by Anna Oney
“Yes sir,” Johnny replied, standing up. He bent over to lift the back of Fawn’s chair with her still in it. “You got it.”
The two guards escorted Big Sneed toward the flaps with him screaming numerous threats over his shoulder at Fawn. She believed all of them. He nearly tore the left flap from the tent upon exiting.
What a tantrum, she thought, as her nerves began to settle down. Baby Sneed is more like it.
Asher waited until the legs of Fawn’s chair became fully balanced.
“Well,” he said, and laughed, peering from Pete to Dr. Wenze. “That escalated quickly.”
Fawn brought her hand to the back of her head, feeling a tender, small bump rising.
“I still want to see what’s inside,” Fawn interjected, putting a stop to Asher’s laughter.
Pete looked to the ground, shaking his head, and contributed his first words to the interrogation.
“Please, sir, show her. So, we can send her on her way.”
The air was stolen from her lungs in this instance. Chin quivering from the shock of her own brother’s hurry to get rid of her, she tried holding back her tears.
“Are Marie and Axton anxious to see me gone, too?” she asked.
“They don’t want anything getting in the way of a better life for their children, Fawn, so yeah, of course they are.”
“Yes, please,” she said, cutting her eyes to Asher, as her body reeled from betrayal. “Show me what’s inside.”
Asher slid the rolled-up plans from the cylinder, spreading it out on his desk. He motioned for her to stand and ordered Johnny to stay close.
Drawings of two tall buildings with rows of windows up and down had been sketched on a huge piece of parchment. These buildings were surrounded by fences with barbed wire tangled along the top. Are these fences meant to keep intruders out? she asked herself. Or keep people in? Numerous poles with straight wires running to and from each other had been labeled, “power lines.” What stuck out to her the most was that none of her neighbors’ dwellings were included in the drawings.
“Where are everybody’s homes,” she asked, raising her eyes toward Asher.
“We plan to condense everyone into smaller spaces, dividing everyone into these two buildings.”
It’s a cage, she thought, taking a step back from Asher’s desk. They mean to cage us.
Taking advantage of the silence, Asher continued. “We do that so that, when the time comes, we can distribute the electricity evenly.”
“What if someone doesn’t want to be a part of it?”
That someone being me.
“Not an option,” Asher said, leaning forward as he laid his palm flat on the plans. “Everyone must comply.”
“Brother,” she said, turning to face Pete. “Have you seen this?”
“Fawn—” Pete began, rising from his chair.
“They mean to cage us!”
“Daddy ruined you with his suspicion and paranoia,” Pete said, walking toward her. “It’s in your marrow to be disagreeable.”
“It wasn’t Dad’s—”
Lacing Switch . . .
“It wasn’t his fault,” she continued, fidgeting where she stood.
“I can’t help but wonder what you would’ve been like if you were allowed to be a kid. Maybe you wouldn’t be seeing red all the time.”
Fawn jabbed her finger into Pete’s chest.
“Don’t you dare—” she began, her face reddening.
“You’ve been against them from the start,” Pete said, wincing at the pressure she made on his chest.
“Of course, I’ve been against them from the start,” she said, her voice wavering. “That’s all we ever were to them. Savages that need to be caged. That need to be controlled!”
“Fawn,” Asher cut in. “I think it’s that time. Johnny,” he said, snapping his fingers. “I’ve had her weapons and horse taken to the back barrier. All that’s left for you to do is escort her to her tent . . . or tepee, whatever the hell she calls it, and let her pack the rest of her things. Make sure she vacates the premises promptly.”
Her feet stayed rooted to the ground as Johnny tried moving her from where she stood. She gave in, but her eyes never left Pete’s as she was taken from Asher’s quarters. An overwhelming sense of loss traveled through her veins, lingering in her heart. She was being kicked out of the only place she’d called home.
Outside the tent, a scuffle to her right drew her attention. Big Sneed had Vance by the arm. Big Sneed beat Vance as he dragged him toward the tent where Fawn had been imprisoned.
No, no, no, she thought, as Johnny tugged her in the direction of her tepee. Lord give him strength. Where’s Blythe?
As they neared her place of solitude, she noticed Ezra, Cooper, and Fenton huddled around the entrance of her tepee.
“Aunt Fawn!” Reesa yelled, running up the dock that stretched to the middle of the pond. “I thought you’d never get out,” she said, having reached Fawn and wrapped her arms around her aunt.
“What’s going on, man?” Ezra called, charging after Johnny who broke Fawn and Reesa apart. “I’ve been asking to see her for the last five days! And now she’s being kicked out?”
“You best step down, nigger,” Johnny said, raising his rifle. “Or I’ll put you down.”
Blowing up, Ezra flew at Johnny. Fawn pushed Reesa to the side, lodging herself between the men about to fight. Cooper and Fenton came rushing to Fawn’s aid, trying to hold Ezra back.
“This is not the way, Son,” Cooper whispered, placing his hand on Ezra’s shoulder. “Stop this now.”
“That’s right, boy,” Johnny sneered. “Best get back to your shop while you still have one.”
“Son of a—” Ezra began, lunging forward.
“Stop this!” Fawn exclaimed, shoving against Ezra’s chest. “The man’s got a loaded gun.”
Fawn threw her arms around Ezra, hoping to distract him. He reciprocated, embracing her tighter than he ever had. He gently lifted her from the ground, backing away from Johnny, who narrowed his eyes at Ezra.
Ezra pressed his lips to Fawn’s ear, and whispered, “I won’t let this stand. I swear it.”
He eased Fawn’s feet back to the ground, squeezing her hand. He brushed past Johnny’s shoulder as he strode back to his blacksmith’s shop, cursing under his breath.
“The rest of you need to move along,” Johnny demanded, waving a hand over his shoulder. “Go on. I won’t ask again.”
Cooper and Fenton took turns hugging Fawn, swearing that they’d pray for her safety and wished her well. When she asked where Amos was, Cooper replied that he was too upset to see her off. The last person to leave was Reesa.
Fawn knelt before her niece, letting Reesa cry into her shoulder.
“I-I hate him!” she wept, her entire body heaving with sobs. “Why is Dad letting this happen?”
“Don’t say that,” Fawn replied and stroked Reesa’s back. She took hold of Reesa’s shoulders, staring the girl in the face. “He’s the only father you have.”
Johnny cleared his throat, nudging Fawn’s back with the barrel of his weapon.
Fawn remembered Ezra’s words.
“The only thing that matters is that the people we love know we love them.”
“Listen, we don’t have much time,” she continued, tears stinging at her eyes. “I love all of my nieces and nephews,” she said, choking up. “But I love you the most. I’m not supposed to pick favorites, but it’s the truth, and I’ll say it again.” She kissed Reesa’s cheek. “I love you the most.”
“But,” Reesa said and sniffled, rubbing her blotched face, “I already knew that. I love you, too.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The pistol that Blythe had promised to hide inside her tepee was nowhere to be found. She’d tried easing her mind by telling herself that Blythe must have run into a mishap when he’d attempted to stow it away.
He wouldn’t have kept it for himself, she thought. He wouldn’t have.
She packed her furs, her moccasin boots for winter, an extra pair of clothes, candles, her training bow, sinew she’d previously prepared for making arrows, and a bag of iron arrowheads Ezra had molded and gifted her on her thirtieth birthday. Johnny hadn’t been aware of the arrowheads as she stuffed them in the bottom of a spare quiver made from the hide of a deer. Before she passed through the flaps of her tepee, she’d almost forgotten her volume of Henry David Thoreau’s collected works.
It was a relief to Fawn that Asher had stayed true to his word, leaving Juniper and Fawn’s weapons at the back barrier.
***
Fawn had spent her first day on her own trying to make contact with Hunter. After she dropped off her supplies at their cabin, she’d headed for the Bogan Farm, where she was told she wasn’t permitted to step foot on the property. When she asked if Hunter could speak to her outside, the crooked-nosed guard on duty shoved her backward, nearly pushing her to the ground.
For four weeks, Fawn had roughed it on her own at the Boom Hole. During that time, she’d cased out the Bogan Farm, coming to the realization that there was no way in without being detected. She knew something had gone awry when Hunter hadn’t shown up at the cabin after their planned two weeks were up.
She’d spent day after day making arrows for the hunt and for her defense. Since that fateful night on Lacing Switch road, Fawn had always made it a point to think ahead. Having the sinew prepared beforehand sped up her arrow-making process. Sinew was created by pounding deer tendons between rocks, and then separating them into stringy fibers.
First, she searched tirelessly for hickory tree branches she could use as shafts for the arrows. They needed to be as thick as her pinky finger and a couple of inches longer than the distance from her armpit to her fingertips. By the third day, she was satisfied with having found a hundred. Scraping the bark from the shafts was her least favorite task as it was the most tedious — not to mention the splinters she had to dig from her fingers. This time, however, she didn’t mind the work as it kept her from stressing over Hunter’s well-being. Finished with that task, she sat the shafts to the side to dry out for a couple of days.
The constant whining and torment of the horseflies caused her to gain an involuntary swatting tick, even when the insects had called it quits for the afternoon.
Ezra had made her fifty iron arrowheads. To make up the rest, she split small stones with her hatchet and ground them on the surface of a flat rock to shape them. Once the shafts were dry, she cut notches no deeper than the shafts themselves at the end of each one for the arrowheads.
Every hour or so, she took a small break near the edge of the creek, sloshing her feet through the cool water. The trees, cypress knees, and brush hemmed the meandering flow of the creek. It was the sound of the rushing current that brought peace to her ears.
After the first week, Fawn felt she was neglecting Juniper. She began designating two hours of every day to spend time with her closest friend. Fawn walked Juniper three miles to graze the greenest meadow. It brought a smile to her face to watch her gallop playfully around the meadow, nickering and bobbing her head up and down. Fawn would lie in the tall grass, savoring the random tweet of birds and hum of dragonfly wings, which made her crave Amos’s bear hugs.
When she returned to the Boom Hole, she got right back to work. She used at least eight inches worth of sinew for each shaft to secure the arrowheads. Before she could use the sinew, however, she had to do something that activated her gag reflex — chew on the deer tendons she’d turned into leathery binds. Samuel had taught her that saliva dissolved the collagen that held the tissue together, making the sinew work like glue.
At night, the whistling drafts that cut through the cracks in the walls shook the ill-fitting windows and door, and kept her awake. She was lucky if she got three hours of sleep every night. Many times, she pictured herself lying inside her tepee back home, listening to the soft chirps of crickets and the orchestra of bullfrogs inhabiting the pond.
Nearing the end of the second week, the colors of the leaves began to change to a reddish-orange. Fawn had combed the ground for bird feathers she could use as fletching. Strangely, every feather she found looked as though it belonged to a cardinal. After splitting each feather down its spine, she trimmed it to size.
By the middle of the third week, she’d searched for hours and hours for enough sap from the trees to glue the fletching to the shafts. After acquiring the resin, she set it aside in a woven bag and ground the charcoaled wood from the fire into dust. Two years of trial and error had taught her that sap by itself wasn’t an effective adhesive.
In a pot full of water, she boiled the woven bag with the sap inside. Any residue that seeped through and floated on top of the water was pure resin. She emptied the woven bag of the impure resin and collected the sap from the water. Four pinches of the charcoal dust were combined with the resin until the sap changed color. This process was repeated over twenty times before she’d created enough glue for a hundred arrows.
Tuckered out and dreary, Fawn was focused on scaling her catch of the day, when Juniper let out a distressed neigh. The rustling of leaves and muffled sound of approaching hooves caused Fawn to cut her eyes over her shoulder.
Pete?
She began to rise from the log she sat on, but decided to stay put. The betrayal festered deep within her — a wound she swore would never fully heal, not even with time. It had her grappling with rising from her bed to meet each day.
“Sister,” he said, dismounting.
“Brother,” she replied, still focused on her fish.
Pete walked around her, as she refused to face him.
“Did you have anything to do with Tye’s death?”
“Another interrogation,” she countered, peering up from her fish. “Is Asher out there hiding somewhere just waiting to pounce?”
“Something’s happened.”
“Really?” she smirked, gutting the fish. “What’s that?”
A catch in his throat caused him to hesitate before he replied.
“Amos. Amos is dead.”
Her hands shook so fiercely that she dropped her knife. Her eyes swelled with tears as a memory of Amos hugging her flashed through her mind.
“H-how?” she asked.
“He drowned. Amos made a scene in the mess hall a couple of weeks ago. He kept asking when you’d be back, but what made everybody pause was when he brought up a body. A body he and Gooner came upon outside the barrier.”
Oh God, she thought, her stomach in knots. It was my fault.
“The mess hall was packed full of soldiers, Fawn,” Pete continued, ducking his chin. “Amos mentioned your name and another guy he didn’t know the name of. Amos was questioned afterward. I was there when Asher tried to get him to identify Vance as the other man.”
A gust of wind sent dead leaves scuttling across the small porch of the cabin.
“When Amos cleared Vance’s name . . . they released both of them. But only one turned up dead.”
Fawn looked to her trembling hands. Her palms were covered with fish scales and blood. She wished it was Asher’s blood instead.
“Amos wouldn’t set foot in the water,” she said. “It was hell just getting him in the washtub. He didn’t drown . . . not without help.”
Those closest to Amos were aware of his unrelenting fear of water. Perhaps if the NWA had gotten to know the people they intended to rule, they would’ve gone a different route.
Pete sat on a log across the campfire from Fawn.
“I know.”
“How soon after Amos’s fit did he turn up dead?” she asked.
“Six days,” he said, resting his elbows on his knees. “I’ll ask again. Did you have anything to do with Tye’s disappearance?”
The campfire crackled and popped, causing Fawn to flinch.
“His disappearance,” she replied, nodding slowly, “yes. But his death . . . no. Bob did, though.”
“Bob? Is he the
other guy Amos mentioned?”
“No. Bob’s a bobcat. He ripped Tye’s throat open when Tye decided to attack me for breaking the rules.”
Pete’s brows threaded together.
“Regardless,” he said, shaking his head. “They’ll be coming after you next.”
“I’ll put up more of a struggle than poor Amos. You know what that means.”
“Any blood you draw, they’ll have it coming to them.”
Fawn stood up and strolled to the edge of the creek. Sloshing her hands through the water, she peered over her shoulder.
“How’s Uncle Cooper and the family doing?”
“Uncle Cooper suffered something Dr. Wenze called a stroke. He can’t move the right side of his body and he’s been bedridden ever since. Fenton hasn’t said a word since it happened. We’ve been having to force Aunt Lizzie from Amos’s grave so she can get some rest. And that’s not all . . .”
Fawn jerked her body around, thrusting her hand in the air.
“What else is there?” she asked, fuming.
“A week ago, I had Dean and Davlyn split up to deliver messages to Clancy and Laken that something was up.”
Fawn shook her hands out and held them over the fire to dry them.
“Okay, and?” she urged Pete to continue and sat beside him.
“Dean’s the only one who made it back, but he’s been locked up in that box ever since.”
“Where’d you send Davlyn? Stagecoach or Caddo?”
He looked her gravely in the eye, taking in slow and steady breaths.
“Clancy. If he did something to her,” he replied, trailing off. “I swear to—"
“Let’s not be too hasty in questioning the loyalty of one of our own,” Fawn interrupted, grasping his forearm. “We need all the help we can get. Besides, think of the hell Aunt Claire would give Clancy for turning against her blood. Davlyn’s her great-niece and Amos was her nephew. You really think Clancy would risk betraying his wife’s family?”
“Not if he’s smart,” Pete replied, chuckling lightly.
“If Clancy had switched sides, Aunt Claire would’ve gotten word to us by now. She’s pretty resourceful for her age.”