Equus

by Rhonda Parrish

  “Sure.” Hettie got up and staggered on weary knees to the counter where she kept her hairbrush.

  He waited a moment there and finished smoking, occasionally looking down at her, across the room at her, into the kitchen at her, until he’d satisfied himself that she was going about her business and wasn’t about to change her mind. Then, with a deep, dark sort of groan, he shoved himself up out of his chair and left, carrying Ma’s bundle of food and a couple jars of homemade whiskey.

  Her mother wrestled the ingredients for another batch of corn pone together in her one huge mixing bowl while Hettie started gathering the relics from the last batch off the counter to make way for her.

  “Hettie,” Ma finally said, and Hettie realized she could never really mimic that voice. “Stop worrying your Pa.”

  “Me?” Hettie felt an empty space where she knew her anger should have been.

  “You have to learn to be one person, Hettie. Can’t go on just being half of Anderson. Not while Pa’s already worried he’s gonna lose his boys to the noose.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Hettie could hear that dark space on the edge of her voice, however hard she tried to force it back down her throat. It swelled up until it overflowed into her arms, shaking between her finger-bones and deep in her wrists. She stood there, hands full of damp rags, shaking and trying to identify the swelling emptiness that crested in her while her vision went dark around the edges.

  Her mother’s voice came into focus out of the blur. “—nymore than Anderson can go on using your brain in place of his own! If he goes on and that fool Hector ain’t…”

  “Ma, please.” Hettie couldn’t really hear herself, but felt herself speaking in the dark.

  The oven door slammed shut on the conversation, and Hettie snapped back to normal at the sound, jumping and landing back in her own skin, surrounded by a too-vivid kitchen. Seconds later, far off in the distance, the popping sound of a gun bounced in echoes through the forest not far away.

  “Heloise, the shotgun!” Her mother shed her dish-towel in a blur of smeared apron, ran to the gun-rack and grabbed a rifle. In seconds, she was at the window, eye to the rifle with its stock buried somewhere in the sleeve of her dress. She took her free hand from the trigger just long enough to motion Hettie toward the guns with a flicking, dismissive gesture, then resumed her watch.

  They stood like that, Hettie with her back to the wall next to the door and a loaded shotgun in her hands, and Ma Richter with her eyes and sights on the road, in complete silence.

  “Reckon it’s a hunter?” Hettie finally said when five minutes passed without a repeat of the shot.

  “Whole county knows better’n to—Hettie! Get out there and help him!”

  Even though she could hear the panic in her mother’s voice, Hettie didn’t feel it for herself. Still holding the shotgun in her steady right hand, she pushed the door open, and now she could hear the urgent braying of her father’s old donkey.

  Her father’s cart was half-destroyed, stove in on one side and still smoking as if it had been lit afire while he still rode it. One of the wheels was missing, and its bare axle had scored a deep furrow in the dirt road. Pa clung to the driver’s seat, doubled over, his face hidden under his broad-brimmed hat and his posture desperate.

  And beyond him, the demon. She caught its eyes first, its bright orange eyes alive with the same enormous rage she used to know, or else she would have thought it was a horse.

  It watched from the bend in the road near the old chestnut tree, a great black draught horse with a chest like a bull’s and legs thicker than Hettie was. Grass and fallen leaves around its hooves withered, caught fire, and disappeared in embers like falling stars, and its mane and tail whirled in midair like black smoke. Just above those incandescent eyes, a tangle of black briars sprouted from its head, a magnificent set of antlers swept back until they seemed to join the endless Kentucky forest.

  It made eye contact and watched her hurry to her father’s side but when next she looked up, it was gone.

  “Pa? What happened?”

  He still held on to the reins in his lopsided cart as if it were in his power to control that donkey of his. Hettie took them from him and offered to support him in his dismount. As if it could sense someone smaller, weaker at the helm, the donkey made one final charge and snapped the last of its tethers, yanking the reins out of Hettie’s hands and running to the barn.

  As the cart lurched further over, Pa Richter accepted Hettie’s hand and climbed down, even though his huge, shaking body was too heavy for her to support.

  “You best… you best get indoors, Heloise,” he said to her. “Ain’t safe to be out on the roads.”

  “I’m real sorry, Aunt Patty,” said Hettie’s cousin, “I tried to get word to ‘em, I did! But when I hit the crossroads, something came up on me!”

  “What came up on you, Small Ellis?” Hettie’s Ma poured some more moonshine for him and cast a glance over at Pa, asleep in his bed in the common room. Hettie had been sitting there all day, trying not to meet her mother’s gaze.

  Hettie still didn’t feel much. Sometimes, that catastrophic rage flickered through her mind like a ghost, come from nowhere and headed to nothing, sparking feelings that ricocheted off her understanding of the situation and set the back of her mind ablaze.

  Word had come up from the town that Rob Miller had died of his bullet wound, making one of the boys a murderer. Lee Stewart still had a chance to pull through, but the doctors weren’t optimistic. Ma had sent Small Ellis to their safe house with the message that the sheriff would be after them soon, and he had come back to the house, hat in hand.

  “That Small Ellis I hear, Heloise?” Her father sat up, having evidently swallowed whatever emotion had him jerk awake from sleep.

  “Yes.”

  “Bad news from the doctor?”

  “No, same news. Still can’t get anybody to the safe house.”

  He laid back down against the pillow, staring straight ahead at their ceiling for a couple moments. Hettie poured a cup of still-warm tea from the big earthen pot her mother had left nearby, and he sat up again to accept it.

  “Have a drink.”

  “Don’t make me.” He laughed at the strong scent of Ma’s special cure-all, and Hettie didn’t envy his having to drink it. When she didn’t laugh with him, though, he fell quiet and drank without protest, and gave his cup back to Hettie.

  She’d been ordered to make sure he had two, so she poured another.

  “Heloise, are you all right?”

  “Are you all right, Pa?”

  “Of course I ain’t.” He settled back into his bed once he’d drained the second cup of tea and given it back to her. Under the heavy brows and shaggy beard and unkempt hair, he looked at her the way Anderson did. Like he needed someone to hold him up. “Of course I ain’t all right. My boys are in danger, and I can’t get to them.”

  Hettie looked up at Small Ellis, a man well over six feet tall, circling his hands around the brim of his hat while her Ma lectured him. The sound of her mother’s voice and the scent of that tea and the ache in her throat, where her feelings were supposed to be, suffocated her.

  “…where’s the safe house?”

  “You ain’t going, Heloise.”

  “Might be safer not to take the roads, and I know these hills. Besides…I want to get out.” Hettie hated strategy meetings, the heads of the family gathered in close together late into the night with threatened gunsmoke hanging in the air. From the first time the sheriff’s men had been to Richter Hollow looking for her kin, she’d hated it.

  “Take the shotgun. You see anything, you turn and run back here. You and Hector, too much like your Ma for anybody’s good.”

  Once he’d given the directions, she crept to the door and grabbed her shotgun, along with the bundle of food Small Ellis had left by the door after his failed delivery.

  And outside the house, it was dark and it was quiet.

  “Don’t compare me
to Hector,” she said into the empty woods, now that she could be sure her father couldn’t hear her, and started on her path, a little trampled road that led from the corner of the front porch to a deep hollow in the earth. Beside the house, the forest dropped down into a narrow overgrown valley completely invisible to the road, where Pa had taught the twins to hunt.

  Here, the foliage closed over her head, the moon disappeared from view, and the problems in that smoky little farmhouse were scattered on the wind. Here, it was just Hettie and the earth.

  Gunfire broke out farther down the trail. One shot, at first, a sharp cry of terror that echoed everywhere in seconds, but others soon followed. Two, three, five, seven shots.

  Before she made it to the road, a dozen or so more shots had peppered the air, and now she could hear men shouting, unfamiliar voices screaming in the darkness. As she approached, she heard hooves and the cries of horses, and long before she could see what was going on, the smell of sulphur blanketed the woods and filled her little ravine like a wash-basin. When she broke through the trees, she knew to expect those live-coal amber eyes and that writhing mane of cataclysmic smoke.

  It stood in the middle of the road, facing straight forward, completely still except that one of its ears turned to listen to her. Ahead of it, in the mud and the tangle of the roadside woods, a handful of men scrambled away, smeared in dirt and gunpowder, and it watched them until the sound of their flight disappeared into nothing. The sound of their panic triggered a wicked little spasm right next to her heart.

  Then, while she clutched at the bark of a slender tree and tried to steady her breathing, it turned its massive neck to look at her. This close, she could see the smoky fluttering of its translucent mane and the tiny reddish leaves buried in the tangle of its briar antlers.

  Her heart still twitching and trembling, she stepped out past that determined little tree, over its treacherous roots, and out of the curtain of leaves. The demon stood still until she was close enough to lay her hand, as tiny and pale as a crescent moon in a dark sky, against the side of its neck. Now she could see the deep, familiar red-black of its coat, and taste the memory of her bile, and remember the feelings she’d thrown up at the crossroads.

  Somehow, some time since she’d learned to walk, she’d come to hate her family. One day, she had looked up at her big brother and wanted to kick him until he toppled, and the feeling hadn’t faded no matter how often she’d smothered it. Her mother’s voice made her want to scream. The tangled schemes of her father and uncles and cousins made her imagine burning the house to the ground.

  It rested its broad, warm chin against her back while she stood there crying in the middle of the road and her tears sizzled into steam around her. No scent existed but the black sulfurous smoke of its mane, and it pulled Hettie deeper and deeper into her forgotten hatred.

  “I hate this,” she said out loud for the first time. “All of it. I hate it.”

  Its breath puffed across her back, ruffling the back of her dress, and in its voiceless whicker she heard the only comfort she’d ever needed. She couldn’t fit her arms all the way around its neck; her discarded hate and fury were powerful. Enormous.

  Strong enough to fight back.

  She let go of its neck to wipe her tears. “I have to go find the boys.”

  It raised its head so she could duck under its chin and run back to the treeline where she’d left her package of food and whiskey. When she returned, she looked up at its back, slightly above her eye level, and realized she couldn’t climb up on her own. So, with one hand carrying her package and the other resting against the demon’s ribs, she walked along the old dirt road toward the safe house.

  As they walked, the dried edges of the forest burst into flame by the roadside and vanished in embers, framing their journey in red light and smoke. Her hip brushed against its stomach from time to time, and its antlers snagged at the top of her hair, and the empty feeling in her chest had completely evaporated. They hadn’t just met; they’d been reunited. They’d known each other since the first time she’d dreamed of shootouts and woke up angry. She couldn’t hear the difference between her hoofbeats and its footfalls.

  “You’ll have to stay behind when we get there,” Hettie said, and she saw by the flicking of its black ear that it heard and understood her. “They’ll be frightened of us.”

  When they arrived at the safehouse, she left her anger at the gate to watch from the treeline as she advanced on what had once been a sturdy little hunting lodge. The forest had started, piece by piece, to eat it, and vines hung from the roof clear down to the porch. A quarter of someone’s head watched her from the gray windowsill, and no other signs of life could be seen.

  “It’s just me, One-Eye. Lemme in.”

  The rest of her cousin’s head emerged from the window and disappeared again. Then, old One-Eye opened the front door to let her in. He’d only been in the woods a day, but his clothes were filthy and his hair and beard had started sprouting off in all directions. He looked, like all the men in her family, more or less like Pa Richter, though One-Eye swept his bangs low over a black eye-patch he’d worn ever since a boyhood hunting accident.

  “Anse, Hec, Pat, get up!” he hollered back into the house, and soon all four filthy shades staggered to the doorway to greet her. Hector glanced over her shoulder and, for a second, his expression went rigid.

  Hettie climbed up the four ancient steps to the front porch. “Food and whiskey,” she said, and held out the package. “And news.”

  “What kinda news, Hettie?” Hector finally returned his gaze to her when he took the bundle.

  “Rob Miller’s dead, and Lee Stewart may not last the night. It’s murder.” She could only get the words out if she imagined the feeling of the demon’s breath on her shoulder, and only then if she avoided her twin brother’s desperate gaze.

  “Hettie, I heard gunshots. Are they hunting for us? What do we do?” Anderson pushed his way forward to stand directly in front of her, like a full-length mirror covered in forest grime and gunpowder, clutching at a rifle too big for him, eyes wide and wet now that her prediction had come true.

  “Yep. ’Course they’re hunting you. You idiots are killers now.” Fear stung at her now that she was split in two; this half of her still wanted Anderson to survive. Even Hector.

  “Why the shooting, Hettie?” Hector hauled Anderson back into the shadows so she didn’t have to look at him anymore. “Is it a shootout? They come for Pa and the others?”

  They weren’t ready, and they had too much to worry about already. “No, everyone else is more or less safe. Might be hunters.”

  “What’s Pa planning?”

  “Pa’s bedridden.”

  “That all you came to tell us?”

  She permitted herself a glance at the reddish briars tucked into the forest beside the road, and the faint wisp of smoke only she knew to look for.

  Before she turned around to get back to her stronger half, she heard voices. Hector must have heard them too; he disappeared into the cabin and re-materialized at the window, rifle at the ready. The rest of the men followed his lead and armed themselves.

  “Give yourselves up!” Hettie recognized the voice of the sheriff; she’d sold him whiskey once or twice. He and the rest of his posse, some twelve men all told, rounded the bend and moved to surround the cabin, guns at the ready. Once he’d advanced far enough to see that it was Hettie standing on the porch, he approached a little closer and politely removed his hat.

  “Miss Heloise, are the men in there?”

  Hettie scanned the forest for those briars, but couldn’t see them, even though she could almost feel the demon’s breath. It was near, but where?

  “You can tell them boys they’re better off turning themselves in. Coming peacefully right now is the difference between jail and a hanging.”

  Behind her, in the cabin, she heard what must have been the pleading of her twin brother. At only sixteen, he could hope for a life once he’d se
rved his sentence.

  She heard it for only a moment before Hector’s rifle seared the air with his definitive answer, and a cloud of dust blossomed at the sheriff’s feet. Hettie’s vision went red and the demon’s breath coursed through her hair.

  In that moment, surrounded by grown men who had no need to listen to her, in a situation she had never had any power over at all, she started to tally up her memories. How many times had she tried? How many tears had she wasted trying to fix everything about her life that she hated, trying to save her family members as, one by one, they proved not to care? There was absolutely nothing this half of her could do but watch it all burn.

  The men reacted, first to the gunshot, then to the emergence of the demon from the forest. At the sight of it, their careful formation broke, and rifles fell to the forest floor, and a litany of terrified curses spread all around and through the cabin.

  Hettie turned around. From the weathered porch, with the help of those antlers, she could climb onto its back, and the thought became an irresistible impulse. The thorns growing from its brows cut into her hands. She didn’t care. Pain was irrelevant until she found herself astride its broad back, leaned forward until her whole body was wreathed in black smoke, and clung fast to its neck.

  All her doubts, her weaknesses, her brief flickers of pity and hope disappeared into smoke and embers. The half of her that walked on two legs had tried and failed to change her life, but now she was whole.

  Hettie looked down at her elder brother, who was terrified of her, as he always should have been. Hettie and the demon stepped up onto the porch together and watched the way the old building started to erupt into sympathetic smoke and flame just from their presence. They leaned forward and kicked out behind at the front door, reducing it to embers in an instant. They watched the sparks catch fire, and they loved the sight.

  Together with her hatred, she reared up and, with hooves as huge and heavy as bricks, kicked at her damn brother until he fell to the ground and the blood started to pool around him and give off steam in the heat. She felt a bullet strike her somewhere in the back, but didn’t have to care anymore.