by Lisa Preston
But maybe not. Papa always had Greer use a bench rest to zero in the duck-hunting shotgun. Greer figured he could fire one round, blast the mean man in half, if the moment came, but he’d have to make sure the magazine held buckshot, not birdshot. A pistol would be easier to fire than the scattergun. It had to be a big pistol, but not so big that Greer couldn’t steady-pull the trigger.
The mean man’s pistol was a big one.
But Greer hadn’t told anyone what the man had done. He’d never tell. So the man should stay away. If he kept his promise, then the man should stay away. That was the deal. But a man without honor wouldn’t necessarily keep his half of the bargain and Greer knew that man was not honorable.
When Papa asked if he wanted to take a ride this beautiful Saturday morning and Greer answered honestly that he didn’t, both parents studied him. Greer knew that kind of notice and attention couldn’t be good.
“Sweetie,” Momma said, “are you sure you don’t want to take a little ride today?”
Greer nodded and shook his head, unable to speak, unable to stop the circular roll of his neck, wobbling his head about.
“Fishing?” Papa suggested. He took the funky motion of Greer’s head to be agreement. “Great, I’ll get my vest and river boots. Grab the special flies.”
The special flies were tied without hooks, even gentler than the barbless hooks the Donners made by filing the barbs off of store-bought fishhooks. Greer couldn’t stomach killing, so he cast flies that proved he’d attracted the trout or salmon, but never hooked and landed a fish. Everyone cocked their heads and smiled in appreciation of his squeamishness, accommodated him. Sure, he went along with Papa and Doug to go hunting or fishing, but he went for the time in the woods with the men, for the camping.
Greer knew they looked at each other up there, up above his head. He was afraid they wondered what was wrong with him, what he was hiding. But there was no way he was going to tell the secret and get them all killed.
Bang! Greer jumped, sucking in a great breath of alarm, but it was just Papa bombing in through the door.
He wished he knew if he could see the future. If he and Papa went off fishing, Momma would be alone. She’d be an easy kill.
“Chop, chop,” Papa said, then took Greer’s hand and led him to the door, tugging against Greer’s hesitant steps.
“Momma, would you come with us?”
She set her tea down. “Fishing? You want me to come with you and Papa?”
He nodded. She pursed her lips, considering something, then rose. Coming around the table, she tousled his hair and kissed his head. “Sure, honey. Let me do a couple of things to clean up.”
Then the phone rang and Papa had to go help Gram with something. There would be no man around.
“You want to come with me or stay here?” Papa asked.
“Stay here.”
“What is it, honey?” Momma sat beside him on the sofa, smoothed his hair while she talked about how much she loved him. She ran her hand over the back of his head. He flinched then stiffened when she stroked his back. “Is something wrong?”
Greer chewed his lip. He wanted to be honest, but too many questions could cut close to the danger area. In his mind, he begged her, Please, don’t make me say it, ’cause I swore I wouldn’t tell. If I tell, he’ll come in the night and he’ll kill every—
He screwed his eyes shut, popped them open, because the image of his dead family was waiting, ugly and too real.
“Can you tell me what you’re thinking?”
Nothing worked for him there but a flat refusal, so that’s what he gave, with a shake of his head. He knew she wouldn’t put up with that noise for long. He could get away with “no” not very much at all.
She told him she wanted her happy boy back and sent him outside to do chores. It was a stupid day. If they lived through the night, tomorrow would be another stupid day.
When his momma noticed red scrapes on his back as he changed into his pajamas, Greer knew he was caught and caught wasn’t good. He hummed while she spoke.
“How did you hurt your back?”
“I …” Greer twisted his mouth, considering how to get around this one without lying. Surely he couldn’t say he’d bashed himself into a tree just ’cause.
“Did someone hurt you? Someone at school?”
“No, Momma, no one at school hurt me.”
“Then what happened?”
“I don’t know.” The lie felt bad.
“No one is picking on you? Ethan’s brother isn’t bothering you?”
His friend Ethan had a big brother, a sixth grader. At the start of the school year Ethan’s brother said that since Greer’s brother Ben was gay that Greer probably was, too. Greer hadn’t started the shoving match, but he’d tried to finish it before teachers separated the boys.
“Greer, I want you to talk to me,” she said. “How’d you hurt your back?”
He nodded his understanding, knowing the family declarations about talking and truth-telling. The truth is the truth, and let the chips fall where they may, that’s what his parents said. Always speak up, never lie, be respectful. Never yell. Rules and promises. Always keep your promise. He closed his eyes, snapping with tiredness even as the usual nighttime dread of needing to be wary built in his bones.
“Greer?”
He swung off his bed, crawled underneath, and pushed his face hard into the angle of the floor and wall, shoving his nose into the crevice.
“Greer.”
He was still thinking. He needed time to figure this out, how to satisfy his family’s rules. Follow their rules while preventing their murders.
“Greer, come out. Now. Stop playing around.”
What if Papa’s pistol had just fallen out of the coat that night? Maybe it was here, under the bed. Greer’s heart thrummed with the marvelousness of the thought just as Momma caught his ankle and dragged him. As she pulled him out from under the bed, dust bunnies and a cobweb on his face, and reminded him she’d asked a question, he gave his most charming grin, thinking fast.
“I don’t know …” he blurted then cut himself off, thinking the rest of his sentence: … what to say right now. There. His words were so clear in his mind, he nodded.
Whew. Got it. Brilliant, as Frankie would say. He’d found salvation. How not to lie, not really. As hard as he’d thought the rest of his sentence, he felt his momma had gotten pretty close to a Donner-honest response from him. This could be a way to scrape through the talking time of regular waking hours.
“You don’t remember?”
“No.” And he thought: It’s just that I can’t tell ’cause then he’ll come kill everybody and—
“How can you not remember bruising your back, honey?”
He remembered everything and wished he couldn’t. He remembered when the man hit and kicked the woman. When she drove away. When the man told him to put the pistol down. When the man shoved him into the tree.
At the top of the list, he remembered what they’d promised each other.
Momma fussed at him and he played at being silly to put her off and she finally went away. Papa came and tucked him in and left. He heard his parents talking in their bedroom, but couldn’t make out the words. He held his breath and listened. Their light clicked off and weight fell on him with the darkness. Now it was all on him, the duty.
His parents made noises, mumbles, rustles, a laugh.
Blinking at the window ledge, he wondered if a minute or an hour had passed. The wind waved the trees out there. Maybe something moved in the woods. Silvery moonlight began in the east. In the far part of the back field, grass shone a ghostly pale gold. Greer pressed his forehead against the cold glass. By midnight, the moonlight had moved enough that he’d seen a good quarter of the yard. Before he’d taken up the job of night watchman, he hadn’t appreciated how the light changed by the hours in the blackness, but now he knew it well. In time, the moon’s light curved around the house, making it cast a shadow over the cree
pier areas by the trees. Seeing the west came later, when he was beyond rummy, fighting hard against the sleepiness.
That mean man could be out there watching the house. From the right part of the woods, he could be looking right into Greer’s bedroom window. Right now.
Greer put a hand over his mouth to stifle the whimper as pee squirted out.
If he ever rode again, Greer decided, he’d never slouch in the saddle, never get casual and think he had it all wired. Never be looking for a hawk above the treetops, or be unprepared for the horse’s sudden lurch sideways in case wind kicked leaves across a trail. He’d never ride bareback or without a bridle. Like Doug and Papa and Momma said, the saddle and bridle supported the rider, gave control. He had to have control.
Never, ever again would he let his guard down.
“We were supposed to take care of each other,” Greer told his momma’s bay horse. Standing in the pasture was all he could manage. He’d seen how the grown-ups exchanged glances when he said he didn’t want to ride.
Clipper told no tales about what happened in the woods. Well, Clipper didn’t know, anyway. He’d probably been home by the time Greer happened upon the horror.
“Oh, leaves, how scary.” Greer mocked the grazing horse with overwrought gestures and faces. Rubbing his ribs, he recalled the fall, the scrape of one elbow on the trail. The sound of rocks scattering when Clipper galloped off, stranding him way out there. A loose horse was bad enough, left a boy in Big Trouble, but all that followed? Contempt for the horse’s panic rose with indignation. He yelled at the now placid animal.
“Dummy! It was just blowing leaves, you dummy.”
He hadn’t even been on his pony since that late afternoon when he came off Clipper and the world went bad. The little spotted gelding stood with the draft team now, indifferent as Clipper. Only old Tib watched him.
He found a stout branch, fallen from an apple tree, hefted it and swung, his jaw set as he imagined striking Clipper.
Reviewing the facts with shame, Greer couldn’t say it aloud, but thought the embarrassing truth. The horse hadn’t even bucked, just lurched in a bad spook. Words couldn’t express the frustration.
Everything would have been different if only he’d been home and presentable in time for Caroline and Malcolm’s big dinner that night. That was a promise he’d made to his papa that morning. If only he hadn’t fudged things with Maddie, snuck home when no one was there, and taken his momma’s horse without permission. He’d broken his word and by nightfall had made a devil’s deal with a mean stranger.
I’ll come in the night and kill everyone. I will shoot your whole family if you tell.
He used to be afraid of things like white water on the river, falling trees, or a loose bull. This was a whole new kind of fear.
Greer let the stick drop from his hands as tears wet his cheeks. The stomping squeeze in his chest was weird, sort of like regular pain, but not. Not like cutting his finger with the buck knife the time he’d let the blade slip while opening a bale of sweet orchard grass, more like when Tib stood on his foot and wouldn’t move even when Greer yelled and shoved against her shoulder.
That time, Momma rushed up waving her arms to shoo Papa’s big horse off of Greer’s pinned foot. When Tib swiveled her hoof on Greer’s boot, it hurt even worse than when Tib stood unmoving on his toe. The first step was the hardest. It really hurt. Sure, it was a lot worse than the sort-of-pain now in his chest. Along with breathing being incredibly hard, invisible pins and needles bugged him.
A thousand unseen needles poked the tip of his tongue, spread across his lips. He looked at his hands. Why were his fingers tingling?
Panting, inspecting his normal-looking fingertips, Greer shuffled for the barn that looked miles away even though a horse could amble across the field to the open stalls in minutes. Desperate for air, Greer turned his back on the horses and tried for the gate.
Now his whole face felt full of pins and needles. He rubbed both palms, smashing his lips, trying to wake them up. The rubbing made his nose run. It was all a trick. He yanked his tingling fingers away, realizing he was smothering himself. He inhaled harder and faster, unable to get each breath in soon enough for fulfillment.
Sucking in greedy gulps wasn’t enough. He was drowning in air. No one could swim in air. His chest pumped furiously and his head pounded. A roaring in his ears made him wonder who turned on all the TVs on channels that didn’t work, turned the volume all the way up, as far as it would go. But wait, he was at the barn and there weren’t any TVs here.
Stay up, on your feet, Greer commanded himself. He shouldn’t go down in the pasture. He could get stomped on if the horses spooked. One big draft hoof on his head or chest would kill him. Left foot, right foot. And again.
He dropped to his butt, stood again, sat again. There definitely wasn’t enough air on the ground. Everything, it took everything he had to stagger through the grayness of the grass. Why was the world going colorless?
Scooting himself to the fence on his knees, he braced one hand on the gate and put his all into breathing. His chest was beyond sore from the heaving strain. Muscles between his ribs screamed with coming cramps. He’d had cramps in his legs before that put him on the ground. Charley horses. Well, once his rib muscles seized up, it would all be over, wouldn’t it?
He couldn’t make it to safety. Just couldn’t. Unable to get in enough life-giving air, knowing he was dying right there, right then, he knew no more.
When a hand grabbed his shoulder and shook him, Greer waited without opening his eyes. Next, he figured, he’d be shoved into a tree and a big fist would grind into his chest and a mean man’s voice would scare him to death.
The voice was nice, a woman’s. Was he dreaming of his momma? He sucked in a breath so deep he thought he’d ripped his insides. A voice called, long and drawn out because it had so far to travel down the cavern that had sucked him up. It was a woman’s voice, but it didn’t sound like his momma, so it was probably an angel and he really had died.
Greer awoke on his back at the pasture gate, Maddie shaking his shoulder.
“Wow, buddy. You were really conked out there. Just fell asleep in the sunshine?”
She was silhouetted, the sun behind her. His chest burned like he’d been dipped in scalding water, as though a horse had indeed parked on his scrawny body. He craned his neck back. Blue sky stretched so far that Greer could spy the moon. Seeing the moon in the daytime was a feature of the far Northwest. Knowing the stars like Maddie, who knew the sky even better than Doug, could fix Greer for life.
Maddie pulled him into a sitting position, her arm and a shin making a backrest for him. Greer looked carefully around. A wire basket with two eggs rested by his knees.
“Want to help me gather a few more?” Maddie asked. “I was hoping for some duck eggs, too.”
He wanted to go to sleep for ten or twenty years and wake up as a big, strong man who could handle anything, but he was supposed to say yes when a grown-up asked for a hand, especially if it was family, so he nodded, pushed himself up, and searched for eggs in loose hay around the barn and the out-of-control snowberry bushes near the pastures.
She wasn’t going to make too much of things. What luck. Maddie was neat that way. He made a mental note to ask Doug about what happened when Maddie was a kid like him. He was pretty sure he’d heard mention of something sneaky, maybe some hiding. Greer sniffed and wiped his face with the back of his sleeve when Clipper, Tib, the draft team, and his pony looked at him across the fence.
“Are you mad at Clipper, Greer?” Maddie had little to do with horses.
“No.”
“I am.” Maddie grinned “I wish he hadn’t dumped you.”
He nodded and headed for the house with her eggs, glad she hadn’t made it more plain, saying Greer fell off. “I like Clipper.”
Maddie caught up and faced him, offering a giggle. “Sure, Greer. I’m kidding. I think it’s great that you can ride horses.”
&nbs
p; Sweat prickled his scalp. “I don’t want to ride anymore.”
She opened her mouth but said nothing, just squeezed Greer’s thin shoulder.
Greer knew his in-laws weren’t born to a life with horses. Maddie and Wes made no bones about despising a horse’s fidelity, having before declared their faith no more able to stand a storm than could toilet paper. Whatever all of that meant, Greer had no idea but he was starting to believe some things a guy could never understand. He’d never understand why people did mean things. And he didn’t know what to do about it, save keeping a promise not to tell. It was all on him.
Soon Doug and Maddie would leave for her island. They’d just come by this morning for eggs. Greer sat down on the top porch step as she went inside.
“Man, that kid’s gotten quiet,” Maddie said to someone inside.
Greer peeked into the living room and watched Doug swirl his wife in a hug. “Ups and downs, like anyone else.”
But Maddie muttered she could see a difference. A week back, she had called Greer a little stinker for sticking her with being the fall guy over his solo ride. He’d told her he was sorry, so sorry he’d been out there.
Greer flung the door open and crossed the threshold. He hadn’t counted on a draft whooshing the door shut behind him and the slam made him quake. He caught Maddie studying him and knew he’d blown acting normal.
“You’re jumpy, buddy.”
The bang had startled him, that’s all. They looked at him way too much these days. He didn’t want that attention and he gave them a grin that should have put them off, then headed for his bedroom. In the hallway, Greer paused at a stray comment.
“You know,” came Maddie’s voice, “your baby brother is more than a little weird.”
Greer crept back, slid down the wall, and flopped around the corner for a low peek. They were on the sofa, all over each other.
Doug laughed. “You say that about all my brothers. And my sisters.”
“And it’s true, but this kid is seriously weird.”
“You know I’m his protector,” Doug warned her. The protector status was Donner family lore. Ben, the first surviving son, had been told as a toddler that he was the protector of the new baby, Clara. In turn, Clara had been assigned to watch over the next born, Doug. As he grew, Doug watched over Emma. Emma was supposed to know where Frankie was. In elementary school, she had used her fists for Frankie’s defense back when he was in a wheelchair. Their lives had been fantastic. The stories of the older kids’ childhood thrilled Greer and scared the hooey out of strangers and even most in-laws.
