Barbed Wire Heart

by Tess Sharpe

  After the moon rises and the stars soar across the sky, sparkling like creek water on a sunny day, I slip down from my perch and keep hidden along the timberline as I head north. I set my trap and hurry back to the tree and climb it again. I need the vantage point.

  I need to watch them.

  The trailer—a seventies fifth wheel with blacked-out windows and ventilation fans punched in the roof—is sitting just a hundred feet away in a clearing cut hastily out of the forest, just big enough for it and a few pickups.

  The harder it is to get to a lab, the smaller the chance of getting it jacked.

  I shift down the branch with one hand, my night vision scope in the other. My shoulders smack against the trunk, the rough surface pressing through the thin cotton of my T-shirt. Leaves brush the top of my head, my silhouette blending into the thick forest shadow.

  I grip the branch tight with my thighs, balancing as I raise the scope to my eye. The paint’s peeling in big patches off the trailer roof, and I see vapor from the fans swirling up into the air and vanishing.

  I’m just waiting now. Waiting for the sound that will draw them out. I tilt my watch closer, the numbers on the dial gleaming in the darkness. A quarter mile away, I’ve set my trap—a small, contained fire. Any second, the flames’ll reach the small mound of ammunition I’ve put in its path.

  Simple. Easy. Classic.

  It begins with the bullets bursting in the fire. The pop-pop-pop fills the air, echoing through the clearing. Birds rustle in the trees close to me, and deeper in the forest something four-legged—mountain lion, probably—dashes through the brush, away from the noise.

  The trailer door swings open. A skinny guy in overalls—that’s Dale—steps out, twelve-gauge firmly in hand as he scans the clearing.

  I’m waiting, breathless. He could just dismiss the sound as hunters, though most of them know better than to poach around here. Or he could call for Troy.

  I need him to call for Troy and for both of them to get away from the trailer. Fast.

  Dale lowers his shotgun slowly and is turning to go back inside the trailer when he sees the smoke rising in the distance.

  I smile. Got him.

  “Hey! HEY! Troy! Get the extinguishers! Smoke! There’s a fire! Shit!”

  He nearly falls ass over ankles, the straps of his overalls slipping off as he scrambles back toward the trailer. Another guy, balding and husky, runs out, red extinguisher clutched in one hand, a pile of blankets thrown over his shoulder.

  I watch as Dale points to the smoke in the distance, and the two of them take off.

  This is it. My heart thumps in my ears, and my fingers clench tight around the scope. I wait until they’ve disappeared down the side of the hill.

  Then I scramble down the tree, bark scraping against my stomach, and I vault the last four feet to the ground. I grab my rucksack and drop my scope inside, where it knocks against the can of spray paint. After making sure the area’s clear, I race toward the trailer.

  I’ve got only so much time.

  I yank the bandanna out of my pocket and tie it over my nose and mouth. Taking a deep breath, I fill my lungs the best I can and dash up the steps into the fifth wheel.

  It’s trashed inside, gutted to accommodate the lab, with a mix of coffee filters, matches, and empty bottles of rubbing alcohol strewn across the ratty brown carpet. I pick my way through the mess quickly, my lungs burning with the effort not to breathe in the toxic air.

  Where is it? It has to be here. I checked the warehouse—they haven’t had a chance to deliver the batch. I use the edge of my shirt to flip open the round cooler stashed in one corner behind a pile of dirty clothes.

  Yes.

  I load the plastic baggies of meth double-time into my rucksack, so roughly I can hear the pieces breaking as they hit the canvas. I want to stamp the crystals down to powder, cut it with so much shit that even the most desperate tweeker won’t touch it. No time for that—my head’s throbbing and light. I need to get out.

  But I can’t hold my breath any longer. I inhale, my lungs shuddering in relief, only to recoil from the all-too-familiar burn of ammonia and phosphorus through the bandanna.

  My lungs sting as I throw the bag over my shoulder and run, gasping in fresher air as I burst out of the fifth wheel and race away into the clearing.

  Smoke’s pillaring thick over the ridge to the south. I’ve gotta hurry.

  I make sure I’m far enough away that the message will be clear. Rummaging in the rucksack, I pull out the can. On the ground, in long careful strokes where they can’t miss it, I spray-paint in bright red: DEATH TO MCKENNA.

  Tearing the bandanna off my face, I dig in the bag again to grab the half-full bottle of vodka I stole from the Tropics earlier. I feed the end of the cloth into the neck of the bottle, making sure it’s soaking up the alcohol.

  For a long moment, I stare at the trailer, my heart beating so fast it feels like it’s the only part of me that’s working. In one hand, I have the bottle. In the other, I have a lighter.

  It’s time.

  I light the end of bandanna, take aim, and throw the bottle hard, back through the open door of the fifth wheel. Then I run like hell.

  The explosion rips through the clearing, knocking me off my feet onto my stomach.

  The sound roars in my ears and heat washes over my back, and I lie there dazed for a second before rolling over. Acrid black smoke curls up from what was once the fifth wheel, blending into the dark sky at the top of the pines.

  My ears still ringing from the blast, I force myself to my feet—I have to get away, they have to believe it’s Springfield’s doing—and stumble toward the woods.

  Right before I disappear into the pines, I turn back, just once.

  The inferno looks like hell on earth, the charred, twisted remains of the fifth wheel burping out chemicals that’d sear the skin right off you.

  But it’s not hell. Not even close.

  Hell’s what’s waiting for me if any part of my plan fails.

  One down. Two to go.

  Seventeen

  When I’m ten years old, Carl Springfield is sent to prison.

  It’s what I’ve been waiting for, and it’s supposed to change everything. But it doesn’t. Daddy still drinks too much and takes too many risks, and sometimes when he looks at me, I know he’s seeing Momma and it hurts him.

  I want to go to school with Will. But whenever I bring it up, all hopeful he’ll say yes because Springfield’s behind bars now and I’m safe, Daddy just shakes his head.

  “You stay with me, Harley-girl. You have different things to learn. Useful things.”

  So I’m locked in a six-hundred-acre cage, and I’m starting to see the tall trees and winding creeks I used to love as the bars. No matter how far I climb or swim, I’m stuck here.

  I think Daddy worries about it because he starts taking me places. Now I go along with him on his rounds, meeting with people, collecting money, checking in at the truck yard. He even takes me to the Ruby, where I hang out with Mo. Daddy thinks my hero worship of her is cute. He doesn’t have the foresight to see that Mo’s way of thinking might make more sense to me than his.

  One day, before we have to pick Will up at school, Daddy takes me out all the way to Pollard Flat, down a dirt road where the houses are set deep in the woods, rusty tin roofs glinting through the pines the only hint of their presence.

  We pull up to a house where a man’s waiting on the porch. Dogs bark all around us, and two big pit bulls gallop up to the Chevy, but the man calls them off.

  “Mr. McKenna.” He takes off his dirty baseball cap. “Wasn’t expecting you today.”

  “I bet,” Daddy says. “But it’s time we talk, Gary.”

  Gary swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “My boys are ’round back with the dogs, if your girl wants to join them,” he says.

  Daddy nods at me.

  I don’t really want to, but I hear some yipping behind the house—what sounds like pupp
ies. So I go.

  There’s a tangle of baby pit bulls in a kennel set in the yard that’s mostly gravel, red dirt, and pines so tall and old that I have to crane my neck to look at the tops. I make a beeline for the puppies, their gray-and-white wiggling bodies calling to me. But then I notice Gary’s sons on the other side of the yard.

  For a second, I think they’re tossing a baseball back and forth. And then a frightened whine shatters the silence.

  They’re throwing a puppy back and forth. A little white ball of fur, smaller than the others.

  The runt of the litter.

  “Hey!” I shout, running forward. “Stop it!” I grab at the puppy, but the taller boy laughs and lobs it back to his brother, high over my head.

  “Stop!” I shriek. I yank at the taller boy’s arm, but he shakes me off like I’m nothing.

  “Leave us alone,” warns the younger one with a snarl. He catches the puppy and is swinging it by the scruff of his neck as it whines and wriggles, trying to get away.

  “Give her to me,” I demand.

  The taller boy laughs, his thin lips in a nasty twist. “It’s just the runt. We’re gonna drown her anyway.”

  “No, you aren’t,” I hiss. “Give her!”

  The younger boy tosses her again, high above my head so I can’t reach her. But this time when his brother catches her, I’m ready. I lunge forward, my fingers skating across soft fur—almost grabbing her, but then pain bursts below my eye like a water balloon popping.

  For a second, I don’t realize what’s happened. No one’s ever hit me before.

  No one would dare.

  I stagger backward, losing my grip on the puppy, gasping for breath as tears start to form in my eyes.

  I can’t cry. I don’t cry anymore.

  Instead, I ram forward like a goat, my head bent, my mouth howling. I hit him directly in the stomach and I don’t stop. I won’t go down.

  As we roll around in the dirt, the puppies go crazy, barking loudly, scrabbling at the kennel fence with their paws. I can’t see where the runt is—I’m too busy punching any body part I can reach. My fists smash into the boy’s neck and then his cheek, my knuckles glancing across his cheekbone sharply, splitting it open.

  “Hey, HEY!” A hand grabs my shirt collar, hauling me off my feet. I kick out furiously, and my fists punch the air.

  I want to hurt that boy. I’ve never wanted to hurt anyone so bad before. It’s an alien feeling, bubbling inside me, hot and thick.

  But I remember the runt, and suddenly the feeling seems right, a surge of emotion ripping through me, making me something new. I turn to my captor, swinging wildly in the air.

  “What is going on?”

  It’s Daddy. His voice is low and deadly, and it makes all the fight flow out of me, rushing out of my body like a river, replaced by prickly fear. I go limp as he sets me down.

  “Th-they were hurting the puppy,” I stutter. “They wouldn’t stop, so I had to…”

  Daddy bends down, gently gripping my chin with his fingers. There’s something wet and warm running down my face, I realize too late.

  Blood.

  The boy made me bleed.

  Blood for blood, Harley-girl.

  Panic shoots through me like a bullet. “Daddy—” I start.

  But he’s already looking at the boy on the ground, his dark eyes glimmering. “Did you hit her?”

  “Mr. McKenna. Please.” Gary’s standing behind his son, fear written on every line in his pale face. “They’re just kids.”

  He knows what’s coming.

  “Daddy,” I say again. “I hit him first.”

  But he doesn’t even seem to hear me. He turns away and steps forward, towering over the boy. “A real man doesn’t hit a girl,” he says. “And no man hits my girl. Looks like I’m going to have to teach you a lesson your father didn’t bother to.”

  “Daddy, no,” I say, because I’m the only person who can say that word to him. I’m the only one who won’t suffer the consequences.

  “Go to the truck, Harley-girl,” he says.

  “The puppy—” I look around. Where is she?

  “Go to the truck,” he grits out, in that scary low voice that means business. It sends shivers down my back.

  I need to do as he tells me, because I’m scared of what he’ll do if I refuse.

  He’s already killed in front of me. I don’t ever want to see that again.

  I hesitate, biting my lip, and for a moment, the boy and I look at each other. I want to tell him I’m sorry.

  I want to tell him he deserves it. The warring parts of me—the one that belongs to Momma and the one that belongs to Daddy—twist and turn inside my brain.

  “Now, Harley!” Daddy orders.

  I go.

  “Mr. McKenna, that’s my boy!” Gary shouts behind me, his voice breaking with terror. “Please!”

  Holding my hands over my ears, I break into a run back toward the truck. My right eye throbs, and my nose is still bleeding. I wipe my face with my sleeve, but it just makes more of a mess.

  I climb into the cab like a good girl. I put my hands over my ears again and close my eyes. And I wait.

  It’s muffled, but I can hear it: a high-pitched scream echoing from the backyard, breaking through the dog’s howling. A scream that starts off as No, no, nooo! fading into one long vowel.

  My stomach churns, sick and glad all at once. It’s warm outside, but I start shivering and I can’t stop.

  It seems like forever before Daddy comes back. He gets into the truck without a word, shoving something wrapped in his flannel shirt at me.

  It’s the runt. She’s alive.

  I take her in my arms, a warm, wiggling mess. She’s dirty and smells like pee, but I couldn’t care less—she’s alive. Her little claws snag in my shirt and she whimpers against my chest, shaking like me, still terrified, but somehow unhurt. I can feel her heartbeat, thumping against mine, like she’s another part of me that’s just been waiting to be found.

  “It’s okay,” I whisper against the top of her head. “It’s okay now.”

  Daddy wipes his hunting knife on his jeans before putting it back in its sheath. As the dark stain spreads on the denim, I clutch the puppy tighter.

  Daddy takes his phone out, dialing a number. “Cooper, you and the boys get over to Gary Hunt’s place. Take the dogs—yes, all of them. Bring a kennel; you’ll be picking up a litter of pups, and you’ll need to find them good homes. And send Doc over. He’s got some stitching to do.”

  When he hangs up, he looks over at me. “You all right, baby?”

  I nod and take another deep breath, but it comes out like a shudder.

  Daddy reaches over, gently touching my cheek. I flinch, not only because it hurts.

  “He got you good,” he says.

  “I got him back,” I say. And it makes him smile.

  “Damn right,” he says, staring at me with an odd expression I suddenly recognize as respect. “You did me proud.”

  I hold the puppy closer to me. I don’t want to think about the boy. I don’t want to know what happened—if he’s alive, if he’s dead.

  Since Ben, I understand that a lot of the time, not knowing is best.

  “Can we find somebody nice to take her?” I ask, stroking the silky fur as she roots around in my shirt, not shaking anymore. I don’t know what Daddy might do, so I have to think of options. “Wayne might want her. Or Cooper. I know she’s small, but she’ll get bigger fast.”

  “I think she likes you,” Daddy says, his smile broadening. “And you fought for her. You saved her. So she should stay with you.”

  My heart leaps. I can barely believe it. “Really?”

  “I’ll train her up,” he says. “You need a guard dog. But she has to go everywhere with you. So she can protect you.”

  I nod, but it hurts my head, so I stop. “I promise.”

  He reaches out and gently squeezes my shoulder. “You’ve got a good heart, Harley-girl. Just like yo
ur momma. It’s gonna get you hurt unless I surround you with things that can hurt back.”

  I swallow. “But Carl Springfield’s in prison.” Why is Daddy so scared still, when Springfield’s gone?

  “There’ll always be people who want to hurt you,” he explains solemnly, smoothing back my bloody bangs, the lines around his mouth turned down in concern. “Just because of who you are. Look at what that boy did to you.”

  “I wanted to hurt him,” I say. A quiet confession, spoken in the safety of the truck cab, to the only person I knew who would understand that feeling.

  Daddy looks over at me, surprised. I look back, solemn, the puppy’s heart beating against my chest, because of him. She’s safe now, because of him.

  Just like me.

  He smiles.

  “That’s my girl.”

  I look down. The puppy’s paws are damp with the boy’s blood.

  I wipe them off, best I can.

  Eighteen

  June 6, 10:00 p.m.

  I snap the red tie off the tree branch. Flagging my way was smart. I can’t waste any time getting lost in this thicket.

  Right now, speed’s essential. I need to get into range to call Fire Watch.

  I don’t sprint, but I move quick and low through the forest, a blur of brown hair and camo. It’s two miles of rocky cliffs and thick pines to make it to the old mining road where my truck’s parked. Awkward in the dark, I trip a few times, but I keep going—I have to.

  I’m sweaty beneath the reek of char and chemicals that clings to my skin. By the time I finally make it to the crude dirt road and uncover my truck, carefully concealed with branches, I’m coughing hard into my sleeve.

  Busy barks, just once, when she sees me coming. After stashing the bag of meth in the toolbox in the bed of my truck, I climb into the cab and drive. She sniffs at me and sneezes, backing up along the bench seat.

  “Sorry,” I tell her. “I’ll smell better soon.”

  One hand on the steering wheel, I roll down the windows as I navigate the narrow dirt road, weaving through the trees until we hit mountain. The red clay cliffs, studded with roots and slate rock, sprinkled with lupine and redbud, loom above me on the left.