The people who were my ancestors, the peacemakers, they were all dead. There was nothing left of them, so why should I cling to their ways just to end up dead in the desert? If the crow was their omen of death and if justice dictated that my time was up, then I was through with both.
I took a step.
My ma had talked about the old ways when I was little. She had talked it up when I was a kid, but she’d only really taken the parts she’d liked. She’d told stories of the old religion, but they’d been just that: stories.
I took another step, then another. I brushed past the bike and moved steadily downhill. Ahead I saw a stream at the bottom of the hill; the gentle sound of moving water reached my ears. The sky boiled. Lightning was my only light.
I’d always worshipped the old ways as I’d wanted them to be. A land with civilization in retreat looks like a land with civilization on the frontier. The analogy had always fit. Law was a commodity. Order was at a premium. I always had felt it was my duty to be the peacemaker, even when I went off to war to fight for my people. Even when we lost.
The stream was warm, warmer than the night air. I splashed some water on my face and felt its fingers running down my chest. I breathed a deep breath and felt the water’s life-giving energy seeping into my body. I drank deep and stood to walk more confidently.
How can a man follow a tradition he hardly knows? The same way a man follows a tradition that he knows well: blindly.
Movement from above caught my eye. It was the crow again, gliding silently through the air. It seemed to hover in place above me, gliding against the wind and keeping my slow pace.
If the crow was an omen of my death and I survived, then the meaning was clear. It was time to set aside the tradition of my ancestors. It was time to set aside justice. What was justice, anyway? Was it the same as revenge, the way confiscating was the same as stealing? It seemed to me on that dark night that there might not be any difference at all.
My mother had left when I was young. I didn’t know why. I probably never would. I suspect it had something to do with my brother Conrad’s death or my father’s reaction to it. After that day, I had noticed a hardening in my father’s eyes. He had been left to raise me, but his ideas of tradition and peacekeeping were much harsher. He was a lawman back then. When he couldn’t take that anymore, he became a bounty hunter. My love of tradition still existed, but it was his idea of tradition that I followed, not my ma’s.
By the time I arrived at the black building, my pains had left me. My heart still raced but my muscles now ached only for action. Without breaking stride, I went straight up to the door and kicked it open.
Inside, lights flickered to life. I stepped in and breathed years of stale air and dust. It was exactly what I’d thought it was: an outpost.
During the Civil War, there had been a number of these outposts. They had been designed using low-tech so that they wouldn’t be noticed by an increasingly high-tech enemy. They used low-wattage lights, analog two-way radios and repeaters, and all manner of low-tech projectile weaponry.
The weapons were gone, of course. The place had probably been looted twenty years ago, just after the war. The squat, desk-sized radio was still there. Every one of these stations I’d run across in my years as a sheriff had a working radio and working lights. People only tend to loot items of value, and these things were constructed in such a way as to be nearly worthless—sturdy, but worthless.
Hardly anyone used analog signals. There was only one man I knew who did. He used it all the time when he needed to stay off the networks. He used it when he was hunting people.
I grabbed the radio and pressed the transmit button.
“Come in, Big Blackbird.” I paused. “Come in, Big Blackbird. This is Little Blackbird. Big Blackbird, you out there?”
The crow, the real one, landed just outside the door and looked at me. It tilted its head to one side as if questioning me.
“Not you,” I said.
It stretched its wings.
“On your way, then,” I said to the crow. “Thanks for the wakeup, but I got no need for omens today.”
The crow flew away just as the radio crackled to life.
“Little Blackbird, this is Big Blackbird.”
I smiled, a little surprised that he’d caught the signal so quickly. “Big Blackbird, I’m in a bit of a bind here. Mind picking up some fuel and helping a guy out?”
There was a pause. “Be a pleasure, son.”
“‘Preciate it.’”
Chapter 14
I sat across from Pa and chewed through the gristly steak like I hadn’t eaten in a week, even though the feast at the ranch had only been twelve hours previous.
The dim light of the old diner did nothing to conceal its griminess. Shadows melted with stains in the corners of every wall. It was hard to tell when one started and the other ended. There were decorations on the walls, dimly lit flickering neon advertisements for beers that hadn’t been brewed in a hundred years. This place was a throwback, some sort of retro trend that used to be fashionable thirty years ago. Pa, the owner, and I were the only people around.
When I finished the steak, I set down my knife and used an old rag to wipe the juices out of my stubble. The wind howled outside. I squinted at the window to see if I could spot the skidder. After we had reloaded the solid fuel repository, it had run well enough to get me here, but there was something wrong with the controls. I reached into my pocket and fingered the black metal needle I had pulled from the machine.
“Storm’s comin’,” said Pa after one particularly strong gust rattled the windows. He was still chewing at his own steak, carefully pulling out gristle and fat and setting it aside.
I nodded. “Yup.”
“You into some sort of trouble out there?”
Pa liked to cut right to the heart of things. He sat there across from me wearing a gambler-style wide-brimmed hat, pristine like he’d just bought it. I knew he hadn’t. He just took good care of his stuff. His suit was in similar condition, with a gray nanofiber mesh for the coat and something that looked like violet silk for his shirt. His tie was the traditional Texas string tie, cinched tight so that the loose wrinkles of his neck bulged up over the collar. The impeccable lines of his expensive suit contrasted with the sagging form of his aged body. Gloved hands moved with a strength and confidence unexpected for such an old codger. Hunting had been a lucrative profession for the old man, and he was able to afford the best in tech—and he wasn’t afraid to show it off.
I wondered what trouble he thought I was in. If I were in trouble, I didn’t think it would be something I’d want to talk with him about. In fact, I had only stayed to share a meal with him because he had offered to pay and I was famished.
“There’s trouble, Pa, but not for me.”
The old man’s chewing slowed and he raised an eyebrow. A few heavy minutes of silence passed.
“Ma ever tell you about the Hopi?” I finally asked.
He smiled at me. “No more a them around, son.”
“Sure, sure. But did she talk about it?”
Another of minute of silence passed. He put down his fork and looked me right in the eyes. “She did. She used to talk about it. Talked about it to you too. I get the feeling you listened ‘bout as much as I did.” He chuckled to himself as if it was a joke.
“Well.” I ran my fingers through my hair, wishing I still had my hat. “I sure wish I had listened, is all. There was a crow out there when I was stuck. Think it might’ve been a death omen or something.”
He nodded.
“You know anything about that, Pa?”
“Nope.” A screen of shapes, letters, and lights flashed in front of the old man’s face, originating, I guessed, from his immaculate hat. “You want me to look it up?”
I waved my hand in front of his face, dispersing the floating images. “No, Pa. I don’t really.”
He ground his teeth and his voice took on an agitated tone. “Son, you gotta
stop fearing the tech. You always had a damn problem with it. Ain’t done you no harm.”
“Ain’t done me no good, neither.”
The old man glanced over his shoulder at the owner of the diner, a dark-skinned guy with a fat gut soaked with grease and a silver eye that flashed with light from time to time.
“Look,” Pa said in a low voice. “You in some sort of trouble? I can help you out, you know.”
“Pa, look,” I felt like a delinquent kid again. “I’m not in any trouble. I should be asking you if you’re in trouble, but I don’t think either of us wants to know the answer.” We both knew he had a habit of skirting the edges of the law.
He grinned at that, showing me his yellow teeth. “Suit yourself.”
We passed the time in silence for a while. When Pa had finished his steak, the owner brought over two slices of absolutely dreadful lemon meringue pie. The meringue was charred on the top and soggy on the bottom. The lemon was bitter. It was the best I’d had in years.
Pa broke the silence. “Genevieve was a lovely woman. Better than I ever deserved.” His voice had taken on a wistful tone. “She loved nature. Loved being outside, even after nature decided to crap right out on us.”
He took a bite of pie and held it in his mouth as if savoring its awful flavor.
“Thing is, I think she really might have followed some of the old traditions.” He looked up at me. “I don’t think she really believed in omens and shit, though.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“Don’t you go all soft on me, son. There’s no reason to worry. Ain’t nothin’ out there you can’t handle.”
I had never heard my father talk like that. I always got the idea that he believed in me, but he had never really said it. It worried me.
“Pa,” I said. “You remember when Conrad died? What happened?”
The old man’s expression got dark. There was a flash of hatred, then one of sadness and resignation. “They said we was poachers. Said we were stealing from the government by living off of the land.”
There was another long pause as he took a slow bite of pie and chewed it very deliberately.
“The gang that got him, they were nothin’ but a bunch of punks. Kids doin’ someone else’s dirty work. Jackals. I don’t know. They killed your brother. Shot him in the middle of the night and didn’t have the decency to come and shoot me too. They figured I’d learn my lesson.”
“Lesson?” I was amazed that he’d said so much. Conrad’s death had always been a forbidden topic.
“You kill something of ours, we’ll kill something of yours.” The old man raised a forkful of pie to his mouth, then thought better of it and set it down. “There’s a goddamn lesson for you. It was pretty soon after that I started hunting people.”
“You kill those punks?”
He narrowed one eye at me. “This my son talking or the lawman?”
I scowled at him.
“Yeah, I killed them. You were there too but probably too young to remember it. Wasn’t nothin’ to me at the time. I didn’t feel a damn bit of guilt.”
I nodded. I figured he was lying, but I knew better than to call him on it.
“They say killin’ and revenge don’t help anything, son. They say it doesn’t make you feel better and it doesn’t solve any problems.” The old man took off his hat and leaned forward, looking me straight in the eyes. “They’re wrong.”
“It’s not justice, though. It’s not order or law.”
“Nope.”
“It’s just hard, you know?”
“You lookin’ to do the same thing?”
“Nope,” I said too fast.
“Well, you watch out when you do. There’s all kinds a trouble out there, and some of it you don’t want to be messing with.”
I nodded.
“Son, you and me are Crows. You know what a Crow does when there’s a storm coming?”
I made no response. I had heard the lecture a dozen times before.
“Crows leave when there’s a storm comin’. They get out of there and find a safe place to ride it out. They don’t fly into it, J.D. That’s how they survive.”
I remembered the first time he had told me that years ago. I’d been getting ready to fight in the Civil War. I hadn’t listened back then. Sitting there in front of my pa, I thought about how different my life might have been if I had.
“There’s trouble coming, son.” He shook his head. “Trouble like you ain’t seen before. Even in your little war.”
“You’ve been sayin’ that for twenty years.”
“It’s been true for twenty years. You just gotta open your eyes.”
I looked around the grimy diner. The light flickered sickly in its socket as the owner polished a filthy counter with a filthy rag. “My eyes are open, Pa. I’m not seeing it.”
A forkful of pie found itself stuck between the plate and Pa’s mouth. He kept raising it halfway and then putting it down again. Finally, he set the fork down.
“What’s anyone done that you got trouble with, boy?”
I thought for a minute. Daniel Brown had been murdered. I hardly knew him, though. Sam’s death had been on my watch. While that got me riled up, it didn’t really warrant the sort of anger I was feeling. What was it?
“They fucked with my people, Pa.” I instinctively looked around for a hat that wasn’t there. “They made us weak. They made us suck the land dry so we could feed them. They told us we’d fought them to a draw twenty years ago. Then they proceeded to take from us everything that was ever valuable. And for it, they gave us nothing. Well, there’s nothing left for us. There’s no law and order anymore. There’s not one damn shred of justice left in this land that isn’t made by me, personally, and I’m tired of it.”
I stood and ran my fingers through my hair again. The old man just smiled up at me.
“I’m done with it. I always thought tradition was the foundation everything else was built on. Even the outlaws and modders didn’t mean anything unless they had something to rebel against. I thought the old beliefs were something to be respected. Laws meant something, you know? There was something that said what’s right and what’s wrong.”
“God’s been dead a long time, son.”
“It ain’t some god I’m talking about. There was that crow out in the desert. Now I know the crow’s an omen. Lot of that stuff’s been forgotten, but I know the crow’s an omen. Well, when I saw that bird I knew it was my time. It must have been, right? Except when it came my time I thought I’d always just take it. I didn’t. That crow of death came for me and I turned my back on it.”
His grin was something comical now. He looked like a proud father ready to pat his little boy on the head. Then his expression soured.
“Son,” he said. “You’re going to want to know something. I got a call for a bounty just before I heard you on the horn.”
I turned to leave. “I’m not going to be a hunter like you, Pa. Even if I’m giving up being a lawman.”
I nodded to the owner as I left the diner and pushed my way out into the heavy night air. Fat raindrops were just starting to fall, making big dark marks on the dusty parking lot. Pa stood up to follow me, but I didn’t slow. In a few strides I got to my bike and swung a leg over it. The engine roared to life.
“Son, wait! You gotta see this.” He pulled out a glow cube showing a wall of flickering text. “Got it just about an hour ago.” He was shouting over the roar of the jets. “Wanted for the murder of Daniel Brown! Bounty’s out, dead or alive!”
“Who?”
He swiped across the screen a few times and then turned it to show me the photo. It was the same stock photo of me that the station used to use for promotional items.
“Who the hell do you think?”
Our eyes met. For the first time, I thought I saw concern in his expression. There was something resembling what you’d expect from a worried father.
“Who signed it?” I shouted over the roar of the jets. Fat,
hot raindrops were rolling off of the old man’s hat and pouring to the ground. They felt good on my face and washed the grime out of my hair.
“There’s a new sheriff in Dead Oak.” Pa read from the cube’s text. “Sheriff Balon Swayle. Watch your back, son.”
I punched the accelerator. The skidder bucked a few times, pulling to one side and then the other, showing a will it’d never shown before it’d been shot. I wrestled it under control, yanked the bars up, and rocketed into the air.
Chapter 15
The night had been almost over when I’d left the diner. I really had intended to skip town. Justice would sort itself out without me. Or it wouldn’t. I’d feel guilty about leaving, but sometimes a person just needs to carry around a little guilt. When Pa showed me the bounty on my head, though, I knew I couldn’t just run. Bounty hunters had a knack for efficiency and brutality. I needed to figure out what was going on and resolve it before heading out of town. Even if I managed to cross into Canada, I could never really be sure I was free.
According to Court there were two people around the night Daniel Brown died. One of them was a beautiful lady with braided hair and tanned skin. The other one was the preacher Henry Sharpe.
That’s why I was there stuffed like a sardine into Henry Sharpe’s church. I’d ridden through the red sunrise and arrived just as the congregation was finishing stuffing itself into the dark red hogan twenty kilometers outside of Dead Oak. The building resembled a bunker more than a church, but the cross outside marked it as a place of worship.
Old Jack was there, along with the dentist Frederick Cornsley. I recognized a dozen faces in the crowd. Religion had been nearly dead and marginalized for generations, so seeing so many people I knew in such a small place was a little disconcerting. I had no idea who might have arrived before me to hide in the crowd. I kept my head down.
Baptists, the southern variety in particular, are the most rotten stink ever made on this dying planet. They preached harder than I’d ever seen any fanatic preach. They had been a thorn in my side for years, figuring their god’s law was a few steps above mine. They might have been right, but I still had to work hard to keep them in line.
Justice in an Age of Metal and Men Page 12