River Runs Red (The Border Trilogy)

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

“You know the swill we buy for the kitchen isn’t real coffee. Let’s go out for a while. You can hold down the fort, right, Oscar?”

  Oscar gave his workingman’s smile. His left canine was gold. “Consider it held, Frank.”

  * * *

  Although it pained her to admit it, when she had heard about Wade’s kidnapping, her first thought had been of herself and Byrd. Especially Byrd. Her big brother had saved her life, emotionally and in actuality. He had done the same for Wade. For years, Byrd and Wade had been inseparable, joined at whatever bone or nerve ending made people want to risk their lives in tiny boats on roaring rivers. She had been part of the group in their earlier days, before the boys started leaving Palo Duro to live their adventures on a bigger canvas.

  Molly had been a gangly kid in those days, when Wade had first moved into their little ranching town on the Rio Grande. Since then she had blossomed into a woman. Now, in her early thirties, she had continued blossoming, to the point that she was glad that J-Lo had popularized a little extra mass in the ass. Her phrase—the more common vernacular was “junk in the trunk,” but Molly was precise when it came to words, and to her a person’s trunk was her torso, not her behind. Molly had dark brown hair that she kept shoulder-length, and bright green eyes and perfect lips, she thought, just full enough and heart-shaped, not much of a chest but on the bright side, not much of a gut either. She was five-seven, no model, but not ashamed to catch her own reflection in a shop window. Not at all the little girl she had been when they had met Wade.

  Now that Byrd was in need, it tore at her heart that she couldn’t save his life in return. Neither could Wade. But she had been afraid, in those first moments and through the days since then, that Byrd would die without ever seeing Wade again, or worse, that news of Wade’s death would trigger Byrd’s final spiral. As it was, only a miracle would keep him alive long enough to see the dawn of 2007.

  Her joy at Frank and Oscar’s information was tempered by a gut reaction to their full-court press on her. She wanted Wade to spend time with Byrd. She didn’t want that time to be soured by her squeezing him for a story. She especially didn’t want to piss him off, make him sorry he had ever come to town.

  Frank and Oscar were both reasonable men, and they’d understand if she refused to exploit her connection. They would understand, but they would be disappointed. They might begin to doubt her reporter’s instincts, her willingness to chase a story. Maybe a refusal here would put the brakes on her advancement prospects.

  She had studied journalism at the University of Texas, El Paso, encouraged by Wade’s early success. She had worked hard as a freelancer, selling articles to the Times and Texas Monthly and other markets. Then a staff job had opened up at the alternative weekly, and she had pushed and cajoled, managing to win the position. She would hate to see that job impaired by an attack of conscience, not to mention the chances of moving up to more interesting and meaningful stories. An editorship one day, even publisher. Molly was ambitious, and she had an abiding respect for the journalistic predecessors that she hoped to emulate. The names of H. L. Mencken and Nellie Bly, Edward R. Murrow, Woodward and Bernstein, even more recent stars like Keith Olbermann and Christiane Amanpour, were a personal pantheon to her. Since Thomas Paine, the dream of America had been tied to the written word. The more powerful the government became, the more good journalists were required to keep it honest. In her wildest fantasies, she leveraged a significant career at The Voice to one of more nationwide prominence, where she could have an impact on the nation similar to that of her heroes.

  If it happened, it happened, and she would keep working toward that goal. She just hoped her job wouldn’t threaten her relationship with her brother’s best friend.

  When she had learned of Wade’s escape (coincidentally from Byrd, who, stuck in the hospital and in a world of pain, couldn’t do much except watch TV), once again her first thought had been of her brother. Thank God he won’t die knowing that Wade went first, she had thought. Concern for Byrd’s emotional health outweighed her worry about their friend’s life.

  She would have thought this made her a shitheel, except that if she did think this, then a voice inside her head—a voice that, when it came from outside her head, belonged to Byrd—would tell her to knock it off, swearing’s not ladylike, and besides you don’t fucking do it well enough. To which she would respond, as if talking to the real Byrd, Yeah? Up yours, bro.

  Thereby proving his point.

  The Byrd in her head couldn’t be effectively silenced, so she tried to keep the reins on her own language, on his behalf.

  The day was coming when that would be the only Byrd left.

  She could hardly bear to imagine it.

  FIVE

  Frank drove his Volvo station wagon, which he’d had for decades and which had come in handy in the newspaper’s earliest days, according to the legends that had grown up around The Voice, when he’d stuffed the back full of papers at the printers and delivered them to street boxes and markets around town. As soon as he had the engine started he turned up the radio, letting the blaring Eagle 99.1 make it clear that he didn’t want to talk until they got where they were going.

  That was okay. He had stirred up the old memory river (a swimming spot Molly didn’t dip her feet into when she could help it), and the sediment hadn’t all settled yet. Molly folded her hands in her lap and listened to Bad Company and thought about her tenth summer.

  * * *

  I saw him first.

  That was the thing about Wade that always stood between Molly and Byrd, although it had gone unspoken since the very beginning. If she had given voice to it, Byrd would have pooh-poohed it anyway. What about it? he would have asked. What does that matter? Okay, you saw him first, big deal? I saw Mom and Dad first. I saw you before you saw me. So what?

  And he would have been right. She wouldn’t have had an answer for that.

  Still, it meant something to her, even if she couldn’t explain it. She had seen Wade first, but he had become Byrd’s best friend. Her friend, too, but primarily by default because she was Byrd’s sister. Which made sense in the ways that really mattered. He and Byrd were boys, and young ones when they met—Byrd just fourteen, Wade a year younger. Just beginning to be interested in girls, she remembered, and then only girls their own age or slightly older, the ones who were blossoming into unattainable young women. At ten, Molly wouldn’t have counted.

  Still, although she understood all the reasons, she had never completely shaken that little hint of resentment. It had itched at her over the years, like a too-stiff tag on a T-shirt.

  The day it happened had been one of the worst days of her life up to that point—which, given that she had only seen ten years’ worth of days, in retrospect couldn’t have been all that terrible. It was an August day, when the days were long and hot and the summer had been long, too, so that school, which she had been only too glad to be finished with in June, had started to look appealing again. Byrd and their father had gone into town, which in this case meant El Paso, fifty-some miles up the Rio Grande from their ranch outside Palo Duro. She was alone with Mom, and bored. It wasn’t long, therefore, before she and Mom started getting on each other’s nerves the way daughters and mothers do.

  Chafing had turned to sniping, which had led inexorably—as Molly had known it surely would, ever since she had heard Byrd say it on the bus one afternoon near the end of the school year—to Molly shouting, “Blow me, Mom!”

  She hadn’t known what it meant, then, only that it sounded angry and had elicited a loud reaction from the other kids on the bus when Byrd had said it. It elicited a reaction from Molly’s mother, too. She had thrown her laundry basket down on the floor, her face instantly turning purple. She was a lanky woman, hair bleached and skin browned by the west Texas sun until they were almost the same color. That same sun had dried her skin until it was deeply lined, aging her before her time.

  Just at this moment, she reminded Molly of a harpy from a my
thology book she had checked out from the school library that spring. She lunged toward Molly, her mouth ratcheting open, her limbs all choppy angles, her hands grasping like claws. Molly evaded her with a swift dodge, knowing she had strayed over a line. “Where did you hear somethin’ like that?” Mom shouted, still trying to catch her.

  “At school!” Molly cried. “I’m sorry!” They were both in the kitchen, where the washing machine was (that was the year before they got a dryer, when wash was still hung on the clothesline outside), and Molly banged her elbow against the kitchen table as she scrambled to evade her mother’s reach. “Oww!”

  “Serves you right,” Mom said. “You come here, Molly McCall. I mean it.”

  Her mother wasn’t likely to actually strike her. At least, she hadn’t for several years, and even then nothing worse than the very occasional swat on the butt. So Molly didn’t quite understand why she was so afraid. She kept the table between them, just the same. “I didn’t mean it, Mom,” she said, sniffling after she got the words out. Tears welled in her eyes. She sniffed again and wiped her fingers across them. They came away damp. “I don’t even know what it means, I just heard it and thought it sounded funny.”

  “Well, there’s nothin’ funny about it, young lady.”

  “I know. I mean, I do now.”

  “I don’t ever want to hear that from you again.”

  “You won’t, Mom, I swear.”

  “I’d better not. As it is, you’ve lost TV privileges for a week.”

  God. Endless summer days without TV to fall back on? She didn’t know how she would survive.

  “And right now I think you’d best get out of the house, before I think of something else to take away.”

  Molly didn’t wait around for a second invitation. As Mom picked up her discarded laundry basket, Molly hightailed it outside where she’d be safe from further retribution. Safer, anyway.

  The day wasn’t just hot, it was scorching. The kind of day she would have given anything for a trip to Balmorhea State Park and a dip in the cold, spring-fed pool there, where you could swim with turtles and feel tiny fish nibbling at your toes. Since that was out of the question, she went into the barn instead, to share her gloom with Freckles, her Appaloosa gelding. The air in the barn was warm and musky, not as hot as outside, and its sweet smell was as welcome as the aroma of fresh-baked cookies.

  Freckles nickered softly when she entered his stall, swinging his head around to greet her. The big horse let Molly stroke the gray-pink mottled skin of his nose, and she drew his muzzle against her own cheek, feeling his hot breath down her neck. The horse listened without judging while she explained what had happened. As she talked, an idea started to dawn on her—a way guaranteed to shake off the sadness that felt like it would crush her into the ground. She was wearing shorts and sneakers, not the jeans and boots she ordinarily wore, but she was still feeling rebellious.

  She hadn’t ridden bareback very often. Always, when she had, someone had been around to help, even if it was just Byrd. But she was alone now, so she opened the stall door into the barn and led Freckles to a stool from which she could climb onto his back. Freckles was as easygoing as an animal could be, totally relaxed around Molly. He let Molly slide onto him, hugging him with bare legs, rubbing his neck. Then she nudged him toward the big open front door and gave his ribs a light kick.

  “Come on, Freckles,” she urged. “Hah!”

  Freckles had grown up with Molly and he understood her intent. If he thought it strange that she would ride without saddle or tack, he didn’t express this. Out in the pasture, he hesitated when she wanted him to trot, and he downright refused to gallop.

  That didn’t matter. Molly drew pleasure from the great muscles working beneath her, from the way he tossed his head, shaking his mane, from the breeze that his motion accentuated as he cut through the still summer air. She rode across the pasture, to the far fence, and was starting to turn Freckles around when everything went wrong.

  First she caught a glimpse of Wade, although at the time she didn’t know who he was, just knew that he was a boy on a bicycle starting across the road toward her. More of her attention was fixed on the eighteen-wheeler laden with hay that was barreling down this very road. She thought the boy would surely brake and wait on the far side until the truck had passed. Instead, he leaned into his handlebars and pumped on the pedals and tried to dart across ahead of the truck.

  The truck driver hit his air brakes and his horn at the same time, a deafening bleat that mixed with the scream of rubber on pavement. So near, so unexpected—even if he could have braced himself, Freckles was already turning, looking toward where he was going instead of where he had been—the startled horse reared up. As if remembering too late that Molly was rising on his back, he cut the motion short, trying awkwardly to return to earth.

  But Molly had already lost her grip, and the horse’s aborted move bucked her the rest of the way off. With a screech, she sailed through the air, landing on her back in the tall summer grass.

  When she opened her eyes again, she saw blue, cloudless sky, a white disk of sun, and then, a boy’s blond head haloed in front of the sun. “You okay?” he asked.

  “I think…I’m fine,” she said. Winded, but not injured. She started to sit up and he came around in front of her, offering a hand. Molly took it and he hoisted her to her feet, his grip strong. He wore a blue and white Joe Jackson T-shirt and blue jeans, and while he couldn’t have been more than a couple years older than her—no older than Byrd, certainly—his muscles seemed more developed than her big brother’s. His face was handsome: sunny and blue-eyed, with a spray of freckles dusting his cheeks like spilled cinnamon, and a lopsided smile that reminded her of Elvis Presley in those movies her mom watched on her VCR.

  “Good, because that was impressive,” he said. “I never seen a girl fly before. You ain’t Supergirl, are you? Or Wasp?”

  More angry and embarrassed than hurt, she snapped at him. “If I was, I wouldn’t have landed on my back.” Molly dusted grass off the bottom of her shorts. “Anyway, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a boy stupid enough to try to race a truck.”

  “I won, didn’t I?”

  The truck was gone, the roar of its engine receding. Freckles was gone too, halfway back to the barn. “You were lucky.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe I just know what I can do.”

  “I don’t think that truck driver trusted you as much as you do.”

  “He don’t know me,” the boy said.

  “Neither do I. And you’re standing in my pasture, and I’m not sure I want to know such a stupid boy.”

  “I’m not stupid. Anyway, I’m not the one ridin’ bareback.”

  “What do you know about riding?”

  “I’ve ridden horses before.”

  “I hope you ride them better than you do that bike.” She eyed him suspiciously, as if maybe the whole thing had been one of her brother’s pranks. “I’ve never seen you before.”

  “We just moved here.” He pointed back across the road, where cotton fields hemmed in the road. “Couple of miles that way, I guess.”

  “Where the Merricks used to live?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Do you have any sisters?”

  “No, it’s just me and my mom and dad.”

  “I have a brother. Byrd. He’s fourteen.”

  “I’m thirteen. My name’s Wade.”

  “I’m Molly.” She shoved her hands deep into her pockets in case he wanted to shake. He had already held on to hers long enough, when he helped her up, and she had felt a certain unexpected, unwelcome thrill from it. She pointed at his shirt. “My big brother likes his video.”

  “‘Steppin’ Out’?” Wade asked. “It’s rad.”

  “I like Duran Duran better. And Bananarama.”

  “Is your brother home?”

  “No, he’s in El Paso.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll come back some other time, then.”

 
“If you don’t get hit by a truck first, I guess that would be okay.”

  “If I do get hit by a truck, I won’t bother comin’ over, how’s that?”

  “That’s a good idea.” Molly shrugged. “I have to get Freckles. My horse.”

  “Okay,” Wade said. “I should probably get home, too.”

  Molly started toward the barn and house. She looked back to see him hop the barbwire fence at the pasture’s edge and pick up his bike from where he had ditched it in the high grass by the road. Part of the frame was bent, and the front wheel wouldn’t quite straighten out. He must have jumped off it in a hurry when he saw that she had fallen.

  He didn’t look her way again, just walked the bike across the street and toward home. She was too young to feel that the encounter had been momentous in any way—didn’t yet have a sense that her own life would have a history worth recounting, or turning points that couldn’t be backed away from.

  But it was both of these things, and more. She would come to find that out, soon enough.

  Once Wade Scheiner had crashed into her life, nothing would ever be the same.

  * * *

  Good Coffee Mexican Restaurant was on Piedras, not far from The Voice’s office in a strip mall storefront on Montana. As the name suggested, the coffee was indeed good—hot and rich and strong enough to defend itself in a brawl. The food was good, too, but it was a little early in the day for lunch.

  Now that they were seated at a table in the nearly empty establishment and Molly finally had a cup of java she could concentrate on, Frank caught her gaze and held it for a long moment. Serious chat coming, she knew.

  “How’s the story, Molly?”

  “The flower thing?” Not what she had expected. “I’m having a hard time getting a handle on it. It seems like a society page story to me, and we don’t have a society page.”