“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“How can you possibly do this?” I’ve spent most of this sorry excuse for a pleasant morning trying to keep my emotions tamped down, but now I can feel it—the pure, hot fury clawing its way up my throat, snaking its way down my limbs, and causing my hands to ball into fists. “She’s nothing like us, James. She’s not strong. Have you seen her hands? She’s never worked.”
“There are other ways to tell if a person is strong than by counting the callouses on their hands, Sarah.”
I step back, stunned. The air leaves my lungs in one sharp, swift burst. I can’t believe he just said that to me.
There’s a noise in the hall, the squeak of shoes on tile. Farrah calls out James’ name. Her voice is rich and warm, like sunshine. I realize I haven’t heard her cough once, not while we were riding, not during breakfast.
“She’s not sick anymore,” I whisper, the rage still crackling through my bones.
“Leave Valentine as soon as possible, tomorrow even.” James starts to back away. “I’ll find you later today. I’ll give you some money, and then you go.” James vanishes around a corner and into the clean hallways of his new home.
I stand there for a moment, telling myself that I’m strong and sharp, but it feels like I’m quaking, like I’m chipping apart.
Lane’s necklace is gone. That last little bit of my sister. I can’t believe James doesn’t even care about Lane’s necklace. It means nothing to him. He traded us. He traded me and Lane for Farrah and Bell. How could he do that?
This is not how this is supposed to work. Leave before you’re left, my grandmother used to say.
Again, I wonder: Is this a spell, like Odette said? Is James under a spell?
I’m still standing there, trembling and alone in the hallway, when Bell has the bad luck of emerging from her room.
Bell, who just had pancakes with butter and agave nectar. Bell, who made her mother fly up to the sky only to bring her crashing down, who cursed the fields, who brought the bees, who brought the lice.
“You did this.” I grab hold of the girl’s arm and stare down into her wide eyes. “To James and Farrah. To James. You did something to him to make him fall in love with your sister.”
Bell is silent, furrowing her little brow, pretending to be the innocent, as if she has no idea what I’m talking about.
“I know what you did to your mother,” I growl.
“My mom?” Bell asks softly.
I lean in and tighten my grip. “You brought the wind.” My fingers push easily into her soft muscle. She whimpers. “But I’m not afraid of you.”
For a moment, Bell doesn’t respond. Then she drops her gaze to her feet, which I take as an admission of guilt.
“I have something to show you.” I pull Bell along behind me, and together we go out the front door, through the courtyard, and back in the direction of the horses. Bell skips and stumbles to keep up, but she doesn’t make a sound. Of course she doesn’t. She must be choking on her guilt. No one sees us.
King is tied up, but still saddled. As Bell and I pass the stables, I hear Ortiz inside, whistling to himself as he works.
“Where are we going?” Bell asks finally. She’s tripping over her feet. Her hat’s inside, so she shields her eyes against the sun with her hand and squints at me.
I know what I’m doing, but I don’t. I untie King from his post, toss Bell up into the saddle, and climb up behind her.
“It’s a surprise,” I say, urging King into a canter and then quickly into a hard run.
Bell flops forward, then sideways, then has to catch her balance with the saddle horn. She clutches a handful of King’s mane and yelps.
By now, the bellies of the Gonzales family are full. They’ve perhaps started to wonder what’s keeping Bell and me. Ortiz may have heard the sound of King thundering away, but he also may have assumed that his new owner James Holt was taking him out. Once they all put the pieces together, Bell and I will be so far out that no one will be able to catch us with another horse. They’ll send the trucks and cast a wide net, but I’ll run zigzags to throw them off my trail.
My arms hurt from cutting maguey. My head hurts, and my skin still hurts from my fever. My lungs and my heart hurt. They feel heavy and full of salt. As I ride, the pain finds a rhythm. It’s not soothing exactly, but there’s something nice about a rhythm even if there’s pain involved.
Bell may be saying things—shouting even—from her position in front of me, but I’m so focused I don’t hear her.
We’ve gone a few miles before I pull King to a stop. I’ve been crisscrossing the plain and can tell by the sun that I’m facing west and by the shadows that it’s almost noon. A bird cries out. Aside from that, it’s so quiet my ears buzz.
This is as good a place as any.
I dismount and drag a crying Bell from the horse. Her legs have gone limp. She falls to the ground and makes no attempt to get up. She covers her face with her hands, and I can see the sunburn on them.
“Take off your boots,” I demand.
“I’m thirsty,” she whimpers.
“Take them off!”
Bell doesn’t move, so I kneel down and yank her boots off myself. Her cries ratchet up into wails, but beyond those, I can hear something else: a train whistle in the distance, coming in from the north by the sound of it.
“Stop being a baby,” I say.
The little girl hiccups and wipes the snot from her face. “What are you doing?”
“It’s a game.” I stand and stuff Bell’s boots into King’s saddlebag. “If your sister loves you enough, she’ll come find you.”
I mount King, and Bell pushes up to unsteady feet. Her socks are gleaming white. Her cheeks are streaked red from the sun and from crying. She’s a tiny thing, pitiful in the purest sense.
“I don’t want to play a game!”
Bell lunges toward the horse and grabs for the stirrups, but I jerk King away and scan the horizon for the clouds of dust kicked up by car tires or the bold glare of a white horse. They’ll probably be on their way by now.
“Sarah Jac, please!”
Ignoring Bell’s cries, I urge King into a hard gallop in the direction of what I hope are the train tracks.
TWENTY-FOUR
I haven’t gone far, probably not even a mile, before I spot a cluster of black birds, three or four of them, soaring lazily past me in the direction of the ranch and of Bell, who’s dissolved into just a speck in the desert now.
So small. Bell will die, from exposure and dehydration, probably in a matter of hours. That’s what I wanted. But now the thought of Bell lying there, peering up to the sky, watching the great black birds she’s so fond of expectantly circle her body, suddenly makes me sick. I realize now—late, too late—that I don’t want anyone to die. I just want the Gonzales family—and James, oh God James—to hurt, to hurt like I’ve been hurt.
I stop King, turn him hard, and take off again. When she finally comes into view, my eyes skip over Bell at first. How quickly she’s started to disappear into the landscape and become a tiny pile in the dirt, barely noticeable except for her white socks. She’s sitting down, still crying.
I jump down from King and start to search the ground.
“Your sock!” I demand. “Give me your sock.”
I find a stick, a sturdy one, almost a yard long, and drive it into the ground. Bell’s doing nothing but staring and hiccupping, so I strip off one of her socks myself, tear its edge, and then drive it down onto the tip of the stick. There’s just enough wind to catch the sock, but not enough to blow the whole thing over. It’s not a perfect flag, but it’ll do.
“Don’t move!” I tell Bell as I remount King. “Don’t try to walk home. Just wait until your sister comes.”
“Stay with me,” she begs.
I can’t stay with her. After what I’ve done, I’ll be dragged back to camp, shot, and probably fed to the remaining mastiff.
Just as I’m ur
ging King away again, I hear the sound of a rifle shot. King startles, and as I work to steady him, I scan the desert. My heavy, salt-filled heart lurches in my chest. I take a breath in, and am surprised by how loud it is. There’s another shot: a crack and then its echo.
If it’s James, I can outride him. Maybe. I dig my heels into King’s side, and push him into another hard gallop. I can tell he’s tiring. I wish I were on Britain. For me, she would have run and run and run.
I look over my shoulder, see the other white horse in the distance, and that James is, in fact, its rider. The gun goes off again—the shot’s not directed at me, but skyward. King whinnies and twists; the reins whip out of my hands, and I nearly fall from the saddle in the attempt to get them back. James fires another shot, and King is done. He stops and rears back on his hind legs. I’m thrown forward, clinging to his mane to keep my balance.
King lands hard on his front hooves, shakes his head, and is still. I can hear everything: my deep breaths, King’s deep breaths, the buzz of an empty landscape, the whistle of the still-distant train, and the pounding of the other horse’s hooves.
I pitch forward in the saddle and roar with frustration. The wind blows crosswise, spraying dirt and small rocks across my face, like it’s chastising me, like it’s saying, You idiot girl. Look what you’ve done.
“Please, King,” I beg. “I need you to run. I need you to get me out of here.”
King must be feeling generous. When I dig in with my heels, he snorts and breaks into a run, but it’s too late. James is coming in fast at a diagonal and soon enough lines his horse up next to mine. For a moment, we’re matched, galloping stride for stride, heartbeat for heartbeat.
“Stop!” James shouts.
I try to pull away, but James reaches out and yanks at my reins. King, unsure of what to do, veers right, straight into the other horse. As they collide, James leans over, throws his arm around my midsection, and manages to drag me off my saddle and onto the front of his. I let out a humiliated, strangled cry. I kick my legs, but they find nothing except air. It’s no use. I’m stomach-side down. My view is of saddle leather and, if I rotate my head, a tilted, bobbing horizon. I try to go limp, so that I’ll slide off and fall hard to the ground, but James has one hand on the waist of my pants to hold me in place.
“Where?” James shouts.
I point weakly in the direction of where I left Bell, and James steers his horse that way.
It only takes a few minutes for James to locate Bell, still sitting next to the makeshift white flag, and when we reach her, James flies off his horse and runs to scoop her up. I slide off the saddle and stand aside. I lost my hat, so I keep putting my hand on the top of my head, as if that makes any difference.
I can see a burn on the exposed part of Bell’s neck that has started to blister. Her lips are cracking. James grabs a canteen from his saddlebag and urges her to drink. When she’s had her fill, he takes his own pull, and then holds the canteen out to me.
I shake my head.
“Fuck you, Sarah.” He walks over and shoves the canteen into my chest. “Drink some fucking water.”
I take a small sip—any more than that and I’d throw up.
“Your horse isn’t going to make it,” James says.
I glance back and see King coming toward us at a trot. Why he followed us I have no idea.
“I’m not going to run him anymore.”
I return the canteen and watch James try to get Bell to drink a little more. She won’t. The water just spills down her chin and onto the front of her shirt.
James takes one last pull and wipes his mouth with his sleeve.
“What were you thinking?” he snarls. “You could’ve done whatever you wanted to me—I expected that—but I never would’ve expected you to take this out on a little girl.” For a brief moment, he peers out to the mountains; then his eyes land back on mine. “Gonzales will kill you, you know. Then he’ll string up your corpse at camp for everyone to see.”
I say nothing as James hoists Bell up under his arm and mounts his horse one-handed.
“You tried to run away,” he says. “Like a coward.”
He’s right.
We walk the horses so we don’t wear them out. I’m back on King. About a mile out from the house, James stops so he can bind my hands with rope and lead King by his reins. He needs to make it appear like I’m his prisoner. After losing our bearings several times, having to retrace our steps and double back, it’s midafternoon before the house is in sight. I see Farrah first. She’s standing at the edge of the horse yard. She lets out a shout when she sees her sister sitting in the saddle in front of James and runs up to meet them.
I’m watching Gonzales watch me. His face is tight with rage, which I expected. I’ve taken one of his fragile treasures and nearly crushed it.
Once Bell is safe in her father’s arms and the horses are tied up, James drags me down from my horse and sets me on legs that sting from dehydration.
He isn’t able to free my hands from their bindings before Farrah approaches and slaps me across the face. I’m surprised by her strength.
“Bitch,” she growls.
I take that insult, fold it up, and keep it safe with all the others.
TWENTY-FIVE
My grandmother used to say that the best thing to be is useful. She said that if you had a group of twenty people, only two or three of them would be of any use. The rest of them would lack common sense and what she called intestinal fortitude. A useful person can, among other things, start a fire, hunt small game with a rifle, witch water, tell time by the position of the sun, determine whether or not a plant is poisonous, and soothe a crying baby.
Above all, a useful person knows her place. She doesn’t draw attention to herself and does what needs to be done, nothing more.
My grandmother would not be very proud of me right now.
AFTER FARRAH HIT me, Gonzales locked me up. He had Ortiz lead me through the camp, where the jimadors were just returning from the fields, to a small room in the back of a storage building.
“You made a mistake, girl,” Ortiz said. I can’t help but hear an echo of what Leo told me that night in the stables, when he said James was in the house with Farrah.
In the room, there’s a cot with a straw mattress and a metal folding chair. There’s one window, a small one, roughly the size of a shoe box, up by the ceiling. The walls are made from vertical planks of wood, crudely and halfheartedly hammered together. I could break out of this room if I wanted with a well-placed kick, but I won’t.
I’ve been here for two days. The gaps in the boards let in the cold air at night, and, during the day, lines of sunshine stretch across the dirt floor. I can hear everything: people walking around, of course, but also Eva’s now-nightly sermons about judgment and punishment, faraway train whistles, men taking a piss onto a nearby scrub oak, and animals—javelina hogs most likely—snorting and shuffling after nightfall as they search for trash.
Aside from the sounds, there are the smells that make up the overwhelming rot-stench of camp. It reeks of carcass and horse shit, especially in the hot afternoons when the mess crew is starting to cook what passes for food these days. I can’t believe I’ve stayed at the Real Marvelous this long—in this filth. I’ve become the filth.
There’s a padlock on the other side of the door. I told Ortiz before he left that he didn’t have to lock me in, just like James didn’t have to bind my hands when he led me back from the plain. I’m not going anywhere. Ortiz bolted the door anyway. Just to be safe, he said.
I’ve had no visitors except for Ortiz. He’s been designated my warden. He brings food, and we sometimes play cards together. He’s made distinctive nicks in the corners of all fifty-two of the cards so he can tell what he’s dealt and what he’s drawn. He always wins.
Ortiz remains tight-lipped. I thought that maybe since he keeps winning hand after hand he might reward me with news about how Bell is faring or if Gonzales
has said anything about my fate. I make jokes about Eva: What a piece of work, huh? I tease him about what it’s like to be my servant: I bet the horses smell better than me, right? I ask him if he’s ever seen an execution at camp before: How many? Did Gonzales make everyone watch? Did the people up there waiting to be shot start to wail or did they stay silent like Bruno did?
He answers only the last question, about the executions. “I’ve seen a couple. Maybe three. But once, some kid who stabbed a foreman in the leg begged for forgiveness in front of Gonzales and the whole camp and was spared. So there’s that.”
So there’s that.
Ortiz comes in one morning and hands me a letter, written in pencil on a yellowed page torn from a book. It’s from Odette. Her handwriting looks like mine: terrible, all gapped and slanted.
Don’t worry, it says. I’m going to help you.
Later that night, James comes. I hear someone working the lock and assume it’s Ortiz. I’m half asleep, so I call out something about how he can wait until the morning to fleece me at cards again, but when I turn my head and see a familiar profile in the doorway, I sit up suddenly and reach for a sun hat Ortiz lent me and place it on top of my fuzzy head. After all that’s happened, I’m still trying to impress him. Still. Because he’s James, and he’s beautiful, and we once made plans together.
James enters and closes the door behind him. He’s in a new set of clean clothes and is wearing camel-brown boots that are shiny and just barely covered with dust. He doesn’t ask how I’m doing. I don’t expect him to. I’m tired and angry. I have so many questions, but James doesn’t give me the chance to fire off even one.
“I’m not going to fix your mistakes anymore, Sarah.” He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out an envelope. “This is the last time.”
“That’s what you think you’ve been doing? Fixing my mistakes?”
“Yes.”
“You think I’ve been the weak link?”
James steps forward, lifting the envelope so that it’s hovering right in front of my nose. I slap it away.
All the Wind in the World Page 16
