Maggie Box Set

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  Lightning flashes around them and thunder cracks almost instantaneously. Maggie’s body electrifies and it’s almost as if it levitates. Their lips break apart. She squeals. The unmistakable scent of ozone fills the air.

  “That helps, music girl. Wow. I think the earth even moved.”

  It helps her, too. “Yeah, it was okay.”

  She gets more dimples, then his eyes roll back. “Hank?” She shakes him. “Hank?”

  His eyes flutter open. “Hurts a lot.”

  “I have to go. I have to get help for you. Can I do anything for Wolf?”

  He groans. “Damn good horse. Can he stand?”

  Wolf has quit struggling. His big barreled rib cage rises and falls with his breaths that are far too slow. “No. I’m sorry.”

  Hank makes a choking sound, then holds the rest of his feelings in. “Me, too.”

  Maggie stands, grabbing Hank’s bow.

  “Take the gun. Bows aren’t for emergencies.”

  She has to leave his gun. For whoever shot at them, if it isn’t a poacher. The thought rips her insides raw. The shooter could still be targeting them. Or on his way here. Hank has to be able to protect himself. Besides, he has a decision to make. About Wolf. One that he needs a gun and a bullet to carry out.

  She puts as much sass in her voice as she can muster. “What, haven’t you seen Daryl with his bow on The Walking Dead?”

  He shakes his head and smiles. “You’re something else, Maggie Killian.” Then he coughs.

  She sees blood on his lips, whether from splatter or from his insides, she doesn’t know, but it’s powerfully motivating. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She turns and jogs, limping painfully, in the direction she prays will take her to Rudy’s house.

  Forty-One

  “Damn you, Lily.”

  How is it that Maggie’s spending most of her time going uphill, when it looked like Rudy’s house was down below her, last time she saw it? She struggles her way through thick sagebrush, keeping her profile low, in case the shooter is still out there. The long-legged, four-footed Percheron would have breezed over the rough terrain Maggie is stumbling over. Rocks. Cactus. Buckbrush. Hummocks, gullies, and sinkholes. Maggie doesn’t bother picking the thorns and stickers from her clothes anymore. Or the dirt and rocks ground painfully into her palms from breaking falls. Somewhere in the distance, she hears an engine, like an ORV. It’s heading in the same direction she is. Eastward, down through the foothills.

  A crack blasts behind her. She gasps and drops to a hunched-over crouch level with the flora around her. Dust tickles her nostrils, followed by the bitter, spicy smell of crushed sagebrush leaves. After a few seconds of silence, she rises, slow and cautious. It was definitely a gunshot, but it sounded different than the ones earlier, at least to her ear. Sharper, less drawn out. As her fear subsides, she realizes why. Wolf. Hank’s handgun. He’d put the horse down. It’s the humane thing to do, but another blow in a lengthy barrage. She doesn’t have time for sadness now, though. She fights her way onward.

  At the top of the rise, she looks back. Hank is no longer in view. But there’s something else she does see. A curl of smoke rising from trees half a mile and at a higher elevation from where he’d gone down. Had he crawled to the woods and started a signal fire? As she stands watching, flames ignite in the upper reaches of the pines, exploding like a gas fire. Even from this distance, the boom, crackling, and hiss carries its way to her ears. That’s no signal fire or campfire.

  It’s a forest fire.

  The fear she felt before mushrooms into a panic that threatens to consume her. She’s paralyzed for long moments—too long.

  A strange delirium slips over her. She hears things she shouldn’t hear and sees things she shouldn’t see.

  “Go.” The voice that commands her is brusque but feminine. “Go fast.” A woman appears out of the gulch on a small paint horse. She’s riding bareback, her long legs dangling below its belly.

  “Can I borrow your horse?” Maggie croaks. She waves her hand at Rudy’s place. “It’s so far.” She turns to measure the distance with her eyes. When she returns her gaze to the woman, she says, “Or you can go . . .” Her words taper into nothingness. The woman is gone.

  “Jesus, Maggie, get a grip.” Maybe she’s breathing in things she shouldn’t. Or dehydrated. Whatever it is, she has to get going, pronto. Get to Rudy’s before her mind is totally gone, and it’s too late for Hank.

  She whirls to take off at a run, but her leg slides into a wide burrow. She barely has time to worry what kind of animal lives in a den that big—Coyote? Badger? Fox? Rattlesnakes?—before the shrieking pain in her tush demands all her attention. She crawls on all fours up and out of the hole, dirt and rocks flying out from under her feet. When she’s a safe distance away, she flops panting and contorted on top of the quiver and bow, but she doesn’t care. It’s her second fall, and her butt throbs with red-hot pain. She remembers how she felt in rehab. The withdrawals, her screams. It was bad, but she was strong enough to beat it.

  She’s strong enough to beat this. To get help for Hank. A waterproof jacket and rock aren’t enough to staunch his blood flow forever, and now there’s fire on the mountain, too.

  The pain has broken her out of her delirium at least. No more hallucinations or hearing the voices of nonexistent Indians. She forces herself to her feet. After a few hopping steps favoring her injured side, she breaks into a trot, then a lopsided run. She runs, and runs, and runs, and keeps running, barely seeing where she’s going until she reaches the creek. She charges in without slowing, her breath coming in dry sobs. She feels exposed here. Vulnerable to the shooter. But there’s nothing she can do but move fast and low. The rocks wobble under her feet. Water splashes to her knees, shockingly cold.

  Past the creek, she picks her way across the barbed-wire fence—down again—and up the grassy slope to Rudy’s shack, shivering. Wet and jacketless, she’s suddenly aware the temperature has fallen some fifteen degrees since she and Hank left the barn. Smoke curls upward from the chimney in Rudy’s shack. It’s a good sign. Rudy is home. Or was home recently. Running on a grassy yard now, she pulls out her phone to check for a signal as she sprints the last few yards to his door.

  Nothing. Always and ever unreliable.

  She turns back toward Hank. She puts it back in her pocket at the door, then knocks, sending needles through knuckles. “Rudy? Rudy! Help. Are you in there?”

  She waits, listening, but there’s no answer. She needs his phone. She tries the doorknob. It turns, and she pokes her head into his house. “Rudy, it’s Maggie Killian. I’m coming in to borrow your phone. I have an emergency.”

  No answer.

  It’s dark inside, and it takes her eyes several seconds to adjust. At first, all she notices is clutter. The man is a packrat. Stacks of magazines teeter next to a fire crackling in the grate. Cardboard boxes line one wall. Above them, plastic and paper bags in the hundreds hang from hooks. Her eyes move to the kitchen on the opposite side of the room. Stacks of plastic containers cover most of the counter space, up to a sink with a large window over it. There’s no curtain, and she sees Lily outside. Her Lily. With Rudy. The mare is nibbling something from Rudy’s hand as he rubs her forehead, a rifle strapped to his back. A four-wheeler is parked just beyond the two of them.

  Maggie starts to call out for Rudy again, but she sees a set of keys and a phone between the crowded stacks on the kitchen counter, ten feet away, behind a couch that’s acting as a bookshelf. She lurches over to the phone like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, dragging her bad leg. It’s a cordless landline phone. She presses the power button. No dial tone. Shit. She turns slowly, trying to see into, under, on, and around the mess, but there are no other phones in sight.

  It’s then that she becomes fully aware of her surroundings. The walls are covered like the floors and furniture, with not a bare spot to be found. There are posters. Flyers. Photographs. Album covers.

  And they’re all of he
r.

  Her hand flies to her throat, and she steps up to the biggest one. It’s a concert poster for the North Dakota State Fair, fifteen years ago. Maggie Killian and Crew. She’s on an outdoor stage, somewhere, and her hair is elevated an inch higher at the crown than she wears it now, blowing in a stiff breeze. She’s all leg in high-heeled boots and a frayed-hem blue-jean miniskirt that barely covers the essentials. The belt hanging around her hips is one she wore pre-Hank, a string of silver conchos. Someone had drawn a heart shape around her in red marker.

  Why would Rudy have this? Then she remembers what he’d told her at the Occidental. It’s the event where he met her, in Minot, North Dakota.

  Magazine and newspaper articles are crammed into the mix on the walls for a chilling pictograph of her history. A New York Times article lauding her for standing up to shock jock Aaron Cryor when he harassed her on his radio show. Album and single charts. Grammy award nominations and her one win. Boozy photos on glossy magazine paper of her with a succession of forgotten men. A write-up about the musical theater in Waco she’d performed in after she lost her record deal. Gossip-rag pieces tattling on her rehab stints. Even the recent “How the Mighty Maggie Killian Has Fallen” entertainment blog piece is tacked to the wall.

  The creepfest is most recent in the kitchen. Stuck to the refrigerator with a Wyoming Cowboys Football Schedule magnet, she finds a brand new photograph of her from last Thursday night, talking to Chet. His face is no longer recognizable, since it’s blacked out in pen, the marks made with such force that they tore the photo paper. Another defaced photo hangs underneath it by a strip of Scotch tape, this one of her with Patrick, from the back, walking into the Wagon Box Inn. A third recent photo, also taped, is of her on Lily, riding beside Wolf and a man whose face has been removed from the picture, too. Hank.

  Her Hank, who’s lying shot and bleeding a hard mile away, with a fire bearing down on him.

  And Rudy is outside stroking the face of the mare that doesn’t like to be touched. Feeding her treats. Goose bumps pimple Maggie’s flesh. On her arms, her chest, and her neck. There’s something so off-kilter about it. About Lily, Hank, Patrick, Chet—and Rudy’s crazy all-Maggie decor.

  About Rudy. Is this what she thinks it is? The rifle. The four-wheeler. Yes. Yes, it is.

  She hears a noise outside the front door. Boots stomping off dirt? There’s nowhere to hide. No time to run. If it’s Rudy, he’ll know immediately she’s seen all of this. That she knows what it means. He’s an ox, and she won’t stand a chance unless she strikes first.

  She pulls the bow from her shoulder and nocks an arrow, firms her stance, and aims for the door.

  It swings outward, creaking.

  Rudy strolls into the living area, her guitar strap around his shoulder like a pageant sash. He smiles. “Maggie Killian. You’ve come to see me.” His smiles droops when he sees her bow pointed at him.

  She pulls back the string as he grabs for the rifle strapped to his back. She releases it as he slips his finger in the trigger and pulls, too late. Her arrow strikes him in the left shoulder. His shot reverberates in the small, crowded space. Maggie’s ears feel like they’re imploding, but the bullet goes high and wide and the rifle clatters to the floor.

  Rudy bellows and grasps the shaft. Maggie grabs another arrow from the quiver. He sees her preparing to shoot and lumbers to the door, his hand sliding up to the fletching before he grabs the doorframe and propels himself outside.

  Maggie runs for the keys on the kitchen counter by the dead phone. Maybe there’s one to Rudy’s van. She’s got to find a phone or cell signal. Behind the keys is a belt and a big shiny Cheyenne Frontier Days buckle crammed between plastic towers.

  The buckle, the strap on Rudy’s shoulder, and the rifle on the floor? She glances back at the rifle on the floor. A .300 Win Mag. Even from this distance, she’s sure of it. All of them, things taken from her guest cabin at the ranch. Her things. Now that she’s made the connection, another mystery unravels: Lily letting Rudy feed her and pet her. Rudy’s been sneaking around the ranch, breaking into her cabin, stealing things, and visiting her Lily while he’s there.

  She grabs the keys and the buckle and races out the door. Even with the dark clouds, the outside light blinds her for a moment. When she gets her bearings, the first thing she sees is Rudy, staggering toward the creek. He crumples on the bank.

  Good. She hopes he never gets up again.

  She rounds the cabin quickly, looking for Rudy’s van, and finds it on the side of the shack. She jerks the door open. Inside, she jams key after key into the ignition. On the third try, she hits pay dirt. The engine turns. She floors the accelerator and fishtails down the long driveway, praying she’s not too late.

  Within minutes, it is clear that she’s lost. Hopelessly lost with not a farmhouse or vehicle in sight. Which means no phones. The only thing she’s seen on the rutted, one-lane road is cows, deer, and barbed wire. She sobs as she drives, praying aloud. “Come on, T-Mobile. Please, God, let Wyoming cut me just one break. I’ll do anything. Just please help me save Hank.”

  She doesn’t expect an answer from God. Not after the way she’s treated him all these years. That’s why she’s so stunned she nearly drives Rudy’s van into a fence when her phone rings.

  She mashes the brakes to the floor. The van shimmies and bounces to a stop over the washboard, pulling even farther toward the fence. The phone clatters to the floorboard on the passenger side.

  “No, no, no!”

  Maggie throws the van in park. She dives after the phone, landing with her head against the glove box, her stomach on the passenger seat, and her palms in a three-bag-thick layer of old fast food and rancid ketchup. She holds herself up by her head and digs like a mole for her phone. She presses it and a soggy white bun to her face, her hand slimy with moldy tomato.

  “Hello?” She pushes herself up with her other hand, leaving a yellow handprint on the seat.

  “Maggie. This is Gene. Lily just galloped into the barnyard without you. Are you okay?”

  Maggie babbles so incoherently even she doesn’t understand herself. But Gene does. Somehow.

  “Let me confirm before I call 911. Hank’s shot, he’s where I got the buck muley last year, and there’s a forest fire?”

  “Yes.” There’s so, so much more. But that is all that matters.

  “I’ll call you as soon as help is on the way.”

  Maggie isn’t about to drive farther in the wrong direction, where she might lose signal again. While she waits on Gene to call back, Maggie wipes her hands and face with her dirty shirt. A sticker scratches her face. She’s sure she’s making muddy streaks on her cheeks, if her hands are any indication. Still, it’s better than food waste smeared from ear to ear.

  She pulls up her Maps app and follows the roads from her position back to Piney Bottoms. She takes back every curse she uttered about Lily. She’s giving her a double ration of oats when she sees her next. And she gets out of the van, hits her knees in the dirt, and prays again. God deserves a huge thank-you, too, and a reminder that there’s a long way to go before Hank’s safe.

  This time she picks up on the first ring when Gene calls.

  He speaks before she can say hello. “There’s ground and air rescue on the way, and fire fighters. I gave them GPS coordinates.”

  “It’s really rugged out there.”

  “They’ll get him with a helicopter. The ground crew is just in case. And they’ll have ORVs.”

  “There’s more. It wasn’t important enough to slow you down.” She tells him about Rudy. All of it. “He was still alive when I left. And the rifle was in the cabin. They need to know. He’s dangerous.”

  “Jesus, Maggie May. Thank God you’re alive.”

  “Let’s just hope Hank is.”

  “He’s tough. You’ve gotta believe that.”

  “I do.” She sniffs back another sob. “I do.”

  He patches her through to the sheriff and stays on the line whi
le she updates the dispatcher with everything to relay to the deputies en route. They drop the third line.

  “Can you find your way back here?”

  “I’ve got it mapped.”

  “I’ll take Laura and head to the hospital.”

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  Back at Piney Bottoms fifteen minutes later, Maggie races past the barn. Paco is outside washing Lily. He waves with one hand. Maggie waves back. She slams the camo van into park in front of the cabin before the vehicle even stops moving. She hates having it here. It’s like Rudy is here somehow, again.

  Inside, she doesn’t take time even to wash her face. She wants out of here. Not just out of here to go to Hank. Out of here completely. This place where her privacy and peace were violated. She doesn’t know where she’ll go, but she knows she won’t be coming back to this cabin.

  She grabs all her things—including Louise—guns Bess north, coaxing the truck to its top speed of eighty miles per hour and holding her there, all the way into Sheridan.

  Forty-Two

  Maggie pulls her hair back in a handheld pony. It’s snarled and matted. She releases it again and looks at her hand as she lowers it. Ground-in dirt, thick with a greasy sheen from Lily’s coat. A wide stain of Hank’s blood, flaking where it’s thickest but also deep in her pores. She hadn’t changed before coming to the hospital, other than to slide the belt through her belt loops and fasten the Cheyenne Frontier Days buckle. There’s no patch of clean left on her T-shirt, the nastiest of it the fast-food detritus a la Rudy. Dirt, burrs, dog hair, and blood cling to the new holes ripped in her jeans.

  She rests her head against the wall and slumps, turning her attention to the mass-produced Western art on the walls of the waiting room. Tans bleeding into pinks and oranges and back again until the palette reaches greens. It’s soothing. She lets her mind go, relaxes into the scene.