American Elsewhere (59 page)

“What does that mean?”

“I told you my brother was unorthodox,” says Parson, “and this is true. His interests are eccentric even for us. And… one of those interests is a common pursuit of yours. Not common to you, personally, I mean—common to your kind.”

Gracie is now a bright pink. Mona begins to feel very uncomfortable with the direction this is taking. She lowers the rifle. “Which is what?”

Parson licks his lips, and cringes as he says, “Romance.”

“Romance? You mean… wait.” Mona almost drops the gun. She looks back and forth between Gracie, who is nervously rubbing her elbow and staring at the ground, and Parson, who appears to now be grimly waiting out this subject.

“Are you fucking serious?” asks Mona. “She’s his
girlfriend
?”

Parson reacts as if he has never heard the term. He thinks, bug-eyed, and says, “I… suppose that would be a fair approximation.”

Mona incredulously looks to Gracie for corroboration. The young girl says, “It’s… complicated.”

“I’ll fucking bet! He doesn’t even look like a, a… person. Right?”

“He looks like many things,” says Gracie. “If he wants to. And he keeps me safe.” Again: “It’s complicated. We have arrangements here.”

“Everyone does,” says Parson. “My kin have arrangements with the natives of Wink, just as my kin in the town have arrangements with those in the wilderness. It is quite complicated, being civilized.
There are so many rules and restrictions involved in living”—he pauses condescendingly—“a
good life
.”

Mona shakes her head. “Okay, whatever,” she says. “I am learning
way
too much tonight. Just… take us to wherever you need to take us.”

“I can take
you
,” says Gracie. “But not him.”

Mona and Parson exchange a glance.

“Just me?” says Mona.

Gracie nods again. “Sorry.”

“Did you know about this?” Mona asks Parson.

Parson, frowning, shakes his head.

“Why not him?” Mona asks Gracie.

“I don’t know why,” she says. “He just said only you would be coming.”

“He being this brother of Parson’s,” says Mona. “First.”

“
Mr.
First,” says Gracie.

“Oh, he’s big on propriety, then?”

“Titles and hierarchies,” says Parson, “are quite important. So am I to just stay here, and wait?”

“I guess you can,” says Gracie. “But I think maybe not. He said something about you going somewhere else. That’s all.” She smiles unhappily. “You know how he is.”

“That I do,” says Parson. He sighs. “Well. Fine. I shall sit and wait here, I suppose.” He groans and begins to sit down.

“You can’t be serious,” says Mona.

“Why not?”

“You’re going to let me walk in there alone?”

“There are
rules
.”

“Oh my God,” says Mona. “You people and your fucking
rules
.”

“You will not be in any danger,” says Parson. “I trust him.”

Mona looks back down the little canyon. The light within it, she notes, is not pink, as it is everywhere else, but silver-white. Everything in there shines, and it shines more and more the farther it goes…

“Is it a different place, in there?” she asks.

He nods. “It is his place.”

“What’s it like in there?”

“I do not know. I have never been inside.”

“Jesus.” Mona looks to Gracie. “Do you know?”

“For me, there’s only him in there,” says Gracie. “But then, he’s much more unguarded with me.”

There is a soft, fond tone in her voice that makes Mona feel repulsed. What has this thing been doing to this poor girl in there? Do these things desire sex? Do they understand attraction at all?

Shadows ripple at the back of the canyon. She imagines something is coming, and she wonders—
Can it see me?
Then she realizes, no—a cloud is simply passing over the moon. Or is that what this thing, this First, wants her to see?

“Has it hurt anyone before?” asks Mona.

“Oh, yes,” says Parson mildly.

Again, she looks to Gracie. “You?”

“Me? No,” says Gracie. “He has never hurt me. I don’t think he’s ever hurt a native.”

“Which is what they call humans, I take it? Christ,” says Mona. She wipes sweat from her cheeks and takes a deep breath.

“Do not be concerned,” says Parson. “You are no concern to him.”

“How do you mean?” asks Mona.

“Understand,” says Parson, “that to him you are merely a spot of light on a wall, reflected by a bit of metal on the ground. You are the twist of a leaf being blown in a slight wind. You are not even a drop of water to him—you are one ephemeral, fleeting curl of a dribbling stream as it tries to flow downhill. You do not concern him enough to warrant harm. He does not care what you want or need. He does not care what you do, or if you live or die. You should not worry, for he is utterly beyond you. He does not notice. He does not care.”

Mona takes two steps forward, then sets the rifle down butt-first and leans on it as if it were a walking stick. She slowly hunches down, the rifle sticking up between her knees. From here she can see the soft glow of the lights of Wink and the dark, rambling countryside. And she knows that what is ahead is not connected to this world in any physical manner. It feels different just being this much closer to the canyon entrance. It is like the room in Coburn, like the scarred bathroom
in her mother’s home—if she were to take one, maybe two steps forward, she would not be anywhere on Earth anymore. She would be somewhere else. Wherever Mr. First wants her to be, she guesses.

But something else is wrong. That niggling bit of her brain, the cop part that’s always cold yet anxious, is trying to tell her something…

Did she not just see a light in the side of her eye?

Yes, she realizes. Yes, she did. Not down the canyon, but from behind her, from where they came. Like a flashlight, but someone turned it off almost immediately… as if that person didn’t want her or anyone else to see it.

Mona turns around and scans the trees for movement.

There is nothing, she thinks.

There is something, she thinks.

Someone else is here.

“Parson,” she says.

“Yes?”

“Does anyone else know we’re out here?”

“I would not believe so.”

Mona keeps looking. She lowers herself to the ground and brings the rifle up to her shoulder. She puts the scope to her eye and glasses the tree line. It’s almost impossible to see anything at night, but maybe…

“What’s wrong?” asks Parson.

She licks her lips, thins her eyes. Something just moved… a head bobbing up, perhaps to see, then down… did she see a finger, white and frail in the moonlight?

“What’s wrong?” asks Parson again.

“Parson,” says Mona. “Get down.”

“What?” he says.

“Both of you. Get down. Get—”

Tree trunks fifty yards away light up with the flash of gunfire. There is a crack, brittle and sharp, then a wet cough.

Something sprays into the air on her left. She looks.

It is Parson’s chest. Rivulets of blood are pouring out of his sweater vest.

He looks at her, then down, befuddled. “Is that… me?” he asks. He begins to slump to his knees.

Mona is already moving, leaping over the stones toward Gracie, who is frozen, staring in the direction of their attackers. Mona is aware she is saying “DOWN DOWN DOWN” but Gracie is not moving, so she tackles the girl and brings her crashing to the ground.

Parson is trying to touch his wound but one of his arms is not working, so he touches it with the other hand. He raises his glistening fingertips to his eyes.

“How… silly,” he says softly. Then he falls back into a sitting position and wilts, head leaning forward as his spine surrenders, and then he is still.

Lightning splits the air out over Wink. It is brilliant white, a magnesium flare plummeting through the skies. There is a savage crack as air rushes to fill its gap.

Then silence.

Then nothing.

Neither Mona nor Gracie moves. Nothing moves. Everything is still. No wind, no rustling of leaves or needles. No nothing.

Gracie begins whimpering and trembling. Mona gently places one hand on Gracie’s mouth. The girl stops. That gesture alone was too much movement, but Mona could not risk her making more noise, nor could she make any herself by telling her to be quiet.

Mona listens for footfalls, the scrape of branches, the sound of tiny rocks tumbling downhill.

There is none. Whoever attacked them has not yet moved, she thinks.

Slowly, terribly slowly, Mona hauls herself up until she is close to Gracie’s ear. There she whispers, “Stay here. Stay down. Do not move.”

To her credit, the girl obeys, but she cannot stop herself from trembling. That’s bad—even that slight amount of movement will be visible against this barren backdrop. That means Mona will need to work fast to keep Gracie from winding up like Parson, who now lies in a finger lake of red among the rocks. And of course Mona herself could get shot at any time.

They aren’t shooting like crazy, though, which would give away their position. That means they aren’t stupid. Which is bad.

What to do, what to do.

Okay. So:

The flash came from the right side of the canyon mouth. Which means they are to the southwest of her and the canyon. And if they haven’t moved, then that means they can probably see only the eastern inner wall of the canyon.

So the best vantage point would be the top of the western wall.

That sounds great in her head, but she would be outrageously vulnerable up there: she’d essentially be sticking her head up over a wall at them, much like a puppet at a kid’s show, an invitation to a bullet.

Mona starts crawling, estimating when she’ll be out of their range of vision.

I will figure all this out
, she thinks,
when I need to figure all this out
.

When she feels safe, she pops up and silently walks (she does
not
run) to the western wall. The walls of the canyon are fairly shallow here, and aren’t hard to climb. She swivels the rifle so it’s on her back, and begins climbing.

Halfway up, she stops.

Someone is talking on the other side of the canyon wall. The speaker sounds either mush-mouthed or drunk.

Someone else shushes them. Then it is quiet.

That’s interesting. There’s more than one of them, that’s for sure. And it’s hard to gauge where they are by what she’s heard, but it sounds like they’re in the same area. And if what she heard is correct, someone over there is either sloppy or unpredictable or both.

And Mona is pretty sure none of Parson’s brothers or sisters are among their attackers, because she doesn’t think they need to use guns. If they wanted her dead, she would be dead.

She keeps climbing until the top of the canyon wall is just above her.

Okay. I’m here. Now what to do.

Mona thinks. She thinks for a long time.

She doesn’t want to poke her head over and look. Just that twitch of motion would be enough to bring attention to this stretch of the wall. And if she’s going over it—and she’s reasonably sure that’s a smart thing to do—then she needs it to be a total surprise. But how to keep
that element of surprise while also getting a good long look at what’s out there?

There isn’t a way
, she thinks.
I’m all the way up here and there’s no way over the wall. Not a chance, not a way, no sir.

Then she has an idea.

It is a very dumb idea.

Okay
, she admits reluctantly.
There’s a way.

Every muscle in her body is still as she considers it. She is panicking at the very idea of it. Her blood is trying to beat its way out of her veins the more she considers it, as if it knows better and is trying to abandon ship.

Am I really, really, really going to do this?

The rifle swivels around again until it’s in her hands. Her legs start to bend, readying to spring up.

I guess that’s a yes
, she thinks.
Well. It was fun being alive for a while.

Mona jumps.

Well, she doesn’t jump so much as dive up and over, and she completely overestimated the power it would take because she actually does a fucking flip right when she’s about to come down on the other side. The stars spin above her, and just before she comes crashing down on the ground a stretch of trees below her lights up with flashes. Hot tunnels of air open up on either side of her. It sounds like there’s a chain gang all along the slope cracking open rocks.

Mona thinks:
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck

Yet at the same time, she thinks:
Watch—and remember.

She sees:

A flashing light beside a large tree trunk.

Large enough, she thinks, for the top of the tree to poke up above the others—remember that.

Someone is crouched there. Two, three feet off the ground.

Still shooting at where she was.

Remember remember remember

Then her tailbone makes a solid connection with the ground, and she starts sliding down, rocks scraping her back and shoulder. They
are still shooting, thinking she is hunkered down at the top, trying to hide from their fire.

She extends both feet out, flexes her knees, prays for something to stop her.

That something comes, but it comes only to her right foot, which catches a stone shelf with enough force to make her ankle ache. But her left side keeps moving, and there’s an unwelcome
pop!
from the right side of her groin, and she grits her teeth and searches with her left toe for something, anything, please…

Her toe finds a tree root. She stops herself, rolls onto her stomach, brings the rifle swinging up.

They’ve stopped shooting. She can hear one of them asking something.

She puts her eye to the scope, scans the tree line, finds the tall tree, follows the trunk straight down. It is too dark to see anything clearly. She takes her eye away to watch.

Wait. Wait. Just… wait.

Four seconds.

Do not waste the shot.