But sophomore year, that all changed. That was the year Rose found me studying in the theater lobby. When she made me hers, which wasn’t freedom but felt far less lonely. And if freedom wasn’t free, at least Rose was. She was more than that, in the ways she pushed me to be better than whoever I was born to be. When I blurted out that I loved her after only knowing her for five short weeks, she didn’t say she loved me back. Instead she sat me down and made me watch some old movie she liked in which a couple argues over the definition of love. Unsurprisingly, in the end, it’s the girl who gets the final say on what love is: trust, admiration, and respect.
“Do you trust me?” Rose whispered in my ear when the movie was over.
I was ashamed—mortified, really—about what I’d told her, so I answered honestly, “I don’t trust myself.”
“You should.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m always wrong.”
Rose wrinkled her nose. “You’re not always wrong. You’re scared to be right. What did you tell Johnny Rheem when he asked if I was your girlfriend?”
I blushed. “I don’t remember.”
“You told him you didn’t know what I was.”
“Yeah.”
“Not knowing what I am to you doesn’t sound like trust.”
But I admire and respect you, I longed to say. That’s more than what I feel for anyone. To me, that’s love. It’s everything. It’s all I have to give you. But that wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
In return for my acquiescence, Rose offered one of her most winning smiles. The kind that set my body ablaze and reminded me that keeping her happy was the most important thing I could do. It also reminded me that, like studying, I could apply myself and learn what to do and what not to do until I excelled at her happiness. Until I was the very best at Rose tending.
“Don’t be sorry, Ben,” she told me, her eyes twinkling with victory. “Be better.”
—
Shock is a powerful tool, I guess. Like Rose’s grace, it ended up being the thing that kept us from breaking down as a group. That let us set our emotions aside momentarily and do the things we needed to. Like taking care of Rose’s wound—the Preacher’s bullet had gone in and out of her left side, seemingly missing any major organs—and while it looked awful, she wasn’t in immediate danger. She was awake and talking, and we were able to stop the bleeding with towels plucked from the clothesline that stretched between the trees. The exit wound was the nastier one, her flesh ripped apart by the force of an object it couldn’t contain.
Infection was probably the biggest concern, Clay said in a hushed voice, while he and I were crouched beside her, trying to figure out what we should do. I argued for leaving right then, for racing down to the staging area where the cars were parked and driving for help, but Clay convinced me that getting lost or injured in the dark wouldn’t do Rose any good. The steep access road, with its fallen trees and washed-out sections of trail, was sketchy enough in good light, and we had no maps or compasses. Nothing.
“Besides, Tomás could already be getting help,” Clay whispered. “Maybe he saw what was going on and knew what to do. That’s possible, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” I said because I had no clue where Tomás had gone in the first place. He hadn’t turned up and that didn’t feel like a hopeful thing. But I didn’t tell Clay that. I couldn’t.
We agreed to leave the instant the sun came up, a choice that left me sick and edgy. But it was late already. It wouldn’t be long before Rose would be in a hospital and under a doctor’s care. She nodded and smiled when we told her this. Then Clay and I lifted her, as gently as we could, to move her into a camping chair we’d set by the fire. We put blankets on her.
We did our best to keep her warm.
Then came the things we did that I prefer to keep hidden, buried in the depths of my memory, far from reach and consciousness. That’s understandable, I think. The way I see it, survival’s often a shameful act, maybe necessarily so, but I guess the point is that at least you’re around to feel bad about it.
It turned out Archie had beaten the Preacher’s brother senseless, but he was alive and we didn’t take any chances. Avery worked to unthread the belt from the man’s pants and the laces from his shoes, and we tied his hands together, his feet, too, before using the clothesline to hog-tie his limp body to a nearby tree, securing him as tight as we could.
Then we set about the terrible job of wrapping Mr. Howe and Dunc in one of those blankets Maggie had sat on by the stream the day prior. No one wanted to linger on this, on the tragedy that had been made of their bodies, but we didn’t want to forget them, either, and we couldn’t just leave them on the ground. They were a part of us, and there were people who loved them. It was up to us to remember that. To contain what was left in any way possible. Shelby started to cry at this point. Archie did, as well—these big drunk-heaving-sniveling-type sobs that got me worried he might really be lost to us. But he held it together. Enough.
Next we had to deal with the Preacher’s body. My assumption was that Archie would be foaming at the mouth to impale his head on a stake, but to my surprise, he said nothing, just nodded grimly and waved me off when I suggested dragging both the Preacher and his dead girlfriend into the woods and leaving them in a spot where others could find them.
When I bent to pick up the Preacher by his shoulders, however, I noticed something strange. My understanding was he’d been shot with his own rifle while fighting with Archie. Only from what I could tell, the bullet had entered through the back of the Preacher’s skull. I showed this to Clay, tried to explain why that didn’t make sense, but his face went white and he ended up walking away. After a moment, I saw him puking in the bushes and Shelby rubbing his back, so I called Archie over and showed him.
“Well, who the hell shot him?” he asked.
“I thought you shot him.”
“Nope. He was alive when I left him to beat the shit out of that other guy.”
“You mean his brother.”
“Whatever.” Archie leaned closer, inspecting the bullet hole. “So then who did it?”
“I don’t know.” I whirled around, remembering the moment when I’d seen Maggie bolting for the woods. It was possible she’d done it: shot the Preacher in cold blood.
Then fled.
Together we dragged the Preacher’s and Fleur’s bodies deep into the forest, far from the campsite. Archie retrieved his own handgun from the waistband of the Preacher’s jeans, which I hadn’t known was in there. Then, without ceremony, we rolled them down a gully in a dry pile of leaves and tree litter and left them there. And maybe I should’ve felt a twinge of sadness at more lives lost or the knowledge that they’d been lovers and he’d grieved her death. But no, there was no sentiment in me for those two. Only anger. A red, red rage.
By the time we returned, it was close to sunrise and the pain set in. Not just Rose’s suffering—her grace was quickly eroding—but all of ours. Everyone except Archie gathered around the fire and we all held hands. Avery recited the Lord’s Prayer—for Dunc, for Mr. Howe, for all of us. There were tears on her face as she whispered the words in Spanish first. Then she said them a second time in English, and Clay lost it when she got to “deliver us from evil.” Soon everyone was crying, except me, of course, and even though I held their hands and stood by their sides, I longed for them to know how deeply I cared and how wounded I felt, too, even if I couldn’t show it.
Avery’s soft words stirred up such crushing sorrow, laying bare both the truth of loss and the inevitable pain of living, that even the wind responded in kind, gusting through the trees with a brutal snap and roar. I tipped back my head to gaze at the night sky, to search for a sign, or at least the two planets Mr. Howe had said would be
visible. Venus and Jupiter, in all their late-summer glow. I searched and searched. I had to see them, to know the world he’d loved was still out there. To know that everything hadn’t changed and that ultimately we weren’t alone in this.
But I couldn’t find them, those planets among the stars.
At least, not that I could tell.
29.
NIGHT INCHED TOWARD dawn. Archie brooded far from the rest of us with the Preacher’s rifle laid across his lap. His own gun, he’d returned to his backpack, which sat at his feet. Driven to know where all weapons were at all times, I went and found the second rifle, the Preacher’s brother’s, which lay in the dirt where I’d left it by the woodpile. Dropping to one knee, I held the barrel skyward while I ejected the magazine and emptied the loaded round from the chamber. Then I secured the whole thing high off the ground, in the branches of a tree, and that was the only thing I’d ever been grateful to Marcus for: teaching me my way around a gun.
Clay and Avery set about righting the card table and the camping chairs, then worked to stoke the fire, sending flames leaping, while Shelby boiled water. The heat was welcome; her earlier adrenaline gone, Rose’s face had turned pale and shiny, her eyes glassy, and she shivered when I stroked her cheek. Then shivered when I didn’t.
Our roles were slipping back to what they usually were—me, the backdrop to her tender light—and it killed me to know she was in pain, real pain, that I’d failed in taking her bullet. She began to whimper, an anguished keening, and I prayed she wouldn’t ask for her brother, since for all I knew, he was lying at the bottom of a cliff or had gotten himself mauled by a bear. I tried calculating how long it would take me to get up the mountain and back so that I could retrieve the first aid kit that held my painkillers. Then I remembered Maggie’s Percocet. She’d had a whole bottle of it.
“I’ll be right back,” I whispered to Rose, sliding my arms out from under her. I found my headlamp and switched it on, heading for the threadbare tent that sat downwind from the smoke.
The inside of the tent was as much a mess as the outside. Amid their filthy clothes and sleeping bags, everything smelled like mildew and body odor. I found beer cans, food wrappers, condoms, a stack of water-stained papers, a dead cell phone, and most ironically, a small dog-eared copy of the Bible. I also pawed through what looked like the contents of a wallet—credit cards, driver’s license, some cash, all held together with a rubber band. I slid the license out and peered at it beneath the light. The man in the photo was the Preacher’s brother, and if the license wasn’t a fake, that meant his name was Abel Trent Faulkner and he was thirty-eight years old, five feet eight inches tall, hailing from Susanville, California, which was on the eastern side of the state, near the Nevada border.
Maggie’s bag was buried under a bedroll. I dug through it, hastily finding the Percocet rolling around loose in the bottom among crumpled cigarette packs, boxes of black hair dye, spare change, lottery scratchers, her silver flask, and bottle of personal lubricant. I shoved the medication into the front pocket of my pants.
“What do you think you’re doing?” a voice asked.
I jumped, then relaxed. It was just Archie. He towered in the tent entrance, his large face staring right at me. He looked sweaty and flushed, like he had when we’d first started out on the trail that morning after I’d told him to put his gun away.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Doesn’t look like nothing.”
“I was looking for medicine for Rose.”
“Not the money?”
“No.”
“You sure about that, Gibby?”
“Very sure. You know, funny thing, money’s really not all that important to me at the moment. In fact, it never was.” I went to push past him, but he grabbed my arm.
“It should be important.” He spat the words in my face.
“Four people are dead, Arch.”
His eyes blazed, a wild look, as if fueled by some inner furnace of will. “That’s why it matters. Dunc, Mr. Howe, they didn’t die for nothing. I’m going to make damn sure of that. You hear me? This, everything’s that happened, it’s going to mean something. I swear to God.”
“Fine.” I wrenched free and pushed past him, dragging one of the sleeping bags with me. “Do what the hell you want. You will anyway.”
Back with Rose, I laid the sleeping bag over her, and when no one was looking, I slipped two Percocets out and put them in her mouth. I whispered for her to swallow them dry. She did, rewarding me with a grateful smile. It wasn’t long before she drifted into a heavy sleep.
I watched her for a bit, the rise and fall of her chest, the brown-gold glow of her cheeks, and did my best to focus on all the ways I loved her and not that she’d been stupid enough to follow Archie into harm’s way. She didn’t deserve to be hurt for that. After all, she wasn’t the one who’d shot Fleur. That was Archie. Although if Maggie had intentionally shot Rose before fleeing—and I was beginning to think she had—it was possible there was more to the situation that I didn’t know.
After a few minutes, I got up and walked over to where Clay, Shelby, and Avery stood on the other side of the fire, their hands held to the flames for warmth. I glanced back to look for Archie, but he must’ve still been in the tent. Or somewhere else I couldn’t see.
“We need to get out of here,” I told them, keeping my voice low.
Clay looked up. “Daybreak, right? That’s what we said.”
“What time is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, maybe we should go now.”
“You think?”
I nodded. “Someone has to come with me, though. It’s probably an hour hike back to the staging area where we parked. Maybe less. The trail’s sketchy, but we’ve got the headlamps, and it’ll be light by the time we get there either way. We’ll be able to drive right out.”
Avery bit her lip at my words.
“What is it?” I asked her.
“I don’t have the car keys,” she said. “Do you?”
—
Fuck. We spent the next five minutes searching Rose and Mr. Howe, combing through their pockets. No keys on either of them.
Finally, I gave up. “This is pointless. They’re not here. They’re back up at Grizzly Falls.”
“Maybe we could just flag someone down on the road,” Shelby suggested.
“No one’s going to come down that road,” I said. “It’s a dead end. Access for this trail only. We need the keys.”
She sighed. “Then we’ll have to get them in the morning. I can’t climb up there again, Ben. Not now.”
Archie, who’d returned from wherever the hell he’d been, sauntered over to the fire, looking more flushed than ever. “Keys aren’t going to do you any good.”
“Why’s that?” Avery snapped. “And can you put the fucking gun down?”
“No, I cannot put the fucking gun down. That bitch is out there. You know that, don’t you? You want to get yourselves killed?”
“Who’re you talking about? Maggie? I saw her leave,” I said.
“Doesn’t mean she’s not out there. Waiting for us. So she can get that money. I know she wants it. She probably wants this asshole, too.” He jerked his head toward where the Preacher’s brother—Abel Faulkner, I supposed—lay.
“She shot his brother, Arch. I don’t think she’s coming back for him.”
“Yeah, well, maybe these two planned it that way all along. Only now they don’t have any way out of here. You go down to that parking lot and I bet she’s waiting for you. Waiting to take that car. She’ll kill us for it.”
“You sound paranoid,” I said.
He sneered. “Do I?”
Shelby looked at me, alarmed. “Did that woman really have a gun?”
I paused. “Yes.”
“Well, are there other ways o
ut of here?”
“Only through the original trail, the one heading south. It leads all the way down to Junction City. But that’s over ten miles away—it’s not an easy trail, either.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“We’re going to get the keys like we planned.”
Clay shook his head. “I don’t want to get shot. We should just walk out the long way. The ten miles or whatever. I don’t want to fuck around with any of this.”
My chest went tight. “Rose can’t wait that long.”
“Then find the money,” Avery said.
“What did you say?”
She shrugged. “If that woman’s really out there, it’s your one bargaining chip.”
Was she serious? “We don’t know where it is! We don’t even know that it’s here! You guys just assumed it was!”
“Calm down,” Shelby told me. “Stop yelling.”
“I’m not yelling!”
“Yes, you are,” Clay said.
“Jesus,” I said. “Forget it. This is stupid. Let’s just wait until morning. Get some sleep. We’ll figure it out then.”
“You know, you’re not in charge anymore,” Shelby said peevishly. “You don’t get to tell us what to do.”
“Yeah. That’s becoming pretty goddamn clear.”
“I’m not sleeping,” Archie growled. “I’m going to find that bitch.”
I threw my hands in the air. “Everyone do whatever the hell you want. I’m not in charge. I’m not anything. Just don’t get yourselves killed, okay?”
When I Am Through with You Page 15