Her voice breaks the spell that had our gazes locked and lets me blink. I sneak a glimpse at Pinky. She is loading the shotgun.
“I should never have left you there,” I say. “In that house.”
“You got that right.”
“But I was just a kid myself, you know. I got so messed up when I finally got away that it was years before I was thinking straight again.”
“And that’s supposed to make everything okay?”
I shake my head. “No. But I want you to know that I came back for you.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s true. But you were gone and the house was empty.”
I see something cold and dark rise in her eyes.
“You can ask Margaret Sweeney,” I say.
“That old bag wouldn’t give nobody the time a day.”
I shrug. “Think about what it was like for her—all of us white trash moving into her neighborhood, treating the land she grew up on and loved like it was a junkyard. And she was supposed to like us?”
“Jesus, now I’m supposed to feel sorry for her? If she was such an angel, why didn’t she do anything about what was happening to me?”
“She didn’t help me either,” I say. “Maybe she didn’t know. Or maybe she was scared of Del, too.”
“I ain’t scared of Del.”
“Neither am I—not anymore. But I was.”
“You should’ve done what I did and cut the bastard. Maybe then he would’ve left all of us alone.”
“You stood up to him?”
She pats the front pocket of her jeans. “Me and my good friend, Mr. Switchblade.”
“I could never find the courage.”
“I guess that’s where you and me are different, big sister.”
“I’m sure we’re different in a lot of ways.”
“Christ, I hope so.”
We fall into the hole of a long moment of silence, just looking at each other again. She seems as curious as I am, though it’s not enough to take the dark anger from her eyes. I try again.
“I really did come back for you,” I say. “I know it was too late, but when I left that place I ended up becoming a junkie hooker. There are whole years that are just this awful blur in my head. But as soon as I cleaned up my act and was able to think clearly again, I came looking for you. Believe whatever else you want of me, but that’s true.”
“You’re just saying that,” Raylene tells me. “I got you running scared now. You’ll say any damn thing to save your skin.”
I shake my head. “I’d die for you.”
I hear myself say it and I’m surprised. Here’s me, so divorced from family that I changed my name, changed my whole life, to get away from them, and now I’m saying the thing that blood relatives say at times like this. But I guess the family tie is strong—except it’s not the one of blood.
It’s that we’re both Children of the Secret and that’s maybe the strongest bond of all. We could be complete strangers, but because of the horrors we’ve undergone, we know each other better than anybody else can. And since what happened to her was my fault—I’m the one who abandoned her—I’m the one who has to make good.
But I don’t know how.
Raylene
It’s funny, but when my sister comes sliding down the hillside toward us, that red rage I got every time I saw some damned picture of her just ain’t in me. I don’t know where it’s up and gone. I find myself hungry to look at her—not like afore when I was sneaking me peeks of her lying in her hospital bed, but like this, face-to-face. Me looking at her looking at me. She knows who I am. I know who she is.
And then she starts in on her explanations and I answer her back, smart-lipping and no give, and that deep dark anger, it’s just not there. Oh, I’m still pissed, but now I’m not so rightly sure just exactly what it is I got to be so pissed about. Because she’s right about this much: she was just a kid. What could she do but run off and get herself all fucked up like she done? And maybe she come back looking for me, and maybe she didn’t. It don’t seem to matter so much no more.
Don’t get me wrong. I ain’t about to turn this into no Hallmark moment or nothing. But I see her standing up there on the side of that hill and I wonder how I could ever have expected more of her. Hell, the reason she probably took it as long as she did back in that hellhole we called home was on account of me. I suddenly find myself remembering all of them times she warned me to keep away from Del, and me, I just didn’t listen till it was too late.
Where would I have been without Pinky giving me that knife? I was older’n my sister by then and I sure wasn’t putting up any kinda fight my own self. I had Pinky, but Jillian May, she didn’t have her nobody ’cept the raggedy-ass little kid I was who probably made things worse for her instead of better.
And then she delivers her killer line.
I’d die for you.
And damned if she don’t mean it.
There’s folks can lie to you with a straight face, but my sister don’t appear to be one of them. There’s so much emotion in her eyes when she says them few words and I guess the clincher is, I can tell she’s about as surprised she said what she done as I am.
All I can do is stare at her.
Where we’re going with this now, I don’t know. And the sorry thing is, I don’t get to find out.
“You ’bout done now?” Pinky asks.
I look over at her. She’s standing there, got that shotgun cradled in her arms like it’s a baby.
“’Cause I don’t like me the look of how all of this is goin’,” she says.
“How all what’s going?”
“Her,” Pinky says, nodding at Jillian May with her chin. “You goin’ all stupid on me now, Ray? Look. at yourself—she’s got you bewitched and you’re too dumb to even notice. I got me the same feelin’ right now that I did settin’ on Miss Lucinda’s porch.”
“So what’re you suggesting we do?” I ask. “Shoot her?”
“It’s a notion.”
I give Jillian May. an apologetic look. We got us stuff to work out, no question, but what Pinky’s proposing ain’t no part of it.
“Wasn’t it you telling me not to go all postal just a few hours ago?” I ask Pinky.
“Yeah,” she says. “But that was in some damned old hospital in the middle of the city. We’re nowhere now. No cops. No rules. Nothing.”
“Pinky—”
“Christ in a cornfield, Ray. All of my life I’ve had to listen to you cryin’ over how your sister done you so wrong. Every damn thing went bad in your life, you laid it at her door. So now what’re you goin’ to do? Let her walk? Where the hell’s the closure?”
Thing I forget, with her just a-hanging around most of the time doing nothing more strenuous than smoking and drinking and watching the TV, is how cold she can be. She might not give the impression of being too dangerous on a regular day, but she’s shot a cop and cut more’n one man with that knife of hers—cut her some women, too.
“You been watching too many of them daytime talk shows,” I tell her.
She just shakes her head and puts the stock of that shotgun to her shoulder.
“I’ll show you closure,” she says.
“Pinky, no!”
I don’t even think about what I’m doing as I run to her. This’s got nothing to do with what my sister said ’bout her being willing to die for me. It’s about stopping something wrong, that’s all. Plain and simple.
But I ain’t in time.
Pinky shoots.
I ain’t in time.
To stop her from pulling the trigger, I mean.
But I’m plenty in time to get in the way of that shot.
I take it right in the chest and it blows me off a my feet like some giant hand come down outta nowhere and flicked me with a finger.
I don’t see my life go by afore my eyes. I wouldn’t’ve wanted that anyways.
But as I’m lying there with the life leaking outta me, I find myself thinkin
g about that sorry-assed little girl I met by the trailer park. How I’m going to be breaking my promise to her.
She’s gonna think of me same as I thought of my sister all those years and it ain’t even my fault, me dying like this.
That’s if she bothers to think of me at all.
“You’re dead!” I hear Pinky scream and I don’t know if she’s yelling at me or my sister.
And then I don’t know nothing more ’cept that I’m falling into this big black hole, only the damn hole seems like it’s above me and I’m rushing toward this spark of light I can see that’s ’biding there at the end of it ’bout as far away as a thing can be.
Joe
That honey-blonde pit bull takes me right to where they are, Jilly and her sister and the sister’s friend. I’ve been hoping we can find a clean end to all of this, but we arrive way too late for any of that.
We come out into a gulch in time to see the tall blonde take a shot at Jilly and damned if Jilly’s own sister doesn’t step into the line of fire and take that load of buckshot herself. There’s a moment of shock when we’re all frozen in place. They don’t even realize that the pit bull and I are here. The blonde lowers her shotgun and is just staring at her dead friend. I focus on Jilly, see the horror in her face. As Jilly starts down the slope toward her sister, the blonde lifts her head. She screams something and that shotgun of hers comes back up to her shoulder.
It’s only Jilly’s dreaming self that she’s taking bead on, but Jilly’s body is here, too. Who knows what’ll happen to her if her dreaming self gets killed?
I start for the blonde, but the pit bull’s quicker. She launches herself at the blonde and slams into her just as the shotgun fires. The buckshot goes wild, pinging against the rocks and trees. The blonde loses her balance and goes down—half twisting her body to see what hit her instead of doing the sensible thing of looking where she’s going to fall. The crack of her head as it hits a granite outcrop makes my stomach do a flip and I know she’s not getting back up again.
The pit bull landed easily. She’s in ready mode before all her feet are back on the ground. She approaches the dead woman on stiff legs and gives her a sniff, then backs up and whines. Looks like she’s no more fond of killing than I am. When she turns to me, I’m already in human form.
“You didn’t know,” I tell her. “And she had to be stopped. I would’ve done the same if I’d been closer.”
Those dark eyes of hers fix their gaze on me and I can see it doesn’t matter that it had to be done. She’s going to be holding on to this for a long time. I know what she’s thinking. With every life taken, we’re all diminished. That’s something too many people don’t get. Yeah, we’ve got to stop violence and killing—but you’re only adding to the problem when the way you solve it is by more of the same.
The honey blonde turns to look at Jilly, who’s bent over the body of her sister. My gaze follows. Jilly looks up, her hands red with her sister’s blood, her eyes filled with confusion and hurt.
Jilly
I’m no stranger to violence, though it’s been long years since I was a teenager, living on the street where people getting hurt or dying was an everyday occurrence instead of something you just read about in the morning paper. Those days are gone and it’s simply not part of my life experience anymore, my recent accident notwithstanding.
The accident.
When Pinky points that shotgun at me, I go right back to that night. I freeze, just as I did when the headlights caught me. Then the shotgun goes off and Raylene gets shot. Her stepping in front of the spray of buckshot meant for me hits me as hard as the impact of the car did.
I lose all awareness of Pinky and the shotgun, of the danger to myself. Only one thing matters. I scrabble and slide the rest of the way down the slope until I’m down on my knees on the damp grass and leaves, crouching beside my sister. I touch her with a trembling hand. Everything I know or can feel or can think about narrows into this singular focus on what’s happened to her. I don’t want to look, but I can’t turn my gaze away.
I stare at the ruin of her chest. The way her head lolls at an unnatural angle. The splay of her limbs. The horrible fact that she’s not breathing. That her eyes are rolled up, showing their whites.
That she’s dead.
I want to call her back from wherever’s she’s gone, from wherever she’s been taken. I try to put my arms around her and lift her up, but she’s a dead weight. Her blood makes my hands go slick and I can’t get a good grip.
I don’t know how long I’m gone.
When I finally remember Pinky and look up, I blink in confusion. Joe’s standing over her still body with a pit bull the color of pale yellow ocher at his side.
I open my mouth, but my voice doesn’t seem to work.
When did they get here? What happened to Pinky?
I dimly remember a second shot. Did Pinky shoot herself?
I can see the shotgun in the leaves and brush not far from where she’s lying. Joe’s hands are empty. That leaves only the Broken Girl, but she’s still the unconscious lump she was when I first got here. Knowing her as well as I do, she couldn’t have lifted a gun, never mind pulling the trigger.
I get a sharp pull in my midsection—
come to me, come to me
—when I look at the Broken Girl and quickly turn away. My gaze returns to Joe to see he’s approaching me. He crouches down on the other side of Raylene’s body, those half-crazy, half-laughing eyes of his filled with sympathy.
“I’m sorry it ended this way,” he says.
I open my mouth again but I still can’t find my voice so I give him a slow nod. I watch his fingers as he rolls himself a cigarette. He lights it and inhales, blows out a stream of blue-gray smoke. When he offers it to me, I shake my head.
“We’ve got to get you back to the rehab,” he says. “Everybody’s pretty worried.”
My gaze drops to Raylene’s face. I reach out with bloodied fingers and close her eyes, one by one. The marks I leave behind on her eyelids look like red war paint. I clear my throat and finally get control of my voice.
“Fuck the rehab,” I say.
He looks as though he’s about to argue, then nods.
“Yeah,” he says. “Healing’s way overrated, isn’t it?”
“That isn’t fair,” I tell him. “And you know it.”
“I suppose. Though the longer your dreaming self is separated from the rest of yourself, the harder it’s going to be on you. You pay for this kind of shit, Jilly.”
I shake my head. “It’s too much to pay.”
“I don’t mean what happened here.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “It’s happened anyway, hasn’t it? My sister’s dead. I think I was actually getting through to her, but now she’s dead. I haven’t seen her in forever and now I’m never going to get the chance to know her any better.”
“Not much to know,” a second voice says.
I look up to see that the gulch has suddenly gotten way more crowded. I recognize Nanabozho from having met him before in the Greatwood. The other man, the one in the black hat who spoke, isn’t familiar, but from stories Joe’s told me in the past I make him out to be Whiskey Jack. Another canid.
They seem to have appeared out of thin air—which doesn’t startle me, not at this point, knowing what I know about the People, but it’s certainly taken the pit bull that came with Joe by surprise. There’s a low growl coming from the bottom of its chest. I realize that I’ve been aware of it in my peripheral hearing for a while—from when the canids first showed up—I just wasn’t listening to it, if that makes any sense.
Joe turns to the dog and murmurs, “It’s okay.”
But it’s not okay. How can anything be okay?
Then I focus on what Whiskey Jack said.
“Maybe not for you,” I tell him, “but it was the world to me.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. You’re acting like she was a saint.”
“Jack,
” Joe says, a warning in his voice.
But Whiskey Jack ignores him.
“She was killing our cousins,” he says. “And you know why? So she could bathe in their blood. Make herself young. Make herself high, her and that pack of wolves she was running with.”
I look at Joe and he gives me a reluctant nod.
“She was doing a lot of killing,” he says. “We’ve been hunting her and her pack for a while now. We didn’t know it was her when we first started looking. We just knew she had to be stopped. One way or another, the killings had to end.”
His voice is mild, soft, like he’s trying to gentle the hurt, keep me calm. Though I get the sense it’s not just for me, but for Jack, too.
“She was my sister,” I say.
“But she was doing wrong.”
“I don’t care.” I look back at Jack. “You don’t know what she had to go through as a kid.”
“I don’t need to know,” Jack says. “You think that’s some kind of excuse? People treat you bad and that gives you a license to do whatever you want to anybody else?”
“No, but—”
“Joe says you both went through some hard times,” he says. “So tell me this: how come you turned out so stand-up and she didn’t?”
“I could’ve gone down the same road she did,” I tell him. “The difference is, I had people to help me, to pull me out of the gutter and show me there were other choices. All she had was that psycho with the shotgun.”
“Bullshit. She was just born bad.”
I stand up. I want to wrap my bloodstained hands around his throat and squeeze the life out of him.
“Nobody’s born bad,” I tell him, my voice tight with anger.
“She was going to kill you,” he says.
“We … we don’t know that.”
But now I’m on unsure ground. I don’t know why Raylene brought me here. I remember the hate I saw in her wolf eyes. I think of all the paintings she destroyed—she had to know they were the ones that would mean the most to me. I don’t know if she was planning to actually kill me, but I know she wanted to hurt me.
“Well, I’m sure of it,” Jack says.