyn captured a potato and began unrolling it with delicate tugs and stabs of lacquered (but functionally short) nails.

  “Coulda fooled me,” Calvin muttered back, as he claimed his own spud.

  “So…you stayin’?” From Brock this time, and Calvin imagined the kid was desperately glad to have another male around. Robyn, for all her looks, had an attitude that could doubtless wear thin pretty quickly.

  “I really shouldn’t,” Calvin reasserted. “I—”

  But before he could finish, he heard the muffled thump of powerful wings flapping, followed almost immediately by the swish of air across his face as something flew right above his head. He glanced that way, and saw—to little surprise this time—that a single peregrine was perched on a limb not fi
fteen feet from the fire. It had something in its claws too, but just as Calvin noticed that, whatever it was won free and flew away. No, Calvin amended, had been released. The falcon had deliberately freed its prey.

  But before he could investigate further, the peregrine likewise spread its wings and wafted away through the woods.

  “Cool,” Brock shouted. “Hey, did you see that, sis?”

  Robyn looked puzzled. “What?”

  “That bird!” Brock continued excitedly. “A falcon, I think. Wasn’t it, Calvin?”

  “Yeah,” Calvin acknowledged softly. “It was.”

  “What kinda bird was that it had, though?” Brock went on. “Man, that was weird, I swear it let it go.”

  “It…did,” Calvin replied slowly. “And that is strange.”

  “But what kinda bird was it?”

  “A robin,” Calvin whispered. “Maybe I will stay the night.” It was not a nonsequitur, though Brock stared at him askance when he said it. No, it was a response to yet another omen.

  Chapter X: Frettin’ and Worryin’

  (east of Whidden, Georgia—supperish)

  “I don’t know how long she’s been gone,” Liza-Bet Scott was sobbing into the phone when Don came tumbling in the door, engaged in a tickle battle with Michael Chadwick. Don silenced his best friend with a glare and an elbow punch in the ribs, then gently deposited the bags of junkfood they’d snatched off Mike’s dad onto the counter, his attention fully focused on his mother. Beside him, Michael nodded and simply slunk back out of the way between a counter and the refrigerator, as if he too could sense the tension that permeated Liza-Bet’s every word and gesture.

  “No, she knows better’n that,” Liza-Bet went on and Don could tell from the way her gaze suddenly hooked his way and locked with his that something really bad was going on. Probably something to do with Allison, to judge by the way Mom’s face was: all wild-eyed and scary, and with a few dark smudges on her cheeks and around her eyes to show she’d been crying. She was picking at her clothes too: the sweatshirt and gym shorts she’d put on when Robert had left to give his ’coon hounds a final run before he went on call again in the morning. And that was a real bad sign, ’cause it usually meant that the bottle’d come prancing out from below the sink real soon. Then…who knew what could happen.

  More noise on the line that Don could not make out, then from Mom: “No, that’s what I said: five hours!” She turned then, looked his way: “You haven’t seen your sister, have you? She say anything ’bout goin’ off?”

  Don shook his head, a score of emotions at war within him, from concern for his mother, through irritation at his sister (whom he divined to have gotten lost sometime while they were taking their own sweet time returning from Mike’s), to that horrible sick thunk of dread that something awful had happened and that he was at fault. And finally to guilt, which he didn’t even need to feel yet. “Last I saw of her she was headin’ for her room.”

  “She didn’t say nothin’ ’bout goin’ out to play?”

  “No,” Don replied, trading apprehensive shrugs with Michael. “But she’s started sneakin’ off a lot lately,” he added, in part through genuine concern, and in part because it might make him look better if Allison did turn up. Another exchange of glances with Mike, who was starting to look really troubled and was probably wondering—as Don was—if this would put paid to their camping trip. “Want us to go hunt for her?”

  Mom’s brow wrinkled and she started to reply, then held up a finger to put him on hold while the voice on the other end of the line—Don bet it was the ever-conscientious Robert checking by the department just in case—rattled on again. Her frown deepened, but then she nodded a little resentfully. “Yeah, I’ll hang on till you get here. But hurry, Rob, I just can’t stand this waitin’, I—Just a minute.”

  For there had been a noise in the front of the house. “What was that?” But Don had not even had time to figure out what that was when footsteps pattered across the living room floor and Allison popped into view at the other end of the hall—dirty and bedraggled, to be sure, but as far as Don could tell, relatively intact. She had something with her, too: a bunch of pebbles wrapped in a scrap of rag.

  “Mom!” Don cried, pointing.

  And with that Allison thudded into the kitchen and screeched to a halt in the exact center of the floor, her muddy sneakers making twin red streaks on the pale linoleum. Don’s nose wrinkled automatically. He’d been right, she wasn’t only filthy, she was smelly as well.

  A startled “Oh!” escaped from Mom, and then her eyes grew very large indeed, and tears of relief flooded into them, even as Don felt a vast relief of his own course through him like a hot drink on a cold day as he realized that his camping trip was not going to be shot to hell after all.

  The phone crackled inquisitively.

  Mom stared at it as if dumbfounded for a moment, then resumed her conversation. “No, Rob, just forget it. She’s come back.”

  More crackles.

  “No, she looks fine. Tell you what, I’ll call you again when I know something.”

  Noise.

  “Yeah, I love you too.”

  And with that, Liza-Bet hung up the receiver and knelt before her daughter. A long moment passed as they stared solemnly at each other, but then Liza-Bet threw her arms around her wayward offspring and hugged her tight. “Oh baby, baby, where’ve you been? Don’t you know I’ve been worried sick about you? Why, I just called Robert. I…”

  She blubbered on, heaping endearments atop exhortations not to do that again, ever, and mixing the whole thing with paens of relief.

  For his part, Don simply rolled his eyes at Michael, who rolled his back and emerged from his patented impression of a piece of wallpaper to snag a bag of goodies and start toward the hall. “Just a minute,” Don called him back, uncertain if he should just go on with business, which was what he wanted to do, or show some concern for his evil sister, which he supposed was what he ought to be at, or at least making lip-service to. Trouble was, it was hard to be worried about somebody being lost when you didn’t know they were lost until they’d been found again. As for hanging around to find out the what and where, he supposed he’d hear all about that soon enough. Finally, he laid a hand on Mom’s shoulder. “You need me, holler, okay?”

  She nodded, and Don felt vastly relieved. He snagged his own bag of snacks and started down the hall, already tugging off his sweat-soaked T-shirt.

  “Got any Cokes?” Mike called from ahead of him.

  Don spun around and returned to the kitchen. Mom was still kneeling by her daughter, her back to him. But from the door Don could see Allison quite plainly.

  And then she saw him too; and for no reason he could think of, a chill raced over his body. There was something about Allison’s expression, something to do with a complete lack of the fear or guilt or contrition he knew should be there. Maybe it was shock, but then he got a closer look at her eyes and realized that sometime since lunch they had grown harder and much more calculating. Though awash with what Don suddenly had an uncanny feeling were crocodile tears, they stared at him hard and unfeeling, and Don had the eerie sensation he was being evaluated—rather like a piece of meat in the grocery store.

  “You bringin’ them Cokes?”

  Don broke eye contact with his sister and shook his head, then trotted over to the fridge and snagged a pair of colas. But as he dashed back to his room, he could feel Allison’s eyes on him every step of the way. He was suddenly glad he’d be sleeping in the woods that night.

  Chapter XI: Moonstruck

  (east of Whidden, Georgia—dusk)

  Calvin took a final lick of apple-flavored fingers and then nothing remained of the supper he’d shared with Brock and Robyn except full tummies and the satisfaction they brought. Brock was already burying the aluminum foil veggie wrappers; Calvin had made him.

  Robyn poked up the fire a little—mostly for light and comfort, Lord only knew they didn’t need the heat—then s
ettled back atop the sleeping bag she had stretched at full length on the ground. “Maybe I ought to tell you about it, just so you’ll know,” she conceded finally.

  “You don’t have to,” Calvin replied. “I mean, I’m curious, and all; but I’m not sure it’d be best…”

  Robyn took a deep breath but wouldn’t meet his eyes. “No, I want to—haven’t told a soul except my friends, and most of them don’t really understand—either that, or they want me to go too far.”

  “They wanted her to kill the old fag,” Brock confided from where he was shaking out his own bedroll. Calvin quickly found himself in the middle, lying on the grass-padded ground.

  Robyn snorted contemptuously. “That’s the one thing he wasn’t.”

  “Wanta bet?” Brock shot back. “I seen him watchin’ me plenty of times that same hungry-kinda way he looked at you. And he was all the time tryin’ to come in the bathroom when I was in there, and…”

  “Sounds like a real asshole,” Calvin interrupted, feeling his first real pang of regret at his failings with his own father. They’d had differences, sure, but it was over ethics and philosophy, not actual abuse. Most of the whippings Calvin had got he’d deserved. And his dad had damned sure never laid a hand on him any other way!

  “He was an asshole,” Robyn continued, her voice a little shaky, but Calvin marveled at how much she’d changed in the few hours he’d been in her company. Though still trying to play the tough broad, she was starting to soften, to let her hair down some. And that was dangerous, because Calvin knew he’d have a tendency to follow suit but didn’t dare.

  “I’m listenin’,” Calvin prompted, when Robyn seemed at a loss as to where to begin. “I can keep a secret,” he added hopefully.

  Robyn sighed and folded her arms above her head, not looking at him. “Oh, jeeze,” she began. “It’s such a long story. But I guess what really kicked it off was when our real dad died. We were living in Miami then. It was a really nice neighborhood—we had a pool and all—but it was kinda close to one of the Cuban ghettos. I guess I was about twelve or thirteen, Brock was probably—”