Black Helicopters

by Blythe Woolston

  “Are they going to share one of the coffees?”

  “They can’t have coffee on account of being pregnant — or something. You can go ahead and eat now. It’s better before it gets cold.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll wait until we’re back on the freeway, but can you pass me a coffee?”

  “Are we going all the way to Canada? Won’t we have some problems getting over the border?”

  “We just take these to this specified location,” says Bo, and he taps the folded piece of paper on the dash. “They got it all set up on that end to pick ’em up and take them home.”

  “They’re going home?”

  “Yep, that’s where they came from,” says Bo.

  “What they doing here?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t care. Not our job,” says Bo. “And you can pass that food through to them now. Keeping them fed is part of the deal.”

  I slide the back window of the truck open and knock on the window of the camper shell. The windows on the shell are all covered up so nobody can see in, but the girls riding back there can’t see out, either. They slide open the window on their side. I pass the paper bag full of burritos and milk through the hole. They say nothing. I say nothing. Then we both slide the windows shut.

  The shipment, one of them, is knocking on the window of the truck. I push it open, and a face is looking at me: TheoAnne or Daverleen, not the littlest one, not Teal.

  “Can you pull over? It’s Teal. She’s got the morning sick. Needs some air.”

  Bo heard, and the truck is already on the shoulder, already slowing down.

  “You got this, Valley,” says Bo.

  Lucky me.

  When I open the back of the truck, Teal, the littlest one, is hunched and waiting to crawl out. She has the paper bag the food came in in one hand. The bag is soggy and the acid smell of vomit is in the air. I put my hand out to help her down, but she holds the bag out to me instead. I take it and fling it down the road bank into the weeds.

  Teal crawls out on her hands and knees and then stands at the edge of the pavement.

  “Breathe,” one of the other girls says from where they are still perched in the shadows.

  “It’ll pass. It always feels better once you hurl,” says the other voice.

  Teal is swallowing, and clenching her teeth, but she does what they tell her to do. She breathes deep and slow.

  I walk around to the cab, open the door, and say, “I think this one should ride up front for a while.”

  Bo doesn’t say yes.

  “I think if she don’t, the whole back there is going to be wall-to-wall barf.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Up here, she’s less likely to blow — and she can open the window if she needs to, there’s that.”

  “Yeah.”

  So I put Teal in the front and climb into the back. The air only smells a little sour. I stretch out and get ready to fall asleep, like any normal person would in the dark in the back of the truck.

  But then one of the chickens says, “You’re nice.” It’s a weird thing to say.

  “You’re nice,” says the other one. “We been talking about it, and you can come live with us if you want to.”

  “What?”

  “You can be in our family.”

  “What about Bo? Can he be in your family too?”

  “Don’t think that would work. No. Don’t think so.”

  “Why not? He’s nice as me.”

  “But he’s a man. He wants to be out in the world. That’s what men do. That’s why I hope my baby is a girl. If she’s a girl, we can be together mostly for always. With boys, you never can tell, but they mostly need to go.”

  We wait, parked on the gravel road beside a long lake that stretches from here to Canada. This is as far as we go. Bo crashes on the truck seat. I’d like to go down by the water and stand by the empty edge where the earth and the sky and the water come together. I would like to watch the ripples kiss and bend around the rocks and see how the wind flutters the smooth back of the lake. Can’t do it. If something happens, we might need to move fast, so I sit on the loose gravel by the truck. The chickens are totally quiet in the back; maybe they are sleeping, too. I hear the whine of a chainsaw somewhere. No, not a chainsaw, a bike engine, getting closer.

  Might be nothing, but I open the truck door and poke Bo awake. He hears the engine, too, so there’s no need to talk.

  It’s an old woman in coveralls riding a four-wheeler hitched to a utility cart. She pulls up behind the truck and stops.

  “This it?” I ask.

  “Yeah, probably yeah,” says Bo.

  “You stay here, then. I’ll let them out.”

  The old woman climbs off the machine and stands beside it. When I open the back, the shipment climbs out and runs to her. They all hug, but she shoos them toward the trailer.

  “Bye, Valley!” Teal waves.

  “Valley watched on us like we were her own sisters,” Daverleen says. But nobody says anything about me going with them, so I don’t have to say no.

  Bo waits until the whine of the old woman’s engine has threaded away to silence before he turns the key in the ignition.

  “We’ll go for a couple of hours, then I get to sleep. We’ll be back to the Captain’s by tomorrow, then I’m going to sleep some more. Damn it, Valley, we got to get you licensed,” says Bo.

  Maybe he says some more too, but my brain is stuck on one thing. We’ll be back to the Captain’s by tomorrow.

  There are no paths here, not even places where the animals always go because it’s the quickest and easiest. Here, every way is open and winding around the sagebrush. Here, there’s no place to go: No water calling, no promise of something better. There are no fences, no power lines, not even any jet trails in the sky.

  The shadows move as fast as the clouds. The bright wind muffles my ears and makes me pull my sleeves down over my hands. But there is a sound that pierces the wind and pings like radar — ping, ping, ping — until it spills out, calling love out of the air, forging it into a bell that rings like a heart. Meadowlark.

  It’s been a long time since I cried. I’ve almost forgotten how. My bones and muscles are a fist around my lungs and heart. I curl down onto myself until I’m hard and heavy as a stone. When Bo finds me, I’m just another rock among the sagebrush.

  “Hey, hey, Valley, I’m here.”

  I’m here.

  Bo gathers me against him, and I push my face into his jacket and cry. I cry until every muscle in my body is tired. Then Bo takes my hand and leads me back to where the truck is waiting.

  “Valley, you don’t have to do it.”

  That’s true. I’m a free person.

  “Revenge isn’t worth it.”

  I let myself think about that — about revenge. I imagine standing in front of Captain Nichols’s gate, waiting for him to come close, waiting for him to think I am squirming under his dirty thumb. And then I would destroy him. But I say, “That’s not why I’m doing this. Revenge is a bad reason. It’s a small reason. I’m not doing this for me. This is way bigger than me. You don’t understand yet.”

  “Understand what?”

  “Understand about the black helicopters.”

  “Valley. You know I don’t believe in them? Right? I don’t believe . . .”

  “I know. That’s why this has to happen. There are lots of people like you, people who don’t believe. That’s exactly why this needs to happen.” The tires go kachunk-kachunk-kachunk on the seams in the road. We are moving closer to wherever we need to be. The gears are all turning. The pieces are all moving. I say, “You are a part of it now. You should know that. Even if you are afraid, you are a part of it. Someday, when people understand, they will remember you. They won’t remember that you were afraid; the only ones who know that are you and me, and we will both be dead. They will remember that you were brave. You were brave, and you were a part of it. They will know that you helped me when I needed he
lp. You will be a hero, Eric the Boneless. How about that?”

  “We should kill him,” says Bo, “for what he did.”

  “No,” I say, “I’ve thought about it, and there is no good plan for killing him. Not right now, anyway. Later maybe, but not now. Not when we get back. He’s got to expect we might try, so he’ll be ready.”

  I can see the thoughts crawling behind Bo’s eyes, crawling and squirming and hatching like mites and maggots. I can see them, and I know them because my own brain has been itching in the same way.

  “Not now. He’s a person who knows people. If he turns up dead, some of the customers will remember you. When that happens, it will be just like he said. They will think you are dirty and the word will get around. Much as I hate it, killing Captain Nichols, that’s a thing we can’t do. We need a different plan.”

  Bo is still not ready to think about anything but blood.

  “What do we have for assets?” It is a direct question that has a right answer, no guessing. It requires thought. I can see Bo’s eyes move while he thinks to answer.

  “We have the emergency cache. The truck. My gun.” I can tell he’s thinking about putting a bullet into Captain when he says that.

  “What about money? The money you’ve been earning on the jobs? Is that on you?”

  “Captain’s holding it. We had a ledger where we kept track. He gave me what I needed for operating expenses. I still got a little of that. The customers, they paid him. I never touched the money.” Bo can’t believe how stupid he’s been. I don’t need to mention it.

  “The stuff we had, that’s all still in the bus?”

  “Yeah. I never touched that. It’s still where we hid it the day we came down to the Captain’s. But right now, we don’t have the bus or anything inside it. And I don’t see how we can get that back unless we kill him.”

  “Not the option,” I say. “How long do you figure we have before he knows we aren’t coming back?”

  “A day, maybe,” says Bo. “We made real good time on the run. But the customers, he’s probably talked to them, so he knows we made the drop. If we don’t show up in a day, he’ll know something’s up.”

  “Can we go back to where the bus was? We’ve got the emergency cache there. We could get that and then live out of the truck.” Even while I ask the question, I know that would be hard. The world’s just not full of food and comfort. It’s full of sagebrush, rocks, and weather.

  “I don’t know if the Captain knows about that property or not,” says Bo.

  “If we don’t know, then it’s not safe,” I say. “The one thing we have going for us is he doesn’t know, right now, this minute, where we are.” I look out the truck window as the wind rattles past.

  “Valley, I think I do know a place where we could go. They’re customers, so the Captain knows about them, but — I don’t know. They treated me good. They trusted me when I brought the delivery. Gave me some food and beer. We even did some target practice together with the guns I brought. They were good guys. I just felt it. They were good.”

  Trusting Bo’s gut might be the stupidest thing I ever do. It might even be one of the last things I ever do. But I’m going to do it. Because if they kill us, it will be both of us. If they kill us, it will be quicker than starving. If they kill us, I don’t have to see the Captain. I don’t have to see the Captain ever again.

  There are three guys shooting hoops. The court is the road. The hoop is nailed to a tree that leans over the packed dirt and gravel. They don’t even stop the game until Bo opens the door of the truck and gets out.

  “Hey, Joe!” The one holding the ball flings it at Bo. Bo claps it out of the air. I did not know my brother could do that.

  “Hey, Dolph,” says Bo.

  “Unexpected visit,” says Dolph. He’s bigger than Bo. His hands are empty; that puts Bo at a disadvantage, even if the disadvantage is only the second it takes to move the ball.

  “Not work,” says Bo. “I wonder if I could talk to Wolf a minute.”

  Dolph jerks his head slightly, and the other guys move until one is standing right by Bo. The other lines up with me; it would be a clear shot through the open door of the truck.

  “Well, come on in, then.” Dolph smiles. “Who you got there with you?”

  “This is my sister, Valley. Come out the truck, Valley,” says Bo.

  I get out slow, and we all walk down the road a minute. Dolph stops and the rest of us do, too.

  “It’s OK, Valley,” says Bo. “Just do like me.” He puts his hands on his head and stands wide. One of the guys pats him down. I feel hands on me, too, hands that go where they want and touch what they want. Hands that run up under my shirt and across my skin. Hands that slide up and down the inside of my legs. I don’t like it, but I don’t flinch.

  “Wolf’s in the Quonset,” says Dolph. “We’ll all walk on over there and let him know you’re here.”

  And then we walk through the trees to meet Wolf.

  They take Bo inside and close the door, but I don’t go. I’m left outside with the guy who patted me down. I turn away from him, away from the door that closed behind Bo. I look down the hillside. I can see sunlight glinting on water through the open spaces between the trees. If I walked that way, would he stop me? Could I just walk there, to the water’s edge? Would the water kiss and bend around me and hold me while my heart went tick, tick, tick? Or would that be reason enough to shoot?

  The stubborn birds are singing in the trees.

  If they have a silent way of killing, it will be my turn soon.

  When they have finished, the stubborn birds will still be singing in the trees.

  But the door opens and Bo comes out smiling. The man with him is smiling, too. He is tall. Taller than Bo. Taller than Da.

  “It’s good,” he says. And I believe him. “Dolph, show them where to park their truck.”

  One of the other guys punches Bo in the shoulder. “Hey, dude, we got a bonfire meeting tonight. Stormy is going to be glad to see you again. Damn your eyes.”

  “This is Valley,” says Bo.

  “I’m Wolf,” the tall man says to me. Things he doesn’t say, but things that I see in the way the other men obey: I am the leader here. What I say goes. “Bo tells me you could use a couple hours’ sleep. So we’ll talk more later, tonight maybe, by the fire, or tomorrow. But for now, get some sleep.”

  Those are easy orders to follow.

  The fire is by the lakeshore. Bo is there now. He is one of the moving shapes, half bright, half dark. I’m not. I am here, at a distance, under the trees. I can watch from here, but I don’t shine or show against the light of the fire. I’m a shadow, I’m a tree, I’m a shadow of a tree.

  “Why aren’t you there, with them?” It’s Wolf’s voice behind me, where I can’t hear so well. I wish now that I had stayed in the back of the truck, in the solid dark, instead of following along to watch Bo. My hand is on the little knife in my pocket.

  “I’m not with them because I’m not one of them,” I say. I turn to face him, but the light of the bonfire is burned into my eyes and hovers where I look.

  “You would be welcome,” Wolf says. “There’s plenty of beer.”

  “I don’t need beer.”

  “Humh? You don’t have to need it to enjoy it.” If I could see Wolf’s face, he would be smiling. I can hear a little bit of laughing in his words.

  “I don’t enjoy it, either,” I say. “I don’t like the bubbles.”

  “Here, then,” says Wolf. “This doesn’t have bubbles.” His hand touches my hand and puts a mug into it.

  I think maybe it is cold coffee, but it smells wrong. When I sip, it is sharp on the back of my tongue, like the smell of pine pitch on a hot summer day, but it also tastes like berries and bitterness.

  “My own elderberry wine,” says Wolf, “mixed with mead. Better than beer for you and me.”

  We stand and watch the others by the fire, and we pass the cup back and forth. We are quiet in the shad
ows under the trees. I start to feel warm inside, from the wine. I watch Bo and the others. I watch how the sparks fly up when someone throws more wood on the fire. Wolf is standing close enough by my side that I can feel the heat his body makes, but he never touches me except to give and receive the cup we share.

  Bo and I go to Wolf and Eva’s trailer right at 5:00 p.m., like she said to when she invited us. Eva is Wolf’s wife. Bo introduced us at the truck when she visited this morning. She was down by the fire last night, and so were her daughters, Wolf’s daughters, Stormy and Sky. They are a whole family.

  When we walk past her truck, the engine is still ticking, making the little sounds the parts make when they cool. She must not have been home very long.

  Bo climbs up the steps to the front door and knocks. Then he steps back down and waits. I start to think maybe we didn’t understand, because nobody is answering the door, but then I start to hear loud TV-commercial music coming from inside the trailer.

  Bo steps up and knocks again, harder this time, with the side of his fist. It’s not polite to knock like that, but the person inside won’t hear it otherwise.

  The door opens and it’s Eva. “Hey, kids,” she says. “Come on in.” She is holding a cigarette and a can of beer in one hand while she welcomes us in with the other. “I didn’t expect you so soon. Wolf and the girls, they’re always late. So I figure everybody’s late. Not you two, though.”

  “Da taught us to be on time,” says Bo.

  “That’s real polite,” says Eva. Now she’s got one hand for the beer and one for the cigarette. She punctuates her sentences by putting one or the other to her mouth.

  Not just polite, I think, also important so a person doesn’t get blown up. Time matters. Da taught me that.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re here,” Eva says. “Sit down. Sit down. Soon as Wolf and the girls get here, we’ll eat. I wanted to welcome you to the family; so we’ll be having a big family dinner together. You want a beer?”

  “Yes, please,” says Bo.