“They want to destroy us. They work us to the bone and feed us rancid food. We’ve become meat for their dogs.”
“Eva, save it for someone else, alright? You’re wasting your breath.”
She goes on, undeterred: “They want to destroy us, and you are working with them. Teaching their daughter how to ride a horse, buying her gifts.”
My gaze cuts down to Eva’s. How would she know about that? She lifts an eyebrow, snickers. This is the Eva I hate most, not the one who stands in front of the campfire and shouts about omens, but the one who’s quietly smug and acts all full of wicked wisdom.
The foremen blow their whistles. I toss down my cup and grab my coa. Eva has no idea how much I am not in the mood to deal with her this morning.
“I do what I want, Eva. For my own reasons.”
I take a step to the side, but Eva grabs my wrist and wrenches it so my palm is facing up.
“Your life line is short,” she says, pressing her gnarled thumb into my grimy hand. “You will die soon.” She juts out her chin and nods. “This is good. This is good for you to know. It gives you the opportunity to decide how you want to live the rest of your brief life.”
“Don’t touch me.” I yank my hand free and drag my palm against my jeans.
The foreman closest to us again blows his whistle. “Girls! Get moving.”
Eva sneers at the foreman and then leans in toward me. “There will be a rebellion. You don’t want to be on the wrong side.”
“Make up your mind. There’s a plague. There’s a witch. Now there’s a rebellion. I don’t believe in your bullshit prophecies.”
I march back to the rows and rows of uncut maguey and hear Eva’s voice ring out: “You don’t need to be a prophet to see what’s coming. The signs are all around us.”
IT’S MIDDAY WHEN a pickup truck pulls to a stop behind me and comes to an idle.
“Hey girl!”
It’s the same man who took me to the house to meet Gonzales the first time. I don’t even need to see his face to know it’s him. I can hear how the cigar clamped between his teeth makes his voice sound thick.
I ignore him. He honks his horn. I ignore him, again. He honks his horn, again. He lays on the horn, and at that point, the jimadors around me stop and stare.
I hear the man get out of the car. He curses and grunts and slams the door. He better not touch me because I swear to God I will slice his arm off with this coa.
“Hey!” he calls out again, with a chuckle this time, like this is all some game he has total control over, like I’m not embarrassing him in front of his inferiors. “Girl. Get in the truck. I’m taking you back to camp.”
The man grabs my right arm to twist me around, which wrenches my shoulder and causes me to drop my tool. The blade lands inches from my foot.
“You’re going back to the house,” the man growls.
I wince. The man notices how I’ve tensed up under his hand and digs his thumb deeper into my ball-and-socket joint. The pain—from an old injury that never healed right—is so sharp and bright, I’m momentarily blinded.
“That hurts?” the man asks. He leans in to where the tip of his cigar sizzles just a hair’s breadth away from my cheek. I can hear it, too, that faint crackle of burning tobacco.
“No,” I lie.
He grips me harder, and the muscles in my legs fail. The man takes that as an opportunity to toss my limp body into his truck. My head slams against the dashboard, and when I raise my fingers to a spot just above my hairline, they come away wet with blood. That wound hurts, but it hurts way less than the man’s thumb pressed into my shoulder joint.
I cradle my arm and turn to look out the window as I’m driven away. Some of the jimadors are scowling at me. They assume that if one worker acts up, all will be punished. Others, like Bruno, hide smiles of admiration. He raises his hand to shield his eyes from the sun. I see it as a salute. The truck passes Eva and Odette. They’re standing side by side. Eva’s eyes are wide, full of pride, full of I told you so.
“WHAT HAPPENED TO your face?”
Bell is laughing as she asks this question. She tries to pull the laughter back into her mouth by covering it with her hand.
“I hit it,” I say, staring at Leo until his gaze drops. “I hit it when I was thrown into a truck. That’s what happened to my face.”
This somehow makes Bell laugh even harder. Leo spits in the dirt and says something about how I should’ve just been cooperative and not made a big deal of it.
Britain’s still saddled up in the yard from earlier, but I head to the stables, where I yank the white horse’s tack from the wall and haul it outside.
“You’re on Britain today,” I say to Bell. She stops laughing.
“But. But . . . I . . .”
“Shut up, Bell, and get on the horse!” Bell doesn’t move. “Get on the damn horse. Leo. Help her up.”
“Sarah Jac . . .” Leo starts.
“If she wants to learn how to ride, she’s going to learn how to ride. No more babysitting.”
I throw the blanket and saddle onto the white horse and glance at Bell. She’s falling apart at the prospect of doing something on her own. Her pale skin goes paler. Her lower lip trembles.
Lane wouldn’t have acted this way. Not ever. Lane was scared shitless all the time—always when we pulled some kind of scam—but she understood what it was like to have to do things that were scary and that you weren’t proud of because that’s how survival works. Aside from me, no one ever knew how scared she was. That’s because I would always remind her what our grandmother told us: it’s okay to be scared, but it’s not okay to show it.
“What would you do if your mother was here, Bell?” I tighten the saddle around the white stallion’s belly. He tosses his head and stamps. I’m making him nervous. “If she was here right now watching you, what would you do?”
Bell looks to her feet.
“What would you do?” I demand.
“This isn’t helping,” Leo says.
“Leo, do me a favor and shut up.”
I repeat my question to Bell. “What would you do? You’d get up on the horse, wouldn’t you?” I urge. “You’d prove you weren’t a little chickenshit.”
“Sarah Jac,” Leo warns.
“Leo!” I shout. “Did you not just hear me tell you to shut up?”
“I’d get on the horse!” Bell yells.
I’m shocked. It sounds so much like a wolf cub trying to find its first howl, I’d bet she’s never truly yelled before. Her gaze is still down at her feet, but her hands are balled into fists at her side. She’s mad; I’ve made her mad. That’s something.
“Then do it,” I command.
Bell walks toward Britain, and Leo lifts her up so that she can grab the saddle horn and pull herself up and over. While Leo adjusts the stirrups for Bell, I finish up with the white horse.
“What’s this horse’s name?” I ask.
“King,” Leo replies.
“King,” I say, clicking my tongue. “Sorry about my mood. It’s been one of those mornings.”
I mount the white horse, and it’s obvious he doesn’t like me. I haven’t given him much reason to. I’ve been aggressive with his tack and in my tone. He shuffles a bit, stepping back, stepping forward. I can feel his muscles tense, release, and tense again. I reach back up to the wound at my hairline. It’s stopped bleeding, but it’s still gummy to the touch.
“We’re trotting today.” I take King’s reins and guide him toward the center of the yard. “Maybe up to a canter. But we’ll just stay here and do circles in the yard. Britain knows you, so you don’t have to be afraid of her.”
“I want to go out,” Bell says, adjusting her hat.
“Really?” Leo and I ask at the same time.
“I want to go out,” Bell repeats, more forcefully this time.
“Fine,” I say. “Let’s go.”
THE LANDSCAPE IS particularly stunning today. It must have something to do
with the clouds being thicker or lower, but the mountains actually look farther away than normal, like they’ve been picked up and moved several miles to the west. They’re hazy, not copper-dusted, as James would say.
We haven’t reached a canter because Bell is stuck on the trot. At first she jostled around in her saddle with such turbulence I thought she might fall off Britain, but she soon got it down: eyes to the front, spine straight, belly in, legs firm. I even heard her laugh, chirping and bubbly like little girls are supposed to laugh. For near-on forty-five minutes she’s been transitioning from a walk to a trot to a walk to a trot. She’s gripping the reins too tightly because she’s nervous, but despite that, she’s never once pulled back too hard on them.
“I’m sorry I laughed at you,” Bell eventually says.
“It’s fine.”
“Thank you again for the violin. I love it.”
“Not a problem.”
“Can I see you gallop?”
I pull my gaze from the mountains to Bell’s chubby face. She’s giving me a gift. I should take it.
“You want to see me gallop?”
Bell nods. “James said you can go fast.”
“Let me take Britain,” I say. “She knows me better.”
I hop down from King and help Bell dismount, quickly in case she changes her mind. I give my hat to Bell to hold, show her how to grip the stallion’s reins, close but not too close to his chin, and instruct her to stay just like that.
“I’m going down toward the mountains and then turning right back.” I readjust Britain’s stirrups and climb on. The horse’s muscles shift underneath me, and I can barely hide my excitement. I’ve been waiting for this for weeks. As soon as I strike my heels into her sides, Britain takes off.
I remember immediately what it feels like to be on a horse when it’s going full speed—the propulsion forward, the ripping force of wind—but I’d forgotten what it sounded like. There’s the thunderous pounding of the hooves and the rush of air, but there’s also silence—a noisy, full silence that comes from being alone with sounds made by the earth and wind and a living thing. That not-silent silence makes me want to ride forever, to the mountains and past them, across the deserts to the wheat fields, to the trees in the East, to the water.
“That’s my girl!” I whoop. “That’s my Britain!”
Being on this horse, it’s overwhelming, all-consuming in the best, most magical way. In this moment—with Britain and the wind—I forget about all the things that have been chasing me: the dead foreman, the curses, the ghost of my sister. It’s just me and Britain, and together we can outrun it all.
It’s impossible to tell how far I’ve gone because of the unchanging landscape and the lack of physical markers, but it feels like miles. I imagine Bell peering out at the blurry horizon, diligently holding King, hot in the high sun and starting to worry.
Britain isn’t tiring, but I can hear her breathing now and see her hair darkening with sweat. I slow down just enough to turn her, and we race back to King and Bell, who emerge as just specks in the distance. The hazy mountains are behind me. The heat beats down on my head. It really does: it beats. Thump, thump.
I’m so happy. Is it wrong to feel like I’ve deserved this happiness?
I dig my heels into Britain’s side and whoop again.
Finally, finally. It’s just me and her. She runs faster, just for me. My Britain.
SIXTEEN
Leo and Farrah are waiting in the yard. I scan for James, but he’s not there. The slant of the shadows on the earth tells me that Bell, Britain, and I have been out too long. Even with her hat for protection, a rash of deepest pink is visible on an exposed patch of Bell’s shoulder, where she’s been cooked by the sun.
“You should have seen Sarah Jac!” Bell cries out. “She made Britain go so fast.”
Leo is not impressed. He helps Bell dismount and immediately walks her horse over to the stables.
“What’s his problem?” I ask Farrah, climbing down from King.
“He said you were mad when the two of you left. He was worried.”
I can smell food—the earthy tang of boiled greens—being prepared down at camp.
“Who taught you horses?” Farrah asks.
“My grandmother. She had a farm.”
For a moment, neither of us says anything. Farrah shifts her gaze over to the mountains and holds it there. That first time I saw the elder Gonzales sister out in the maguey fields on Britain I thought the expression on her face could best be described as haughty, and that she looked at the landscape like a proud, puffed-up owner would. I thought she admired the desert and the terrain the same way I admired the small, collected treasures stuffed in my bandanna. Now, I’m not so sure that’s right. The way her yellow-tinted eyes are set on the mountains, it’s like she’s watching them, or looking beyond them, like she’s been waiting patiently for so, so long for someone or something to appear from their far side. All of a sudden, I feel uncomfortable, as if I’ve stepped into a moment that’s not mine.
“Well, then,” I say. “Unless I plan on fighting for scraps, I need to head down to camp. I’m sure Leo will be back for King in a minute.”
“Your farm,” Farrah says, finally facing me, “was it like how farms are in books? With animals and a red barn and green rolling hills?”
“Something like that.”
“Were there many trees?”
“When I was there last, people from the cities were starting to come in and cut them down, but yeah, up until then there were lots of trees.”
“Do you plan to go back?” she asks.
I don’t like to think about what my grandmother’s land would be like now: stripped, fallow. Or the structures: dismantled for their wood, taken over by squatters who are probably wearing all my grandmother’s old clothes and eating off her dishes.
“I’m sure there’s nothing to go back to.”
“That’s too bad,” Farrah says, and I believe she means it. “Do you miss it?”
“Not as much as I probably should.”
Farrah holds my gaze, like she’s urging me on, like she wants there to be something shared between us.
But then I remember Eva’s words, slamming into me like wind. They are trying to destroy you.
“Excuse me,” I say, stepping around Farrah, “I have to go.”
I WAS RIGHT about the greens. They’ve been boiled to a paste and need salt, but someone in the mess crew thought to add cayenne pepper so that’s a nice surprise. After shoveling them down, I head back up to the ranch house. I’m tired of waiting on James to come to me. I’ll find him myself.
I figure the best place to start is the stables. When I’m at the door, I hear two people speaking in low tones. I walk inside, as quietly as I can, where a lamp is lit, and it’s just bright enough for me to see two shadowed bodies sitting across from each other on the ground in front of the horse stalls. I see their hands, fingers stroking palms, like when James rubs his strong thumb against my aching muscles. He’ll hold my wrist in place and stretch out my fingers. You have to know someone’s body well to do that for them. You have to really care about them.
My eyes adjust to the dark, and I recognize Raoul. The top few buttons of his shirt are undone. The bundle he wears on a string around his neck rests on his bare chest, directly above his heart. With him is Leo. I take what I think is a silent step back, but Leo immediately shifts. His eyes lock on mine. He smiles. It’s a melancholy little thing, so different from what I’m used to seeing from him.
Raoul sees me next. He drops Leo’s hand. His heart must have split a bit, like mine does whenever James and I are forced apart and our time together is stolen from us.
I understand, finally. Leo is running a con, just like us. That’s what he was trying to tell me the other day.
“What are you doing here, Sarah Jac?” Leo asks.
“You . . .” I pause. “That fight—at the fire, weeks ago, between the two of you—that was
staged. Did James know?”
Of course James knew. The fight was probably James’ idea.
Leo is silent.
“I’m here for the horse,” I say.
“The horse?”
“Britain. I was coming to check on her.”
Raoul is gnawing at his thumbnail, watching me, strategizing.
Strategizing what? Against me?
“Leo, we need to do something,” he says.
“No,” Leo replies, unwinding his long legs and rising to stand. “It’s fine. Go back to the bunkhouse. I’ll find you later.”
Raoul curses and reluctantly gets to his feet. As he leaves, he pins me with a glare. He’s angry and disappointed. I know so well what that feels like, so I can’t blame him.
Once Raoul’s disappeared into the night, Leo folds his arms across his chest and lowers his head. I’ve disappointed him, too.
“How long?” I ask.
Leo’s head snaps up. “How long what?”
“How long have you known him?”
“Not long. We met on the train.”
“Leo. I can go find him. Talk to him. Tell him I’m the last person . . .”
“Yes,” Leo says, cutting me off. “The fight at the fire was staged. James helped.”
“What about the first one? When your lip got split.”
Leo shakes his head. “That was just me being stupid.”
“Let me go talk to Raoul.” I take a step back toward the door.
“Forget it. I’ll find him and deal with this. You might as well stay. Be with your horse.”
I wait for Leo to leave, but he doesn’t. He just kicks at the dust with the toe of his boot, frowning.
“What?” I ask finally. “You’re not worried I’ll say anything about this, are you? Because I won’t.”
“I know you won’t.” Leo’s response comes quick. “I’m debating whether or not I should tell you something I know will hurt you.”
“If it’s about James, just say it.”
Leo takes a step forward. “Obviously, I know about the games you two play with people, Sarah Jac, because I’ve played them, too, and played them better. This time you might’ve made a mistake.”
My hands clasp in front of me, in front of my heart. My thumb presses into my palm and drags across the swoop of my too-short life line.
All the Wind in the World Page 11
