Devils Unto Dust Read online

  “And after next month?” Micah asks quietly.

  “I don’t know. Maybe Elsie has work for me at the bar, or repairs need doing. Pa might send something.”

  Micah scoffs at me, and I hold up a hand to silence him.

  “The twins are awake,” I say quickly. I can hear tentative footsteps, and I don’t want them to overhear. Catherine has taken to hiding around corners and eavesdropping. She is too much like Micah; she understands too much for a seven-year-old. Calvin I do not worry about; he is more interested in lizards than conversation.

  “You’re up already,” Cal says grumpily as he pulls out a chair. The twins like to jump on me to wake me up, and the crosser I get the more they laugh.

  “You’re going to hurt me one day, and then you’ll be sorry.”

  “Prob’ly not,” Cath says seriously, and I try to smile. The twins have our mother’s coloring, sandy blond hair and light blue eyes. Micah and I take after our father, dark eyes and brown hair streaked light from days in the sun. We all have the same look about us, though, and it’s easy to see we’re related.

  “I made biscuits, you ingrates. Clean your hands.”

  They ignore me as usual, knowing I won’t press too hard. Breakfast is hardly a feast, but they eat the biscuits and some dried apricots with gusto. The twins try to see who can make Micah laugh first, which gets more difficult every day. They’re happy; it’s such a simple thing to please them. I watch the three of them, a smile frozen on my face. I love my brothers and sister, I do, but there is another part of me that wishes I could leave them all behind. It’s selfish, but this isn’t the life I wanted for myself. Some days it’s all I can do to drag myself out of bed to face the washing and cooking and mending, the walls of this house slowly closing in on me, trapping me here forever.

  It was different when Ma was alive. Ma knew how to stretch the pantry, she took in extra sewing on the side; she tried to teach me but I’ve never been much good with a needle. Things were tough, sure, but we got by. Pa—well, he was still Pa, but at least when he came home he had stories to tell, and he could always make Ma laugh. He would send money when he remembered, or when he won a big hand. Now, he never comes home unless it’s to sleep off the drink and ask for cash that we don’t have.

  I keep waiting for something to change, but I don’t know what that will be. All I know is that I can’t keep on like this, I can’t take care of all of them. Micah helps with the skinning, but between the two of us we only found three snakes yesterday, and two of those were rat snakes, not worth much. We have no money and there are four of us to feed. Hattie Jensen put a pillow over her baby’s face eight months ago. The Judge put her outside the perimeter, but we all understood why she did it. If it’s a choice between dying quick or starving, I know what I would choose. But I don’t even have that luxury because I can’t leave my family to die.

  I wipe the plates down with a stiff rag and order the twins to clean their hands again. I can see the grime under Calvin’s fingernails, and I vow to start enforcing some rules around here, though even Ma could barely control the twins. I don’t think they’re scared of anything, especially not me; that’s what happens when you grow up in a place where danger is as commonplace as weeds. They’ve never known any other life, and maybe that makes it easier.

  I’m debating whether or not to sweep; I’m fighting a losing battle with the dust, and some days it doesn’t feel worth it. A knock at the door makes the decision for me.

  “Micah,” I call over my shoulder. Micah’s friend, Sam, can be expected at least once a day.

  “Hold on,” I say, and I shove back the sticking lock on the door. I open it wide to find two hunters waiting on our front porch.

  3.

  The younger one’s name is Yancey, I’m fairly certain. He’s a sorry-looking fellow, sallow cheeks and thin hair that he hides under a wide hat. The other one, with the dark hair and the mean mouth, I don’t know. I’ve seen him at the Homestead, playing cards with Pa, but I never had reason to get his name.

  “What do you want?” I’m not rude as a rule, but I don’t like surprises, especially on my doorstep.

  “You Harrison Wilcox’s daughter?” the stranger asks.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Name’s McAllister. We’re looking for your father.”

  “He ain’t here.”

  “That right?” And before I can stop him, Yancey shoves his way past me into the house.

  “Hey,” I yell, grabbing at him and missing. “You can’t just—”

  “If you’re hiding him, you better tell me now,” McAllister interrupts.

  Yancey knocks over a chair and my entire face goes hot. I start to call him all the dirty names I can think of, and the commotion brings Micah out of the back, the twins trailing after him.

  “Willie?” he asks, confused.

  “He ain’t here,” Yancey says to McAllister.

  “I already told you that,” I say, furious. “Now get the hell out of my house.”

  “One moment,” McAllister says, and he very deliberately pulls out his gun. I go still, and he nods at me. “Now how ’bout we have us a talk.”

  I glance at Micah, but his eyes are on the gun. My own still hangs on the wall, useless with McAllister between it and me.

  “I don’t think so, missy,” McAllister says, following my gaze. “After you,” and he motions to the table with his gun.

  Damn. I turn around, trying to remember where Micah left his rifle. McAllister takes a seat at the table where we just ate our breakfast, and my lip curls with resentment. Who the hell does he think he is, pointing a gun at me in my own kitchen?

  “Sit,” he tells me.

  “Let them go,” I order him, nodding at my family. Yancey stands to Micah’s side, daring him to move. “You don’t need them.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Micah says.

  “I’m staying if he’s staying,” Calvin says.

  “If Cal stays—” Catherine starts.

  “Enough,” McAllister says, his voice clipped. “Sit.”

  I glare at Micah and pick up the overturned chair. Trust them to be difficult when I least need it. I sit and McAllister levels his gun at my chest. I cross my arms to show him I’m not impressed, not by him or his bootlicker. I’m scared, but more than that I’m angry. I know their kind, bullies and cowards, and I won’t show him fear.

  “Now then,” he says, “like I said, we’re looking for Harrison Wilcox.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause he has something that belongs to me, that’s why.”

  I close my eyes for the briefest moment. “What’d he steal now?”

  “Four hundred dollars. I won it fair off some boys last night. I maybe celebrated overly much, and when I woke up my money was missing, and your pa with it.”

  It figures. Only a fool would spout off about money at the Homestead; serves him right that Pa took it off him.

  “I can’t help you,” I tell him. “I didn’t even know he was back in town, I swear.”

  McAllister doesn’t say anything for a moment, he just studies me. Then he nods at Yancey, who kneels down in front of Catherine.

  “Hey there, darlin’,” he says, smiling at her, and bile rises in the pit of my stomach.

  “Leave her alone,” Micah says.

  “Did you see your daddy this morning?” Yancey asks.

  Micah moves to jump in, but Cath doesn’t need help; she rears back and kicks Yancey in the shin, hard.

  “Son of a bitch,” he yells, rubbing at his leg. “You little—”

  My mouth fills with wild, panicked laughter that I swallow down.

  “Look, he weren’t here,” I say quickly, before Yancey thinks to retaliate. “He hasn’t been home in months. If Pa took your money, he wouldn’t stick around. You can bet he’s out in the desert right now. You want what’s yours, you’ll just have to go get it.”

  “I got a better idea,” McAllister says with a nasty smile. “Seei
ng as how he’s your pa, I think you should get it.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll give you a week to bring me my money.”

  I shake my head. “Look around you—you think I got money to spare?”

  “That’s your problem, not mine. You’re gonna do it.” He stands up. “’Cause if you don’t—Yancey?”

  I look over in time to see Yancey grab Micah around the throat, and my chest lurches.

  “Stop it,” I yell, jumping up from the table, but McAllister yanks me back down.

  “Stop it, now,” I say, trying to tug away.

  “You’re going to get me what I want, because if you don’t, Yancey and I are gonna come back with some friends. And we’re gonna do for you and your brother, and then I’m gonna put a price on your gutless father’s head.”

  Micah’s face is turning red; the twins are pulling at Yancey’s arms and kicking, but he holds Micah tight.

  “What’s gonna happen to those little ones if you’re not around?” McAllister says with a smile. “One week.” He stands up and motions to Yancey, who releases Micah. He falls to the floor and I rush over to him.

  “We’ll be at the Homestead,” McAllister says. “Waiting.”

  Micah starts to cough, the veins on his neck bulging out in red strands. I grab him around the shoulders, and I’m just repeating, “It’s all right, it’s all right, everything is all right.” Two small sets of hands hug my back and nothing is all right because I can’t keep them safe, not even in our own house, not even if I have my arms around them.

  “Y’all have a good day,” Yancey says, tipping his hat at us. The door slams shut behind them and I press my forehead against Micah’s shoulder and listen to him breathe while I try to remember how to do it myself. In and out, in and out, until my body takes over for me.

  4.

  My boots are old and worn, the leather soft and cracked in places. Before the animals started to get sick, my father used to tan all sorts of hides. Now these are the only shoes I have, and they’ve molded to my feet after years of wear. I check for scorpions by habit, but my mind is elsewhere.

  “I told you I’m fine,” Micah says, sipping on some water at the table. His voice is slightly scratchy, but he keeps waving me away when I hover. “He wasn’t really trying to hurt me, he just wanted to scare us.”

  “Well, it worked,” I tell him, tucking in my shirt, a faded blue blouse. “I’m good and scared.”

  “I still don’t think you should go to the Judge.”

  “Micah, they said they’d come back—”

  “We got guns, too, Will.”

  “Don’t be stupid. There’s more where they came from, and I don’t trust them not to come at night and burn the house down around our ears. No one else is getting hurt if I can help it. I’ll ask the Judge for a line of credit and we’ll pay them off.”

  My slim jim holster goes on my belt, and my gun goes into my holster. My father schooled it into us that you don’t carry a weapon unless you can use it. My revolver is long and heavy, and I’m a decent shot. Micah is better than me with the rifle, but my vision isn’t as sharp as his.

  “You think he’ll lend you the money? He ain’t exactly kindhearted.”

  “We can’t just wait and hope Pa shows his face again. I know Milford and that widow borrowed from the Judge. It’s worth a shot.”

  “How are we gonna pay it back? We barely have enough to get by as it is.”

  “We’ll figure it out, Micah. We can’t have this hanging over our heads.”

  I think about taking my knife, but it can be cumbersome on a long walk, so I decide against it. If I need to pull a blade on a shake, chances are I’m already dead.

  Micah fists his hands on the table. “I could kill Pa.”

  “Hey,” I tell him. “I’ll get us through this. I’ll find a way, I promise.”

  I shouldn’t make promises I can’t keep, but the biggest lies are the ones you tell yourself.

  “I’m set,” I say, standing up. “You sure you gonna be all right on your own?”

  “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 t
o 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.

  Then something changed, and people stopped talking, or if they did it was in hushed voices. I remember the fear in the air, and not knowing the reason. It hit Silver first, a mining town to the east. The docs thought it was hydrophobia, and that was bad enough; then they realized it was spreading too fast and people were taking sick too quick. So they said it must be something the miners dug up in the dirt, or caught from the red bats hunting at night, but even I knew they were just guessing by then. They started calling it the Silver sickness, and everyone shook their heads for the poor city folk. But didn’t those people go putting on airs, thinking themselves better than the rest of us? Then the animals started dying, the cattle and the horses, and dogs stopped coming home at night. When it hit Hide Town and then Best, the fences went up and folks stopped calling it the Silver sickness. It didn’t need a name anymore; Silver was gone, and the sickness was everywhere.