by Faith Hunter
I blinked back hot tears and didn’t remind him that I had no phone and couldn’t call for help. I said, “Thank you, Mr. Thad. I’ll remember. And my name is Nell. You understand?”
“I do, Sister Nell. I surely do.”
* * *
The Rankins were parked in the drive for an hour and twenty minutes, and during that time, Brother Thad and his son changed out four windows and marked several dozen shot holes in the siding outside and in the wallboard inside, coming and going like family, while bread dough finished rising and I put four loaves in to bake, picked vegetables, and thawed meat for the evening meal. It was unexpected to discover that the Rankins thought of me as a sister, an equal in their church, and not chattel. The entire idea of church had left a bad taste in my mouth for years, but . . . maybe that was just the one church, the God’s Cloud of Glory Church, or a few churches, not all churches. I had to wonder.
I accepted a tract from Brother Thad before they left, and told him I would consider attending a service at his church. A service. One. I made sure he understood that part. And he left beaming and satisfied, telling me he’d wait until he heard from the insurance company to send me a bill for the deductible.
I didn’t really know what to make of people like Mr. Thaddeus Rankin. Good people, but foreign to my upbringing and life experience so far.
* * *
No one bothered me that night, but I woke with a perplexing sensation at about two a.m on Wednesday, a feeling that ants were crawling all over me—biting, itchy, feathery, and burning. I sat up in my small bed in the dark, disturbing the cats. More than one nonhuman, and one human, had crossed into the woods on the Vaughn farm property. Their life signatures were incomprehensible, remarkable enough that I couldn’t separate them into individual markers, but I knew in my blood that they were no threat to me, feeling playful rather than malicious. I felt them tramp along the property line to the deer stand, and later felt it as the stand’s supports were ripped from the trees and it started to fall. I felt it in my bones when the biggest part of it hit the ground about twenty feet from where it had started, as if the air had swept up underneath and tossed it. Heard it in the nerves of my hands when the nonhumans shouted with victory.
It wasn’t Paka. I’d have recognized her.
Nonhumans. On my land or near enough. Strangers.
In the ground beneath my home, I felt something stirring, something new and angry. I raced to the front windows, listening, waiting. But the flash of rage died away, gone so totally that I had to wonder if I had imagined or misinterpreted it.
In the distance, on the Vaughn farm, I felt the uninvited visitors withdraw. Relief shushed through me like water through a pipe, but it didn’t last long, and worry flushed right back. I spent the rest of the night on the sofa, where I could see anyone coming down the drive, protecting my home from any direction. I slept uneasily, with John’s old Colt .45 six-shooter and the Winchester .30-30 on the rug at my feet. Neither had the spread pattern of the double-barreled shotgun, but without being able to stabilize it against a flagpole or a handy wall, the shotgun was mostly a threat without teeth. Useless. I needed something that was point-and-shoot and wouldn’t dislocate my shoulder. I needed a new gun.
* * *
The land quivered when humans walked onto my land just before dawn. They entered along the northwest side of the property, from the Stubbins farm. The churchmen had never come that way before, the land being steep and requiring a demanding climb, but perhaps Jackson Jr.’s anger was changing things. Or perhaps the group he’d found to help were the Stubbins’ kin. I had figured it would take time, maybe even weeks, to organize the menfolk. I’d been wrong.
I sat up, feet on the floor, and rubbed my tired eyes, concentrating. Fear spiked through me. They had sent eight men. I felt their combined life force flowing through the woods, along the ground, and up through the foundation of the house, into my bare feet, and some of the life force carried a faint taint of wrongness, similar to what I had sensed from Jackie. They carried weapons, and though I couldn’t tell what kind, I knew that with eight participants, they didn’t intend to use distance weapons. They intended this to be up close and personal.
I’d thought I had longer. I was a fool.
The battle I had been expecting and fearing for years—the battle to take me back to the church for punishment and rehabilitation, churchman style, or burn me at the stake—was heading my way. I’d choose my own way of dying if I had to go today.
The intruders had to come through the woods, however, and there was no path, just ridges and small creeks and rock outcroppings and trees big as redwoods. They’d be working by dead reckoning, in the dark of predawn, giving me time to get prepared. The trees were so tall on the steep hill that the leafy canopies cut the line of sight to nothing. I wished again I could do magic like a witch in one of the silly movies I watched, making roots rise up and trap them, thorns rise up and form an impenetrable wall. I remembered Pea and the earth that had stopped her in her tracks. In some form of trepidation, I reached out to the woods and thought, Stop them. Thinking that maybe the roots and the soil would indeed reach up and trap their feet as they had trapped Pea. But nothing happened.
So . . . I was gonna have to deal with this. With the men.
Real life was always a lot more bloody and had a lot fewer happy endings than movies.
Working in the dark, I double-checked the loads in all the weapons and laid out ammunition at each window. I washed up with the last of the night’s warm water, bathing the sleepless exhaustion from my eyes, before slathering on my homemade emollient cream. A cold wind was blowing, tossing multicolored leaves, and even stripping green leaves from their stems, flinging them through the air, so I braided my hair back out of the way, dressed in long-john underwear, layered on T-shirts, overalls, and work boots. For an extra bit of safety, I strapped John’s old hunting knife around my waist while extra rounds went into my pockets—preparations that settled me. I was gonna die. But I’d take a few of them with me. I took a moment to wonder what life would be like if I were able to pick up a phone and call the police for help. But the woods made that impossible. Cell signals just didn’t reach in here. Even satellite signals were iffy once one entered the edge of the property.
Soulwood ate the energy.
Though my heart was stuffed up high in my throat and my guts did little pirouettes, I ate leftovers from the fridge and stoked the stove before putting the drip percolator on the hottest section of the stovetop for coffee, making a full pot in case I got to be hospitable instead of a good shot. Or in case someone made it inside and I needed an unexpected weapon. Scalding coffee was a good one.
I shooed the cats out of the house. It was safer outside this morning than inside, despite the owls and coyotes and foxes that thought house cats were tasty. And the churchmen would likely kill the cats like they’d killed the dogs.
My heart rose up in my throat at the thought of the dogs, and I suddenly could feel the cold, hair-covered flesh of their ankles as I dragged them across the lawn to bury them. Tears threatened and I blinked, closing my lids over hot, painful eyes. I would not mourn. Not now. Grief was paralyzing. Grief slowed reflexes. Grief was an emotion I didn’t have time for.
I sat on the back porch with John’s hunting rifle, the sun rising at my back on the front of the house, the screening hiding me in shadows, and I felt one of the churchmen trip and fall, barking his arm on the root he landed on. His skin ripped and his blood dropped, two tiny splatters. But it was enough. His life was mine the moment I needed it. Another tripped and bit his tongue when he landed, jaw-first, in the loam. He spit bloody spittle. Two were mine now. Six to go.
The churchmen walked closer, tramping over my land.
Maybe I could convince them to go away.
My laugh was humorless. Maybe pigs would fly and I’d find gold nuggets in the water that my windmill pumped up from th
e ground. Best bet was I’d die fighting and take a few with me.
The sky was bright in the east, climbing above the mountain ridge, the sun’s rays shining through clouds like a deceitful promise of survival, when dark forms appeared at the edge of the woods, stopping just outside the cleared area of grassy land. I lifted John’s binoculars to my face and tracked down until I focused on one of the men.
Only it wasn’t a man. It was a kid. A boy. Maybe ten or twelve years old. He was wearing a plaid shirt like the older churchmen wore on weekdays. Jeans. Boots. He had dark red hair and freckles. He carried a hunting rifle almost as big as he was. And he wore an expression too callous and too determined for his years. And yet . . . he was afraid.
Oh . . . No . . .
I moved my binoculars right, slowly, then left, until I had seen all eight of them. Not one was older than fifteen. None of them even needed to shave yet. And they all wore faces that said they had come to do something they already regretted. Ernest Jackson Jr. had sent children to murder me. And I owned the lives of two if I set my hands into the soil and dragged them under.
“No,” I whispered. “No.”
They are not going to make me kill children.
FIVE
I stood and set the rifle against my shoulder, opened the back door, aimed out into the dark, over their heads, and fired a warning shot. The biggest child, maybe the eldest, raised his weapon on the house, but with me standing inside the door, lights off, and with the sun rising on the front of the house, throwing the back into darker shadow, he was blinded. “What you’uns want?” I demanded in my best church accent.
“We’re looking for Brother Ephraim,” one of them shouted. “My daddy thinks you got him here. We’uns aim to set him free and then take you back to the church, where you’re supposed to be.”
“The Brother isn’t in my house,” I said. “And I’m not of a mind to go back to the church.” My comments seem to flummox them, because no one answered. I figured that they hadn’t thought much beyond telling me what they wanted and then expecting me to obey, like a good churchwoman did. But they forgot. I wasn’t part of the cult anymore. I didn’t obey anyone. At that thought, a fierce delight welled up in me and pulsed through my body, through the floor, and into the ground.
In the rising sunlight, the boys looked back and forth between each other in consternation. I studied their faces, thinking I spotted some family resemblances. There was a Cohen, two of the Purdy boys—Joshua’s cousins or half brothers—a Campbell, a boy I didn’t know but maybe a Stubbins, maybe a Lambert, and a McCormick. But the biggest kid was dressed differently from the others, wearing city-boy jeans and a T-shirt with something written on it in yellow and orange, the design shaped almost like a target over his heart. He wasn’t Aden family, though he had slanted, narrow eyes like the family patriarch, maybe a similar shade of blue. His rifle was different from the other boys’ guns too. It was one of the modern ones that fired off three-burst rounds and could be set to fully automatic with the right gear and know-how. Like an AR-15 or -17, something or other, a gun like I’d been lusting for and could never afford. Like the automatic rifles Priss had mentioned. This boy was clearly in charge, urging the others forward with his gun barrel, his face full of anger and hatred and devoid of fear, the kind of emotions learned at Daddy’s and Mama’s knees, family hatred shared along with prayers at the dinner table. That hatred and the AR-whatever would chew up this house in a heartbeat, and me along with it.
“Witch!” the unfamiliar kid shouted, stepping forward, into the light of dawn. “I call thee out, in the name of Jesus Christ, to face your punishment and the justice of the church.”
I thought a minute, not seeing any other way except to shoot him. My guts curdled. “I’m not a witch,” I shouted back, trying to buy some time, trying to figure out what to do, how to save these children and still keep me alive. “I’m a baptized Christian just like you, only I don’t try ’n kill people who are different from me.”
“You’re a woman. You gotta do what you’re told,” he said.
I took a breath to reply when I felt the change up through the floor. I might have felt it sooner if I’d still been barefoot, or had my boots in the dirt, but two factors were detrimental to my knowing what was happening until it was close: wearing boots in the house, and my attention on a more obvious threat.
A truck had pulled up the hill and turned into my drive, the headlights illuminating the boys with their guns. The boys froze like deer in the headlights and the sun peeked over the horizon, tinting them in the bright red and gold of morning. I heard a voice, a bull horn or loudspeaker from the truck. “You children get back to your own homes!”
I closed my eyes in relief so strong it sent acid up my throat. It was Thad Rankin, and he sounded mad as a hornet. “Git!” he shouted.
The boys turned as one and raced back into the trees, the outsider boy in the lead. He might have shouted to the others. I couldn’t hear, but I felt the remaining boys race toward him, back the way they came. I sprinted to the front, staring through the windows. I felt more than saw Thaddeus get out of his truck and slam the door, muttering under his breath about hooligans. And I laughed, the sound a panicked wheeze.
I dropped to the sofa, following the stranger boy and his comrades back to the Stubbins farmland. I felt the land rise up, as if aware, as if tracking them as a threat, as if it knew who they were and where they went. As if the woods had . . . learned something about the threat they posed to me. Something dark and wild raced through the ground, following the boys. It was more cohesive now than it had been. More complete, less divided, and that was unexpected. I wrenched my thoughts away from the land and the sick feeling that the dark thing brought me.
I went to the door, and opened it to my rescuer.
Thad Rankin asked, “Are you hurt?”
I shook my head and realized I was trembling. A sob burst out, as unfamiliar as the dark thing in my woods. I was crying. Again. I wrapped my arms around myself and shuddered, backing away to let Mr. Thad and Deus into my living room. “I didn’t know what to do,” I said. “I didn’t know what . . .” I trembled so violently my teeth rattled. “They were children. Just babies.” I sobbed again, the sound harsh. I hadn’t cried in front of people since Leah died. My knees hit the sofa, and I stopped moving. “Copying their daddies and the hateful men at the church. I couldn’t even defend myself. They were just children,” I said fiercely.
Mr. Rankin pointed at the sofa and I fell onto it, wiping my face.
“I heard a shot. Did they shoot at you?” he asked.
“No. I fired a warning shot over their heads.”
“What did they want?” he asked. His eyes were tight and dark with worry.
“They came looking for a churchman who went missing while hunting. They accused me of having him prisoner in my house.” Rankin’s eyebrows went up in surprise. I shrugged, feeling tired. “They said they were here to set him free and take me back, by force.”
Rankin said, “We’ll check the house. Do you want me to call the sheriff when I get into cell range?”
“No. I won’t send a bunch of children to juvenile detention for nothing. I put on coffee,” I said. “Help yourself.”
I went to the bath and splashed water on my face, which was white and bloodless, my eyes too big. I freshened up and felt a sight better when I came back out, and better still when I realized that Thaddeus and his son were checking the house and the woods out back.
When they came back in, I had a loaf of homemade sliced bread, plates, spoons, three cups of coffee, real cream and sugar, and a jar of peach-hot open on the table. My peach-hot (peach preserves made with hot peppers) was the best in the county. After exchanging a glance I couldn’t interpret, the two sat at my kitchen table and made up their coffee to suit them, Deus taking his with sugar and his daddy taking his black. We sat there, silent, and I realized that
it was the first time they had ever sat at my table. Which was a shame.
“Thank you for being here,” I said, the coffee sitting uneasily on my stomach. I tore a slice of bread and chewed, hoping to settle it, which led to Deus taking a slice and smearing preserves on it. He was a young man, and young men were always hungry.
“Why did you leave the cult?” Thaddeus asked.
I understood his curiosity on all the levels—curiosity about the cult, curiosity about why someone would shoot up my house. I chewed, and drank my coffee, and said, “I stopped attending God’s Cloud for several reasons,” I said. “One, when I inherited this property I fell into ‘sin and disfavor.’” I made the words a quote with my fingers, and both men showed surprise. “This property, by church law, should have gone to the church upon John’s death, since he had no sons. But after Leah died, John and I were married by a judge, legally, under the laws of the state of Tennessee, instead of according to church law. And his will had been filed properly. I was his widow, and I inherited.
“The church objected, but they lost in court. They had to pay the legal and court expenses too.” I knew that the men heard my satisfaction. I’d been practically blissful when the judge had ruled that the church had to pay my lawyer and all costs.
“Reason two,” I said, “a proper churchwoman would have taken her deed to the land and gone right to the church and married according to her next male relative’s wishes or according to the will of the leader of the church.”
“What?” Deus said. “That’s not right.”
I smiled behind my cup at the statement, but it faded when his father said, “There’s lot a things wrong in this world, son. It’s important to remember that others have troubles we don’t always see.” He was right. My problems were small potatoes compared to the problems of others.