by Anna Oney
After Fawn had secured the holster to her ankle, Blythe lifted his end with one big breath and hard tug, and she did the same. The veins in Blythe’s neck and forehead were immediately pressed beneath his skin, exposing themselves. They managed to lift Tye’s body about two feet with wobbly arms and heaving breaths.
Fawn whistled twice for Juniper to lean forward. Once she had, Blythe’s jaw dropped, forcing his mouth to gape wide open.
“Come on,” she said, heaving the load toward Juniper’s back. “Help me.”
They positioned Tye’s body belly-down on Juniper’s back. Between heavy breaths, Blythe removed his shirt and wrapped Tye’s dripping neck with it to lessen the chance of leaving a trail for the NWA to follow. Fawn was both grateful and uncomfortable at the unexpected ditching of his shirt. Raising her right brow, she became enraptured by his smooth, olive skin, and the sweat glistening off his chest.
Hunter . . .
Blythe turned his back on her, rushing toward the blood that had gushed from Tye’s throat and stained the ground. It was then that she noticed a white trail of what she assumed to be bird excrement down the middle of his neck.
Bless his heart, she thought, widening her eyes at Juniper.
Blythe picked up Tye’s rifle, situating the strap across his chest.
“Smart animal you got there,” he said, swiping the back of his wrist across his forehead. “I’ve never seen a horse do anything like that before.”
Juniper nickered, shaking her mane as Blythe approached them.
“I think that was a thank you,” Fawn replied, scratching behind Juniper’s ear. “Oh . . . you’ve got bird poop on the back of your neck. Did you know?”
His lips curled back from his teeth as he let out a light gasp, slapping his palm against the back of his neck. Swallowing hard, he brought his hand before him. With a wrinkled nose, he stared at his hand, covered in half-dry white goop.
“That’s unsanitary,” he muttered.
“Yes, well,” Fawn said, patting him on the back. “It happens to the best of us.”
Fawn gave two quick clicks of her tongue for Juniper to start moving. Once she had, Fawn took hold of Tye’s pant leg to keep him from tipping over. Blythe strode toward them to catch up and promptly wiped his fouled palm on Tye’s shirt.
“There’s a place the hogs frequent,” Fawn said, once Blythe had made it to the opposite side of Juniper. “A wooded area of upturned earth near a curve of the creek. I’ve always assumed that’s their resting ground. I found Mr. Primous’ remains near there. If they’re home when we arrive, we’ll sneak up and dump Tye about a hundred yards away from their camp. The smell of blood should draw them to the body.”
“And then what?”
“And then, well,” Fawn replied, envisioning Mr. Primous’ half eaten face. “We wait until the business is done.”
“I always thought pigs were herbivores.”
“They’re more opportunistic animals when it comes to food. They’ll eat anything.”
“How long do you think it’ll take?” Blythe asked, turning green. “For them to finish Tye off?”
“I’ve seen them devour a deer carcass in less than five minutes. Bones and all. It may take them a little longer to gobble him up.”
Arriving twenty feet before the rear entrance, Fawn caught sight of Vance leaning against the outer wall of the back barrier. Ducking his head under Juniper’s throat, Blythe stepped toward Fawn before she could emerge into the clearing. He held his arm out in front of her, raising his forefinger to his lips. Leaning forward, he lifted his arm to the height of her chest.
“It’s clear,” he whispered, taking hold of her hand as they stepped into the clearing.
As they came into view, Vance’s gaze was pulled toward their joined hands, prompting Fawn to snatch hers away.
Juniper turned to the right, facing the trail they’d need to travel to find the hogs’ resting ground, giving Vance a better view of the body strewn over her back. One second, Vance was leaning against the outer wall of the barrier, and the next he was cast from the wall as though someone had pushed him from behind. The blood from Tye’s neck had steadily worked its way through the fabric of Blythe’s shirt. In less than five minutes, Blythe’s off-white shirt had turned crimson red.
“Damn Blythe,” Vance said, gawking at Tye’s lifeless form as they passed by him. “That cat tore Tye up good.”
Resuming his position beside Juniper, Blythe glanced over his shoulder toward Vance.
“You’re correct,” Blythe replied, quickening his pace to match that of his company’s. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
“Okay, okay,” Vance said, waving them off. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
***
Once they’d hit the trail, Blythe voiced that they needed to return to Vance before sundown. Fawn knew the trail would be clear of traffic because her neighbors enjoyed the NWA’s planned meals. She imagined the line being wrapped around the mess hall as they continued distancing themselves from the back barrier.
For a moment, the tracks they were leaving concerned her. The worry vanished as she realized their tracks could easily be mistaken for those of people who had visited the woods earlier in the day. Hunting used to be the main reason her neighbors frequented the woods, but now they parted from the community’s walls to bathe in the creek with a supply of the NWA’s lye soap. Before the NWA’s arrival her people used their own soap that they’d made from pig fat and ashes.
They came to a point in the trail where Fawn knew they needed to take a right into the woods. A clean passage wouldn’t come for another mile. If they wanted to return before sundown they’d have to cross there.
The differences between the smooth terrain they’d been traveling and the rugged, unforgivable environment of Fawn’s beloved woods were vast. Briar vines, poison oak, mosquitos, snakes, and cypress knees that preyed upon the shins of greenhorn hunters, were only the miniscule trials that Blythe would have to endure.
Fawn tightened her grip on Tye’s pant leg.
“It’s time for us to head into the woods,” she said.
Juniper moved along with Fawn’s steps to the right, and brushed up against Blythe’s side, causing him to stumble. In the process of steadying himself, he grasped Juniper’s mane, forcing her head to tilt.
Juniper drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, and audibly, through her mouth, releasing a spray of spittle.
“Sorry, Juni,” Blythe said, having regained his footing. He gently patted Juniper’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean to pull so hard.”
Fawn grinned and found herself thinking, Juni . . . I like that, as they cleared the small embankment separating the woods from the road.
Under the cover of trees, Blythe began swatting the mosquitos that encircled him. Juniper shooed away the annoying insects that landed near her rear by swishing her tail. The mosquitos seemed to crave nourishment from Fawn’s company more than they did from her. She noted that she’d only felt the bloodsuckers’ sting three times.
The denseness of their muggy surroundings had framed Fawn’s forehead and the sides of her face with wisps of baby hairs. The sponginess of the rotting leaves and pine needles beneath her feet was her least favorite sensation.
During their journey, Fawn repeatedly glanced at Blythe. When his face wasn’t scrunched as he swore at the flies, there was something oddly familiar about him. It was as if, in another life, their paths had crossed. Maybe it was the distinctive shade of his olive skin or the clumsy way he carried himself.
“How much longer?” Blythe asked, as they approached their first hour in the forest. He smacked his forearm, smearing blood across his flesh as he squished a mosquito. “I’m being eaten alive.”
“Not much,” she replied, dodging a spiderweb intertwined with a low-hanging branch. “The creek is up ahead.”
“I think I can hear it,” he said, craning his neck with a glint in his eye. “Its flow, I mean. It’s quite soothing.
”
She closed her eyes for a moment. She listened to the wind dance across the trees, gracing her ears with the soft creaks that could, in other, less dire circumstances, lull her to sleep.
“If you can get past the bugs, everything about this place is soothing,” she replied. “To me, anyway.”
“I can see how you’d feel that way.”
“It shouldn’t be long before we start to see hog tracks. Once we catch their scent, we’ll get as close as we can before we dump the body.”
“And . . . they’ll just come?”
“Hopefully.”
“God, help me,” he whispered, sweat drizzling down the side of his face. “I don’t think I’m mentally prepared for this.”
Fawn squatted, bringing her fingers to the ground.
“You better get it together, my friend,” she said, rising to her feet. “Because luck is on our side. These here are fresh tracks.”
“Al-already? Are you sure?”
“Yup. I would say God is on our side, but I don’t think He’d want any part of this.”
A shaky breath exploded from Blythe’s lungs as he looked at the ground covered in hooved prints. Hyperventilating, he leaned against Juniper’s side, clutching at his chest.
“I, I don’t think I can do this.”
“Listen,” Fawn replied, stepping toward him. “I’m not used to being around men as squeamish as you. To be honest, I’m stumped by it. Being in the medical field, you’ve been around blood and guts, haven’t you?”
“Of course, I have,” he said, dangling his arm by his side. “But I’ve never served a man up for dinner before!”
Fawn stared Blythe down, refusing to respond to his outburst, and clicked her tongue twice for Juniper to start moving. Once the horse complied, Fawn turned on her heel and began trudging forward. She hadn’t gone far before she caught sight of a man’s form walking beside her out of her peripheral vision.
“You can turn back any time,” she said, staring forward. “I can tackle the rest on my own. I guarantee you, it won’t hurt my feelings.”
“I always knew,” a raspy voice said, stopping Fawn in her tracks.
She whipped her head to the right, sending her braid over her shoulder. A sudden chill traveled its way up her spine, transforming her skin into gooseflesh. The man Fawn had assumed to be Blythe had disappeared. An uneasy feeling exposed the rod in her neck and ripped through her chest.
“Hold up, I’m coming,” Blythe called behind her. “I’m coming.”
It was then that she remembered where she’d previously heard Amos’s statement about the cardinal, and how the bird had led him to find her in the woods. The scarred blind man her family had cast from Back Wood’s walls said those same words to her.
She stared at the spot where a pair of feet were imprinted on the ground — where a man should have stood. A rush of questions ran through her mind.
Has he died? Am I doomed to be haunted by his vengeful soul? Will his spirit feed off my guilt to sustain itself? Was that a, a thing?
“You okay?” Blythe asked, having reached her.
“Did you hear anything?” Fawn asked, raising her chin. “Just a few seconds ago?”
“No ma—” he began and shook his head. “No, I didn’t.”
“A voice?”
Blythe’s brow was furrowed in a stumped expression. He looked to the ground that had held Fawn’s attention.
“Can you see them?” she asked, her voice wavering. “The footprints?”
“Yes,” he said, nodding slowly. “But I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for them to be there. Being this close to water means that someone may have come here to bathe.”
“That doesn’t explain what I heard,” she countered, her chin quivering.
“What was said?”
Shakily tucking a few stray hairs behind her ear, Fawn envisioned the day she and Pete had escorted the scarred blind man out. The guilt she’d felt since that afternoon had left her struggling to acknowledge that it had ever happened to herself, let alone to someone she barely knew.
What would he think of me? Yes, she’d tried to convince her siblings to allow the man to stay, but she’d also aided her brother in dumping the man on that deserted stretch of land.
“Forget about it,” she replied and clicked her tongue for Juniper to start moving.
Blythe didn’t pry as they continued on with their task. The silence filling the space between them made the air feel even denser. After traveling another half hour, they came up on a sharp curve in the creek. Eighty yards or so from where they stood, a group of hogs were in the process of tearing up the ground with their tusks.
Fawn guided Juniper behind the cover of a massive cypress tree draped in Spanish moss and motioned for Blythe to join her. The tree’s large roots were exposed on the bank of the creek, and partially submerged in the water.
“They must be hungry,” she whispered.
“Why do you say that?” he asked, peering from behind the tree.
“They’re digging for worms. That’s the best spot to find fishing bait.”
“I’m confused,” he said, squinting his eyes back at her. “Are you saying they’re going fishing?”
“Good night, Blythe,” she retorted, stomping her foot. “No.” She tied Juniper’s reins to the lowest limb of the cypress tree. “I’m just saying that’s how I know what they’re digging for.”
“Right,” he said quietly, bringing his palm to his forehead. “I’m an idiot.”
“Just stay focused. Now, help me lower Tye to the ground.” She grabbed hold of Tye’s right side, prompting Blythe to take hold of his left. “We need to be as quiet as possible. Anything could spur the hogs into motion.”
As they were in the process of lowering Tye to the ground, a snake slithered past Blythe’s foot, skyrocketing his knee into Tye’s back. Just as the snake disappeared into the creek, his grip on Tye faltered, transferring all of Tye’s weight to Fawn in an instant. Before the obscenities that were swirling through her mind could escape her mouth, she tipped backwards with the body falling on top of her. She landed in a puddle of stagnate water, littered with twigs and a rotted, half-eaten floating possum.
Tye lay strewn across Fawn’s middle, making it hard to breathe as his weight crushed her lungs. She glanced up at Blythe, whose face had gone ashen.
Useless, she thought, turning her attention to the hogs, relieved to see they were undisturbed. Thank God.
“Help,” she mouthed, squirming beneath Tye’s form. “Get him off me.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, grabbing hold of Tye’s legs. “I’m so sorry.”
Fawn pushed while Blythe tugged. Once the body was removed from her torso, Fawn came to her knees. Pebbles and gravel were half buried along the muddy creek bank, embedding themselves into her leggings. She glanced at the possum, floating belly-up.
We need to get this done, she thought. Or we’re going to be floating belly-up.
The only thing that made her pause was her notion that every man, woman, and child were God’s creations. She figured He’d look down upon the desecration of one of His children’s bodies. At some point, though, during Tye’s transformation into his version of a man, he’d deviated from his Creator’s word, becoming a misogynistic, hateful man.
When she’d killed the others on the road that had resorted to violence to steal from her, she’d buried their bodies out of respect. Their intentions weren’t to strip her of dignity or relish in the act of breaking her spirit. Their intentions had simply been to survive. So, despite their transgressions against her, they had deserved a proper burial.
Blythe excused himself. His nerves had gotten the best of him. He held his stomach, vomiting into a bed of wild ferns.
“Pssst . . . pssst . . .”
She peered across the creek where she believed the noise had come from and caught a flash of coral out the corner of her eye. Cautious, Fawn turned her head to the right. A woman who looked
to be in her forties knelt beside her. The skirt of her coral dress hung over her knees as she floated nearly a foot above the earth. Stella came into view beside the woman, steadily chewing on the end of a stick.
Fawn’s eyes cut to Blythe’s heaving back.
“Don’t worry,” Joy said. “No one can see or hear me unless I allow it.”
“But—” Fawn began, as Joy brought two fingers to Fawn’s lips.
“You’ve done got yourself into a world of trouble,” she said, cupping Fawn’s jaw. “I can hear your thoughts. We’ll talk that way. We don’t need Blythe thinking you’re crazier than he already believes you to be.” Chuckling, Joy looked to Blythe puking in the ferns and patted Stella’s head. “Get Tye’s body in position. Let us worry about the rest.”
Joy and Stella disappeared, leaving Fawn beside the edge of the creek. She took Tye by the legs and dragged him from behind the cypress tree. Pausing to catch her breath, she set her sights on the hogs, about eighty yards away. If the NWA went searching for Tye’s body and found his rifle covered in blood near the resting ground of a band of wild hogs, she figured they’d assume he’d lost a battle with the hostile creatures.
Blythe turned from the wild ferns, wiping the bile from his lower lip and chin. He stared after her with his brows stretched into his forehead.
“I could’ve helped you,” he said, as Fawn lowered Tye’s feet to the ground.
Sweat glided from her hairline, soaking into her arched eyebrows. She strode toward the cypress tree and eased Tye’s rifle over Blythe’s chest.
“You were too busy losing your lunch.” She tossed the rifle beside Tye’s body. “Let’s get to higher ground.”
Fawn guided Juniper down the slope toward the creek with Blythe trailing close behind.
“Will the water hurt the pistol?” she asked, almost forgetting that she’d strapped the weapon to her ankle.
“It might. Here,” he replied, holding out his hand. “I’ll put it in my pocket.”
Without question, she unbuckled the strap. Blythe hadn’t been the best sidekick, but she figured if he’d meant her any harm, he would’ve made a move by now. The tentative smile that began at the corner of his mouth conveyed to her that he was surprised by her lack of objection as she placed the pistol in the palm of his hand.