Devils Unto Dust(6)
“Would you stop fussing at me and just go already?”
I smack him lightly on the back of the head and call for the twins.
“Take us with you,” Cath says as I tuck my hair into a wide-brimmed hat; we’re all tanned as dark as our skin will go, but it will keep the sun out of my eyes at least.
“Please, Willie?” Calvin asks, and a matching pair of wide, hopeful eyes try to guilt me. They look so much alike; Cath took a pair of shears to her hair when it got longer than Calvin’s. They’re easy to tell apart now, though, when Cal has his horrid yellow lizard draped over his shoulder. I keep threatening to skin it, but I haven’t been able to catch it yet.
“You know better than that,” I say, wiping crumbs off Cath’s chin. “They won’t let you in anyhows.”
“Here,” Micah says, handing me an empty sugar sack. He’s wrapped up the extra biscuits in the ratty cloth to keep them fresh, along with three snakeskins and some of the warning chimes he makes, fractured pieces of colored glass tied with string.
“Thank you,” I say, the glass clinking as I settle the bag around my shoulder. “I won’t be gone more’n a few hours, I should think.”
“Be careful,” Micah says.
“Always am.”
“Liar.” He gives me a wan smile.
The door is heavy, and I yank it open with a scowl, squinting into the light.
“Behave,” I say. “And fix this damn lock while I’m gone, will you?”
They watch me march down the porch and along the dusty path from our house to the fence. It’s old and wooden and useless, a remnant from a time when these kind of fences mattered. At the gate I look back to see all three of them crowded in the doorway. This is my family, smaller than it should be, worn down and restless and resigned to losing. I don’t want to give them more bad news.
“Love,” I call.
“Love,” they call back, even Micah, who sometimes feels he is too old to be shouting love to his sister. But this is Glory, and you always make time for good-byes.
5.
Hunters. It’s always the hunters. It was a hunter’s fault Ma got sick, the one who happened to be at the gate that day. That alone is enough to condemn them all. I don’t remember his name, only that he was young and too drunk to remember to close the gate all the way. Ma was just dropping off some linens to Elsie, trying to get home before supper. She still made it home; she killed the shake that came for her and just kept going. Even bleeding and half-conscious she tried to get back to us. We shut the door behind her, locked it, and she never left the house again. I can’t even hate the guard, because he’s dead and gone beyond where hatred can touch him. But McAllister I can, and will, hate.
Anger fuels my march down the main road to the center of town. It’s less a road, really, and more of a wide expanse of packed dirt, worn down by feet taking the same trip hundreds of times. Horses aren’t much good in Glory; they’re expensive to keep and shakes tend to go for the animals first if you take them outside the perimeter. Some hunters are willing to risk it, but only the ones who can afford to gamble money for speed. At least it isn’t awful far to the Homestead, maybe six miles, though it takes time to walk in the heat. I have wrathful energy to burn, and I set a sharp pace.
Our house is at the very edge of town, where the poor folks had to settle. We have a few acres Pa bought back when it seemed like a good idea, when it had only been a year since it had rained. Now all we have on our land is an empty chicken coop and an endless supply of dirt that’s slowly making its way into the house.
Our land borders the Molinas’ place, or at least it used to. They left three years ago, after their dog attacked their youngest son. It must have snuck out into the desert at night, and they never realized it was sick. Careless of them. You can’t afford to overlook anything here.
The sun is high, turning the sky a blinding white. Heat shimmers on the road, and sweat is already beginning to trickle down my neck and between my shoulder blades. It’s a good heat, clean and searing, burning away any moisture in the air. I lick my lips and swallow, wishing I had thought to bring a canteen. I left in too much of a hurry, I suppose, but I couldn’t sit around and do nothing.
To my left the perimeter rises, wooden poles supporting row upon row of barbed wire. Tumbleweeds caught at the base rustle gently and the sun glints off the wire, turning each spike into a blinding spot in my vision that still flashes when I look away. Once Micah and I found a shake trapped in the wire along the road. We thought she was dead, but when we got close enough she opened her fever-bright eyes and began to scream and writhe, oblivious to the way the wire tore at her skin. I shot her through the heart, as much to stop her suffering as to keep us safe. The memory is like the spots of light; I blink and I still see it.
I was seven when the fence went up, and that was a good ten years ago. It wasn’t long after the War Between the States, and I remember folks talking about how bad things were, how the war took the men and the crops and razed the cities to the ground. I remember Pa railing against the planters, saying it was a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight; but then Pa is from the up-country of East Tennessee and never had any love for the rebels. He hid in the mountains for most of the war, a draft deserter. He wasn’t particularly loyal to the Union; Pa’s just always been good at avoiding a fight.