by T. K. Malone
Even that first night at Lester’s, the man had just walked away toward the mine, coming back the next morning only to drop off some rabbits he’d trapped. It had been much the same each morning for the next couple of weeks, but then he hadn’t come back at all. Lester had always worried about him, though, always said he’d be back to kill her. But why torch her place? Unless it was just tit for tat for her burning Lester’s. About to walk away, her eye was caught by what looked like a small, clear plastic bag tucked into the bark of the tree she was sure Jake had stood by.
As she reached out for it, she got the distinct impression she was being watched, that very feeling of dread Lester had warned her about. The air seemed heavier, closer, but also empty, as if a storm was about to break. Taking a long puff on her cigarette, she plucked the bag from the bark and realized it held a folded note.
Her hands shook as she fished it out, in no doubt it was a message from Jake. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to know what it said, but unfolded it anyway, reading its single scrawled sentence.
“I know everything about you, and I know what you did.”
Teah’s hands dropped to her sides, and she tipped her head back and stared up at the clear blue sky above the clearing, wondering what Jake had really meant. The words may have been plain, but there was too much in her past to be able to narrow it down to anything in particular. That she was a gridder? That he knew she’d torched Lester’s cabin? Both were common knowledge, so hardly the stuff of threats. “Everything, I know everything”, she repeated, still none the wiser, but at least she now had something tangible to investigate, and investigation had once been her daily fare.
She looked back at the forest and almost screamed in fright. Jake was standing there, but her heart leapt when he turned and ran away. Teah tore after him, around the ruins and headlong into the gloom of the forest, Jake soon swallowed by the dense undergrowth.
“Stop,” she shouted, time and time again, but although the growth got thicker, she still caught glimpses of him ahead. “Jake, wait,” she screamed as she followed him up a steep slope toward the trail, fighting against even denser undergrowth. Then she heard an engine start, and redoubled her efforts, finally launching herself up and onto the trail only to watch as Jake drove off into the distance. As she fumed in frustration and panted at her exertions, she saw him throw something out of the window of his truck.
Catching her breath, she rushed along the trail and knelt beside what she’d already recognized: the flag of The Free World. Another clue, but one that didn’t take a genius to figure out. His note had said he knew everything, and this flag told her what that everything referred to. Nothing out here, no, not about Lester or Clay but about the city.
Teah folded the flag and pushed it into her drawstring bag. Games, she thought, the last thing she needed was games. She would have to find Jake. She would have to kill him, but first she had to learn what he knew, and more to the point, who he’d told.
She turned around and walked along the trail that wound its way through the forest, through its green canopy-filtered light. If it weren’t for the Jakes of this world or the hunters, she now realized, if it weren’t for The Free World and all in entailed, then it could all be so much more. It could be a place of peace and tranquillity, a utopia of sorts. But she knew the world wasn’t like that. It hadn’t been so for an age, but Teah couldn’t help but draw at least some measure of solace from its all-enveloping beauty. She wanted to flee again, to take herself and Clay to some place far away from here, away from Jake and out of sight of the city. Or could she not drag herself away from it, from its dark stain on the land, its greed and corruption, from Zac and Connor?
It was dusk by the time she wandered in through Jenny’s backyard and up onto her porch. She’d trapped a brace of rabbits on the way, downed a pigeon and shot her usual couple of squirrels, but it had taken her the best part of a good few hours. Having wandered through the house, Teah found Jenny on the front porch. “Brought you some food,” she said as she dumped the catch on the floor and slumped into a chair.
“You shouldn’t have,” Jenny said, but there was no life in her voice, no spark in her eyes.
“You okay?”
“Yes, just tired. I’m always tired.”
“Where’s Ned?”
“Ned?” Jenny looked away and over the road. “Over at Trip’s bar. He’s over there a lot these days, when he isn’t wandering around.”
“Do you want me to go fetch him?”
“Ned? No, he won’t be interested. He’s never been interested, not since I got sick. No, Teah, Ned doesn’t want me, never really has.” She sighed but then coughed. “You may as well know the truth of it.”
“Why’d you two get together?”
“Because men drink, and when men drink they forget who they like and don’t like, and then they come home and want company. And they take it.”
Teah stared at Jenny. “And you accept that?”
“It’s the way of things. Better to be lonely as a couple than on your own,” and Jenny grunted. “And before you go over there getting all vigilante, remember it’s none of your damned business what goes on between me and my husband.”
“Then why tell me?”
“Because sometimes you need to tell someone, to spill it out. Sometimes you need to say the words you’ve kept close to your heart for too long. Truth is, it ain’t Ned’s fault, it’s mine.”
“How come?”
“’Cause I married him and knew he never loved me? ‘Cause I married him and hoped one day he’d love me back? Or ‘cause I married him just because I loved him? You pick one. Folk fall out of love with folk. Ned never fell out of love with me because he was never in love in the first place, so the blame lies with me.”
“Shit, Jenny.”
Jenny laughed, a laugh that turned into a rasping wheeze. “Don’t cuss on my porch, and don’t ‘Shit, Jenny’ me. I made my bed and paid my dues, and I got the roof over my head I wanted, and I got the porch and the dogs.”
“And you got sick…”
“That too, I suppose.” She reached for her cup of juice. “I’ll let you into a little secret, if you want.”
Teah shifted awkwardly on her chair. She didn’t like the way this had gone. “Go on,” she said, pulling out a smoke to ease the pain of the conversation.
“Don’t like kids much,” Jenny said. “Now Ned, he wanted them. He’ll be better off when I’m gone. Promise me you’ll keep giving Ned the meat. Promise me, Teah.”
“Yeah, ’cept you ain’t going nowhere just yet.”
“Hmmph,” and Jenny coughed, long and hard. “You’ve heard this cough before, haven’t you?”
Teah nodded.
“Then you know how it ends,” and she reached across. “Can I have one of those?”
“Should you?”
She arched her eyebrows. “Really?”
Teah lit her one and passed it across. “What is down those mines?”
Jenny scoffed again. “Not ‘those’ but ‘that’; that mine.”
“Lester’s was the only one?”
“Nope, my…well, my father’s claim was the only one. He’d passed a year before, and I’d dreamed of prospecting, of finding the big seam—you know, all the stuff us girls ain’t supposed to dream of—but there was nothing there. So I sold some space in it. Sold that space and bought this place. I told Lester not to go up there.”
“You knew Lester?”
“Everyone knew Lester. Trouble was, he didn’t want to know anyone.”
“So how come he went up there?”
“Something to do with something. Lester was a government man. He tell you that? He went up there to stop something. Not quite sure what. That’s when I first met him. Served me a notice, and notices don’t get served up here. Said someone had hidden something in my father’s claim. Never explained what, though, and I didn’t tell him about my little deal. Anyhow, he didn’t come back down. Stopped whatever he had to stop
and that was that. Never did find out what, and only went looking the once—think that’s what did it for me. To be honest, I had a bad feeling about the whole affair. Should never have snooped around up there.”
“Government man?”
“Yep, Lester was a gridder. Didn’t he tell you that?”
“Nope.”
“Guess he wouldn’t have.”
Teah wondered if that was why Lester had taken the time to teach her how to survive. She’d thought it was just because he had plenty of it, in hours if not years—the days could drag up there—and it could have been that he wanted something to do while waiting on his death. Maybe, she thought.
“What about Jake? Do you know anything about him?”
“Only that he’d come through here every now and then. Usually drive on straight through, no messin’, no stopping. He’d known Lester for a little while, though. Not sure how. You should take them to Mary’s,” and Jenny nodded toward the carcasses. “She’ll hang ‘em and keep ‘em fresh. Got a smoker out back, she has.”
“Yeah, I know,” Teah said, getting up.
“You were a stiff, back when you were a gridder.”
Teah at first only stared at her. Secrets, she thought. She’d reckoned she’d had a load of them, but it just turned out to be not quite as many as she’d thought.
“Yeah.”
“That space I sold—in the mine.”
“Yeah,” Teah said, kneeling by her and holding her hand.
“Josiah Charm.” Jenny shut her eyes.
Teah lingered for a moment, just holding her friend’s hand. After a while she got up, gathered her bounty and crept down the couple of steps from the porch to the road. She looked back the once, but knew Jenny was dead. She’d seen it before.
9
Teah’s story
Strike time: minus 6 hours
Location: Aldertown
Saggers sat on his sofa and let Clay light the fire. Clay liked fire, it appeared to fascinate him in a way other things couldn’t. He’d stare into the flames for hours, but didn’t seem to remember how to skin a squirrel, or much else he considered boring, for that matter. “He’s a typical kid,” Saggers had said, but Teah wanted a little more from Clay, wanted a kid who knew how to survive. “Needs to learn,” she’d snapped as she’d pushed them out the door. A foul mood sometimes had a need to be spread, and Teah’s mood had been foul enough to cover the entire mountain that morning, but now they’d buried Jenny, she somehow felt a little brighter. Bright enough that Clay looking into the fire didn’t upset her.
“It was a nice hole,” said Saggers.
“What?” Teah muttered, taking off the cattleman. She’d had to wear it; Jenny would’ve expected it.
“Ned; he dug her a nice hole. Nice and deep. The coyotes won’t dig her up.”
“It was about time he did something nice for her.”
Saggers threw her a glance, clearly about to say something but then thinking better of it. “Lovely hole,” he finally muttered, then started giggling.
“I need a smoke,” Teah said, and rolled her eyes.
“Would you?” Saggers asked, once he’d controlled his laughter.
“Would I what?”
“Stick with someone if you didn’t, you know, love ‘em?”
Teah thought about this. Would she? Would she just abandon someone? She grunted. Already done that, she thought, though in truth even she knew it was a harsh judgment on herself.
“No,” she said, in barely more than a whisper.
Saggers jumped up from the sofa. “Here, I think this calls for a little whiskey. Sure I’ve got a bottle around here somewhere.” He rummaged around at the back of the room. Teah hadn’t dared breach that mess. The basement had polished up just fine, but the rest was for Saggers; it was his house, anyway, something she never forgot. At least he was moving better, and blaming her less and less for getting him blown up. “Here we go,” he shouted in triumph and held up a nearly full bottle. “Swig?”
Teah reached out. A swig would be mighty fine, she thought. “To Jenny,” she said, and took a decent swallow.
“Jenny,” Saggers said and took his own. “You do know that’s another vote you’ve lost.”
“What is?”
“Jenny dying—she voted for you to stay,” but his grin told her he was only playing with her.
“You’re an asshole, Saggers.”
“Yep,” he said, making his way back to the sofa. They sat there, drinking and smoking, and the importance of words diminished. They both looked up when the front door creaked.
“Hello?”
“Hannah?” said Teah, getting up. She pulled the hallway door open. “Shit! What happened to you?”
Hannah’s face was a mess. One eye was red and puffy, weeping water and blood. She had a lip the size of a garden slug and about the same color, and her cheeks were red and scraped raw. She was bent nearly double, holding her ribs. “Nothing much,” she said. “Just need a place to hide up for a bit. Do you mind?”
Teah led her to the sofa, every step a trial, and eased her down. “Clay, go get a bowl of water.” Clay got up, took one look at Hannah and held back the sulk that threatened to surface. “And a cloth,” Teah added. She knelt before Hannah. “Was it Ray?”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s my business, Teah.”
“Ain’t just your business,” Saggers said. “Ain’t just yours at all. This is a tiny town. Divides are like a sickness.”
Teah looked over at Saggers, now on the edge of his seat. “You tell me it was Ray, and I’ll go fix for him.”
“Ethan,” Hannah muttered, but winced at the pain.
“They’ll be no fixing for now,” Teah said, and shot Saggers a look. Could she have missed it? Did he have a thing for Hannah? “When you can, just tell us what happened,” and she stared at Hannah.
Clay came back in with the water, and Teah dabbed at her wounds. “Are your ribs broke?”
Hannah shook her head, but then nodded. “I don’t know. Bruised or broke, much the same thing with ribs.”
“Best you look at the fire with Clay, Ethan,” Teah said, and waited. Saggers looked like he was about to explode.
“Fire,” he muttered. “No good—”
Teah lifted Hannah’s jumper and drew in a sharp breath. It was a mess of black and purple, like a cloud of thick smoke from a cabin fire. “That’s gonna hurt for a while.” Saggers kicked the fireplace. Hannah began to sob, and he turned to put his arms around her.
“It was Jenny,” she said between heaves. Teah and Saggers swapped a look.
“What was?” Teah asked, but had to wait for Hannah to compose herself.
“Jenny,” she at last said. “It was her passing what did it.”
“Did what?”
“Got me to thinking that I don’t want to be her, don’t want to live a life like hers.” She looked up, one eye already closed, purple and angry. “I told him I’d had enough. Told him to go.”
“And he did this to you?” Teah whispered, but knew the answer. She felt her anger simmering away, the whiskey in her stomach adding to its turmoil. He wasn’t exactly a favorite of hers, so she knew she had to think this through. Besides, he’d no doubt be on his way here, ready to drag her back. That would be the time, she decided. “You want to stay here the night?”
Hannah nodded, new tears falling. Teah grabbed a smoke and sat back. Taking another swig from the bottle, she thought through her options but knew they were limited. Ray’s handiwork couldn’t go unanswered. Hell, he might have run already, then she realized Saggers was holding Hannah tight. Yeah, she’d missed that secret love, but at least it explained why he hadn’t made much of a move on her, apart from that half-hearted attempt right at the beginning. She hated to admit it to herself, but she knew what it felt like, wondering if someone could be the one. Could she have settled with Saggers? No, they’d both probably known, deep down, that they couldn’t be together. They both loved other people. Saggers anothe
r man’s girl, and her two men equally, two men for different reasons, two men she was separated from now.
“Let’s get her down to the basement,” Teah said. “She can sleep there, in case Ray comes by.”
“If that—”
“Ethan, calm down. Ray will get what’s coming to him, but now is not the time. But just in case he’s gone and gotten himself drunk and comes knocking, Hannah can sleep in the basement and me and Clay will sleep up here.”
“By the fire?” Clay said, all hopeful.
“By the fire,” Teah confirmed.
Saggers looked dissatisfied. “But what about—”
“You look after Hannah. Probably make a better nursemaid than me,” she said with a hint of amusement. Saggers didn’t argue, and more to the point, neither did Hannah. Teah wondered how long it had been this way between them. If Ray knew, he’d definitely make his way up here at some point or other, once jealousy had conquered his remorse, and anger had slayed his guilt. Trouble was, he’d probably known all along that Hannah held a torch for Saggers; a powerful cocktail waiting to erupt. No, she thought, the hurting hadn’t finished yet.
It took a while to get Hannah down the stone steps, and even longer to get her comfortable. Teah stocked them up with water and whiskey, and a bowl or two, and then left them to it. She doubted they’d get much drinking done.
Clay was happy by the fire, so Teah took a chance and went and rummaged around at the back of Saggers’ front room, in search of another bottle of whiskey. There was no doubt about it, she thought midway through, but Saggers was a hoarder through and through. He had everything from old boots to yellowed books, badly folded maps to sacks full of what she assumed was junk, and littered everywhere were bundles and bundles of money. There were piles of it, and coins too, bronze and silver and gold. A half-empty crate of whiskey finally came to light, along with an old television set. Teah was half tempted to see if it worked, but the thought of the whiskey won out and she pulled a bottle out.
