Clash of Mountains

by Chloe Garner

  “Why white?” Thomas asked. “Didn’t anyone tell her?”

  “I’m sure someone did,” Sarah said. “But it ain’t like Kayla to do what’s best or easiest when she’s got a different vision of a thing, is it?”

  Thomas laughed.

  “What happened last year?”

  “Men broke in for shelter, tossed the place up, bored.”

  Thomas nodded, followin’ her out to the cart and climbin’ up next to her.

  She gave the gelding a slap and he started up with a grunt, lettin’ her know he weren’t so excited to head out as he had been the first time, and she clicked to him, lettin’ him know right back didn’t matter - he needed to pick his feet up and get ‘em all home.

  “What happened with Lise’s and Peter’s baby?” Thomas asked. “Why did you have her?”

  Sarah glanced over.

  “Rhoda ain’t told you?”

  He shook his head. The night air in Lawrence cooled fast, and the humidity turned clammy against exposed skin. At first, it were a comfort against the heat of the day, but it’d turn sickly soon enough. Sarah liked Lawrence nights, but this weren’t a good season of ‘em.

  “Lise is leavin’,” Sarah said. “Baby’s Jimmy’s. Peter’s been drunk mostly since she were born. Name’s Ellie. Elaine.”

  Thomas was quiet for a time after that.

  “Where is she going?” he asked.

  “Out to the coast, gonna work for Jimmy from there,” Sarah said. “Rest of it, you’d do best askin’ him.”

  “Jimmy’s,” Thomas said.

  “Yup.”

  “I…” Thomas said. “I knew that she was interested in him. I think everyone but Petey did. But… I just… I didn’t believe he’d do that.”

  “He did,” Sarah said. “Weren’t much ashamed of it, when Lise let me in on it.”

  “Explains a lot about the two of you,” Thomas said. Sarah snorted.

  “That woman and I were destined to hate each other, with or without Jimmy Lawson bein’ involved,” Sarah said. “Different breeds of power what don’t mix at all.”

  Thomas whistled.

  “She was angry, I bet,” he said. “When the baby came before her doctor did.”

  “Weren’t anything else ever gonna happen,” Sarah said. “Just denial. Problem were Sid and Doc bein’ tied up at the Kirks’.”

  Thomas looked over.

  “What?”

  She nodded.

  “Rhoda delivered that baby.”

  There was a slow, stunned silence, and Sarah nodded at the comin’ dark.

  “Did a damned fine job, too,” Sarah said.

  “Why is she leaving?” Thomas asked. Sarah shook her head.

  “Could speculate, but it’d just be idle gossip. Likely nobody’s gonna know but her, in the end, though Jimmy’ll have a good gutfeel guess.”

  “Petey,” Thomas said, and Sarah nodded again.

  “Took him surprised.”

  “I don’t understand my brother,” Thomas said after a space of silence. “Don’t understand him at all.”

  “Ain’t tellin’ me nothin’ new,” Sarah acknowledged.

  “Anything… else happen while I was gone?” Thomas asked. Sarah snorted.

  “You reckon between a full-scale revolt with executions and a bastard baby, we’re still overbored?”

  He grinned.

  “We do things in big lumps,” he said.

  “Lumps what come so fast they just look like a torrent, you ask me,” Sarah said, and Thomas laughed.

  “It’s so good to be out of there,” he said. “Being there was like a sickness.”

  “You feelin’ better?” she asked and, triggered at the thought, Thomas coughed again.

  “Wasn’t feeling bad to begin with, I don’t think,” Thomas said. “Though it’s kind of hard to tell with as miserable as I’ve been the last few weeks. What’s in my head and what’s real and physical. Maybe I’ve been getting sick for more than just the last day and I was too much of a mess to even notice.”

  She glanced over.

  Odd thing for a Lawson to say, save Thomas.

  “Glad it weren’t nothin’ more’n sandworm,” Sarah said. “Doc’ll have ‘em cleared up in no time, the ones what ain’t more sick ‘n that.”

  “Some of them are going to die, aren’t they?” Thomas asked.

  “You know Sid better’n I do, reckon,” Sarah said. “But he and Doc was plenty concerned ‘bout those boys they took in for tonight. Don’t know what to tell you but that Doc has got tools and medicine he ain’t had available to him in closin’ in on a decade, and they got the best shot they could, for what gone on. Maybe y’all coulda given ‘em better care, up there in the hills, but I wouldn’t ‘a done a lot better’n you did, keepin’ ‘em up and goin’ without Doc to step in like he done.”

  “Thank you,” Thomas said, “but you’re being too kind. We should have been taking care of them the whole time, not locking them away where no one could see them, in hopes of preventing a panic.”

  “Maybe you done right in that, too,” Sarah said. “I can’t say much more about it, ‘cause Wade and Rich, even you, still got to answer to me ‘bout what went down around it, but mass panic ain’t a safe place for nobody, and all three of you knew it.”

  Thomas sighed, ridin’ alongside her the rest of the way in quiet. Sun had done a lot of the work dryin’ out the sand over the course of the day, and it slid out the way of the pull-horse’s hooves as he went, sloshin’ under the wheels with an odd whir, and tirin’ the poor beast out beyond reason, so Sarah let him pick his own pace the rest of the way. Night air, cool and wet, would be cool and dry the next night or so, she reckoned, though the hobflowers’d be here by mornin’, sprawlin’ over the ground and holdin’ the wet down another few days while they bloomed.

  She looked over at Thomas, thinkin’ of him and Rhoda, of what it must be like, feelin’ things like the two of ‘em did, not bein’ all dried out by Lawrence and Elsewhere, likes of Jimmy and Sarah. Weren’t worth it to her - she had too much hard in her life to be soft like that, but worth a passin’ thought on a still night.

  “There was a time,” Thomas said finally as they got in view of the house lights. “There was a time in Intec when I thought things were better. We were strong enough that we didn’t have to prove we were strong anymore, and mostly the boys stopped killing people… Jimmy was talking about opening a shipping company and Rich and Wade wanted to buy a car company and put their names on it… It was still… busy… like this, with always too much going on for anyone to do any of the real stargazing dream chasing like they would have had to, but it felt like… Maybe. You know. Maybe that was where we would get, and we wouldn’t be Lawsons like we’d always been.”

  “Then we got absenta and you got pulled back into it,” Sarah said. Thomas nodded.

  “Now we’re enforcers again, but professionally, this time. We aren’t going to be anything else.”

  “Give you a hint, Thomas Lawson,” Sarah said. “Lawsons ain’t never gonna be nothin’ else. No matter what medals you pin on his chest, what pretty haircut he’s got or how shiny his shoes are, he’s a Lawson underneath it, and he’s lookin’ for a man what’s lookin’ to cross him, and he’s gonna cross him first. Just the way of it.”

  Thomas sighed.

  “You always take away the best part of the dream,” he said, his tone friendly enough.

  “The part what ain’t never gonna happen,” Sarah agreed. “Feel bad, sometimes, doin’ that to you when you was just a kid. Spoilin’ everything for you, like I did.”

  Thomas shook his head.

  “Honestly? It meant I was allowed to dream even bigger and even more… recklessly. Because I knew that you were there making sure that nothing went off course more than you could fix. Even back then.”

  She’d been a bossy child, to him. But damn if she hadn’t loved him hard.

  She nodded.

  “Always took an interest.”
>
  “You looked out for me since before I can remember,” Thomas said. From Rich or Wade it would have been an attempt at emotional extortion, but Thomas weren’t capable of it. It was the only reason she’d ever let him be as close as he was.

  “Get good sleep tonight,” Sarah said. “If Jimmy ain’t got you busy all day tomorrow, I need you out gettin’ horses and carts sorted and back where they go. And then we’re gonna need every set of willin’ hands we got to get the boys settled back in, wherever they’re gonna land.”

  Thomas nodded.

  “I understand.”

  She pulled the cart to a rest and waited as the stable boy turned up - reliable as sunrise - to take the horse and cart and see to ‘em.

  “You got enough light in there to work by?” Sarah asked ‘im.

  “We have a lamp,” he answered, friendly, and took off with the horse, near a run just to keep up with the horse’s eager trot. Tired as he were, he knew he’d be gettin’ good oats in his feed, tonight.

  Sarah went up into the house with Thomas, feelin’ like she didn’t belong as she went in the door and found most of the family sittin’ at the table. ‘Tween Rich and Wade still bein’ in the hot box and the fact that Sarah weren’t the woman what had left that mornin’ - she was the woman she’d been ‘fore the flood came, but somethin’ had set her on a different way, for a time, and now she was back where she’d always been - she just wanted to go to her room and be still for a time.

  Jimmy was holdin’ Ellie, though, and Sarah weren’t gonna take herself away from the child just ‘cause the world outside weren’t the same as it’d been that mornin’.

  “She’s been crying all afternoon for you,” Rhoda said as Jimmy stood and handed the baby over. She were sleepin’, just now, and Sarah had to work at it, later, to figure what it mean to her that the child had missed her.

  For now, she just took her seat at the table, seein’ that the meal were done and not much mindin’, takin’ an eye to Rich and Wade.

  “You aren’t going to make me feel bad,” Rich said. “I don’t care what you heard or what you believe happened. I just don’t.”

  “Do you think the hobflowers will come up tomorrow?” Kayla asked. Rhoda made a motion and Kayla sat back in her seat. “What? It’s at least as important as whatever everyone isn’t talking about.”

  “It isn’t,” Sarah said, letting her accent drop. She didn’t know why, but it just didn’t seem to suit the dinner table tonight. “Because your husband might hang for what they did.”

  “What?” Kayla asked, leaning forward to look at Sarah, her palms pushed hard against the side of the table. “What do you mean? Wade said there were men who were angry at him for doing his job, but… You’re not siding with them over us, are you?”

  Sarah glanced at Kayla.

  “I’m just preparing you for what could happen. I’m not going to discuss it with anyone, at all, until I’ve finished all of my interviews, but I will hang them both, if that’s what the situation merits. If you lie to me and I find it out, you absolutely lose the benefit of the doubt and you walk yourself to the gallows.”

  The rest of the table had gone quiet, but one by one, they looked to Jimmy.

  “I have nothing to say until I have something to say it about,” Jimmy said.

  “You can’t hang Wade,” Kayla said. “That can’t happen.”

  “I have nothing more to discuss about it,” Sarah said. “And I know that the wedding is on a schedule. I just don’t want denial to turn this into surprise when it doesn’t go the way you want it to.”

  “Jimmy,” Kayla said. “Tell her. Tell her she can’t hang him.”

  “What about me?” Rich asked.

  “You’re probably the one who did it,” Kayla said. “The worst things he does, it’s because you talked him into it, or you were already doing it.”

  Sarah couldn’t find anything at fault about that logic. Sure, they goaded each other on constantly, but Rich was always the one to take it the final step.

  “We did what we had to do,” Rich said. “Like we always do. You women with your pretty dresses and your fantasy lives, you have no idea what it takes to put you into your pretty places.”

  “We’re plenty ugly all the time, as a family,” Peter said, picking up his glass and tipping it back. “All the time.”

  Sarah glanced at him, taking in his skin and his eyes, then dismissing him as still drunk. When he got sober, that would be when the problems started.

  “Well, maybe if you didn’t always do that stuff, you’d start liking yourselves better,” Kayla said. “It isn’t that hard. Don’t do bad things.”

  “Bad isn’t that simple,” Rhoda said, and Sarah thought of Kayla standing on the boardwalk in front of a body, holding a gun. Bad was certainly a complex idea until you untangled the story behind it.

  “You’re just saying that because Sarah isn’t threatening to hang Thomas,” Kayla said.

  “No,” Rhoda said, still darkly calm, careful, “I’m saying it because people have to do the things that this family does, the big things, because if they weren’t doing them, someone worse would step in.”

  “Then let them,” Kayla said. “Why not just be… good? Let the bad people do whatever they’re going to do.”

  “Because if the bad people get away with everything without people like us stepping in and getting dirty drawing a line, the people without the power to defend themselves suffer so, so much more,” Thomas said. There was an edge to his voice that drew both Wade’s and Rich’s attention.

  “What did you tell her?” Rich growled.

  “Everything I knew,” Thomas said, sounding like the end of a confession. “It shouldn’t have happened like it did.”

  “No fair just taking the story of a wimp,” Wade said. “He’s going to paint it all as our fault.”

  “Wimp?” Rhoda asked, her tone sharp.

  “Wimp,” Rich answered defiantly. “Not willing or able to do the things he had to to make sure we all survived. Freeloading on the rest of us to do the hard stuff so he can look like the good guy when it’s all over.”

  “He is the good guy,” Rhoda said.

  “Nobody is,” Sarah answered, and Rhoda jerked her head, frowning at Sarah with confusion. Sarah shook her head.

  “I can’t talk to you about it,” she said. “But there isn’t anything simple about it.”

  Rhoda blew air through her lips and glanced over at Thomas, then down at her place at the table.

  “All right,” she said.

  “No,” Kayla said, slapping the table with her palms. “It isn’t all right. I’m not making a wedding outfit for someone who’s threatening to kill my husband.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sarah said. “I can’t take it back. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen.”

  “Then you can just wear your dirty jacket to the wedding and stand in the back,” Kayla said, standing quickly, her voice high, tight. She dipped her head quickly at the rest of the family and fled. Sarah would have felt pity, were she a better person.

  Rhoda touched Thomas’ hand, then stood.

  “I’ll go talk to her,” she said, giving the same little head-bob to the table and leaving. Sarah looked over at the kitchen.

  “You s’pose they’ve still got a meal back there worth eatin’?” she asked, glancin’ to Jimmy, who let his eyelids drop a fraction. Permission. She stood and pushed her way through the door into the kitchen, findin’ the staff there mostly congregated from the whole house.

  “Is what they’re saying in town true?” Tania asked.

  “Any y’all been in town?” Sarah asked.

  They looked at each other and Tania took a step forward, pointedly ignorin’ the rest.

  “We had four young men turn up at the back door looking for food,” she said. “Happens three, four times a week. They get so they can’t stand the rations from down in town and they come around the houses, asking for anything they can get. I don’t think they know whi
ch one is which. I always ask about the stories down in town. It’s hardly uncommon for me to get a different story than the one Jimmy knows.”

  “Fair enough,” Sarah said. “What are they sayin’ in town?”

  “Open revolt,” Tania said. “That the working men are breaking trust with Jimmy and the rest of the Lawsons because of what happened at the shelter during the flood.”

  Sarah shrugged.

  “Don’t know how common an opinion it is, but I’m sure some of the boys got it.”

  Tania shook her head.

  “That isn’t the story that they’re telling me,” she said. “They’re saying that, whatever it is that happened over there, it’s enough to get the powers that be down in the camp moving against Jimmy.”

  “Hard to move against someone when they’re the ones with all the guns,” Sarah said.

  “We will hold a summit with the named men,” Jimmy said from the doorway. Sarah’d known he were there, and from the look of her, so had Tania, but the rest of the staff, includin’ the fancy-pants chef from the coast, shifted uncomfortably at the surprise.

  “You know how to find the main men?” Sarah asked.

  “I know how to ensure that I do,” Jimmy answered, lookin’ at Sarah, and she nodded.

  “We got talkin’ to do, tonight,” she said, then turned back to the staff. “What of my dinner?”

  Tania snapped her fingers and the staff moved into action.

  “Please bring plates upstairs when they’re ready,” Jimmy said. “We are going to bed.”

  Sarah looked down at Ellie, still in her arms.

  What a world.

  “Bottles, as well, and formula,” Sarah said. “She’ll be wanting her dinner soon.”

  The staff acknowledged her in pieces, and Sarah made sure the right people had noticed what she’d said, then she followed Jimmy out through the sitting room and up the stairs, past closed doors to the main suite, where he closed the door carefully behind him and turned to face her.

  “So?”

  “Thomas can tell you who to get up here to parlay, but those idiots killed one of the more important ones,” Sarah said. “Shot him in the chest, point blank, for being a threat.”

  Jimmy put his hands through his hair, face emotionless, then nodded to Ellie’s crib.