40
THAIS
Atticus brought a catfish as long as his forearm from the pond; its silvery smooth body glistened with water underneath the noonday sun as it hung from his fingers by its mouth.
I raised my back from the rocking chair, my mouth already watering.
“Wow,” I said, “that’s a decent-sized fish. Line or pole?”
“This one was all you,” he told me, beaming, holding the fish up higher to display. “What did you bait that line with this time?”
“Just worms,” I said. “Be careful—catfish whiskers are like razorblades.”
Atticus flashed me a smile, and laid the fish on the chopping block; he pulled his knife from his boot.
I was sure that he knew how to clean a catfish, and all about the whiskers being razor-sharp, but he never corrected me.
“I’ll be careful,” he said.
The knife being my cue, I got up.
“I’m going down to the blackberry bush,” I told him and went down the steps. Before Atticus could get the words out, I turned with a big grin and said before he could, “And yes, I’ll be careful!”
He smiled, and I disappeared around the side of the house.
I hummed a song—the same song I always hummed and sometimes hardly realized—as I plucked blackberries from the tangled bush. I thought of my mother and of Sosie and how angry I was that they left the way they did. I loved and missed my mother and sister very much, but it hurt my heart to know they weren’t strong enough to stay in my life. “Maybe Sosie really did believe me dead,” I said aloud, absently dropping blackberries into the bowl cradled in my arm. But she could’ve made sure it was true. I would have. I would have demanded to see my sister’s body before I checked out like that. Damn her! Damn you, Sosie!
I dropped another blackberry into the bowl—my fingers plucked and pulled and separated with more emotion; they were getting tangled in the brambles.
But Momma—she knew we were alive. She knew we still needed her, but she just left. She just left. My fingers stung as they carelessly brushed and scraped against the thorny stalks, but I hardly noticed.
I hated these moments, when I would remember the things I wanted to forget. I wondered if they would ever go away for good. It was why when I, my sister, and my father, left our home in the suburbs and headed for the forest, that I’d made the decision to forget about my mother, to leave her behind:
“Hurry, girls!” my father had said, standing in the doorway with his shotgun on his back. “We have to leave. Now.” He motioned for us; there was anxiety in his face.
I, with a backpack strapped to my back stuffed full of the only possessions I could carry, stopped just as I’d started to rush outside to follow my father and sister.
My mother’s smiling face looked back at me from the wall set behind a 5x7 piece of glass. She sat with her dainty hands on my shoulders from behind. She wore her white-blonde hair loose about her face, and her favorite light pink lipstick. Her arms were covered in a blue blouse that clung to her small wrists. I could even recall my mother’s perfume in that moment—I’d always loved that perfume. I’d always loved that picture. It was taken when I was seven-years-old at a mother-daughter event at grade school. I was so proud to bring my mother to school that day.
“Thais! Now! We have to go!” my father called from the porch.
I looked at that photograph once more. I’d always thought I’d take it with me wherever I went.
“Bye Momma…”
I ran out the front door without closing it, and left the photograph hanging on the wall.
“Ssss!” I hissed, and snapped my hand away from the bush; the bowl fell to the ground. Blood trickled from my fingertip; I put the finger in my mouth and suckled the blood and sting away.
Leaves crunching underfoot sounded behind me and I whirled around, expecting to see Atticus standing there.
It was not Atticus.
My hand shot up, pressed against my chest.
“Hello,” a young man said.
I reached behind me for the gun Atticus told me to always, always take with me. It was not there. I couldn’t fit it behind a one-piece dress like I could a pair of pants.
“Stay away from me,” I demanded.
I walked backward until the thorny blackberry bush stopped me; the blackberries I’d just picked squished beneath my sandals.
The young man, early-twenties, raised both hands up at his sides as if to assure me he meant no harm. A bulky backpack sat heavily on his back with various items of necessity strapped to and dangling from it: a rolled-up sleeping bag, a drab silver canteen, a hiking pole made of metal, a compass much like Atticus’ hung from a chain.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said in a kind voice, his hands still raised out at his sides. “I’m just passing through. Heading to Colorado.” He glanced around the area, then down at the empty bowl and blackberries scattered at my feet. “Do you live here?”
My eyes darted to and from the path leading back to the cabin, and the man blocking that path. Can I get past him fast enough? I didn’t think I could—the need to be near Atticus was greater than ever.
“Look,” the young man said, taking steps backward rather than toward me, “I swear I’m not here to hurt you. I didn’t even know anybody was out here.”
Without taking my eyes off him, I scrambled to get the blackberries back into the bowl.
“I’m not alone,” I warned. I rose into a stand; the bowl tucked underneath my arm was pressed to my ribs. “M-My…husband is right there in that cabin. All I have to do is scream and he’ll hear me. He’s outside right now cleaning a fish.”
I looked toward the cabin; the roof was still visible, but far enough away that the trees around it engulfed everything else, and if I screamed, Atticus might not actually be able to hear me right away.
“Good, then,” the man said. “I’ll go and speak with your husband.”
He walked away, leaving me alone with the blackberry bush.
Confused—though very much relieved—I stood there for a moment, watching him get farther away as he weaved his way down the leaf-and-pine-needle-littered path; his bulky backpack so tall and full it covered the back of his head. I noticed a chain dangling from the back of his cargo pants; it made a jangling noise as he walked. I also saw the handle of a big bowie knife jutting from a sheath at his hip, and then my heart filled with dread.
What if he catches Atticus by surprise?
I took off running, and zipped around him, hoping he wouldn’t grab me.
“I’ll tell him you’re here!”
I ran.
“Atticus!” I called out as I neared the cabin.
ATTICUS
I looked up from the severed fish, just as Thais burst through the trees and into the backyard. Knowing right away that something was wrong, I grabbed my gun from the porch.
“Thais!” I went toward her in heavy, thundering strides, and then saw a second figure emerge from the trees behind her.
“I’m sorry I didn’t take my gun,” she said, out of breath. “B-But I don’t think he’s dangerous. He’s just traveling. He didn’t—”
I grabbed her by the shoulder and pushed her behind me as the man stepped into view.
“What do you want?” I demanded, my gaze severe. “Who are you?” I was ready to shoot the guy right then, not giving a shit about what he wanted or who he was, but I thought, for Thais, I’d at least give the stranger a chance to answer.
The man put up his hands.
“Put your knife on the ground!” I demanded. “Now!”
“All right, all right,” the man said, doing what he was told.
“Now step away from it!”
The man stepped away from it.
“Farther.”
The man stepped away from it farther.
“Now turn around.”
He turned around, his hands in the air.
“Please don’t shoot me,” he said, still turning slowly. “Like I told your wife, I’m just passing through. Heading back to Colorado where my family lives. Not here to hurt anyone. Didn’t know anyone lived in these parts.”
He made two full turns and was on his third when I told him to stop.
“Now remove the backpack.”
The man did not remove the backpack.
“This is all I have,” he explained instead, his hands still up, his back facing me. “If you take my gear it’s the same as killing me—might as well just shoot me, man.”
“Remove the backpack.” I forced the words through clenched teeth.
“He could’ve attacked me in the woods, but he didn’t.”
Not the time, love.
My boots moved swiftly over the grass as I went toward the man who still had not taken off his damn backpack, and in two seconds, the barrel of the gun was pressed to the man’s temple.
“Take off the fucking backpack.”
The man immediately took off the fucking backpack; after breaking apart several clasps, he dropped the heavy load on the ground at his feet.
“Now lift your shirt and turn. Slowly. Thais come here!”
The man lifted his shirt up to his neck with both hands and slowly turned around so I could check for hidden weapons. The man’s ribs were showing; his skin was pallid, and bruised, probably from carrying such a heavy load on his back.
“Empty his pack,” I told Thais when she came running up. “Every pocket. Every zipper. Search for weapons.”
“Atticus, I think he’s—”
“Just do it,” I ordered, glanced at her so she could see the pleading in my eyes.
Thais nodded.
She found many items in his pack, but the closest thing to a weapon other than his bowie knife was a small axe. No guns. No bullets. No prison-standard weapons made from toothbrushes or cardboard.
“What do you want?” I asked the man once more; I kept the gun trained on him.
“Can I lower my arms?” the man requested. “There’s not as much muscle on my bones as there used to be—can’t hold them up as long anymore.”
After thinking about it, and then bending to scoop up his bowie knife and axe, I nodded.
“Take them inside,” I told Thais as I put the weapons into her hand. “And put on your pants. I want your gun in your pants.”
She nodded nervously, and then scurried off toward the cabin, disappearing inside seconds later.
The moment she was gone, I shoved the gun underneath the man’s chin.
“I will not hesitate to blow your brains out of the top of your fucking head if you try anything. Am I clear?”
The man nodded, eyes wide. “I-I got you, man,” he said. “I-I got you.”
I lowered the gun, but it took everything in me. I didn’t trust the stranger then, nor would I later. There was something off about him I felt right away, and I wouldn’t make the same mistake I’d made at the farmhouse.
“My name is Mark Porter,” the man introduced, and he reached out a shaky hand.
I didn’t take it. I didn’t even look at it.
“Okay,” Mark Porter said, withdrawing. “I guess this is the part where you either give back my gear and send me on my way; threaten me about never coming around here again; or”—he gestured a hand as he spoke—“you send me on my way without my gear and—”
“Where are you coming from?” I interrupted.
Mark paused. “Princeton, Indiana. It’s north of Evansville." It was as if he were asking: Maybe you’ve heard of it?
“And you said you were going where?” I quizzed; I wanted to catch him in a lie. One lie was all it would take. One little white lie and I’d be digging a shallow grave instead of cooking catfish.
“Colorado,” Mark answered without missing a beat. “My family lives in Yuma.”
“Those states are really far apart,” I pointed out suspiciously. “Why would you be traveling to and from Colorado and Indiana, by yourself, weaponless”—I looked Mark’s severely malnourished body over—“and practically starving to death that you can’t hold your skinny arms up for longer than a few seconds anymore?”
“I have family in Indiana and Colorado,” Mark answered again without stumbling once. “I went to Indiana to try to bring back my brother. Our father is dying.” He swallowed and looked at the ground for a moment. Then he shrugged. “But apparently, my brother is too much of a dick to visit his father on his deathbed.”
“Then why are you here?” I said. “Why not just travel a straight shot west—this is a bit out of the way for Yuma, Colorado from Princeton, Indiana.”
“I wish I had a more believable answer for you,” Mark offered. “But the truth is that I got lost.”
Confident I was about to catch Mark in a lie, I glanced at his backpack on the ground, all the contents laid out in the grass. “So, then your compass is broken,” I said with expectation. I was sure that it wasn’t broken; absently I felt my finger warming up to the trigger again.
“Actually, yeah,” Mark answered, surprising me. “It is broken, but I was never very good with it anyway. Doesn’t help much if you’re not sure where you are, to know which direction you’re going. I haven’t seen a map in two years. Street and highway signs have been removed, painted over. But I tend to keep off the roads, too, so there’s that.”
Hmm, I pondered.
Keeping Mark in my sights, I moved to stand over the contents of the backpack and nudged the compass on the end of the chain with the tip of my boot, turning it over. The glass that once covered it had been busted, the needle missing.
“Why keep it if it doesn’t work? You’re carrying deadweight.”
Mark took a deep breath and shrugged.
“It’s my father’s.”
I chewed on the inside of my mouth contemplatively. “What’d you say your last name was again?”
One lie. Just one.
“Porter.”
I hid my gun away in my pants.
“Come and have some fish,” I told Mark.
Mark, blinking with surprise, nodded.
“Thanks, man.” He started to follow, but then stopped. “Do you mind if I repack my stuff first?”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
I left him there and went back to the porch where I’d been preparing the catfish. I may not have been looking directly at Mark, but I was watching every move he made.
Thais came back outside, dressed in her dirty cotton pants and a T-shirt. She looked across the yard at Mark sitting against the grass, placing everything back into his pack.
“You didn’t shoot him,” she said.
“Not yet.” Steadily, I cut away at the fish meat. “Where’s your gun?”
She reached around and patted it behind her.
“Should I give him back his weapons?”
“He’ll be staying for lunch,” I said.
THAIS
This surprised me—and made me highly suspicious. Atticus was not the one of us likely to share our food with a stranger.
“Did you invite him?” I hardly believed that was true.
“I did,” he answered.
I narrowed my eyes on him, believing there was much more to this than there appeared. There had to be.
“He has some things in his pack I’d like to have,” Atticus said, and then it all made sense. “And I’d like to find out if he knows anything about the Lexington City raiders. Or about anyone, for that matter.”
I was nervous about how Atticus intended to obtain the man’s belongings. “But…how do you expect to—”
“Barter,” he answered, already knowing what I was about to say. “We’ll work something out.”