Wake of Vultures

by Lila Bowen

  The other girl pursed her lips, hunting for the right words. “With horses and cows, mostly, the male takes the female to get young on her. They don’t marry or mate for life. They might have a lead bull or stallion, but for the most part, the mares can allow the stallions to mount or kick the hell out of them, correct?”

  “I reckon.”

  “Well, people are different.”

  “No shit, girl.”

  Half bored and half fascinated with the discussion, Nettie sat up and fetched the Bowie knife off her belt and took to cleaning out her fingernails and trimming them down. Winifred finished with her soap and offered it to her, and Nettie pulled a face at the thought of smelling like goddamn dwarf flowers. Finally, Winifred just sat on a nearby rock and stared off into space until she found the words she wanted.

  “Nettie, imagine what life would be like if some stallions favored stallions and some mares favored mares.”

  “That don’t make a damn bit of sense.”

  Winifred shook her drying hair. “How much of humanity does? Why is white skin more valuable than brown skin? Why is a drunk, uneducated idjit like your Pap deserving of more respect than a hard-working, talented hunter like my brother, Dan? Why do the Rangers hunt only nonhumans when humans do even more horrible things to each other every day? If you live every day looking for sense, you’ll spend your whole life hunting the horizon.”

  “So?”

  “So not every person fits into the little rooms we build to hold them. There are infinite combinations of human and inhuman, male and female, brown and white.”

  “What’s infinite mean?”

  “Means so many you can’t count. Like the stars. Another thing I learned from the white man’s books. A creature is what it is, even if it can’t show its true face. And Hennessy did like you. Does like you. But Hennessy thought you were a boy, and he likes boys. And now, well… he feels like you lied to him.”

  Nettie’s chest felt like a five-pound pickle barrel packed with ten pounds of nails and a stick of dynamite. Nothing in her life with Pap and Mam had prepared her to understand what Winifred had just told her. Her world had been black and white—or brown and white. Brown is bad; white is good. Women are bad; men are good. Women were supposed to cook and clean and have babies, and men were supposed to do all the fun things, and Nettie Lonesome could do all the fun things if she pretended to be a man. Men and women were attracted to each other for the same reason all other animals joined. Everything had been tidy, if mostly unfair. And now this coyote-Injun girl was telling her that there was no good or bad, there just… was.

  “Nettie?”

  She flapped a hand at Winifred. “Shush. I can’t think with you yapping all the time.”

  Winifred stood from the rock, blocking out the sun and throwing Nettie into shade that was no less hot for its darkness.

  “I’ll get dressed and head on back, then. I understand it’s a lot to take in, but you have to remember… this is a good thing. What you were told isn’t always true. You can be whatever you want. Pap’s ranch is such a small part of the world. And in the end, what happened there doesn’t matter.”

  “You sound like your brother,” Nettie grumbled.

  Winifred smiled. “Thank you.”

  And then she was gone.

  To a person unaccustomed to choices, the truths that Winifred had laid down were boggling. But Nettie wasn’t so consternated that she sat around nekkid, waiting for some other cowpoke to show up and pitch a hissy fit. As soon as her clothes were getting close to dry, she wound her chest back under the wrap, tight as she could, and tucked her shirt deep into her britches. Everything felt crisp and hot and warm, and although she had always preferred a second coating of dust, she felt oddly free.

  Pulling back her sleeve, she inspected the exact color of her clean body. Without the lens of Pap and Mam, just looking at the color, it was right pretty, like the bottom of a burned biscuit. She’d always liked horses this color, a warm and melty blood bay tipped with black, or maybe a dark chestnut with flaxen mane, a right cozy hue. She didn’t have to see the tips of her hair to know it was growing out dark and thick, but she didn’t so much mind the wind on her neck. Guess that made her a bay.

  Standing up, she tried to catch her reflection in the clear water of the stream, but all she could get was a rough, wavering outline. In a town like Gloomy Bluebird, it was rare to find a patch of clean window and rarer still to see a mirror. Nettie might’ve had trouble picking her own face out of a lineup, unless all the other fellers were white, like it was in the Rangers. She could see that her limbs were long and lanky without too much hair, which might’ve bothered a boy her age. Her lips were fuller than she preferred, and her nose was wide at the bottom and sharp at the top, as if it couldn’t quite decide which way to go. Her cheeks were high and her chin jutted out just enough to make her look stubborn. Basically, she looked like she was trying hard as hell to not look white, and it was working.

  But she didn’t walk like a girl, a-swinging her narrow hips. And she didn’t talk or act or sit like a lady. She stared too long and hit too hard and rarely gave thought to her looks, which seemed awful unladylike.

  If Hennessy had liked her as a boy, did that mean she looked like a boy? And what made a boy handsome or a girl pretty, anyway? She rubbed her eyes with her fists. Life had been a lot easier when she was breaking broncs.

  When she finally turned to walk back up the creek to the town, she felt as if she’d left some old bit of herself in the water, like the old Nettie had sloughed off and floated away. Her steps were a little lighter, her chin still held high, but this time with more than stubbornness. When she thought back to what Pap and Mam were like, it was hard to believe that anyone had ever given them a sweet goddamn bit of respect. Dirty, mean, lazy, drunk, dishonest. Everyone in Gloomy Bluebird thought they were bad neighbors, and Nettie could recall that many of the folks who’d given her scraps when she’d gone begging on their behalf had carried a particular sadness in their eyes. Had they felt sorry for her, maybe? She’d always assumed they looked down on her, but maybe what she’d seen was hate for Pap and Mam and not herself.

  Her skull hurt like she’d been mule-kicked, and she couldn’t wait to lay her head on her saddle and sleep. Of course, Hennessy would’ve moved his bedroll. A faint pang of regret in her stomach told her she owed him an apology. She had truly thought he knew her secret and hadn’t meant to betray him by being born a girl. It hurt, to know that he wouldn’t like her anymore, wouldn’t give her that grin and squeeze her shoulder. That he’d carried a candle for a boy named Rhett who didn’t actually exist.

  Which brought a new truth to mind: Life wasn’t fair, no matter how handsome and blue-eyed you were. If Samuel Hennessy couldn’t get what he wanted, what hope did the rest of the world have?

  But of course, that left her with the question: Where did she fall on the spectrum of stallions and mares? She’d been drawn to Hennessy ever since she’d known him, but her skin had tingled and flopped when Dan had held the bow around her, even though she didn’t take a shine to him. And when Winifred had stood, all wet and nekkid, in the creek, Nettie couldn’t stop herself staring. Could a mare only like mares or stallions, or could a mare like whatever she damn pleased? Maybe she just didn’t know enough yet to understand what she was or what she wanted. Or maybe she was lots of things, just as her skin was a mixture of browns. Maybe she didn’t have to like anything.

  It was too damn much, is what it was.

  Sleep would be welcome, so long as she could stop thinking.

  Back in the bunk room, fellers were passing around hunks of bread and scooping beans and unusually fragrant meat from Delgado’s pot. Hennessy had moved his bedroll to the other side and was crouched down in grim, forced friendliness with Qualls and a couple of the other young fellers, rolling bone dice. When she looked at him, giving him the most apologetic glance she could muster, he just spit and looked away. As if she could help being a girl.


  She ate alone, checked her gear, and settled down while the other fellers moseyed over to the dwarves’ saloon to drink, a rare treat on the plains. When Hennessy left, Nettie could finally breathe again. Her head hit her saddle, and she willed herself angrily to sleep. For once, no one woke her. There was no watch, no Coyote Dan, no sign of Winifred’s return. She had no dreams of fires and the Injun woman, no promise of the future or painful remembrance of the past. She barely noted the brightness of the night sky, hardly counted down the days to the new moon and whatever threat the Cannibal Owl planned. It was right peaceful, actually.

  She woke up to a rooster’s call both a completely different person and the exact same as she’d ever been, but more so. When she went outside to piss in the outhouse, she saw a far-off figure on a dark horse, pointing west.

  “You see that?” she called to Hennessy as he strode past.

  “I don’t see nothin’, you girl,” Sam muttered.

  Somehow, it was even more insulting than it used to be.

  Nettie didn’t see Winifred again until the Rangers were saddling up in the corral to leave. The girl walked among the horses with calm purpose and ease, touching rumps and necks as she went. She was wearing the same light blue dress from yesterday, but with a boy’s britches beneath it and covering most of her legs down to bare, slender ankles and dusty feet.

  “You can take the saddle,” Nettie said, tossing her head at Ragdoll.

  Winifred rubbed the mare’s nose and subtly inspected her, which raised Nettie’s hackles. “Are you sure? I can ride bareback, you know.”

  Nettie looked around, made sure none of the fellers were nearby. “Wouldn’t be gentlemanly, making a woman ride with no saddle.”

  Winifred hid a laugh behind her hand. “Thanks anyway, Rhett. What a gentleman. But I’ll take your paint, if you don’t mind.” She said it loud enough that a few of the cowpokes looked over, curious, and Nettie growled at her.

  Just then, the saddlebag twitched under Winifred’s hand, which was exactly what Nettie had hoped wouldn’t happen. With her usual quickness, Winifred whipped open the leather flap.

  “What are you hiding?”

  Nettie shrugged. “Ain’t hiding nothing. They’re my saddlebags. You’re doing what’s called snooping. Downright impolite, as a matter of fact.”

  Of course that didn’t stop Winifred from digging deep, past the clothes and jerky. She stopped right before she’d pulled out the foot, and Nettie stepped close to block the men from seeing it.

  “Why do you have this?” Winifred’s voice was low and anxious. And angry.

  “Found it when I was on watch the other night, right after Dan left.”

  Winifred glanced around to be sure no one was paying them any mind. She cradled the tiny foot in her hand, cupping it like a child’s cheek. “Do you know what this is?”

  “Warning from the Cannibal Owl, I reckon.”

  A tear dropped on the foot, and Winifred shook her hair and stroked the ankle bone. “That’s not what I mean. This is… it’s a skinwalker’s foot. A Javelina. And the child still lives, so long as it’s whole. But the pain is constant, the leg bleeding from an open wound that can’t heal without help. It’s torture.” Then, softer, “The Cannibal Owl is torturing her.”

  The foot twitched all of a sudden, the toes going wide as if in surprise or pain. As Nettie and Winifred bent their heads over it, the tiny foot turned to warm, beige sand and ran out through clutching fingers to spill over Nettie’s boots. Bile rose in her throat, and she bent to try to scrape up the light sand where it had fallen over the darker prairie earth, mixed with horse manure and hoof prints.

  Overhead, Winifred sang a low song, all consonants and liquid and pain. She ended on a high, ululating note and threw her hands into the air, letting the wind whisk the remaining sand from her fingers. In a fit of understanding, Nettie threw the sand she’d managed to scrape up, too. Some of it flew back to stick in the tears on her cheeks.

  “Shut yer hole, Injun,” Jiddy called, and a few of the fellers nodded along. “That ki-yay song’s setting the horses off.”

  Sure enough, the horses were dancing uneasily, ears pricked and nostrils flaring.

  “It’s not the song that troubles them,” Winifred said.

  Nettie’s stomach twisted inside out, and she put a hand up to shield her vision as she scanned the prairie. Something moved, far off, in the direction the horses faced as they snorted. She could almost see it—a wrapped figure, tall and dark and balanced all wrong, not on a horse. It disappeared in the wavering sunrise, to the west, far too quick. A cloud passed, and it was just a flock of vultures, all bunched together like they were headed to find something good and dead. Nettie’s gorge rose; the shine on their feathers revealed them as harpies.

  All around her, the Rangers saddled up, unaware of what had just passed. But Nettie’s eyes met Winifred’s, and what she saw there was fear.

  “Where’s Dan?” Nettie asked.

  Winifred swallowed hard and shook her head.

  “I haven’t seen him in days.”

  They made good time, and Winifred was a savvy enough rider that Nettie couldn’t complain, which was vexful. Nettie felt more lonesome than ever without Hennessy by her side, trotting on his palomino or flashy black and cracking jokes. Winifred was a far more somber companion, and Nettie was still shook up from watching the child’s foot collapse into sand and learning that Coyote Dan might be in trouble himself. Seeing what had to be the Cannibal Owl, as if the danged thing was taunting her—well, now she had to wonder who exactly was the hunter and who was being hunted. And the presence of the harpies in the monster’s wake suggested that Pia Mupitsi didn’t hunt alone.

  For hours, they trotted across the green-brushed plains, picked their way down arroyos, and sidestepped dusty skeletons where various creatures had just flopped down and decided to die. In this wild, forgotten corner of Durango, there were no towns, no fences, and after a while, no water and nothing alive and bigger than a thumb. The mountains loomed ahead, stark and heavy as the bones of gods left to rot. Time came to mean nothing, and Nettie forgot the hour mere seconds after tucking her new watch back in her pocket. They didn’t stop for lunch and barely to sleep, just pulled out their jerky and chewed like a herd of cows as the wind punished them with stinging sand. When the trails grew narrow and treacherous, they had to abandon the cook wagon, and Delgado rode one of his mules and ponied the other with panniers of food and pots heavy on its back. Even Winifred ran out of things to say. Nettie just focused on Hennessy, trying to will him to understand by staring at his back.

  For days, she couldn’t find a way to approach him. He always turned away, moved his horse to a different place in line. When she finally saw him turn off to check his limping gelding’s hoof for stones, she saw her chance and loped away from Winifred and to his side. Feller couldn’t run away if he was off his mount.

  “Hennessy.”

  He looked up and flinched like she’d slapped him. “Go away, Rhett, or whatever your name is. We’re done.”

  Nettie’s chest ached as she watched him move around his gelding, his fingers light and his every move gentle as he inspected the horse’s hooves and extracted a stone from the left rear foot.

  “Fool horse,” he muttered.

  Before he could remount, Nettie pushed Ragdoll toward his palomino, making the horse dance back and preventing Hennessy from getting his foot in the stirrup.

  “Goddammit, girl. Why won’t you leave me in peace?”

  “Because you’re acting like I shot you in the foot, and I didn’t do nothin’ wrong. I just want to be your friend. I…” She looked down, wishing to hell she didn’t have a lady’s chest burning with sobs. “I miss you. I’m sorry.”

  He caught her reins and stepped close, hurt written in every line on his young, handsome face. “I can’t miss you, because you’re not who I thought you were. You led me on. And now, if you tell any of the fellers about me, they’ll string me up. And if I te
ll ’em about you, you’re gone. So the best thing you can do is stay away from me.” He jerked her reins, making Ragdoll dance as he watched the other Rangers trot on ahead. “Far away.”

  When he released the rains, Nettie got desperate.

  “Dammit, Hennessy!”

  Without thinking too much, she yanked out her whip and snapped his horse on the flank, and the palomino took off, galloping across the prairie with the ponied horse in tow. Hennessy cussed and ran a few steps before rounding on her, finally showing his anger in clenched fists.

  “Why’d you do that, fool? You want me to hate you more?”

  She shook her head. “No. I want you to listen. Nobody ever listens to me, and you’re dang well going to.”

  Hennessy stared at his horses, now cropping scrub grass a good five minutes’ walk away.

  “You got until I reach my horses, and then I’m galloping the hell away from you. For good.”

  When he started walking, she swung Ragdoll’s head to keep pace. “Look, Sam.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Fine. Hennessy. I’m a girl. I always been a girl. And I don’t like being a girl, I don’t feel like a girl, and that’s why I pretend to be a boy. I didn’t know you were… like that. And I don’t care. I reckon a person can be whatever they want to be. But you can’t blame me for being what I am, and I can’t blame you for being you. I don’t. I thought you knew I was a girl. Figured you might feel about me the way I felt about you. And I still don’t see why you can’t, if you used to. I’m the same person. Just got different parts. But my head and heart are the same, and I’d…” He didn’t look back, and she felt all desperate, like her heart was going to climb out and throw itself at his feet like a hungry cur. She kicked her mare to a lope and spun in front of Hennessy, the mare’s side blocking him. “I’d take a bullet for you, Sam. I would. And I don’t care about boys and girls and all that bullshit. I love you.”