by Tom Abrahams
“I think so,” Lou said, hoping her tone was convincing. “Rudy is a strong man who can overcome about anything. Plus he’s got Norma nursing him back to health. I bet she’ll have him doing chores around the house in no time.”
David appeared to like that. He chuckled and agreed. Norma could be a taskmaster, but in a good way. Someone had to run things on the property, and she was the best to do it.
“That’s you, Momma,” he said, squatting and tracing the outline of her shape on the ground. “I tried to make you as beautiful as you are.”
“You flatter me,” she said, “and I think the drawing makes me look prettier than I am.”
She made a silly face, crossing her eyes and puffing out her cheeks. David’s hand was at his forehead, shielding his eyes from the sun. He chuckled again. This time it was closer to a belly laugh.
Lou studied the drawing of herself. He’d made her tall and slender and had dressed her in a long, narrow skirt, and there was what looked like a sideways-turned baseball cap on her head. There was a star with the letter H in the center of the cap. One hand, though, was markedly longer than the other.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“What?”
“My hand,” she said. “The right one.”
David clucked. “Really, Momma?” he asked, his mouth twisting to the side with disappointment. “That’s your knife. One of them anyways.”
Lou wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Sure, she always carried a knife. It was habit. It was religion. But that her son would make sure to include it as part of her said something that maybe she wasn’t willing to admit.
Violence, or the threat of it, had always been a part of his life. Nothing she did could have saved him from that. And in so many ways, she believed the threat of violence, the preparation for it, and the stress surrounding its possibility were more harmful than the violence itself. She’d done him no favors in that regard. But what choice did she have?
As her father had prepared her for the inevitable, didn’t she bear that same obligation, same responsibility? Of course she did. She cleared her throat and motioned toward the stick figure next to her. “Is that your dad?”
“Yes. He’s taller than you. He’s taller than everyone.”
There was one more figure to the far left of the rogues’ gallery. That figure loomed over the others. It was the tallest, the broadest. It wore a cowboy hat on its head and boots on its feet. Extending from each hand was the crude but unmistakable shape of handguns. Although Lou knew the answer to her question, she asked it regardless.
“The one on the end is the tallest. Who is that? Who’s taller than your dad?”
David pivoted in his squat, his shoes crunching on the asphalt. He glanced at the figure on the left and then used his fingers to push himself up. He stood at his mother’s side, using her body to shield him from the sun. “That’s Marcus Battle, Momma. You said he was a hero. I figured I’d make him big. All heroes are big, right?”
A lump swelled in Lou’s throat. She swallowed against it, her eyes stinging from pooling tears she was trying to keep at bay. She cleared her throat and forced a weak smile. “No, heroes don’t have to be big. They come in all sizes. You’re a hero, dude. No doubt.”
David squinted, though it was evident, as he stood in the shade she created for him, that it wasn’t because of sunlight. It was confusion. He frowned and scratched his cheek, leaving a smudge of white dust on his face. “Me?” he asked. “A hero?”
“Of course.” Lou winked at him. “You’re my son. How could you be anything but a hero?”
A broad grin brightened his face. His cheeks flushed beneath the pale smudge.
“C’mon,” she said, “let’s go get some water.”
Slung over her shoulder, connected by a strand of leather bootlace, were two canteens. She carried a third in her hand. Motioning for David to join her, Lou started the walk south toward the dry, caked edge of the reservoir.
They stepped onto East Main Street without checking either direction. There was no point given the absolute absence of traffic.
The only sounds, at first, were their steps on the hard surface of the state highway and the distant chirps of birds. Once they’d crossed the highway, they were in a neighborhood. A street sign, bent and almost illegible, told them they were on Overlook Trail. Both sides of the narrow pitted road were lined with dead trees. Lou thought it might have been beautiful at one time, before the drought took hold. There were homes on either side of the road. Some of them were built on concrete foundations that sat above the ground; others were mobile homes in severe disrepair, their skirts bent or missing, the cinderblocks on which they stood visible from the road. Plumbing, where people hadn’t salvaged it, hung in mazelike tangles stretched between the ground and the underbellies of the homes.
They followed the road south, past an intersection that would have taken them west, and another that would have turned them north again. After a few minutes, they reached a clearing devoid of silvery tree trunks or developed property. To the west, the land sloped gently downward toward a sea of dried mud veined with cracks that gave it the appearance of shattered clay pieced back together but not yet glued.
They walked a hundred yards before the land dropped. On both sides of them, stretching like fingers out across the dried mud plain, were wooden piers that ended with ragged docks and modest boat houses. There weren’t any boats, and many of the long piers were missing planks. In some cases, posts were missing and the remaining planks hung precariously.
Between the piers there were charred remains of what must have been campfires. Desperate people needing warmth or something over which to cook food had used the available wood as a resource.
David walked alongside Lou in contemplative silence. She glanced at him and saw the concentration on his face, the wonderment at what they were seeing.
It was like walking across an abandoned planet, alien and new. Lou noticed David was looking at his feet now, trying to avoid the cracks in the ground as he walked. He hopped and skipped, as if playing a game, but kept pace with her as they moved farther from what had once been the shore.
Ahead of them and somewhat south, the sunlight glinted off the remains of the reservoir. The water was bright, reflecting the noon light like a mirror or a precious stone. Despite the evaporation of most of the reservoir, there was still plenty of water. Something between a small lake and large pond remained. It looked to Lou like an oasis in the middle of a desert, though the dried mud darkened the closer they got to what was now the bank.
Lou was sweating, her shirt clinging to her skin, as they reached the water’s edge. It was still. There was a thin film on its surface that gave Lou pause. She scanned the water, which stretched a quarter mile across. Farther down the bank, the water appeared to move. It wasn’t stagnant.
She lowered herself to the ground and started working at her boots. David watched her quizzically.
“I’m going to wade out there a little bit,” she said. “I think the water is better, less gross. Even with the filters, I’d rather have that water out there.”
After she removed her boots, she rolled her pant legs up to above her knees.
“Can I go in?” asked David.
“No. You can’t swim. I don’t know how deep it is. I won’t be long.”
David plopped down onto the ground. It was softer here and he ran his hands across its surface, like he was making a dirt angel.
Lou kissed him on the top of his head and stood. She stepped into the water, expecting it to be cool. It wasn’t. At its edges it bordered on hot, its shallow depth cooking in the daylight.
As she inched farther out into the water, the film parting around her as she moved, her toes sank into the crispy mud at the bottom. The water cooled the farther she went. When the water reached the bottom of her protruding belly, she turned to spot David.
She was much farther out into the water than she’d expected. David was where she’d left him, bu
t she was a good fifty yards from him if not farther. It was difficult to judge. From her spot in the water, the edges of the reservoir blended into the light brown clay at its banks.
“David?” she called. “You good?”
David raised his arm high, stretching it skyward, and raised a thumb.
Lou cupped her hands around her mouth and called out to him, “Love you.”
He mimicked her. “Love you.”
Lou offered a thumbs-up before turning in the water and taking a couple more steps. Once the water was cool at her feet, she uncapped the canteen in her hand and dipped it beneath the surface. The water gurgled and bubbled as the canteen filled with water.
Once it was full, she capped it and let it float on the surface. She slid her thumb under the leather lace on her shoulder and filled the connected canteens one at a time. When they were full, she draped the leather over her neck, resting the canteens on her chest, and fished the other from the water nearby.
She turned and waved to David. He waved back. She was focused squarely on him as she waded back toward the embankment. Then something caught her attention. The edge of her vision saw movement in the distance. She squinted and drew a wet hand to her forehead to shield the sunlight. It wasn’t there at first, but she swept the landscape, searching for movement. Then she saw it. A cloud of dust plumed on the far edge of the reservoir’s desert.
Lou’s pulse accelerated. Her chest tightened and her eyes flitted from the dust to her son and back. She pushed herself through the water, which seemed to bear more resistance than before. Her feet slipped in the mud, the sticky cake squeezing between her toes, as she trudged in long strides, working her hips and elbows to maintain her balance.
She started to call her son’s name again, but knew it wouldn’t do any good. There was nothing he could do without her help. It was better not to frighten him.
The dust cloud was a brown mist, lifting from the desert toward the pale blue sky. In it now, through the splashes of water in front of her, she could see dark figures moving. At first it looked like a single person; then it shifted and there were several shapes. Three, four, maybe a dozen of them. They were too small to be vehicles or horses, and the dust cloud was too small to be from anything but people on foot.
The water was ankle deep and warmer now. She was almost to the embankment. David sat there, oblivious to anything but his finger drawings in the moist earth.
Breathless, Lou stepped from the water and joined him on dry ground. With one hand she cupped the underside of her belly, her wet shirt sticking to her skin. She extended her other hand holding the canteen to David.
“C’mon,” she said, her attention split between him and the approaching threat. “We need to move.”
David took the canteen. His hands were caked with mud, as were his cheeks and forehead. His shirt was streaked with the reddish brown color of the reservoir’s bed.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Yes, but we need to get back to the horses. I’m sure they’re lonely over there across the road.”
David hopped to his feet. “Can I water them?” he asked. “I like doing that.”
Lou nodded and swallowed. She’d caught her breath, but her heart was pounding in her chest, in her neck, at her temples. She stuffed her socks in her boots and picked them up as a pair in one hand. Then she ushered David toward the houses and dead trees to the northwest.
“Aren’t you going to wear your boots?” David asked, carrying the canteen against his chest. “You’re barefoot.”
Lou was walking in short strides, her hips swinging like a race walker as she led her son away from the water. She didn’t answer him at first. He was jogging to keep up with her.
“Momma, did you hear me?”
To the right, east of them, the dust was a translucent brown fog. The figures were bigger now. There were people of varying heights. They moved in unison like troops marching toward battle. They were too far away for Lou to know if they were armed. She assumed they were and turned her attention back to her son.
“I’ll put them on when we get to the horses,” she said.
“Why aren’t you wearing them?” David was breathless now, his little legs working to keep pace.
Lou slowed a beat, still hustling but easing up for David’s sake. “I wanted my feet to dry.”
David didn’t speak again until they’d reached the road called Overlook Trail. The worn road was rough on Lou’s feet. Stray pebbles and crumbs of asphalt caught on the soft part of her low arch, jabbing the calloused pads beneath her toes.
Wincing, she had her hand on David’s shoulder as they hurried north. Glancing back, she could distinctly see the line of people. They were spaced evenly as they moved; two of them were armed. The others didn’t appear to be. Lou did a double take and stopped. David kept walking, unaware she’d turned her attention back toward the water.
“Hold up, David,” she said. “I’m looking at something.”
“The people?” asked David. He had seen them.
Lou stared at him for a moment, studying his expression. He wasn’t frightened, didn’t sense the possible threat. That was good. Or it was bad. Maybe he hadn’t lost all of his innocence yet. That was good. However, being too innocent in this world was not.
“Yes,” she said. “The people. I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with them.”
They were standing on the road, a cluster of trunks and a mobile home giving them cover. Lou narrowed her gaze, focusing on the group one person at a time.
They were still at a distance, and the sun darkened their features enough that she couldn’t make out anything other than size. Though from the way they walked, she figured the taller one at the front of the line was a man and so was the tall one at the back of the line. Both of them were armed. No doubt now. The people in the middle looked to be women and children. They shuffled where the men strode, hung their heads where the men held their shoulders back, their chins up. Lou scanned the line again and saw the familiar curve of a pregnant woman’s body on one, then two, then almost all of the women.
She knew what this was. Norma had warned her. This was why she hadn’t used a coyote, why she’d waited for Marcus to help her and Dallas move north. These were men selling women to a tribe.
Lou’s mind raced. The closest cities were Dallas and Fort Worth. They were north and west of Gun Barrel City, not too far. In a day or two these women would be slaves, their children raised to be soldiers. Lou glanced down at her son and then back at the women. It was then she saw the dust rising from between the women as they walked. Were those chains linking them together?
Lou’s grip on her boots tightened. She clenched her jaw, anger swelling in her gut. The fear and apprehension that had hustled her from the water was boiling rage now. She had to do something.
With her free hand she took David by his upper arm and pulled. Tugging him gently toward East Main Street, she formulated a plan that would free the women and keep her boy safe.
“David,” she said when they’d safely crossed the highway and reached their horses, “I’m going to help those people at the water.”
David offered his dirty hand to one of the Appaloosas. It sniffed and nuzzled his palm. “What am I going to do?” he asked, his attention on the horse.
Lou took the canteens from around her neck and looped them over the horn on the Appaloosa’s saddle. She ran her hand along its mane and faced her son. “I need you to stay here with four of the horses,” she said. “I’m taking one of them.”
David frowned. “Is that what heroes do?” he asked. “Stay with the horses?”
“Heroes do all kinds of things. And if you give these horses water and keep them company, you’ll be their hero.”
Lou knew leaving her son in the parking lot of a funeral home at the edge of an abandoned town wasn’t the maternal thing to do. And as she described to him his role, pangs of guilt gnawed at her. She thought better of it. “Change of plan,” she said.
“Come with me.”
She led David across the parking lot and around the side of the funeral home. At the back was a low, glassless window. She stopped there and peered inside, grabbing the lower edge of the wooden casement to lift herself onto the tiptoes of her bare feet.
It was dark inside the building, bars of light filtering into the space through the open holes where glass used to protect the interior from the elements. It wasn’t ideal, but it would do.
“All right,” said Lou. “I need you to stay inside the building.”
David didn’t ask her why or complain about the task. Both the interrogative and declarative resistance to her request were obvious.
“Remember the loud noises, the gunfire, at the barn?” she asked.
He nodded.
“There could be more of that,” she said. “And I want you safe. You’re safer in the building than you’d be in the parking lot with the horses.”
David’s eyes flitted toward the front parking lot where the horses were. He couldn’t actually see them from where they stood, but Lou imagined he could envision them clustered around the phone pole.
“What about the horses, Momma?” he asked. “I was gonna water them.”
“You can do that when I come back.”
He drew in a deep breath through his nose and let it out. It was the sigh of a tired child, the kind of thing that reminded Lou how young her son was, how much she was asking of him.
His expression relaxed and his mouth curled into a disappointed frown. “How long?”
“How long what?”
He rolled his eyes. That was a new thing. He’d clearly learned it from her. Or it could be Dallas. Lou rode her husband hard, she knew that, and it wouldn’t surprise her if, behind her back, her doting husband occasionally protested her demands with the silent protest of an eye roll.
“How long do I have to stay in there?” he asked.
“A few minutes. Less than the length of a bedtime story. I won’t be long.”
Lou hoped that was the truth. There was no telling how long she’d be. And what if she didn’t come back at all? She was a pregnant woman, alone, taking on what she supposed was a skilled pair of coyotes. They were men who bartered in flesh and would have no compunction about killing her or, worse still, enslaving her. Then what would David do?
