by Brent, Cora
“You lookin’ to get shitfaced?” The voice was good natured and familiar.
There was no moonlight and my eyes struggled to adjust in the dark. The limp radiance from the Riverbottom didn’t extend this far away.
I heard the crunch of footsteps and realized someone was walking toward me.
“Something the matter, Promise?” It was Grayson.
“Hey, ask her if she has any more cookies.” I recognized Brandon’s voice as the first one who had spoken.
The two of them had been lounging in front of Grayson’s trailer on the spools, drinking beer and leisurely discussing heaven only knew what.
“I don’t have any more cookies right now. Sorry,” I called back to Brandon.
“Well, come on over anyway.” Grayson turned and headed back, urging me to follow.
I almost tripped over Brandon’s large body.
“Sorry,” I muttered. He belched in response.
A citronella candle burned nearby and that was the only light around.
“Sit down,” Grayson pressed.
“No,” I shook my head.
“Can’t sleep?”
“No.”
“Fuckin’ A,” Brandon suddenly said. He motioned to the Riverbottom with his lit cigarette. “Heinous Bitch Alert.”
I heard Grayson’s hiss of disgust. “The fuck is she doing back here?”
I looked over to where the men were staring and saw a young brunette climbing on the back on the back of a motorcycle with a shadowy man.
“Shit,” whispered Brandon.
Grayson let out a chuckle. “Well, I guess that means she’s Angelo’s fucking problem now. He has no idea what kind of ticket he just bought.”
Brandon laughed. “Look who’s talking, friend. Took you a while to catch on.”
Grayson stretched. “Guilty of being a slow learner. But I never fail a test more than once.” Then he seemed to remember that I was standing there silently and with no idea what the conversation was about. “So where did you think you were going?”
“Nowhere,” I said, crossing my arms. “I just couldn’t sleep.”
“Hey,” Brandon stood, yawning. “I’m gonna go see what the ass looks like over there tonight.” He slapped Grayson on the shoulder and staggered away without saying anything else to me.
Grayson sank heavily back onto the spool and returned to his beer. “Nightmares?” he finally asked.
“Yes,” I said softly. “Sleeping and waking.” I was shocked to hear the words which came out of my mouth next. “I wish he was dead.”
Grayson didn’t seem surprised. “Well, Promise, someday he will be. Look I don’t know what it’s like to be you, but I damn well know what it is to carry the rage around in your gut until you feel like you’re being choked.” He paused. “They tell you much about me?”
“That you were in prison, that you saved Casper’s life, and that you didn’t do whatever it is you were sentenced for.”
“Yeah, all true.” He leaned back and crossed one leg over the other. “Someday I’ll tell you about it.”
“But not tonight?”
“No, not tonight.”
I looked up at the stars, a brilliant collection of designs. It seemed impossible that they were real places, an unreachable distance away. I didn’t understand why I could speak more feely to Grayson that to anyone else. But the reason didn’t matter; it was what I needed right now. “You told me today not to let it eat me alive. So what do you do? To cope, I mean.”
“I shoot.”
“You what?”
I heard him open up another can of beer. “When the train gets too loud inside my head and I’m feeling like it’s gonna block everything else out I grab a rifle and head deep in the desert.” I could feel his eyes on me. “I’ll teach you. You know, when you feel better.”
“I think I would like that.”
“And that way if he ever pops up again you can blow his balls off.”
I smiled. At his words and at the rough cadence of his accent, how ‘balls’ sounded like ‘bawls’.
“Hey, I can’t fucking see you in the dark; are you smiling?”
I laughed. “Yeah.”
“Well, good.”
I wanted to hear more about him. “So you’re not from here.”
“Nope. New York.”
“So how did you wind up out here?”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. Finally he stood and picked up the spool he was sitting on. “We’ll save that story for another time too. For now, let’s see what we can do to get you some rest.” He started to walk toward my trailer carrying his chair. “Come on.”
He dropped the spool in front of my door. “Now, I’m gonna hang out here for a while. You go inside and get some sleep and know that if anyone comes near your door they’ll have me to deal with. Oh, and another thing. Always keep the door locked. There’s freaky people around. I’m not one of ‘em, but they exist.”
“Grayson,” I wiped a tear away. I couldn’t even say this to Rachel. “I don’t know what I’m going to do if I’m pregnant.”
“Damn,” he said softly. I didn’t back away when he pulled me gently against his chest. My head came to rest on his muscled shoulder as if it were used to being there. He didn’t say meaningless things like how it was all going to be all right. He just held me and let me cry until I was exhausted enough to try sleep again.
“Good night, Promise,” he said, sitting down and staring out into the night.
“Good night, Grayson.”
I did fall asleep soon after that but awoke once again with the pounding internal alarm which screamed that something terrible was about to happen. I sat up on the mattress for a long time, trying to calm my breathing. Somewhere nearby I heard the deep curses of men and then the high yips of coyotes. I crept to the window, easing my finger around the paper shade. He was still there, right where I had left him, staring stoically into the moonless desert night as he kept silent vigil against my demons.
Chapter Eleven
Things gradually began to get easier over the next few days. I still had the specter of a terrible possibility looming over my head, but I tried to push it out my mind. A large package containing my new clothes arrived and I started to feel more free the moment I put on a pair of denim shorts and a simple t-shirt. Kira and Rachel labored every day with me on the trailer, adding homey touches to make it more comfortable.
Grayson stopped by frequently to share lighthearted tidbits of information he thought might interest me. There was a coyote den about a half mile into the brush beyond where his trailer sat. The pups which had been born in the late spring were growing larger and sometimes he would sit quietly under a nearby mesquite tree and watch them caper. He brought me a handful of pottery shards he had discovered in the wash beyond Riverbottom. Together we spread the broken clay pieces on an old piece of plywood and tried to make sense of their shapes. I held the ancient shards and tried to visualize what they had looked like whole, how they had been used by people, women most likely, who had long since been returned to the earth.
Several times Grayson caught me watching him. I couldn’t read the look in his eyes when he stared back. I remembered how he’d asked me what I had thought of him and wondered if he was afraid I’d been too indoctrinated with bigotry to recover. I wanted to tell him otherwise, that he might just be the best man I’d ever known. But I was too shy to say the words so I told him instead about the precarious adventure of teaching Kira how to bake bread from scratch.
He only asked me once about the horrors of the Faithful. “Will they try to come after you?”
The thought had occurred to me. I shrugged. “I don’t know how they would find me. It’s not like I’m going to email my father with my street address.”
Grayson seemed grim. “There are ways if they are determined enough.” I must have looked alarmed because he tried to smooth his words over. “Don’t worry,” he said brushing a hand down my arm. “I told you no one
will hurt you anymore.”
His touch made me feel strangely warm. I smiled. “Yes. You promised.”
He smiled back. “Yeah. I promise. Promise.”
One afternoon I helped Kira bake an old recipe I conjured from memory. I’d been making it in my mother’s kitchen since I was small. It was called ‘Sand Cake’ and used corn starch instead of flour.
“Hey, can I use your laptop?” I asked suddenly.
“Sure,” she shrugged, sitting on the counter and swinging her legs while reading a battered copy of Catcher in the Rye.
I opened up the lid and Googled ‘Faithful Cooperative’. It was the term I’d heard tossed around in Winston’s tense business meetings. As I clicked through the results, most of the information seemed perfunctory. Apparently it was a multi-faceted business venture created and run by the Faithful Last Disciples and Saints. My jaw went slack with shock when I read that the combined net worth of the Freedom Cooperative was crudely speculated at approximately $140 million.
Kira must have seem something in my face. She hopped off the counter. “What are you looking at?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. I returned to the search results and clicked on a forum conversation, scanning the contents. I saw Josiah Bastian’s name. And Winston’s name.
Someone who posted under the name of ‘FormerlyFaithful’ wrote the following:
“The Faithful Cooperative: What originally began as a small scale business cooperative designed to benefit the church of the Faithful Last Disciples and Saints has mushroomed into a multi-million dollar endeavor whose interests span a number of states. It is currently unknown how many businesses are under the FC umbrella as these connections have been deliberately blurred due to certain public backlash. Investors include a number of general construction contractors in Arizona and California and, to a lesser degree, Utah, Nevada and Colorado. Ominously, much of the money funneling into these projects are public funds with state or even federal origins. Several defense contractors in Arizona and California also have suspected ties to the FC. However, a grave effort to conceal these this link has made it difficult to connect the dots. Due to the church’s widely known criminal practices of coercing women and girls to enter abusive polygamous relationships, any association with the FC would be highly detrimental if made public.”
Orion sidled in as Kira read over my shoulder. He turned the laptop around without asking and those piercing blue eyes began immediately skimming the posts. I looked up at Kira but she just shrugged and ran her hand over Orion’s huge, muscled shoulder as we waited for him to finish reading.
When he was done he turned his powerful stare in my direction. “These are your people?”
“Yes. Winston Allred, he’s my-he was the man I had to marry.”
“Sounds like they’re into some shit. The type that could take down a lot of deep pocketed sons of bitches who don’t fight fair.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Orion wasn’t really waiting for me to answer anyway. He hit the Print button and motioned to Kira that she ought to grab the paper from the living room.
He crossed his arms and kept his intimidating gaze on me. “This is a deep rabbit hole. And it’s all lined with the money of important people. You keep that information handy, girl. You might need to fucking remember it later.”
Chapter Twelve
Six days after Grayson Mercado saved me from my horrific circumstances, I awoke before the sun had risen. A preternatural quiet reigned, the cooler night air had not yet receded, and my belly was a knot of cramps.
With a gasp I dove off the air mattress and ran into the tiny bathroom, my shorts already pulled down to see why I had been praying for. The dark menstrual blood had stained my panties. I weakly fell to the floor and sobbed with relief.
It was over. Winston had no further hold on me.
I pulled my shorts up and ran out the door. I needed to say it out loud to someone else. I’d already begun pounding on the door when I realized Grayson’s place was not the first one I should have gone to. Was this really something I should blurt out to a man? And what if he had a woman in there?
He came to the door grumpily but was instantly alert when he saw my tear-stained face. “Promise. What the fuck happened? What’s wrong?” He reached me in one fluid movement and cupped my face in his hands.
“I’m not pregnant,” I whispered.
Grayson stared at me for a moment and then his face broke into a grin. He pulled me forward, pressing his forehead to mine. We stayed that way until the shriek of a nearby vulture startled both of us. Then he gently pushed my loose hair back and slowly withdrew his hand.
“Scorpions out here,” he said in an odd, husky voice. “You shouldn’t walk around barefoot.” He turned and walked back to the door of his trailer and I abruptly realized that he was only wearing a pair of boxer shorts. But instead of looking away, embarrassed, I stared after him with fascination. He gave me one final look, saying, “I’ll see you later, Promise,” before shutting the door.
“Yes,” I whispered, though there was no one there to listen.
As it turned out I didn’t see Grayson later. I was helping Rachel polish glasses in the bar when Casper breezed through and told her he would be gone a few days.
She wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders and kissed him deeply, then yanked on his arm with a mischievous grin, leading him toward the office in the back. I switched on the old radio which sat next to the bar. It drowned out most of the noise they made.
Ten minutes later Casper emerged, sweaty and with his shirt balled up in his hand. He raised his eyebrows at me as if he’d forgotten I was there. “Hey, can I get a quick shot of Jack?”
I stared at him blankly and he laughed.
“Never mind, I’ll grab it.”
He hopped over the bar and poured himself a tiny glass full of brown liquid which he swallowed immediately.
Rachel wandered in, adjusting her bra as Casper watched her.
“Bye, cupcake,” he said with a kiss.
“Just come back, lover,” she answered.
The reigning quiet was interrupted by the harsh choke of engines; the sound of several motorcycles starting and then riding away.
Rachel’s face was dreamily content as she began wiping the bar down.
I grabbed a linen cloth and joined her. “Where is he going?”
She smiled. “Wherever he needs to, hon.” She raised her eyebrows meaningfully. “Grayson is going with him. And a Defiant from town named Abel.”
At the mention of Grayson’s name I tensed. I hated the idea of him being gone. Partly because being near him made me feel safer. And partly because of something else I wasn’t quite ready to put a name to.
Rachel beamed. “We should celebrate tonight,” she decided, referring to the happy news of my non-pregnancy. “Really. Just you and me. Kira will be busy entertaining Orion but the bar won’t be too busy. How about we grab a pizza in town and come back here to enjoy the free booze?”
I wasn’t sure about the booze part. “I’d like that,” I said. I folded the towel and put it down. “I told him, you know. I ran over there without thinking this morning and just blurted it out.”
She was interested. “What did he say?”
I blushed. “He was happy. For me,” I stammered.
Rachel smiled knowingly. “I’ll bet.” She stepped behind me and started playing with my hair. “He looks at you, you know. Longer and more hotly every freaking day.”
“He does not,” I insisted quietly. Grayson Mercado didn’t see me that way. Yet as I remembered the way he’d held my face this morning, I wondered.
She pushed my hair over my head, blinding me in a wave of dark red. “Have it your way,” she laughed.
It was pleasant evening with Rachel. Kira rolled by to take a brief rest from her intense evening with Orion.
“Shit, little girl. You should take it easy,” Rachel teased. “You’re gonna wear him out.”
Kira smi
led at her sweetly. “Not. Fucking. Possible.”
“You’re right,” Rachel shrugged.
I was glad when Rachel offered to let me stay with her until Casper returned. As I returned briefly to my trailer to retrieve a few things my gaze fell briefly on Grayson’s dark trailer. He had called it an ‘Airfloat’ design and said it was manufactured back in the fifties, which explained its strange appearance. As I stared toward the black eyes of its eerie round windows a bleak loneliness overcame me. I disliked the idea that Grayson was untold miles away. The security of his presence was something I’d counted on since the moment he pushed me safely behind him and dared Winston Allred to interfere.
There was another part of it too. The part of me which flushed at the sight of his body, at the possibility of his touch. In Jericho Valley I’d been kept away from the boys when I became old enough to attract attention. Though there were those here and there who caught my eye and rattled my nerves, I’d never had the indulgence of a tender moment. Which, I supposed, was how I was able to accept Winston’s plans for me.
The memory of Winston brought a surge of bile into my throat. For days I’d avoided dwelling on Jericho Valley and its people.
Jenny.
I knew if I returned then not only would I be unable to take Jenny away, I would be held captive there myself. It had happened before, to other women who fled and tried to return for children or for sisters. The thought was enough to make me feel faint. I would kill before I would return to Winston.
Rachel was closing up the bar. A few patrons lingered slowly, smoking cigarettes and staggering away into the night. Rachel took a second look at my face and came right to me.
“What’s wrong?”
I could hardly choke out the words. Of shame, revulsion, disgust. “How could I?” I moaned. My voice became more shrill. “How could I have been so fucking stupid?”
I’d never said the word ‘fucking’ before. I understood now the empowerment of such words. It felt good to say it. It felt like a fitting expression of outrage.
