Tat don’t speak, and I drive with just the wheels making noise.
“Do you get used to it?” Tat say.
“No. I ain’t. But I ain’t got a helluva lot of lead on ya. I did my first killin’ a month ago, is all.”
“I killed a priest. Last year.”
I drive. Pass a camera, side the road. New way to catch speeders. Used to be, if you broke a law and no one saw it, it was like a bear shittin’ in the woods and no one to hear it. Or a tree, the pope, something. Nowadays it ain’t like that. They say you got to mind the law whether someone lookin’ or not.
But they morals—that the kicker. Nobody got to mind a moral at all. Ever. You can’t legislate the morals. So we can’t fart without bustin’ a law and they know, but lie like the fuckin’ devil, cheat yer neighbor—
I hit the brake.
“You see that? Fuckin’ idiot. Didn’t even look.”
Nobody got to give a shit about nobody. Make a man want to live in a hole.
Take the exit I recall from last week when the whole funshow started.
“Every day or two people come back to the house,” Tat say. “It’s best to park here and walk.”
I ease to the side. Got a good burst of dry weather and the dirt don’t sink. Close the doors. Outside is quiet, save the eighteen-wheeler tires rollin’ by.
Tat lead into the brush, follow a trail set by deer mebbe. I follow best I can, in no time barely touch cane to ground. Calf seeps with the work—feel it on the leg and I bet that sock about nasty—but the exercise is good and the lungs still fill deep with air, and with the sky turning gray and the simple wonderment of silence, I’s so happy I could shit a diamond, and never civilize again.
And Stinky Joe out there.
We climb the hill and with elevation look down on all below. Head west, keep level, and if my right leg was three inch shorter that’d make it easy, on account the slope. Then Tat lead to a trail mebbe used for hauling logs and the going is easy.
“Oh shit.”
Tat turn. See me look downhill.
One, two, six vehicles. Got the Coconino department Blazers, black sedans. People jog back and forth, arms waving. They form a line and start forward, not like they’s looking close, but like they wanna cover land fast.
“We’s fucked.”
“Hurry.”
Tat trot ahead.
“I can’t move like that.”
“Hurry.”
I hobble ’long.
“Hey, dammit! Where Stinky Joe? At least mebbe I see ’m ’fore they take me.”
She disappear around a bend.
Cold on my nose. Snow. Mebbe she think to find a spruce with low branches, wait the fuckers out.
I follow ’round the bend and there she’s stopped, eyes bold and smile on her face. If they saw us they can’t now.
“Why you grinnin’?”
“You saved me. You saved my sister.”
No sparks. No red. No juice or nothing.
She know it the end. This is where she’s gonna leave me to fend fer myself. Pat my hip. Got the Judge.
“You go on. Got yer whole life ahead. And all that. We appreciate ya.”
Snow fall like it come off the back a truck. In two second her hair is sparkled. Sound’s muted. Air thick with it. Look out and hardly see a thing.
I nod, and she stand still as a planted post. Got the creepy feel, can’t ken shit. Then like she decide something, she smile bigger. Turn around and face the rock behind her.
Dogs bark below, like a mile off, though it’s a couple hundred yard at best. They got the hounds on us.
Tat put her hand on the rock.
It move.
She push.
Rock swing on a hinge.
Though I see, I don’t believe. Look a fairy to fly out. But Tat say, “Come in, quick.”
I follow. She push the rock back and it latch.
Swallow hard. Some kinda dungeon. Like mebbe they made it for World War Two ... ’cept the cement ain’t old. They’s a light down the way. Tat lead. I follow. She open a door, jog down some steps. Air get warmer and warmer.
Open into a room with sofas and chairs and smells like tacos. Big ass television on the wall, show the whole hillside below. The snow falling. Men running. Everywhere.
Light on in the other room. Another girl stand in the entry, wary.
I nod.
She dip.
“This is my sister,” Tat say. “Corazon.”
“Howdy.”
“We have food,” Corazon say.
Tat’s brows is high and hopeful. Tears in the eyes. Chin puckered. “Thank you,” she say.
I slap her arm.
“Shit.”
Leg start to fuss and I want a seat so I take it. Sofa made out rubber, something. Firm. Lift a leg to the table and rest. Watch the television takes up half the wall, tuned to the hillside below.
Men below walk side by side, stumble and slip. See one already found hisself a punji pit. They’s two others make a fireman’s carry.
A blast of dirt and leaves pull the eye. Land mine.
A way off ... way off ... they’s a mound snow look like a dog, look like a ghost. He bound off, mebbe got a place for the winter.
Stinky Joe, I hope you got a place to winter.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Stinky Joe inhaled air sharp with cold. He saw the sky far off turn deep silver and smelled the change in the air that meant snow.
It was time to leave.
He'd revisited this place daily since Stinky Baer disappeared in the machine. He'd been bleeding, but not in the way of a dying creature. And something had changed in his voice.
When Joe first found Baer in the cave they became fast friends. Baer’s voice was like cooing, and his hands scraped all over his back and belly, a divine sensation impossible to reproduce on a tree.
But his voice had changed. His laughter found a new target.
Baer was injured and bleeding. The girl who'd caused him grief was back, and when Baer passed out after shouting her away, Joe had followed, untrusting her intent.
There was something wrong with her. She emitted coldness like a scent. He crept up on her, and watched as she built a fire and cooked meat that Joe recognized as forbidden. His heart recoiled at the smell.
She offered some to him and Joe recognized the scent as the woman in the house. The girl spoke to him in a voice he distrusted, but the scent of roasted meat confused him, and the girl had human authority. He allowed her to place a thin green cord around his neck.
He watched her leave and waited for her to return. She never did, but she left him the human meat, and when the fire died and night was fully upon him, Joe ate the forbidden meat and, hearing coyotes, knew he must free himself of the green line. He chewed through it.
Although he explored the land for game and shelter, every day he returned to where he left his master bleeding in the snow. He smelled him near the dead man, and killed the other when he tried to wound him from afar.
Every day he looked for Baer, and at last saw him with the girl who tied him with the green string.
Joe watched a long while after they disappeared into the hill. Then he turned and bounded away.
POST SCRIPT
Human trafficking is very real and no matter where you are, very local.
To find nearby resources in the fight against human trafficking, visit here:
http://www.globalmodernslavery.org/
Ready For More Nat Cinder?
You’ll find him in TREAD. Preview TREAD here…
Chapter One
Flagstaff at sundown. I drink a quarter of my flask of Jack in two gulps. There’s a crew of secessionists in the cabin behind me, bitching about the same old. It’s endless, and that’s why it’s got to end.
I’m on the porch wondering when I should tell the boys to get lost. They got guns but won’t use them. They got the same reasons to be pissed as I do. A tax code seventeen thousand pages long, for shit�
��s sake. But they’d rather suck beer and fart than defend themselves against the almighty Machine. And what am I doing? Sitting here drinking whiskey and thinking about a dead woman’s feet.
One more gulp of Jack and I'm going in. The only one that has any stones is George Murray—the bastard’s lugging around a set of cannonballs. The IRS closed his bait shop and he's stockpiling black powder. He's raising a fuss and I want to hear it.
“We ought to firebomb ‘em,” Murray says. “Hit the IRS, courthouses, Fish and Game. Then they’ll know what we’re about.”
I stand at the door beside a floodlight swarming with moths. Murray and Charlie Yellow Horse, a white man with a sixteenth of Apache blood on his mother’s side, are nose to nose.
“Fucking moron,” Yellow Horse says.
“Talk! Talk! Let’s blow some shit up!”
It’s about damn time they show a little spirit. So far all the boys have done is snivel. They come from all over. One smokes Dominican cigars and the rest chew Copenhagen, but when it comes to bearing arms, they each take their panties off one leg at a time and when their asses are bare, they bend over.
Except Murray. Praise Jesus.
The fire lights surrounding trees in an orange glow. I get the feeling we’re not alone. Might be a chipmunk in the leaves, but this kind of group attracts attention. All we do is talk, but it’s the wrong kind of talk.
Tree branches break the outline of the moon and the breeze carries a storm. The sky flashes but no clap follows. Electric is in the air.
Murray talks and my head snaps back to the show.
“I’m sick of being a goddamn government mule,” he says. “Any of you ever have the IRS chain your shop shut? Pay this, pay that! I’m sick of it!”
“Why don’t you do something about it, shithead?”
“Well, well. The Indian who dyes his hair black is talking tough. Why don’t you reach down and see if those wampum nuts of yours are big enough to join me?”
“Behold the modern White Man,” Yellow Horse says, and jabs Murray’s shoulder with his closed fist. “Talk.”
Cowboy boots shuffle on the plank floor as fat men slide back in a hurry. Yellow Horse shoves Murray through the screen door. Murray stutter steps past me and falls off the porch. He’s a heavy man, but Yellow Horse has thrown him. He rolls and leaps to his feet.
Yellow Horse steps outside and they square off in front of the fire.
Someone cries, “Whooo-hooo!”
Yellow Horse is quiet now. He wishes he was a real Apache starving on lichens and grass, killing men with knives, flitting across the rocks like a ghost. Instead, he’s a grad student at ASU writing papers about the evils of assimilation, wearing a leather necklace with a silver arrow as the jewel.
Murray puffs his chest and throws his shoulders back, fists high, arms parallel, like an Irish pugilist. And I know Yellow Horse is praying to Red Cloud to make him a man, just one damn time.
Murray has the pounds, but Yellow Horse is sinewy and lithe, his stance like a coiled spring. His hair catches firelight and the illusion is strong. He circles Murray.
Yellow Horse lunges. They lock arms on shoulders and dance around the fire.
“Gittim Murray!” Merle cries.
In a minute they’re gasping tired and I imagine this fight will reach the back-slapping, good-buddy stage before anyone bleeds. Sure enough, Murray steps back and drops his arms.
“You don’t know when to stop running your dick-licker,” Yellow Horse says, and drives his fist into Murray’s jaw. “Maybe if I bust it, they’ll wire it shut.” He throws another and the sound is wet with blood.
Murray touches his mouth and his hand goes to his chest like a man patting a wallet he can’t feel.
Yellow Horse sends a flicker of a look to me. Our eyes lock.
Yeah, I saw it.
I watch the woods again; hair stands on my neck. You get a sixth sense as a Ranger; I have a seventh.
Yellow Horse charges and grabs Murray by his arms and jerks him forward. Murray falls and throws him with a practiced move—the kind you see on TV. They roll and Yellow Horse is back on top with his knees pinning Murray. Yellow Horse punches him below the right eye. Murray bucks, but can’t marshal the strength to throw him. Yellow Horse thumps him again.
Maybe there’s hope for this group.
I take a couple slugs of Jack. I’ll need a refill soon. I’ve felt like I’ve been in a river for the last fifteen years, sucked along to a destiny that includes this kind of action. Maybe these men have something to do with my end, after all.
Yellow Horse sits on Murray’s chest and gives him a sudden jerk like a dog snapping a rabbit’s back. Murray’s shirt rips open and a flat black rectangle is taped to his chest.
Yellow Horse tears it off and tosses it to me.
“Gee, Murray. This ain’t too good,” I say.
“It’s a voice recorder,” Yellow Horse says.
“You didn’t get this gizmo at Radio Shack, didja?” I say.
Murray coughs bloody spit and hocks it to the side. “Just trying to protect myself.”
“How’s that?”
“I was afraid y’all’d say I was instigating shit here.”
Yellow Horse pops Murray in the jaw. His knuckles glow red when he pulls back and wails one more time.
“You was the one talkin’ about blowin’ shit up. Wouldn’t that be entrapment? Murray?”
Yellow Horse looks at me and his eyes pass to the group behind me.
“You’re under arrest for conspiracy and sedition,” Murray says.
“Sedition? They didn’t even get the Rosenbergs for sedition,” Yellow Horse says. He grins; he’s holding a law enforcement officer’s life in his hands. He’s lost himself and in this moment has a chance to measure against an old standard.
The group has ten members. We haven’t named ourselves a militia or printed some redneck banner to fly on our Jeeps. We haven’t voted for leaders, though they all know I’m the one with the dough. None has ever taken action on behalf of the others, save springing for a kegger. And yet the central government—the Machine, as Yellow Horse calls it—finds us dangerous.
It’s the worst confirmation. My country’s made me its enemy.
It’s formal, now.
Yellow Horse watches my face as fire reflects little orange dots in his eyes. His jaw is frozen: a white man transforms himself into the savage he always wanted to be. He’s fluttering on the cusp of metamorphosis, and just when I think his courage will fail him and leave him with nothing but a good story, his hand falls to his side.
I jump. “No!”
With blurring speed Yellow Horse unsheathes a boot knife.
His arm whips forward and he slices Murray’s throat. Murray writhes and gargles blood; Yellow Horse flips the blade in his hand and drives it into Murray’s forehead. He stands and turns to the rest of us, trembling with courage.
“Jesus,” I say, though the Almighty had nothing to do with it. One of the boys behind me throws up on a lounge chair.
Murray is dead but shaking. I smell piss and blood and remember Gretchen, my wife, suspended above me in a flipped Ford Bronco.
The smell just about breaks me and I turn aside.
Yellow Horse watches me. I finish my flask and wipe my mouth with my sleeve.
“Well,” I say, “they’re on us. This group is done.”
*
By dusk the temperature had fallen from mid-afternoon highs of one hundred-twenty to a reasonable hundred-five. The crowd cheered Governor Virginia Rentier as she cut the yellow sash. It fluttered to the ground and she stepped to the surveyor’s mark, cognizant as kiln-baked clay pressed pebbles against her soles.
Mick Patterson, Chief of Staff, placed the handle of a round nosed shovel in her palm. The crowd stilled.
“Here?” She indicated a stake with a pink ribbon. A bronze man with day laborer shoulders and a black five o’clock shadow nodded.
Holding the shovel vertical, she dro
pped it. The earth rejected the point without a chip.
“Eh, Meez Governor—you wan mi hombre bust ee dirt?” A different man from the crowd spoke. He wore ragged flannel and his back was stooped. Even in the purple street-lamp glow, his face was crinkled like the scorched clay underfoot. Rentier followed his eyes, trod a few steps, and returned holding a pickaxe level at her hips.
The second man nodded at her. The first grinned.
She swung the pick overhead; her left hand slid along the shaft and she whipped her back and buttocks. Her heel broke. A small cloud of dust popped free as the metal shank plunged to the rounded swell of the handle. Vibration stung her hand.
Holding the man’s eyes, she lifted with her knees and pried loose a heavy chunk of baked clay.
The stooped man smiled wide and his compadres cheered.
Votes.
Rentier held their eyes, pair by pair, until she owned them. Finally her gaze settled on Dick Clyman. The Republican Minority Leader of the Arizona House stood with the others, his pale Anglo face distinct from the Hispanic throng, his mouth lopsided in a Dick Cheney grin.
This wasn’t his kind of event, and Rentier was suddenly aware that she stood lopsided.
Her fingers closed toward an old burn scar high on her right cheekbone. She swept the willful hand through her hair, waved, and kicked off both shoes. The group erupted. Photo bulbs flashed white under the streetlamp glow. She steeled herself to step across the sharp pebbles.
“I—”
A frenzy of cheers silenced her.
She passed the pick to Patterson, took the shovel and tossed aside a spade of loose dirt. Camera flashes sparkled like a Flagstaff snowstorm.
“I am honored,” she said, and waited for their whooping and clapping to subside. “I am honored to break ground for the Arizona Center for Undocumented Americans. Across the street, the Chavez Center stands as a proud reminder of the Hispanic community’s contributions to Arizona. Now the ACUA will join the fight to expand the civil rights of the Undocumented, hear their voice, and amplify their voice.”
Pretty Like an Ugly Girl (Baer Creighton Book 3) Page 24