by S. M. Hulse
Being left behind suited Eli; once he retired, he wanted as little to do with the mines as possible. Family legend says he left a lamp burning in his bedroom each night, having sworn off darkness. He intended this land to be a cattle ranch, but after the first year half the cattle died of blackleg and the rest sold for less than he’d paid. He could’ve made up the loss by selling some land, but he’d never owned anything before, and he made his son swear never to sell a single acre. Samuel told me our father made him swear the same thing.
In thirty-seven days, the state of Montana will force Samuel to break that promise.
Rather than ride the fence line all the way to the road, I cut across the pasture behind the house. Samuel hasn’t yet mowed this year, and the grass reaches almost to Lockjaw’s knees; she snatches a few mouthfuls without breaking stride. I close my eyes, concentrate on the tentative heat of the spring sun, the ease of the journey over this land.
“Josephine Faber?”
I open my eyes. A man in his late forties stands in front of the bridge over the creek. Average height, dark hair gone gray at the temples, eyes narrowed to a squint in the sun.
“Samuel’s not here.”
“Are you—”
“Yes. I am.” The man’s suit looks like the one Samuel owns: plain black, a few loose threads protruding from the holes in the plastic buttons, a decent if imperfect fit. His shirt is white, his tie an inoffensive red-and-gray stripe. He also wears black cowboy boots, and they aren’t near scuffed enough to make me think they’ve touched dirt before today. “You’re FBI?”
“Senior Resident Agent Will Devin.” He holds up an ID, but he’s too far away for me to read it. I wonder if he’s done that on purpose, hoping I’ll dismount. The plastic window in the wallet catches the sun, and a small square of reflected light skitters between us.
Lockjaw reaches for another mouthful of grass, and this time I stop her. “There are more of you at the house?”
Devin shakes his head. “Not yet. We’ve flown up some specialists from the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Salt Lake.” I flinch at the word terrorism, repeat it in my head until I’m numb to the syllables so the next time I hear them their sting won’t show on my face. “They’re still down in Elk Fork. I’m based at the resident agency there.”
I glance at his boots. “So you’re, what, the down-home, folksy, local-boy agent I’m supposed to trust because you wear a pair of Justins?” Shouldn’t have said that. But I don’t know what I should have said instead. I don’t know how to behave in this situation. I do know what Samuel thinks of the FBI, and maybe that’s why I’ve defaulted to confrontation, which is so unlike me but so like my brother.
“Something like that.” Devin nudges a stone with the toe of one boot. “They’re Lucchese, actually.”
I don’t care how much he paid for his boots. I should never have mentioned them, should never have tried to emulate Samuel. I urge Lockjaw forward, and Devin steps aside. I ride behind the barn and have already halted Lockjaw beneath the mounting bar by the time Devin comes around the corner. I see him take it in: the zigzagging ramp Samuel built, the metal bar overhead, and my wheelchair waiting on the platform at the top of the ramp. He keeps his expression neutral, but I don’t think he knew.
He takes a step toward Lockjaw, and I say, “I don’t need help.” I unwind the lead rope from the saddle horn and loop it over the bar above, letting the knotted reins drop to Lockjaw’s withers. Then I reach down and remove each of my feet from the stirrups before grabbing the bar overhead with both hands and pulling my body from the saddle. I move my hands sideways along the bar, like a child at a playground, and Lockjaw stands immobile even as my right leg drags across the saddle. When I’ve positioned myself properly, I settle into my wheelchair, one hand still holding Lockjaw’s lead. I release the brakes on my chair, back Lockjaw away from the mounting bar, and only then turn to face Devin. “A complete spinal cord injury,” I explain. “No feeling or movement below my waist.”
He says nothing as I wind my way down the ramp. Lockjaw obediently follows my path on the ground. In the barn, I unbridle her and tie her in the alleyway. Devin stands a couple yards away—between me and the exit, which can be no accident—but he stays silent as I finish untacking Lockjaw, and makes no more moves to help, even when I reach to pull the saddle from Lockjaw’s back and the bridle in my lap falls to the ground in a tangle of leather and metal.
He’s good. Not that most people gawk and point when they first meet me, but they tend to studiously avoid looking at my chair, and often fix their eyes on a point a couple inches above my head. He does neither, and I find myself wishing he would. I don’t want to be Jo Faber right now—don’t want to be a suspect’s sister—and I’m desperate for almost any alternative, even Woman in Wheelchair. At least I’ve had practice playing that role.
I settle the tack on its racks in the barn aisle and hang my helmet on a hook near the stall, beside the dressage whip I carry to replace the leg cues I can no longer give. Then I run a brush over Lockjaw’s coat, pick the packed dirt and stones out of each hoof in turn. I do these things slowly, trying to draw each second long. Samuel is almost to Wyoming. He’s about to cross the state line and can see the Bighorns. Finally I untie the rope halter and slide it off Lockjaw’s head. I cluck my tongue against the roof of my mouth, and the mule walks past me through the open door of the nearest stall. I shut the door behind her, check the latch. No more excuses for delay. I look at Devin.
“Can we talk in your house?”
“I’d rather not.” Another thing I shouldn’t say. I expect Devin to insist—he no doubt has the right to—but he hesitates for a fraction of a second and then nods. I’m instantly suspicious, almost wish he had demanded we go inside. I don’t like the way this feels like a chess match, and one that sets novice against master. Everything I do seems to mean something to him—even if it doesn’t to me—and I can feel him adjusting his responses, calculating and correcting.
A breeze carries through the barn aisle, and Devin’s tie flutters away from his chest before settling again. “I’ll be up-front. I’m here to arrest your brother.”
“He’s gone to Wyoming.” Every time I say it, it becomes less real. More like a story. More like a lie.
“If he has, he went after he detonated an explosive device at the district courthouse in Elk Fork.” Devin says it with no particular inflection. I suppose that’s deliberate. Wait to see how I react, whether I choose to be ally or enemy. I try to keep my features still, and after a moment he continues. “I’m going to be spending a lot of time learning everything there is to know about Samuel Faber. What he’s done, where he’s been, what he wants, how he thinks. But at this point, I’m close to a blank slate as far as he’s concerned.” He looks at me. “Tell me the one thing you think I ought to know about Samuel.”
“Excuse me?”
“The one thing I ought to know about your brother. Before I find out what everyone else thinks about him, what do you most want me to know?”
I study Devin’s face. He looks back steadily, with an expression that is less hostile than I expect. Doesn’t mean anything. He can probably call it up at will, probably practices arranging his features into a perfect facsimile of empathy and understanding. He’s here to arrest Samuel; he said so himself. I am a source of information, nothing more. A means to an end.
In my place, my brother would say nothing. Not a word.
“He’s—” I stop. Devin tilts his head, waits.
One thing. One thing about Samuel. So much seems important. I could tell Devin that after our mother died, Samuel sold everything we could spare: our mother’s jewelry (he saved her wedding ring for me), the two horses and their tack, the station wagon. I could tell him Samuel treated every transaction matter-of-factly, until the day he sold our father’s watch. I could tell him Samuel put on that watch the day after our father died—he was only eight years old, and in pictures it hangs low over his hand—and had worn it every da
y since, and I could tell him that the day he sold it, he came home from the pawnshop and punched a hole through the kitchen wall.
Or I could tell Devin that Samuel had planned to be a veterinarian, had been the best shortstop in Prospect history and was offered a scholarship to the state university, had decided instead to go into the Army with his best friend Kev, had told me but not our mother when our lives took the turn they did. I could tell him that instead of college or the military, Samuel went to work first at the movie theater, then the fried chicken place, the home improvement warehouse, the sprawling junkyard off the old highway, and finally the sawmill in Split Creek.
I could tell him about the time Lockjaw—we’d called her Muley then—ran through a fence and two weeks later went stiff and rigid with tetanus. I could tell him that our mother had been in the barnyard with the rifle, that Samuel begged her not to shoot, and that though the vet said there was no real hope, Samuel spent the next ten days at the mule’s side, sitting silently with her in the darkened barn aisle as she spasmed, administering the medications the vet left behind, hand-feeding her soft bran mash when she was finally able to eat, until at last she recovered.
I could tell harsher tales, too, about what happened the night our mother died, or how Samuel came to get a swastika tattoo, or what he said the day the notice about the house arrived. I could tell him how Samuel’s faith in government had started to slowly erode even before it shattered into distrust, and how it had transformed into something much darker in the years since. I could tell him that I was sure the worst was behind us, that my brother had tried on half a dozen ideologies over the years but abandoned them all, that at last his soul seemed to have settled until that damned letter arrived. I could tell Devin that as much as I want to deny it, as much as I’ve been trying all day to deny it, whenever I think of that bomb in Elk Fork—whenever I can’t stop myself thinking of it—I think of Samuel, too.
I weigh each of these things, and more. I think of why Samuel sold the watch, why he took the jobs he did, why he stayed with Lockjaw, even why he got the tattoo. And finally I decide. I meet Devin’s eyes. “Samuel,” I say, “would do anything for me.”
* * *
I wonder if you know where I am, Jo. If you’ve thought about it you do, but I wonder if you’ve let yourself think about it yet.
I really did mean to go to Wyoming. That wasn’t a lie. After Elk Fork, I meant to go to Wyoming. Heard my name on the radio before I got to Billings. Don’t know where I went wrong. I was careful, really careful. I was careful, Jo, and those people weren’t supposed to be there. There wasn’t supposed to be a church; I had no idea there was a church. That little girl wasn’t supposed to be there.
Do you remember how we only had room for three books when we came here together? I brought Black Beauty because it was your favorite, The Call of the Wild because it was mine, and East of Eden because it was the longest book in the house neither of us had read, and because of the name. (Remember how I kept trying to skip the parts I thought were too old for you, but you always caught me at it?)
I don’t have any books this time. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I made preparations just in case—in case of this, I guess—but I didn’t think about books. All I have to read is this map of Montana. I’m writing in its margins now, words all along the Canadian border.
Did you believe it right away, Jo? That it was me, that I did it? You probably tried not to. You would do that for me. Maybe you’re still trying. Maybe you’re doing your best to ignore whatever they’ve told you, explain away whatever evidence I didn’t mean to leave. But deep down, I bet you believed it right away.
Don’t worry about it. You were right.
* * *
I wake in the dark to a sharp cracking sound. At first I think it’s a gunshot. Always think I hear gunshots. Then the deepest haze of sleep clears, and I decide it might be thunder; the clouds over the Cabinet Mountains to the west had darkened suspiciously the evening before. But there is no rumble, no lightning bursting through the night. It cracks again, sharp and sudden, and at last I place the sound. The left shutter of the window in my old bedroom upstairs. The latch is broken, and anything more than a slight breeze sends it banging against the house. Samuel has been promising to fix it for weeks, but there’s always something more pressing.
“Samuel,” I call. Still feel a small thrill of terror when I raise my voice in the night, like a child who has finally gotten up the nerve to call for her parents after a nightmare. “Samuel!”
And then I remember. All of it.
Before bed, I steeled myself and turned the radio on. The bomb had destroyed the south facade of the courthouse, though early reports estimated most of the structural integrity of the building remained intact. No one had been inside. One man was injured by flying debris while walking his dog nearby. (The dog, the reporter assured listeners, was unharmed.) The rest of the injured—eleven in all—had been attending services at Light of the World Church across the street. The church met in a storefront, and when the bomb exploded, the windows facing the sidewalk shattered inward. I listened to the description and imagined the glass splintered into the air like a suspended sculpture of glittering shards, and I wondered whether it had been beautiful for a moment. If it had been beautiful before it was terrible.
Most of the injured were treated and released. Three remain in the hospital, two in serious condition, one critical. That last, the one, is the pastor’s daughter. She is nine. Her name is Emily.
The shutter slams against the house again. I turn on the bedside lamp, but the relief I usually feel when light eradicates dark doesn’t materialize. I glance at the clock: 2:41.
I could go upstairs on my own. I’ve never tried it, never had to, Samuel always there to carry me. But I think it’s possible; I’m strong. It would mean transferring to my wheelchair, then to the floor at the base of the stairs. It would mean using my hands to cross my right ankle over my left and raising myself backward one stair at a time. Eighteen stairs. Half my body dead weight. No wheelchair at the top. And I’d have to get back down after. Still, I think I could do it.
I consider it a moment more. Even grab the side of the mattress, ready to push myself into a sitting position. But I don’t want to find out I’m wrong, don’t want to learn I’m not strong enough after all. So I stay in bed and lie awake and listen to the shutter crack against the house until at last, near dawn, the wind dies down.
* * *
It was night then, too. Samuel the first to spot the headlights, understand what they meant. I remember the urgency in his voice when he said, “Mom,” the expression on her face when she looked out the window and recognized Ben Archer’s truck. Samuel went to the front door, locked it, headed for the back. Mom pulled me down the hall, tucked me into a corner of the closet in her bedroom. The smell of potpourri, the brush of wool on my neck. “Stay here, Josie,” Mom told me. “It’ll be all right, just stay here.” A smile that even at ten I had known was forced. No time to object, to cry. The door closed. Dark.
* * *
I still haven’t called the lawyer. Hawkins is right; I should. But I don’t need a lawyer to tell me Samuel is in serious trouble. Besides, a half dozen FBI agents already traipsed through the house yesterday evening, carting away boxes and bags filled with what had been Samuel’s possessions and were now classified as “evidence.” I sat outside while they worked, stared hard at each person who crossed the whitewashed planks of the porch. I told myself I wanted the agents to meet my eyes, told myself they were cowards for refusing. Told myself I wasn’t relieved to be ignored.
They left a receipt when they were done, but I should go through the house and inventory it myself. If I do, will I be able to identify what’s missing? I imagine Samuel’s room, new empty spaces on the bookshelves and dresser and desk interrupting the dust like chalk outlines. For each familiar object I’d find—the sweater I gave him last Christmas he wore only often enough to show dutiful appreciation, the horses
hoe he nailed above his doorway for luck—there would be another absent item I’d fail to conjure in my memory, and yet another I’d never known was there at all.
The radio is still here. Samuel and I haven’t owned a television since the day during my sophomore year when I came home to find it in the tall grass behind the house, a heavy rock resting in the center of the shattered screen. Propaganda of the Zionist Occupied Government, Samuel said. I’ve never been able to determine why my brother tolerates the radio but not the television—I think he simply likes music too much to give it up—but he does, and it stayed.
Few stations come in clearly in Prospect, and most have gone back to playing country or Christian pop, but I find one of the talk stations on the AM dial. No one has died in the night. He hasn’t killed anyone, I think. Try not to add yet. I expect them to call Samuel a “person of interest” or something like that, but no, he’s a “suspect,” not to be approached, armed and dangerous, et cetera. (They give his name as Samuel Henry Faber; the only time I’ve heard his middle name spoken aloud before is once when our mother was angry with him for staying out all night with Kev.) Lincoln Street in Elk Fork will remain closed at least through the end of the day. There will be a prayer vigil for the pastor’s daughter—Emily, her name is Emily, she has a name and it is Emily—on Tuesday evening.
Off.
There will have to be a statement; Hawkins is right about that, too. It’s surprisingly simple to write. I didn’t realize how often I’d heard similar statements on the news, how easily I’d internalized their components: First, express sorrow but don’t apologize, because apology is close to admission. (Doesn’t matter that nothing is proven yet, that I have nothing to do with it in any case, that I had no idea, that I’m devastated, too … devastated is a good word; I use it twice.) Second, cross out the sentence that casts your accused loved one in a positive light. (So Samuel raised me since I was ten. So he gave up plenty to do it. No one cares.) Third, say you feel for the victims. No, say you’ll pray for them. (I won’t. I haven’t prayed since I was a kid, and even then I suspected I was talking to myself.) Fourth, think but under no circumstances write that it could not have been your loved one, because he is your loved one, because he has strange ideas but they are just ideas, because he is your brother and how could your brother have done this? End with a futile plea for privacy.
