by Lou Cadle
She sat there, obsessing about the moment, listening to Dev’s breathing while he dozed, until she could stand it no longer. She grabbed her cell phone for the light, went past Mr. Lambert and said, “I’m going into the kitchen.” She had a vague idea of doing some menial kitchen task, bagging vegetable trimmings for compost, or doing an inventory of equipment. Anything to keep her mind off the cycle of thoughts before they drove her completely insane.
She had forgotten the prisoner. There he sat, attached to the sink. Sierra was about ready to turn and go when she changed her mind.
The place smelled of raw celery. There was no sound at all except the rustle of her clothes as she squatted in front of the man.
“Do you ever worry about what you’ve done?” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“You killed people in Payson, right? Raped? Stole?”
“I never raped. I had one of the girls who offered twice, up until Franco claimed her. But I never raped.”
“Just killed and stole.” It felt good to accuse him, good to know she wasn’t the only bad person in the world.
“We were surviving. Same as you.”
Maybe he wasn’t wrong about that. “Why Payson?”
“It was just where we went. We had to get higher. It could have been Prescott, I guess. The valley is so fuckin’ hot now. When the food ran out at the stores, we were able to acquire some elsewhere. But when the electricity stopped, we had to move or we’d have died of the heat.”
“So you formed a gang in Phoenix? Were these all guys you knew before?”
“Some of us. Some of us went to the same high school. But others joined that core group. Friends, cousins, like that.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
He’d seemed older.
“Had you ever killed a man before oil ran out?”
“No. I mean, I hadn’t even been in a push fight since sixth grade.”
“Crazy world we’re living in,” she said.
“It is. You understand. You won’t let them kill me, will you?”
“It’s not mine to decide. It’s the people that you’ve wronged.”
“Then I’m dead.”
Sierra suspected he was right. She’d never be able to atone for shooting Roy, but she wouldn’t root for this one to die any longer. She sighed. “I tell you what. I’ll remind them you gave us the location of the hideout, the extra ammo, and that you cooperated, and I think you should be exiled instead—driven somewhere in a car and let out to fend for yourself.”
“Thank you,” he said. “You won’t regret it. I promise you.”
“I’m not sure it might not be better to be executed,” she said. “It’s a new world out there. People who have survived? We’ve learned to defend ourselves. One man, alone, no weapon? I’m not sure you’d last long.”
“But I’d have a chance.”
“More than you gave some of them.”
He looked away, unable to deny the truth of what she said. Feeling remorse? Or shame? Or just sorry for himself about being caught?
It didn’t matter to her which he was feeling. She stood.
Or maybe it did matter. One last question.
She asked him, “You ever think about the people you’ve killed? Like in bed at night. Trying to sleep. Their faces flash through your mind? Tell me the truth. It still won’t change that I’ll put in a good word for you.”
He shrugged, still not looking at her.
What to make of that? He knew enough to feel ashamed of not feeling ashamed for the lives he’d taken. There might be a lesson there for her, but she was damned if she could figure it out.
“I’ll tell them,” she said, and she did, going to Mr. Lambert and saying what she’d said she would. She wouldn’t repeat it a second time. She doubted it’d factor into the Paysonites’ decision. But she’d made a promise, and she fulfilled it.
Lambert nodded. “I’ll mention it. But I don’t think it will sway opinion. I doubt any of these men will be left alive beyond tomorrow.”
“Your choice.” And your memory to live with.
All those other people she had killed, she hadn’t felt a moment of remorse. The hardware store clerk. All those faceless strangers. Emily’s molesters. Okay, the clerk and the molester—she’d still give herself a pass on those two. They deserved to die. And the last bunch, the men who’d come up from Payson to deal with them, the ones who’d used children as shields. But what about the others in between? They had been desperately hungry. Maybe they’d never committed a crime in their lives until they snuck in to steal their food. If the neighborhood had tried to talk with them, maybe no one would have needed to die.
How many had she killed of those? She tried to remember.
And she couldn’t. It might be ten, or two, or none. All of the shooting back at home had melted together in her mind. She could not have said how many she’d killed by this point if someone had a gun to her head, demanding she confess to them all.
There was only the one death that stood out, the one that mattered. Roy, a man decent enough to share the information about the canned food with her and worry that it be distributed fairly. Someone who had reached out to her after weeks of being jailed, hungry, filthy, and said he’d be proud to have a daughter like her.
“Sierra?” Lambert’s voice came to her, and she realized he’d been saying her name for a while.
“Sorry, was lost there.”
“You okay?”
“Thinking.”
“You were a million miles away.”
She wished she could get a million miles away from these thoughts. A billion miles. An infinite distance.
But she feared they’d be with her forever.
Chapter 17
Soon after dawn, Sierra was woken by a touch. She’d fallen asleep in the room with Dev, and Curt was shaking her shoulder, his touch gentle. She opened her eyes. Dev was gone.
“We’re letting the Payson men out of jail now,” he said.
“It’s all done?”
“It’s done.”
“Are they all dead?”
“Four prisoners, including two in here, but otherwise, they’re all dead or they ran.”
She reached for the desk to help herself stand. She was stiff, having sat on the floor all night. Curt offered a hand, and she took it. “How many were there, with the final count?”
“Seventy-six dead on their side. Four on ours.”
“Joan? Kelly? Arch?”
“No, no one from our street. One from the other neighborhood, and three Payson people.”
Then she remembered. She shut her eyes. “Oh.”
“It’s bad, but not that bad. We had surprise on our side—thanks to your plan.”
She didn’t want any credit for any of this. Not any more. “How many injuries?”
“A few. Jackson, the guy you were with, is among the worst. He’s in a bed in town for now, and a medic from town is with him. She says he’ll live, but she’s worried about nerve damage in his back if they move him today. Joan’s injury hurts, but she’ll heal.”
“I guess she’ll be moving back here now that it’s over.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll kind of miss her kids. And that dog, though she’s useless for much of anything.”
“Can’t bark and wants to kill the chickens. I can’t disagree with you there.”
“Misha likes her.”
“It’s sort of good to see a kid running around with a dog, isn’t it? Seems like none of this ever happened when you see that.”
“If the dog isn’t good for anything,” she began. But she didn’t want to finish her thought. Was it reasonable to keep a dog alive these days, to waste food on it? Only if the dog did good work.
“I know. But maybe it’s good enough that she makes the kids happy.”
“We’ll lose the Payson kids too. Which is a good thing, if we think about food.”
“Som
e will go back to mothers and fathers. That’s a good deal. And that we rescued them and took care of them will go a long way toward making relations between us and Payson solid.”
“Is that going to be a problem? Have any of them said anything against us?”
“No. Not in my hearing. But eventually they will. Might take months, or might take years. They’ll talk about how Arch shot those guys that came up, I imagine.”
“And me. I shot the guy in my barn.”
“They’ll start to resent it. Or they’ll think of everything we have, and they’ll want it.”
“I hope not. I’d like to be done with war for a while.”
“Really?” He cocked his head and studied her face.
“Really.”
“I’m sure your dad will be happy to hear that.”
She felt a spark of something other than guilt and remorse and despair—irritation. “You two talk about me too?”
“Nope. I have eyes though.”
“Hmm. I have to find a bathroom.”
“I’ll wait outside. We’re going in ten minutes. The cars are right near here.”
“We aren’t going to stay and help clean up or whatever?”
“Tomorrow we’ll come back. Wes told them we’d come back down and have a talk—a negotiation—tomorrow at noon. Give them a chance to clean up, get rid of bodies, let the jailed men see their families and the families who won’t see their men return get over the shock of that news.”
“Might take longer than a day to get over that.”
“A lifetime. But at least they’ll know for sure within an hour.”
Just then a line of the Payson men walked past in the hall. She saw her science teacher, Mr. Alvarez, but he didn’t notice her. The men were all focused on getting out. Of course they would be, longing for their own homes.
She waited until they had passed, and then she used the bathroom down the hall. The toilet in here worked, wasn’t clogged with human crap the way the jail cell toilets were. But it didn’t flush very well. The whole plumbing system for the jail must be a mess. She wondered if they’d ever bother to fix it.
Also not her business.
She waited until another bunch of prisoners had been released and followed them out. The jail door was propped open. She emerged into a clear morning, the sky deep blue shot through with the last of the gray streaks of dawn. Before they were home, it’d be bright blue again. The longing for home hit her like a physical thing, like the smack of a board in her gut.
Curt was there, waiting, the closest thing to home she had right now, and it was all she could do not to throw her arms around him again and cling to him. She walked over, remembered her backpack, and went back to find it. Her rifle was on top of it. Then she emerged again, in better control of herself, and joined Curt. “I’m ready. More than ready.”
“Arch has the car waiting for you.” He led her across to the building where they’d fought the men, and behind to the parking lot.
Both cars were there, and she counted heads through the windshields and saw the right number. She was the last one to arrive. Everyone else was there, even Joan. “She’s coming with us?”
“Her kids are with us. And the other kids as well.”
“Of course. I’m not awake and thinking yet.”
“Hard night, huh?”
“The hardest.”
“If you need to talk about it, you know where to find me.”
“Thank you,” she said, and she went for the car Arch was driving.
Only when she sat next to Dev did she realize she should have said “same goes for me” or something like that to Curt. But the truth was, she didn’t want to listen to anyone else’s problems right now. For one thing, she didn’t think she had anything useful to say. No one needed her advice. But for the other, her mind was filled enough with her own troubles that she didn’t think she had space in there for anyone else’s.
She sat in the car next to Dev.
“Ready?” Arch said. “We have animals to tend to.”
Kelly said, “Pilar said he’d feed them if we weren’t back soon.”
Arch grunted. Same old Arch. It was something of a comfort that some things didn’t change.
Sierra turned to Dev. “How’s the hand? Your head?”
“My head is much better. My hand?” He glanced at his mother and then shrugged.
“Let her look at it if it hurts,” Sierra said, lowering her voice so his parents couldn’t hear. They were talking together up in the front seat.
“She’ll want to do more things.”
“If she wants to do them, they need to be done. You think your mother would hurt you on purpose?”
“Maybe,” he said, giving Sierra a crooked smile.
She tried to smile in return but feared it came off as more of a grimace.
She hadn’t told anyone what had happened with Roy. She didn’t want to tell anyone. And she didn’t know who to confess to. Joan? Arch? Whoever Payson chose as the leader of their town?
She thought about doing that, confessing, and being put in that stinking jail, awaiting their version of justice. That made her not want to tell anyone. If Jackson’s memory of the events became clearer, he might tell. And if he did, she’d admit to it, and deal with whatever happened. But right now, while emotions were high in Payson, it might not be the right time to bring it up.
Or she was being a coward. Maybe that’s all it was. She was a killer and a coward both.
Why did the world have to change like this? One second. It hadn’t taken more than one second for everything to flip upside down.
“Sierra?” Dev said.
“Yeah?”
“You just looked upset.”
“I’m okay. I’m tired of fighting. Tired of blood and fear. I want to go home.”
“We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“I know.”
“I—” He stopped, cleared his throat, and tried again. “I want to talk later.”
She’d forgotten, since waking, about his declaration of love to her. She couldn’t imagine dealing with this right now, but soon she’d have to. Maybe it’d give her something else to worry about, what exactly to say to him that might hurt him the least. “We will. When we’re both rested up and feeling better.”
“Were you hurt?”
His concern made her feel worse.
“No. Oh, yeah, I was nicked in the leg. I forgot.” The instant she said it, she felt it. Putting her ankle over the other knee, she worked her pants leg up. There was a scratch and dried blood—a smear of it, and then a line that had trickled down into her sock, well dried. She licked her finger and rubbed the blood off. It hurt. So she rubbed harder, relishing the pain, which was at least real pain, a physical thing, and not this simmering mass of feeling inside her that hurt in ways she had no idea how to fix.
“You’ll make it bleed again,” Dev said. “Is it a bullet wound?”
Kelly turned around and said, worry lines between her eyes, “Sierra, are you hit?”
“No,” she said. “I think I took a chunk of concrete from the sidewalk. A guy was shooting at me from above, and I think that’s what happened—a piece flew up and hit me.”
“Lot of force in something like that,” Arch said, and he started talking about ricochets and formulas for computing the speed of an object like the concrete.
Kelly said, “Arch, shush. I’ll take a look at that when we get home, Sierra.”
“It’s minor, really,” Sierra said. “Thanks, but it’s nothing a Band-Aid won’t take care of.”
“Clean it out really well. Pavement is filthy stuff.”
“I will,” Sierra said.
“I want a shower,” Dev said.
“After the chores are done,” Arch said.
“Arch!” Kelly said. “You will go straight to bed, Devlin, and stay there until your head doesn’t hurt one bit. And if you lie to me I’ll—I’ll….” She couldn’t think of an appropriate punishment, it
seemed, for she ended lamely with, “You won’t lie to me this time.”
“No, ma’am, I won’t.”
When they pulled up to the log that blocked their road, Sierra felt such a wash of relief, it weakened her. She wanted to see her dad so much, she wanted to run straight home. For the first time in a while, she felt the loss of Bodhi keenly. She wanted the uncomplicated love of a dog, to sit on the floor with him and hold him, rub his ears the way he liked. Tears sprang to her eyes as she thought of him.
“Sierra?” Kelly said. She’d opened her car door, gotten out, and was looking back in. “Are you sure you’re not hurt?”
“I just,” Sierra choked out. “I just want to see my dad.”
“Go on then, honey,” Kelly said. “We can deal with the cars.”
Sierra took her at her word, pushed open the car door, and climbed over the log. In no time, she was running up the road for home.
Chapter 18
Dev watched Sierra disappear.
“You too,” his mom said. “You go home and get straight to bed.”
“Can I shower first?” he said.
“If you make it fast. By the time I get home, you’d better have the sheet pulled right up to your nose.” She looked after Sierra, a frown creasing her brow.
“Sierra’s okay,” he said. “I saw the wound. It was just as she told you.”
“Then what’s wrong with her?”
“I think she’s worried about something. Or sad or whatever.”
“You sure?”
“Pretty sure, yeah.”
“Then you get going on home.” She turned to help Curt—who had just pulled up—and his dad deal with the cars.
Regarding Sierra wanting to cry and run, Dev was afraid it was his fault. That she was running to avoid having to talk to him about what he’d said.
What had made him say it? “I love you,” like some dope. Had he thought it’d be like a movie, and she’d throw herself at him and say, “Oh, I love you too, Dev, and now we’ll be together forever”?
What an idiot he was.
He had been pretty out of it with the headache when he said that, but it was just a headache. He should have shut up. Maybe if he had, he’d have been able to—to work on her. Woo her. Whatever. Convince her he was the one for her. But now he was worried he’d blown it forever. He’d spoken too soon. And she was running to get away from him.
