Fall Back Down When I Die

by Joe Wilkins

  Gillian

  B​RANCHES SLAPPED AGAINST HER, SCRAPED HER ARMS AND FACE. SHE took an awkward step and fell. Sticks and dirt and cheatgrass ground her palms, and the wound along her ribs ripped open once again beneath the gauze. She paid no attention to the smear of blood down her belly as she scrambled up and ran toward the river. Toward that voice. If the voice was but some conjuring, if the voice was but some crack in her furious, tired mind…

  She broke through the willows, and beyond a gravel bar strewn with driftwood stood two figures, the one tall and lean, the other so small and slight as to be not so much a shadow as the intimation of a shadow. Shoes about their necks, pants rolled, the two held hands, the rippling water at their ankles and shins. They stared at her. The tall figure spoke, and it was the voice again—that voice that had carried itself to her through the silences of the night.

  —Mom?

  —Maddy! Maddy!

  Gillian charged into the river, and in a moment had her daughter in her arms. She held her hard, kept asking again and again if she was okay, if she was all right. Maddy finally pushed her away and bent and picked up the boy, Rowdy Burns, and balanced him just so on her hip, as if he were her own, as if in the course of a night her daughter had aged into a mother herself, into someone entirely away from Gillian.

  —Why are you here, Mom? Where are we?

  Beneath Gillian’s feet the river gravel shifted. She wanted to tell the simple truth, to say, I came for you, to say, We’re here, where this all began. But Gillian had no idea how any of this had happened, how the world would ever up and deliver such a thing. She’d never been farther from her daughter.

  The boy’s face was crusted on one side with dirt and dried blood. Maddy herself was as pale as river shells, her breath high and quick, a flame raging in her eyes.

  —We’re at the old house, Gillian said. Let’s go. Let’s get Rowdy cleaned up.

  Maddy faltered, and Gillian reached out and took her elbow. Her daughter leaned into her, told her thank you, that she was so tired. Told her, with the fire in her eyes flaming once again, that they had to hurry.

  —Wendell’s still out there, she said. They’re after him.

  With no cell reception at the house, Gillian drove south down the county road—too fast, then too slow, then too fast again, as relief and terror washed over her in alternating waves. She bumped over the old iron bridge and up onto the first high pass into the Bulls, where she thought she might catch the cell towers across the mountains, and, yes, she had a single bar. She pulled the car over. But whom to call? What to say? How to make sense of her daughter, along with a mute boy, finding her way through the heart of the Bull Mountains in the night? Her daughter hiking ridges, fording rivers, some iron in the blood pulling her to her childhood home with the kin of her own father’s killer in tow?

  She glanced to her right to make sure, and it was no dream. There they were, Maddy and the boy, huddled up together in the passenger seat. Maddy had pulled the blanket up tight around him and opened a pack of saltines and by the green dashboard lights was trying to get Rowdy, who now had clean gauze taped to his just-washed face, to drink a little water.

  Gillian dialed 911 first, but the call didn’t go well. The dispatcher couldn’t understand, and it was too hard to explain. She hung up and called Dave Coles.

  When he answered, groggy, sniffing, she launched into it without preamble: Wendell Newman was on the run from a militia group out in the Bulls. Maddy and Rowdy Burns had been with Wendell after the three of them had escaped from his trailer, but he’d sent them off to safety and gotten Betts’s men to follow him.

  There was a pause.

  —Oh, boy, Dave said. Oh, gosh. What else? Tell me everything.

  All she could say was that Maddy had told her there were at least six of them at Wendell’s property, that they had all kinds of guns, and that they’d shot the sheriff’s deputy to pieces. There’d been a woman from CPS, and Maddy wasn’t sure what had happened to her after she and Wendell and the boy ran. Wendell had shot Betts. He’d had to—it was self-defense, Maddy said. And that’s why Betts’s men were after him.

  Dave promised to do whatever he could to help. He’d call every cop he knew.

  —But where will you be? he asked. You’ve got to get somewhere safe.

  From the pass Gillian could see for miles. The valley of the Musselshell turned and snaked off to the north; the badlands and plains unraveled in the east; the mountains rose and fell and rose to the south and west, where the lights of Billings were but a rumor.

  —I’m going to Colter. We’ll be at Kent Leslie’s place. The three of us.

  The county road unwound between the hills, dropped and then lifted through coulees and washes. The world was blue-black at its heights, full blue at the pine-studded horizon. One last time, Gillian thought, for this dusty gravel dance from Delphia to Colter. This last time. Maddy held the boy on her lap as he slept, his head against her chest, his breath halting as he jerked and shivered through dreams. The two of them even smelled cold, like rocks and knives. When they passed the dirt road that led to the Newman place, silent swirls of red and blue branded the far-off ridges and trees. Gillian reached over and touched her daughter’s knee. Maddy startled, but stared straight ahead as she spoke.

  —I didn’t know, Mom. I didn’t know about Wendell. Who he was. Who his father was.

  The road fell into a tight, dry creek, then rose abruptly and leveled across an alkali-stained stretch of flats. Despite the loose gravel, Gillian had the speedometer almost at sixty. Maddy knew now, Gillian thought, and what would she do with this knowledge? What had she done already?

  —But he’s good, Mom. I’m not in love with him or anything, if that’s what you’re thinking, but he’s a good person. He is.

  Gillian gripped the wheel hard, held at bay the questions, the anger. There would be a time for all that.

  —Okay, honey. I hear you. I believe you.

  The dawn came on at last. The Prius’s headlights pale and weak, everything at this liminal hour shading to nickel and bone, yet even from some distance Gillian spotted the dark hulk in the bar ditch. A car, she thought. An upended car, tires in the air, nose tangled in the broken four-strand barbed-wire fence. They were maybe fifteen minutes from Colter. Maddy and Rowdy were both half asleep beside her. Gillian didn’t want to slow but skidded to a stop anyway just past the wreck. Likely there was no one in there, but she should check. Maddy blinked and swallowed. Gillian touched her on the arm, told her to wait.

  If anything, the air had chilled a notch further. No birds, no wind, nothing but the crunch of gravel beneath her feet. Twenty yards from the overturned car she came on the undone body of a deer, nothing more than a blood shawl along the ditch now. She walked on.

  The car was an Impala, an older make. The trunk had come unlatched, and pink boxes of Mary Kay were strewn across the road. The car’s nose was accordioned, the headlights, she saw as she circumnavigated the wreck, spattered with hair, blood, and viscera. The windshield had held in place but was pure snowy-white shatter. Gillian bent down. She hoped no one was in here, that it was an untowed days-old wreck. But when she peered in the broken driver-side window, a shadow shifted, repositioned. Oh no—oh Jesus.

  —Can you hear me? she shouted. Are you okay?

  She swept away glass and gravel, got down on her belly. From inside the wreck came the scrabbling of breath. She turned and yelled back toward her own car for Maddy to bring the flashlight from the backseat.

  A car door opening and closing then, followed by the crunch of gravel, and Maddy was beside her, handing her the cool barrel of the flashlight. Gillian clicked it on.

  The woman was wedged beneath the collapsed dash, thin lines of blood ribboning her face. The blue-black hair, the deep, wide eyes—it took Gillian a moment, but then it came to her. It was Tricia Wilson, Tricia lifting a hand crusted with dirt and blood to block the glare of the flashlight.

  —Oh God, Tricia, don’t move
. Don’t move.

  Gillian handed the flashlight to Maddy and scooted forward. Her own belly flared with pain, but she managed to reach Tricia’s hand. She squeezed. Tricia wept, wailed.

  —Fuck, she called out. Fuck, fuck. He took Tavin. Him and all those fuckers. I told him not to. I told him…

  Her voice gave way to scattering heaves and sobs and Gillian tried to quiet her. She twisted her head around to her daughter, standing there shivering in the blue dawn. She wanted to let go of this woman’s hand, crawl back out, and drive away. Didn’t she have an obligation to her own before this other? Tricia coughed and shook. Gillian held the woman’s hand.

  —The keys are in the car, Maddy. You should get cell service in another ten minutes or so. Call Dave Coles. His number is in the phone. Tell him we’re maybe twelve miles north of Colter on the Delphia-Colter Road. Tell him Tricia Wilson hit a deer and is hurt bad. He’ll know what to do. Then call Kent—his number’s in there too—and go to his house. Wait for me there. Go.

  Maddy left to do as she was told. Watching her jog down the cold wing of the gravel road, Gillian almost called her back. But she swallowed the words, swallowed all the old fears. She let her daughter go. Her daughter so tall as she disappeared down the road and drove away.

  Gillian had read somewhere that it was good to keep talking to someone who had a head injury, so she asked question after question, but Tricia shifted by the minute in and out of consciousness. Gillian, too, began to drift. She woke once to the sage going rose, to hard swaths of light in the pines, and felt the gravel beneath her belly and the wet blood of her wound. She remembered and began to talk again to Tricia. She got no answer. She talked and drifted and talked, and the two of them, these women grieving men, chasing children, bled there together at the side of the road. Twice she heard what she thought might be a far-off engine but was only wind. At times it seemed to Gillian as though Tricia were her younger self and it was her own blood-slippery hand she held. Then there was a howl, long and drawn, rising from a nearby ridge. It was close enough that she felt the shape of it in her chest, sloping, bell-like, heavy. When it fell away she could feel it still. Though she’d never heard a wolf, she knew it was a wolf.

  —They’re really back, aren’t they?

  Tricia said nothing. Gillian squeezed her hand and told her to hang on. Hang on a little longer.

  Verl

  I look back at what I’ve written and don’t remember when. When did I taste meat? Why this field of wind? What color are your mother’s eyes? Was this the night I dreamed the wolf? The day after the night? I see a ridge or line of pines and hours later see the same again. I find a spring and am scared by my own boot tracks as I kneel to drink. I don’t know I don’t remember

  Wendell

  T​WICE IN THE EARLY HOURS HE HEARD HOWLS. ONCE, A RIFLE SHOT. HARD to tell how close. A ridge away? Three? He kept moving. From east to west the sky paled from iron to stone to the blue of certain lakes he’d seen as a boy, the few times they’d gone camping, the three of them, up in the Beartooth Mountains.

  The three of them. He’d sent Maddy and Rowdy straight north, making sure Maddy knew to stick to the rocks, to the ridges, and he’d gone south, through a grassy valley and across an overgrown road, his trail as easy as could be to follow, boot prints right there in the dust and grass. Though after the howls and the gunshot, he, too, took to the rocks and turned to the west. They’d follow him. He would lead them away from Maddy and Rowdy, give them time to get to town, and then—then he wasn’t sure. For now, there were the mountains. That was all.

  It wasn’t yet midday when he heard the helicopter. He fell flat on his belly, nearly knocked the wind out of himself. It came toward and over him, flattening the grass, snapping dead branches, lifting great clouds of dust, and continued north and east. As the sound receded, he lifted himself up and brushed at his shirt front and went on. It hadn’t even slowed or circled. Maybe they didn’t know he was out here. Maybe Betts’s men had killed the deputy and the CPS woman. Or maybe they had the CPS woman hostage in the trailer. Likely they had split up before the sheriff could find out how many of them there were, and a few were coming after him while a few held the CPS woman. That must be it, must be why the helicopter was headed fast in the direction of his property.

  Walking, he thought for a time on the CPS woman. He wondered if it wasn’t Carol Hougen who’d called, seeing as how he’d left Rowdy there and gotten so drunk that night. But that was two weeks ago. And it wasn’t the way things were done around here. Could have been a teacher from Delphia, still having to do with Rowdy busting that boy’s arm, or it could have been one from Colter, about something he didn’t even know. He’d been sick about it, though—a heavy ache—ever since he’d heard Child Protective Services crackle from the deputy’s speakers. He hadn’t had a chance to explain to Maddy it was nothing. He told her now, in his mind, and hoped that maybe she knew already.

  Wendell came down a steep, eroded coulee and passed a tangle of chokecherries as the hardpan gave way to grass. He slowed and stripped a handful of cherries the magpies hadn’t yet gotten and as he walked on popped them one by one into his mouth. The small, almost black cherries were sweeter this late in the season but still mouth-puckering. He worked the thin layer of flesh off with his tongue and spit out the stone. Rowdy would like chokecherries, he thought. His mother used to make a chokecherry syrup you could drink straight from the jar. Had he ever cooked the boy pancakes? He didn’t think so. Maybe Rowdy and Maddy would get some at the café, if they’d made town by now, which they should have. Maddy had likely been able to call 911, call her mother. They might still be waiting, though. He could picture them beneath the snapping white fluorescents, where the linoleum was always tracked with the dirt of men’s passings, see them sitting at one of the sloped tables, Rowdy on Maddy’s lap while he reached to arrange the little packets of sugar and powdered creamer, Maddy with her eyes on the door, waiting.

  He hoped no one there would give her a hard time. There were some that might. More than a few. They’d whisper, cut their eyes, even ask her to leave if she wasn’t about to order anything. But maybe Glen would drive in and buy the both of them pancakes and eggs and sit with them. Glen, he knew, wouldn’t have wanted any part of what Betts had done out at his place. Likely Betts hadn’t even told him or Glen would’ve tried to argue him out of it. Glen didn’t have in him whatever those others did. Or maybe Maddy would call her father’s mother, old Elner Kincheloe. She was sick these days, but she’d always gotten her way. Wendell knew no matter what she’d make sure Rowdy got plenty of syrup on his pancakes.

  Wendell followed a game trail across a dry flat. Despite the cool of the day, the sun was hot and sharp on the back of his neck, the glare of it in his eyes. He found a snakeskin wound around a dead yucca. He plucked up the skin, which was nearly whole, still preserved even where it had lifted off the snake’s eyes. Once, twice he touched the eye caps themselves, and the skin began to tear, fall to pieces in his hands. The dry rattle made a small sandy sound when he shook it.

  He knew then what the difference was between him and the others—they thought they were owed something. Freddie, Toby, Daniel. Betts. His old man. Someone had told them they were owed something. He wasn’t yet sure who, hadn’t had time to think that through, but that’s what they thought, that it wasn’t fair. Wendell crushed the snakeskin in his fist. We aren’t owed a goddamn thing. He’d known that all along, known it so deep in his bones that he hadn’t ever thought it outright before, and now that he did, he understood that Maddy had been right. That story he’d been telling Rowdy was a lie, pure and simple. Verl Newman might be out here, but if he was, it wasn’t as anything more than bird-picked bones. Betts, too, was dead. Wendell didn’t know what was in store for himself, if his story of shooting Betts would be believed, but no matter how this turned out, Freddie, Daniel, and Toby would likely see prison time. And that Wilson boy—good God. What would become of a boy like that? It wasn’t easy out h
ere—that was sure enough true. It was always something, hail or drought or poor cattle prices. But it wasn’t like it was all of a sudden hard. It wasn’t the EPA or the BLM making it all of a sudden hard. It had always been hard. That’s why the wolves were coming back. They were built for it. They didn’t worry about what was owed to them. They lived how the land demanded. Wendell could see it now. The land itself had taken his father, had left him with this sad riddle of a story, one those others were reading the wrong way altogether.

  He smelled the water first, that mineral sharpness in the air, and followed the thickening grass up a box canyon. The cool stone walls narrowed as he went, passing wild rose and chokecherry in the shadows, and beneath a slick face of sandrock he knelt before the spring.

  He leaned the rifle up against the rock and put his lips to the muddy seep. The water was cool and gritty. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he was. He drank and drank, and fell back. The muscles of his legs cramped as he sat in the grass and he rubbed at the bruise on his thigh, where the calf had kicked him. After a time he pooled water in his palm and rinsed his face. Scattered about in the soft earth were the tracks of elk and deer, the delicate, intricate markings of raccoon and skunk—and then the wide, long-clawed tracks of what he thought might well be a wolf.