Haints Stay

by Colin Winnette

  And Martha left. They called after her but she did not flinch. She found a gelding in the same stable the killer had pulled from. She was not a fan of bareback but had no time for saddling. She nudged the horse’s shoulders, delicately directing him over to a crate that would give her the height she needed to mount him with little additional effort. She took the ride slowly at first, letting the horse get a sense of her body and getting her own sense of the way the horse would respond when she shifted her weight. She was not experienced, but the horse was understanding and patient. After a few moments, she dug in and set off down the path in pursuit of the killer.

  The baby would not stop crying. Sugar did not know what to do or where to go because he did not know the territory. Here, the trees were shorter than the ones he’d known, thicker and closer together. You could not ride fast through these woods. They were heading higher and higher up between the mountain ridges on either side. It was getting colder. There was a body hanging from a tree overhead and Sugar passed beneath it slowly. He did not recognize the clothing or the man. He felt then that this was what they had planned for him all along. There would be no ceremony to his end. He held the baby against him and tried to warm it. He could make out faint ruts hardened into the dirt, and he tried his best to follow them. It would not hurt him to linger outside a populated area, though he would need to establish a safe distance. His mind was not working as it normally did. He could not focus with the child crying. He was overrun with thoughts unrelated to the matters at hand.

  He made a hard plan to stick to the ruts and see where they took him. It would make it easier for anyone following him to track him, but they would not be after him for at least half a day, if not more. It was entirely possible he had taken out every living thing in that town, other than the horses and the hogs and the chickens. He had been merciless. There was something divine to it, but he did not feel elevated. He felt more self-assured. Brooke was dead and he was alone with this child. Sugar thought that maybe if Brooke was here he would feel less conflicted about leaving the child or drowning the child and riding on. As it was, something was keeping the thing pressed to his chest. Something made him want to warm it and stop it from crying. He did not feel a tenderness toward it, but felt a strong desire to balance it out. To put the creature and himself on a more even keel.

  When night fell, he did not stop riding. The baby cried as if that were its only function. It cried as a healthy man might breathe. It was a sound he found impossible to ignore. When the stars were out, Sugar slowed to a trot and tried to feed the baby. He had some cheese in his front pocket, and a bit of bread in the other, and he pressed small chunks of each to the baby’s lips, but it would not accept them. The bread gummed up there and broke apart and the baby cried and sent the little balls down its neck or onto the back of Sugar’s hand. The horse seemed tired. He was huffing and lagging. Sugar was tired. The baby was crying and, maybe, Sugar hoped, tired. They could not sleep until something in the landscape changed, until they were more hidden. Sugar remembered then where he had held the infant the moment after it was born. He opened his shirt and held the baby at his chest. The baby gummed about for a minute then took hold. It was painful, but ignorable. The minor irritation was far preferable to the crying. Sugar realized suddenly how quiet this particular wood was. The baby was working his chest and Sugar held it and rode slowly between the stubby trees. They needed to take it slow anyway because there was no moonlight and Sugar could see only a foot or so ahead of them at a time. The baby went on like that. It hurt a little more as the time passed but Sugar thought of other things and let the pain melt into his other concerns.

  He did not so much care who had been after them, who had caught them, now that he had worked that town over and felt as safe as he ever could feel. He did not prefer to ponder the mystery of what had happened, but instead preferred to set himself up somewhere for a bit and try to get a few good meals in and a few good nights’ sleep. He was long overdue for a bath and a fizzy drink. These had been his simple desires what felt like only a day or two ago. It had been much longer, but the events did not come together in a way that suggested the passing of time. Rather, his memory of the past few days was scattershot and rough. There was a lot of hurry to it all. The baby gagged and spit fluid onto Sugar’s chest, then settled back into Sugar’s bent arm. Sugar did up his shirt then dug his heel into the horse’s side. They trundled along only briefly before the child burped and fell to something like sleep.

  The storeroom beneath the kitchen was full of jars and sacks of food and smelled like clay. It was cool and pleasant to stand in.

  “We might never have to kill a chicken,” said Mary.

  Bird held a jar between his knees and pried loose the lid. He let it fall to the floor, then set the open jar on a shelf and ate the jam inside with his fingers.

  “I would not mind doing it,” said Bird.

  “But it would maybe be hard and chickens are tricky,” said Mary. She read the labels on the sacks one by one. “Flour, grain, oats, flour, flour, salt, flour. This little one is yeast. We can make a bread.”

  “How ?”

  “With these things and the oven,” said Mary. “We used to make bread every week. You just mix these things.”

  “How long before these things are bread.”

  “Not long,” said Mary. “Once everything’s in order.”

  “I’d like to eat hot bread,” said Bird.

  “Do you think we are the only people left here ?” said Mary.

  “I hope we are the only people left here,” said Bird.

  “I would be sad.”

  “It’s safer that way,” said Bird.

  “People aren’t bad,” said Mary.

  “Bad ones are bad,” said Bird.

  “Were you scared earlier ?”

  “You just mix these three ?” said Bird.

  “And water,” said Mary.

  “Where’s the water ?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mary. “That’s why we need to find more stuff first.”

  “Fine,” said Bird. “Do you think Martha will come back ?”

  “Yes,” said Mary. “When she’s done. She is very dependable.”

  “She’s going to kill that man ?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I hope she does,” said Bird.

  “Why ?”

  “Because it seems like the right thing and I would feel safer and better.”

  “You have little faith in people.”

  “I guess,” said Bird.

  “I hate to see anyone put to death,” said Mary.

  “That’s foolish,” said Bird.

  “Why ?”

  “Because the only way to deal with an evil thing is to put an end to it.”

  “I don’t like it as an idea,” said Mary. “I won’t agree to it, but I will not be called foolish.”

  “Then let’s concern ourselves with bread,” said Bird.

  The building had three stories : two bedrooms in the upstairs and a hallway with a ledger and a cash register. Beneath the floor level, where the restaurant was and the tables and chairs, there was the storeroom. In the rooms upstairs, they discovered warm clothes, blankets, and a basket full of buttons of various sizes. There was also thread in a drawer and several cans of oil for the lamps.

  There was a long jacket hung from a peg by the door that led to the kitchen. There was nothing in its pockets. They could work the stove well enough. They could keep the fire going with wood from an enormous stack behind the building.

  Every now and then, Bird would check the windows. He saw no one and nothing moving but the few remaining horses.

  “What if he comes back ?” said Mary.

  “That’s why we have the pistol,” said Bird.

  They took the pistol out behind the building. A hundred or so feet away, there was a wagon. They flipped it over and set a milk bottle on it. They walked away until they were a distance they could be proud of.

 
“I would like never to shoot a man,” said Mary, “but I can shoot bottles for sport.”

  “How many bullets do we have ?”

  “She said we could find more, if we looked.”

  “All we found was buttons and a coat.”

  “I think she meant… around.” Mary pointed to the backs of the adjacent buildings. She swept her hand from left to right.

  “She said to stay hidden.”

  “I think we’re meant to sneak,” said Mary.

  Bird pulled the hammer back on the pistol. The pistol was heavy enough to make him feel off balance, as if he were listing in its direction and would topple over without serious concentration when he fired. He held up the gun and exhaled. He squeezed the trigger and the gun flew from his hand. The floor of the alley coughed dirt several feet to the left of the wagon.

  “You are our protection ?” said Mary.

  “It’s not easy,” said Bird.

  Mary took the pistol and fired without much hesitation. She splintered the wagon a few inches from the base of the jar.

  “We cannot shoot,” said Mary. “But I’m better.”

  “We have to practice,” said Bird.

  “You can practice,” said Mary, “once you’ve found more bullets.”

  Mary made bread and Bird caught and killed a chicken. They kept quiet and did not explore much outside of the building with the kitchen and the bedrooms and the storeroom — and no one else, if they were around, made themselves known. There was butter in the storeroom, for the bread, and lard to cook the chicken in. They salted everything heavily. They found wine under the counter and tried it and did not like it. There was a fireplace near the base of the stairs and they made a small fire, more for entertainment than out of necessity. They did not sleep well. They made pallets on the floor near the fire with the blankets from upstairs and the clothes from the trunks. It went unsaid but understood that upstairs would not have been a comfortable place for either of them to spend the night.

  Bird kept the gun near his pillow. He watched the fire in its metal. He had not wanted to become a gunfighter but it seemed like he was going to have to become a gunfighter. Mary did not have the follow-through for it, even if she was a better shot.

  “Please stop staring at the gun,” said Mary.

  “I’m thinking,” said Bird.

  “About the gun ?” said Mary.

  “About having to use the gun some day.”

  “It is thinking like that that will make it so,” said Mary.

  “That’s foolish,” said Bird.

  “You are an orphan who doesn’t have the capacity for reason or high thinking. In his whole life my father never once drew his gun.”

  “And he was murdered,” said Bird.

  “You’re frightening me and making me feel alone,” said Mary. “You are supposed to be my little brother.”

  “I am not little.”

  “You are a cripple.”

  “I’m not a cripple.”

  “I do not want our friendship to go on like this. You need to think of something else to talk about and think about other than guns and killing and dying. I won’t have any more of it.”

  “You sound like Martha used to sound,” said Bird.

  They were silent for some time. Mary might have slept. Finally, Bird said, “I am glad you’re here.”

  Mary did not respond, but she shifted, eyes closed, to face either him or the fire.

  In the morning, they were friendly again. They all but finished the bread, then gathered small rocks from behind the building. They sat, leaned against the building, and took turns trying to throw the rocks into a bowl they had set a few feet away from them.

  At first, neither could do any more than hit the side of the bowl and scoot it an inch or so in either direction. After some time, they started landing the rocks in its center. Bird landed four in a row then turned to Mary and said, “I would like to go into the other houses and find bullets for the gun.”

  “It makes no difference to me,” she said, “but it is not a path I would pursue.”

  “I don’t know what we’re to do here,” said Bird.

  “We can do anything we like,” said Mary. “We are on our own now.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” said Bird.

  “It does not mean anything,” said Mary. She tossed her last rock at the bowl and it ricocheted off the side.

  “I have a scared feeling,” said Bird, “and I cannot get rid of it.”

  Martha watched the killer make a modest camp. From a low hill, she could make out his shadow and then, with the light of his fire, his face and the baby in his arms. He held the baby’s face beneath his jacket, and he rocked it for several minutes. Then he set it to sleep on a pile. She watched him pick at the fire and set his heels by its outer coals. She worried that he would look up toward the night sky and see her outline on the horizon, or that he would be able to hear her breath working its way down the hill and into the branches of the trees above him. She seemed to be breathing abnormally. Snorting like a beast. Heaving like her father in the throes of a coughing fit.

  The killer did not sleep, but picked at the fire whenever his head began to drop, or wandered the small circle of his camp. He did not smoke. He did not sing or talk to himself. He was still up until the moments bordering sleep, and then he moved just enough to keep it from overtaking him. Or so it seemed from her vantage. She studied him and tried to know him well enough to make a plan. He was like a fox in its den, or a snake in its pit. She wished she was truly a sharpshooter, able to pick him off safely from a distance. She did not think she could surprise him. She was not a faster draw. If it came to a fight, she would not be victorious. There was a chance she could outride him, seeing as she was only one, and he and the child were two. She slid herself back down the hill and out of view. Her horse was tied up, shadowed by a cluster of thin trees, but still visible if one were to happen upon them. She made herself flat against the dark hill.

  During the night, birds settled on either side of her and picked at the hill for insects or seed. She was still and they moved over her and around her indifferently. They were focused on their task. They squeaked, but seemed to communicate nothing. She felt pity for them that they had no higher calling. But there was something simple and direct about the way they lived, and that was admirable. She turned over and crawled a few feet on her belly, scattering the birds. She pointed her right elbow into the dirt and positioned the rifle against her upturned palm and its corresponding collar pocket. She fired and hit the dirt between the fire and the man. He was up then and headed for cover, but she managed two more shots that sent him sliding into the dirt. She was astonished and proud. Each shot had felt less natural than the previous and she had become convinced she was incorrect in her decision to open fire from a distance, rather than to overtake him on the path. But it had worked. There it was. He was slain.