by Anna Oney
Leaning forward, Neenah drummed her fingers on the table. “Joy was clear on the amount of time Father said y’all were allowed behind the veil.”
“When you say, ‘Father,’” Noelle squeaked, craning her neck to look at Fawn’s grandmother. “Who are you talking about?”
“Our Lord and Savior, of course,” Neenah replied and laughed.
Ayita turned on her heel. In the blink of an eye, she arrived at Fawn’s table. The speed at which she traveled blew Noelle’s icy blonde waves behind her shoulders, forced the silverware to clink, and sent the napkins afloat.
“Already, Darby?” Ayita asked, bringing her trembling hands together before her waist. “Is it really time for them to go?”
Rising from her chair, Neenah signaled for Fawn to do the same. Noelle and Davlyn quickly followed suit, each of them coming to stand on either side of Fawn.
“It is,” Neenah replied and nodded, taking hold of Fawn’s hand. “Ladies,” she said, sighing as she peered to the left at Davlyn’s cheeks, flushed from the muscadine wine, at Noelle on the right, and lastly to Fawn in the middle. She rested her palm on Fawn’s mended shoulder, looking her sternly in the eye. “Stella will lead y’all the rest of the way.”
A wave of emotions smashed against the wall Fawn had risen within herself to block such feelings from surfacing. Grappling with the fact that this could be the last time she would speak with her grandmother, loss cracked open the barrier, transforming her into a blubbering mess. She struggled to hold back tears as her mind was flooded with flashbacks of her aunt Claire’s body, the beds in Back Wood’s infirmary stained with blood from her parents’ and sisters’ deaths, and that carefree little girl, who had been severed from her ravaged soul that fateful night on Lacing Switch road. Lastly, the soft glow of the candle’s flame illuminating the lash-less lids of her son, Joshua’s, eyes, which would never fully develop. How weightless he’d felt in her arms, his tiny head no bigger than the palm of her hand.
“It,” Fawn softly cried. “It was nice meeting you.”
Neenah pulled Fawn close, enveloping her in her arms tighter than she had when they’d first met. “Same here,” she whispered in Fawn’s ear and leaned backward, lifting Fawn from the floor. “You’ve made us proud. So proud. You have no idea how much.”
“Looks like our guide is leaving without us,” Davlyn said, drawing Neenah and Fawn’s attention.
Stella stood at the entrance to the hut, staring Fawn down with her black, piercing eyes.
“I guess we better follow her,” Davlyn added, tipping her head in Stella’s direction.
Neenah and Ayita took up the ends of the horizontal line Fawn, Davlyn, and Noelle formed as they closed the distance between themselves and Stella. Neenah and Ayita halted a few steps before the exit, allowing Fawn and her companions to carry on without them. Fawn glanced back at her ancestors seconds before they arrived at Stella’s form.
The crowd of spirits raised their glasses as they made a half circle around Neenah and Ayita. Grinning, Neenah draped her arm over Ayita’s shoulders. Dabbing below her reddened, puffy eyes, Ayita wept quietly at Neenah’s side.
“Ladies, we’re all rooting for y’all,” Neenah said, peering behind her, and then back at Fawn. “Until we meet again!”
With a snap of Neenah’s fingers, Stella, Fawn, Davlyn, and Noelle were transported to the middle of an open, shoulder-height wheat field. On the other side of the field, the upper part of a steep set of stairs led to a latch in a sky sporadically dotted with puffs of clouds. Fawn turned to look at her companions who hadn’t said a word. Noelle and Davlyn scanned over the vast horizon, made up of shades of burnt orange, vermilion, purple, and baby blue. Wind swept across the top of the field, dispatching swirls of golden dust into the clear air.
Fawn marveled at the scenery, feeling the sensation of Stella’s scratchy tongue licking her hand. Fawn followed the tip of Stella’s wet nose as the dog directed it upward toward the stairs.
“Is that where we’re headed?” Fawn asked Stella, drawing Noelle and Davlyn’s attention. “Up there?”
Stella led the way, with Fawn and her companions shuffling through the tillers of wheat behind her. The hum of children’s laughter wafted in their direction as they approached their destination.
About twenty minutes later, one at a time, the three women cleared the field, and stepped onto the greenest grass Fawn had ever seen. The smell of honeysuckle drifted to Fawn’s nose, reminding her of home. A jungle gym weaved in honeysuckle vines stood to the left, with a slide and swing set jutting out the side. Young children of all races, ranging in age from what appeared to be about four to seven, were being pushed on the swings or guided down the slide by adults sporting content, smiling faces. Melanie’s, “Brand New Key,” blared from two speakers hovering in the sky over the joyful scene.
To the right, teenagers in bathing suits got a running start before sliding belly-down on a slick Slip ‘N Slide.
“That looks fun,” Noelle said, peering in the slide’s direction.
“Wonder if they’ll let us join?” Davlyn asked, hopeful.
Far to the right of Fawn and her companions, a game of tag was starting at the edge of the field. The tallest boy of the seven other children stood in the middle of the group eager to begin the game. He pointed to himself, signifying that he’d be “it.” A countdown began and as soon as he yelled, “Go,” the other kids scattered in the field, sending the tillers of wheat swaying.
“I’d rather join them,” Fawn whispered to herself, as memories of playing childhood games with her siblings surfaced.
A girl of about eight sprinted from the field and ran into Fawn’s side. The girl’s waves of auburn hair draped over her face as she staggered backward. Melanie’s lyrics echoed in Fawn’s ears.
Well, I got a brand-new pair of roller skates . . .
The little girl plopped to the ground, leveling the wheat around her.
You got a brand-new key.
The girl exhaled and whipped her head to the right, casting her hair from her face.
I think that we should get together and try them out, you see.
Fawn boggled at this girl as the resemblance between them was uncanny.
I been looking around awhile . . .
Not only did the girl’s hair match Fawn’s, but so did her heart-shaped lips, sapphire eyes, and the spray of freckles across her high cheekbones and the bridge of her nose.
You got something for me . . .
“Sorry, ma’am,” the girl said, her voice unsteady. “I wasn’t paying attention like I’m supposed to.”
“Is it just me,” Davlyn chimed in, cutting her eyes to Fawn, and then back to the girl. “Or does she look like a younger version of you?”
“Right,” Noelle contributed. “You two could be twins if it weren’t for the age difference.”
Ignoring their remarks, Fawn offered a hand to the girl. Tentatively, the girl reached out and immediately jerked back her hand.
“It’s okay,” Fawn urged, stretching her hand out farther. “Let me help you up.”
The girl gripped Fawn’s hand.
Fawn stood on the side of Lacing Switch road, staring down at her eighteen-year-old self, shaking and crumpled on the ground between two hollowed out vehicles. Shapes of twigs and gravel were imprinted on Fawn’s profile where the rapist had kept her face pinned to the ground. His fingertips had left red marks on her cheek that later turned to bruises. Scrapes and cuts from their short scuffle, before he’d pulled the knife, were fresh on her arms and chest. Blood seeped from her mangled vagina, staining the earth.
Taking her eyes from the ghastly scene that was herself, she caught sight of the young girl from the field standing on the opposite side of the road. Twisted, jagged shards of metal curled inward and outward from the tops and sides of the vehicles prevented them from being easily reunited.
Fawn was startled by her own voice saying, “Come back so we can be one.”
“
I can’t,” the girl replied. “Not until you forgive yourself.”
“But I-I did this to us,” Fawn countered. “I wasn’t paying attention like Daddy taught us. I let my guard down.”
“The guilt and shame you carry doesn’t belong to you. It falls to the monster that did that to you.”
Fawn was jolted from the vision by the girl coming to her feet and snatching her hand from Fawn’s grasp. She turned and strode into the wheat field, disappearing. With a heavy heart, Fawn stared at the swaying tillers.
“Hey there!” someone behind them shouted.
A petite woman with dirty blonde hair as short as Davlyn’s came into focus at the bottom of the stairs. Her almond-shaped eyes and high cheekbones reminded Fawn of her father’s. She wore flip-flops with knee-length shorts and an Eagles T-shirt, the letters printed across the front in fiery, red-orange. The wingspan of an eagle hovered over the band’s name.
As Fawn and Stella cleared the slope, with Davlyn and Noelle trailing behind, the woman outstretched her arms.
“Hello,” she said, in a thick southern drawl. Fawn came to a stop before her. “I’m Shirley, Doolie’s wife. That makes me your great-grandmother.”
“What is this?” Davlyn spoke up beside Fawn. “A family reunion?”
“I read about you in Gran’s journal,” Fawn said, ignoring her cousin’s comment.
“Well,” Shirley replied, rolling her eyes. “I hope I didn’t sound too neurotic. It’s a day-to-day struggle.” She winked and kissed the tops of Fawn’s hands. “Joy was sorry she couldn’t be here to see you ladies off.”
“Where is she?” Noelle asked from Fawn’s left.
“She got tied up assembling the army of The Faultless for Wakiza.”
The Faultless, Fawn recited to herself, thinking back to her first encounter with Joy. The purest of souls that never got to experience life.
Stella sat stoic beside Shirley and raised her jaw, tipping her white head toward the stairs.
“Okay, okay,” Shirley said and hissed in the dog’s direction. “Stella says it’s time for y’all to go now.”
Closest to the stairs, Davlyn took the lead and cleared the first step. Noelle followed closely behind her. Fawn brought her foot to the bottom step, feeling a tug at her arm. Shirley pulled her back. A gust of wind disheveled Fawn’s auburn waves, draping them over half her face. Shirley brushed Fawn’s hair from her cheek, securing them behind her great-granddaughter’s ear.
“You remind me so much of my Emma,” she whispered, studying Fawn’s face. “I’m grateful that my grandson passed some of her traits on to you.”
Peering upward, Fawn stared after Davlyn and Noelle’s shrinking forms. Her heart pounded fiercely against her chest as she looked to Shirley.
“I wish I didn’t have to go, Grandma,” she said, throwing her arms around her great-grandmother.
“I know you do, sweetie,” Shirley replied, circling Fawn’s back with the palm of her hand. “But your story isn’t finished. You must play your part and keep the pages turning. Just know,” she said, and then paused, pulling back and taking hold of Fawn’s shoulders. “As long as you have Christ in your heart, we won’t be too far behind you.”
Leaving the comfort of Shirley’s arms, Fawn caught up with Davlyn and Noelle underneath the latch in the sky. The two women positioned themselves on either side of the stairs, allowing Fawn to take up the middle.
“Who’s first?” Noelle shakily asked.
“Not me,” Davlyn whispered, her eyes darting from the latch above them to Fawn. “Cousin, you’re the oldest.”
“That’s the way it is, huh?” Fawn replied, shaking her head. “Fine.”
Taking a deep breath, Fawn exhaled as she brought her hands to the door in the clouds. She peered downward over her shoulder, seeing that Shirley and Stella had joined in the fun of the Slip ‘N Slide. Transferring her attention to the latch, Fawn pushed it open, revealing a black square in the sky. She reached her hand into the darkness and felt her feet being lifted from the stairs. It reminded Fawn of a dream she’d once had of drifting to the stars to play amongst the constellations.
The weight of Davlyn and Noelle gripping her by the ankles had no effect on the pull of the unknown. Together, the three women floated into nothingness. Memories of Fawn’s time behind the curtain faded fast. Within her mind, she grasped desperately at the faces and words of Ayita, Neenah, and her great-grandmother, Shirley, wanting to take them with her.
Fawn blinked rapidly as she was overcome by a wave of exhaustion. Her eyes closed of their own accord and, no more than five seconds later, popped open again. Standing in the middle of Davlyn and Noelle — whose chins were drooped to their chests in slumber — Fawn scanned a room she believed to be Stagecoach’s armory.
Daylight shone through the two windows on each side of the room, shining a spotlight on a multitude of bows, arrows, spears, hatchets, and knives on the left side. The right side was adorned with rifle and pistol racks. Cedar chests and shelves, stocked with the same curved, rectangle-shaped device that birthed the golden tube Fawn had marveled over after Tye’s death, were stationed near the closed door of the exit.
Fawn tried wrapping her mind around the strangeness of the scene when Davlyn and Noelle’s chins shot up from their chests and the lids of their eyes fluttered open. The two women’s feet shifted beneath them as they realized they were standing.
Noelle rubbed at her puffy eyes and took in her new surroundings.
“Uh, where are we?” she asked, looking from Davlyn to Fawn. “And how did we get here?”
“Yeah,” Davlyn chimed in, rubbing at her stomach questioningly. “And does anybody else feel full?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Fawn took her first steps within the armory and looked about. The last thing she remembered was hearing a knock coming from the other side of the pit’s wall.
“Something like this has happened to me before,” Fawn said.
Fawn reminisced over the altercation she’d had with Big Sneed and how she’d awoke with no recollection as to how she came to be lying healed in she and Hunter’s bed.
“Whomever helped me then,” she said, turning to face Davlyn and Noelle, “must’ve stepped in and got us out of the pit.”
“Okay,” Noelle said. “But why bring us here?”
“So, we can stock up,” Davlyn replied, closing the distance between herself and the bows lining the wall. “Obviously,” she said and paused, picking up a bow. “Whomever they are, they’re welcome to share a drink with me anytime.” She studied the bow, turning it over in her hands and running her palm down the curved limb. “Cousin, I think this one is mine.”
“Really?” Fawn said, walking up behind her. “Maybe mine’s here, too.”
Fawn scanned over Stagecoach’s fine display of craftsmanship. She reached for a longbow with her initials engraved on the lower part of the curved limb. Her arrows, sporting cardinal feathers for fletching, came into focus amongst the piles of others. Not wanting to use anything Clancy’s townspeople had constructed, she picked through every arrow until she had collected all of those she had meticulously assembled with her own hands.
Noelle licked her bottom lip as she picked up one of the automatic rifles.
“Ah,” Noelle said, turning the rifle over in her hands. “My favorite.”
Fawn and Davlyn put loading their arrows into their quivers on hold. They stared after Noelle walking toward the cedar chest full of ammunition.
“Um,” Davlyn squeaked. “What cha doing there?”
Noelle leaned the automatic rifle against the chest before clasping her hand around the same curved, rectangle-shaped device that had birthed the golden tube.
“Loading my weapon,” she replied, studying the top of the curved rectangle. “This is called a magazine,” she continued — her eyes focused on the double stack of golden tubes hidden inside. “Just looking to see which side the top bullet is on.”
She wedged the magazine
under her armpit and picked up the rifle leaning against the chest. Using the palm of her hand, Noelle slammed the magazine into a socket at the bottom of the rifle. She looked up to find Fawn and Davlyn gawking at her.
“What?” she asked and shrugged. “I’ve learned some things over the seventeen and a half years I’ve been living. It’s not that hard to catch onto when you’re surrounded by it, day in and day out.”
Davlyn leaned toward Fawn’s ear.
“She scares me sometimes.”
“Same here,” Fawn replied and smiled, resuming loading her arrows into their quivers. “But I like it.”
Five minutes later, Fawn and Davlyn had finished stuffing their quivers with arrows. Upon further inspection of the room, Fawn was grateful to find her father’s hatchet piled with the others in the far corner. She guided the stock of the hatchet through a loop at her side and crisscrossed the straps of her quivers over her chest.
Drawing her bow, Fawn stepped toward the window on the right side of the room. She peered outward, taking note of the two railcars sitting motionless on the train tracks that circled the building. Three of Clancy’s townsmen stood guard in front of the train station. Hope rekindled her spirit as she realized how close they were to the hidden passage of loosened boards, but then she remembered Clancy’s words.
“We’ve had eyes on you since you came within five miles of Stagecoach.”
“We’re inside the train station,” Fawn said over her shoulder. “We’ve got three guards out front. How’s it looking out back, cousin?”
Ominous dark clouds swollen with rain had draped themselves over Stagecoach, stretching toward the horizon. Streaks of lightning skated across the sky. Thunder boomed and cracked in the distance. The landscape had turned a hazy, brownish yellow. The scent dispensed by rainstorms — that earthy fragrance of fresh rain Fawn had often found relaxing because it brought with it the soothing, patters of drops on her tepee — turned to dread. A storm was just one more thing they would have to contend with out in the open.
“Same in the back,” Davlyn called from behind her. “Looks like we got a storm coming.”
