“Just because I’m not leaving doesn’t mean you can’t.” He shoves the envelope into my stomach the way he did with the canteen a few days ago.
I take it, warily, and peek inside. It’s stuffed with more paper bills than I’ve ever seen. It makes me think of the money I’ve got hidden in my bandanna. The money I earned working day after day in the fields and with Bell doesn’t come anywhere close to the amount in this envelope.
“What is this?” I ask.
James takes a breath. “I promised.”
Then it clicks, what he said the other day: I’ve got you taken care of.
I hurl the envelope at James, wishing it were a brick. It hits him in the chest, and the bills scatter to the ground. He doesn’t even blink.
“Have you spent so much time up at the house in bed with your girl that you don’t see what’s happening here?” I seethe. “We’re starving. People are losing their minds. Bruno. I got caught in a bee swarm, and my horse . . .” I trail off. “I could’ve left weeks ago—hopped one of those trains just like everyone else with sense. Left with the caravan. Instead I waited here . . . with you. For you.”
James crosses his arms over his chest and looks to the ground. It’s the first time I’ve seen him appear even remotely guilty.
“What about the other night?” My voice breaks. “When you came back, and you found me. James. You’re married?”
“Sarah . . . I already told you . . .”
I rise from the cot and start pacing. “How did this even happen? How did you . . . ?”
James reaches out to stop me, but I spin from his grasp.
“Don’t touch me.” I point my dirty finger into his clean face. “You do not get to touch me ever again.”
I rake my fingernails across my shorn head and, in the process, knock my hat off. James bends to pick it up and then places it on the edge of my cot. It’s a gentle, considerate gesture.
His hand—the left one—lingers on my hat, as if that will have to do since I won’t let him touch me. There’s no gold band around the third finger. My gaze travels to his collar. There’s no pin, no gift from another desperate girl.
Hope flares. It is so small, though. And undeserved.
“Come with me,” I beg. “Just come.”
James lets go of my hat and puts his left hand back in his pocket.
“I can’t.”
A sob rises in my throat, so big I nearly choke on it. “I thought she was dying.”
It’s a terrible, illogical thing to say, as if love and death are mutually exclusive. James knows this, and doesn’t dignify it with a response.
“This . . . This isn’t you. This is James playing dress-up.”
“Just take the money and go.”
“You’re hiding behind fancy boots and a new haircut.”
“Sarah.” There’s a roughness to the way James says my name, like he’s coming apart inside, the way a pile of rocks shudders before collapsing under its own weight.
Come apart, I urge silently.
“Does your Farrah know you’re a gambler and a thief and a killer?”
I’m trying to threaten him, but he doesn’t take the bait. “She knows more than you think she knows.”
“Did you tell her about Tulsa? About Truth or Consequences? Does her father know?”
James is silent, and that is my answer. Gonzales knows. Farrah knows. With James connected to the family, they would have protected me, but now I either die here or get hauled back to New Mexico and die there.
“Take the money and leave, Sarah Jac,” James says. “No one knows I brought it.”
Die here or die there. Either way, I’m old bones in the desert. I take a step toward him, crunching paper money under my boots. He smells the way he always smells now, like piñon pine. And faintly of dust.
“No.”
“We can stage it,” James says. There he is, my schemer. “We can make it look like you attacked me. Beat me senseless. Use your fists. Use that chair over there. Knock me out, take the money, and go.”
“Tell me what happened with Farrah,” I demand.
“I fell in love with her, and I married her.”
“Liar,” I scoff.
“I told you I didn’t want to do this forever, Sarah—hop trains with you, be on the run all the time.”
“We had a plan! Did you not think about me at all?”
“A plan?” James extends his arm, gesturing to the fields and bunkhouses beyond the wall. “Have you seen these people here? You don’t think they all had plans when they were our age? We could work for decades running little scams and cutting maguey, but it wouldn’t amount to anything.”
“What does that mean?” I demand. “Amount to anything? I had no idea you cared so much about nice clothes and fancy cars.”
“It’s not that!” James moves past me, brushing up against my shoulder, and sits on the side of my cot. He runs his hands through his hair, loosening it from its pomade. A lock comes free and hangs in a crescent at his forehead.
“Of course I thought about you,” he says, “and in thinking about you I figured out a way to help you and myself, and you went and fucked it up!” He pauses, and I watch him breathe heavily, as if he’s exhausted, as if I’ve exhausted him. “I’m sorry about what happened to you, Sarah—the bees, Britain. I wish I could have been there for you.”
I wait for him to say he’s sorry about Lane’s necklace. Or that he’s sorry for marrying Farrah. Or that he still loves me. Seconds pass, maybe a full minute. He says none of those things, so I give up and play the only hand I have left.
“I look forward to dying here,” I declare, proud of how steady and clean my voice sounds.
James lifts his head, and his eyes widen.
“Burned at the stake like a witch. Or shot in front of everyone. And I look forward to what’s left of me being strung up on a pole in the center of camp. That way you can see me every day from the window of your beautiful new home and watch the vultures come to slowly pick my carcass apart.”
James flinches, just slightly, then rises to stand. He regards me for a moment, quietly.
“Hard hearts, James Holt,” I say.
“Suit yourself,” he replies, moving past me to get to the door. “I have to go. No one knows I’m here.”
“How’s Bell?” I call out as James places his hand on the door latch.
He stops and glances over his shoulder. “Don’t act like you care, Sarah Jac.”
After James leaves and I’m again alone in the locked room, I kneel down and carefully collect all the paper money that’s scattered across the floor. The bills are mixed. Some are ones; those are crumpled and worn. Others are fives. Far more are twenties, crisp and bank-fresh. I take my time sorting them on the mattress. I count them once, then twice, then a third time just to be sure. I put them back into their envelope and shove the envelope into my waistband.
For a long time, my little room sings with James’ presence.
TWENTY-SIX
I’ve stopped playing cards with Ortiz. I don’t trust myself with my bets now that I have all this money from James.
Odette finally comes. Early one morning before the trucks leave, I wake to the sound of her whispering my name through a gap in the wall.
“Sarah Jac, it’s me! Did you get my letter?”
I roll from my cot and move across the small room toward the sound of her voice. She reaches her dust-covered fingers through the gap to awkwardly clasp on to mine.
“Has James come to see you?” she asks.
“Yes,” I reply. “But just once. And not for long.”
“Not me.” Odette sounds like she’s choking: on her sadness, on her anger. “I bet he wants to come, but that bitch won’t let him.”
She gasps and releases my hand. She stands; her boots shuffle. Her bandaged foot is right in front of me. The cloth wrappings are clean, coated in dirt rather than blood. I wonder how much it still hurts her. I know she still limps.
&n
bsp; “I’ll come back,” Odette whispers. Then she’s gone.
Later, in the afternoon, I’m dozing when I again hear my name, again called through the cracks. It’s brighter now, so when I flip onto my side, I see a brown eye peering at me. It blinks. Several sets of dirty little fingers poke through the gaps. I rise, and the eye and fingers vanish. There are multiple squeals, followed by the sound of several sets of feet running. I’ve become something out of a storybook, a girl-monster that the kids of the Real Marvelous can’t resist waking only to run away from.
I kill time envisioning a new house—not the one in the hill, but one out here in the desert. Of course it’ll be smaller than the Gonzales estate, where James and Farrah will tumble around together under cool white sheets, but the sandy color will be the same, and I’ll figure out how to set up the windows and doors so that the breezes come in but the dust stays outside. I try to imagine myself living there with Bruno, but all I can recall anymore is his warmth, the script of his tattoo, and the smell of his cigarettes. I can’t picture his face. I know we talked to each other several times, but all I can hear in my head is him asking, Did I do the right thing, Sarah? And then, in the fields, him telling me to go. I can’t make a full person out of just those scraps, so I imagine living in my house alone.
I’m thinking about my desert house when James comes back. He looks more like how James should look—dirtier, rougher around the edges. He’s wearing the same pants and shirt as the last time I saw him—the shirt for sure. It’s wrinkled as if it’s been slept in for several nights. He’s rolled up the sleeves to his elbows, like he does when he goes to work in the fields, and his cuffs are smudged with dirt. His ring is back on.
I sit up.
“Odette’s trying to find—”
He cuts me off, shaking his head in warning. Then, Bell enters.
Her hands and face are smeared with some kind of white salve that I’m guessing is meant to soothe her sunburn. Aside from that she seems well enough. I remember thinking she looked full of cake when I first saw her standing in the horse yard, and full of cake she looks again. The desert didn’t do its duty with her. It didn’t dry her out and cripple her. Bell’s cheeks are still plump, and she’s standing straight and proud. I know her well enough to see she’s angry.
“She followed me,” James says.
“You had a sister,” Bell blurts out. “She died. James told me.”
I glare at James. As if he hadn’t betrayed me enough.
“How old was she?” Bell asks.
I clear my throat. “She was a little older than you.”
“Do you miss her?”
“Yes. Every day.”
“I could’ve been your new little sister,” Bell says.
The right thing for me to do would be to apologize. I’d take Bell’s small, warm hand in mine and tell her I wasn’t thinking straight when I rode her out on King and abandoned her to the elements. I would say that there are things in my life that are really complicated right now and that I hope she’ll forgive me one day, though I’ll understand if she won’t.
Instead, I say: “I don’t want a new little sister. And if I did, you, Bell, could never replace the one I had.”
“Sarah,” James warns.
Bell’s eyes pool with tears, but still she’s undeterred. “I asked Leo one time why you were so mean, and he said that you were lonely. He was trying to be your friend, but you wouldn’t let him.”
“James, what is this?” I ask. “Am I supposed to explain all this to her? Do you want to?”
“Bell.” James puts his hand on the little girl’s shoulder. It’s then I notice the third finger on his right hand; the entire thing is swollen, purple to nearly black in places. Bell shrugs James’ hand away. She doesn’t want his comfort.
“Just say what you came to say and let’s go,” James urges.
Bell says nothing, and I assume she’s waiting for me to do or say something. She’s wearing her riding boots, the ones I shoved in King’s saddlebag. They’ve gotten dusty from the trek across camp.
“James says you’re going away,” Bell finally says, “so I just wanted to say thank you for the riding lessons. I learned a lot, and I’ll miss you.”
This little girl—what is she doing to me? She’s thanking me? She’ll miss me? Does she not understand what I tried to do to her? Does she not understand . . . anything that is happening here? I reach into my pocket. Bell’s button is still there, wrapped in wire.
“James,” I say. “Can you give us a minute, please?”
“I don’t think so.” James reaches for the little girl’s hand, and again Bell dodges away from him.
“It’s okay.” I force a weak smile. “She’ll be fine. I promise.”
James is reluctant, of course, but Bell doesn’t seem at all afraid of me. A single tear, large and shiny, rolls down her chubby cheek, and she wipes it away roughly as if she’s ashamed of it.
“Ten minutes,” I say.
“Five,” James counters. “I’ll be right outside. Just call out if you need me, Bell.”
I wait until James has gone and then reach out to take gentle hold of Bell’s arm, which is slick from lotion.
“You don’t like him,” I say. “James.”
Bell shakes her head and looks over her shoulder to make sure that James is gone.
“I don’t like him being around my sister all the time. I wish he’d go away.”
I study her for a moment. For such a young girl, she’s so fearful, so angry. What does she do with all that anger and fear? Where does it go when she’s so stuffed and can’t hold it all in?
“I need to ask you something,” I say. “And I need for you to be as honest as possible, okay?”
Bell nods. “Okay.”
“Do you . . . ?” I trail off in an attempt to find the way to make what I’m about to say sound less bizarre. “Have you ever made . . . things happen? I mean, have you ever been mad or sad or scared and then noticed that something strange happened?”
“What do you mean something strange?” Bell asks.
“Well.” I pause. “Maybe the weather changed suddenly? Or maybe the animals acted differently, or maybe even people acted differently? Like, all of a sudden someone you thought you knew seemed like a stranger, or all of a sudden they’re hurt or sick? Has anything like that ever happened?”
Bell doesn’t speak, but she tilts her head and bites her lip. Lane used to do this when she was embarrassed.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I won’t tell anyone.”
Another tear slips down Bell’s cheek. “I’m sorry.”
I move off the bed and kneel down in front of her. “You don’t have to be sorry. But it’s happened?”
Bell nods. “After my mom died, I couldn’t stop crying. Papá told me I cried for three whole days, and then on the fourth day, the rains came. It hadn’t rained for years, he said, and it rained and rained and ruined all the plants and one of the horses drowned. He told me that it was all my fault and that I was bad luck. Then he said that if I hadn’t been acting like such a baby, my mom would have been more careful while she was riding. He said she’d still be alive if it wasn’t for me. He told me I’m probably the reason Farrah’s sick now.” Bell gasps, hiccups. Her words have all come out so fast. “He says I’m a witch.”
I sit back on my heels and sigh. Now I see: Bell’s father is full of magical thinking, too. A wife dead, crops ruined, and a daughter sick have become so much, so unbearable that he blames it all on his littlest offspring.
“You are not a witch,” I say.
“I am!” she exclaims, sniffling. “You said so, too. I put a curse on James. I put a charm under his cot in the stables. I used one of my teeth that had fallen out and wrapped it up in black cloth and yarn like my mother taught me. Then I burned it in the dirt. It’s supposed to make him sick, and I think it’s working. Did you see his hand?”
“Why would you try to curse James?”
Bell lowers her
gaze and shakes her head. “I don’t want my sister to love him.”
“Why not?”
“Because then he’ll take her away and leave me here alone.” Bell comes closer. Her hair is downy soft against my cheek, as she whispers in my ear: “I hate this place, Sarah Jac. I wish it would all blow away.”
The door opens, and James reenters. He stands—how he’s always stood—rooted slightly heavier in his left foot than his right, causing his left shoulder to pop forward. It’s so slight. By a glance you’d think he was perfectly symmetrical.
Farrah can’t possibly see this. There’s no way she can see him with the same amount of detail I do.
“You told Bell I’m going away?” I ask. “When is that supposed to happen?”
“Bell,” James says, “wait outside, please.”
I release the little girl, sit back on my cot, and watch as she walks away. She waves. It’s a tiny, forlorn gesture. I wave back, and Bell closes the door behind her. It’s probably the last time I’ll ever see her.
“Tomorrow,” James says. “Just before supper. Gonzales will do it himself. In front of everyone.”
“You’ll be there?”
“Of course.” James pulls one of his hands out of his pocket and checks his watch—the first I’ve ever seen him wear. “What did you do with the money I gave you?”
“Nothing. What would I have done with it, bought myself a new car?”
“An eastbound train comes in forty minutes,” James says. “If you go now you can catch it. Transfer south and cross the Mexican border. I sent word to Leo to be on the lookout for you.”
I blink, reach out and grab James by the wrist as he’s turning to go. I can feel his pulse in my fingers, erratic and racing. “What about Leo?”
He glances at my hand. “I thought you knew.”
“No. Farrah told me he . . .” I hunt for the right word. “. . . vanished. She assumed he’d died when the bees came.”
“He went south to Ojinaga the morning before the bees. He’d saved up enough to buy some land. It’s not the greatest. It’s full of half-burned and rotted-out maguey, but he’s already planted his first crop. You can work for him.” James pauses. “I thought you knew all this. He sent me a cable while I was in El Paso. I wrote you a letter.”
All the Wind in the World Page 17
