The Breeders (9 page)

I skid to a stop. “Get out of here!” I yell, though it comes out raspy from my aching lungs. I want to dig out my knife, but my hands are full of my brother, who’s … unconscious? Is he breathing? I flick my eyes from Ethan, back to Clay.

Clay sees Ethan’s arm and his face darkens. He whistles low. “That’s a nasty bite. Let me lend a hand.”

“No.” My voice is slick with hatred. “Get off my steps before I make you.” My words sound strong, but my arms feel like limp noodles. If I have to fight Clay now, it’ll go poorly. I don’t care. I’ll die before I’ll let him hurt Ethan.

He wrinkles his blue eyes as if weighing his words. “Really,” he says. “I can help.”

“Help what?” I’m stalling. My eyes skim our dusty yard for an exit, an answer, something. “Help capture us?” Ethan moans and more blood runs from his arm onto his shirt. I have to get him inside. Now.

“Listen,” he says, looking at me sheepishly, one thumb hooked in his belt loop, “I’m not here to take you in. When I locked you in the cellar, I was trying to keep you from getting shot up.”

He offers that smile now, one he’s probably given his parents a million times to say,
Trust this face. Would I lie?
I don’t care how charming he is. All I can see is an image of Arn’s body drug out for the coyotes.

“My parents and Auntie are dead because of you.” I feel my pocketknife pressing against my thigh, waiting for me.

Clay’s forehead furrows and he turns his eyes away. When he looks at me again, his voice is almost too quiet to hear. “Your ma and auntie aren’t dead.”

Suddenly the world feels smaller, heavier. “What’d you say?”

He blows out a breath. “They ain’t dead. We … they took ’em into custody. Nothing I could do.”

Not dead. My mother and Auntie Bell aren’t dead. But what’s happening to them? Were they sold to the Breeders? The thought of them going back there feels like an iron fist around my insides.

Clay takes a few steps sideways. He takes his hat off and tucks it to his chest, a cowboy’s act of contrition if I ever saw it. Then he nods down at Ethan’s arm. “He needs disinfectant or that’ll fester. Coyot’ bites are nasty.”

“I know that,” I say, taking a few steps toward our back door. I walk slowly past him, never taking my eyes away.

He gestures toward the bike sitting in our driveway with his hat. “Got a first aid kit on the bike. It’s not much, but I got antiseptic and bandages.” He brings his hat back to his chest and smiles.

Arn in the dirt, left to die.

“We don’t need your help.” I run up the steps and lock the door behind me.

* * *

Ethan’s arm worsens.

I wash the wound with water, but it’s not enough. The four slashes, deep bloody valleys with peaks of shredded skin, swell and puss. While Ethan moans and rocks on the bed, I scour the house for soap, disinfectant, anything. I pull apart every cupboard and closet. I come up empty handed.

In the barn I knock over empty gas cans, dig through drawers and fling empty bottles from shelves. I find nothing but fat centipedes and oily rags. My heart won’t stop thudding in my chest. What if there’s nothing? Desperate tears threaten, but I dig my fingernails into my palms and keep searching. I gotta find something. I gotta.

I save Arn’s workbench for last. There’s too much pain hovering around his worn table, the notes tacked above in his slanted scrawl, his projects never to be finished. I walk to it slowly, feeling the waves of sadness wash over me as my eyes touch all the things that he never will.

My vision’s drawn to something smooth and shiny on a top shelf. My hand closes around the brown glass dropper. I lift the three-inch bottle up to the light. Brown liquid sloshes inside. Half a bottle of iodine. Jackpot.

I run back to the house. When I barrel into Ethan’s room, he’s a sweaty moaning mess. I slide up to his bed and push the hair out of his eyes.

“I got it, bud,” I say, unscrewing the bottle. “Hold still.”

He moans, but stops thrashing. I fill the little dropper with iodine and drip it into his wounds. Such a little fix for such a huge problem. I pray it’ll be enough.

Ethan calms a little, though his arm still throbs. I find myself rubbing his sweaty back and singing verses of “You Are My Sunshine” and “Rock-a-bye Baby,” songs my mother would sing on nights when we were fitful or the thunder rattled the walls. The words feel heavy in my mouth.

He falls into a feverish sleep. Exhausted, I stumble down the hall.

Night has crept up in all the commotion. I stare out the ragged hole that was our front window to the quiet of our yard. The cool twilight air that pulses in feels good on my face. Somewhere an owl gives a mournful hoot and the insects buzz in harmony. I run my hands over my arms and slump on the couch. The familiar smells and sounds help me to breathe.

I’ve spent most of the day alternating between beating myself up for letting Ethan check a trap alone and picturing Auntie and my mama in chains. Now in the dark, my thoughts fly to them. Are they crouched against a concrete wall in one of the jail cells, waiting for the Breeders to collect their prize? My mind supplies chains on their ankles or collars around their neck. The horror of that thought haunts me. I hug myself and shiver. I gotta free them. But how?

My eyes trace the scattered remains of our life strewn around the living room. There’s shards of a ceramic vase, the desert flowers my mother lovingly picked shriveled to husks on the floor. My eyes trace past shreds of our tattered wallpaper. A picture frame, knocked off a sideboard, lies broken on the ground. I pull myself off the couch and pick it up with tender hands.

The cherry wood frame, dented at the corners, holds the treasure I was seeking. The glass is gone, but the drawing remains. I lift the paper delicately out of the frame. It’s a piece of butcher block with a ten-year-old’s pencil scrawl. To anyone but my mama, it would’ve been trash, but she framed it and set it on the sideboard. Looking at it now brings a tightness to my throat I can’t swallow down.

The pencil drawing shows five stick figures, each with giant circular heads and grins that cover half their faces. For my mama, I drew a triangle dress and her clutching what looks like a bean with a face—my best effort for baby Ethan. For Arn, I sketched his overalls as uneven rectangles over his stick body. Auntie’s figure has a long rope braid down her back. And for myself, the biggest grin of all plastered on my little circle head.

My family as I saw it at age ten. I drew this at the kitchen table of the house we lived in six years ago. A thunderstorm crackled overhead and I tried to clamber on my mama’s lap. She kindly pried me off and set the pencil and paper in front of me.

“Draw something happy,” she’d said, caressing my cheek. “It’ll keep your mind off the storm.”

I hold the picture delicately to my chest. What I wouldn’t give to go back there, under the flickering sky with my mother’s hand at my shoulder and the
clack clack
of Auntie’s rocking chair, the slow steady rhythm that meant all was right with the world. How could I have known then I had everything I ever need? That it would all be taken from me?

What can I do now to keep my mind off the storm?

* * *

The sharp knock on our front door wakes me. I bolt upright and dig in my pants for my knife. Nothing. I scan the room, lit with morning light, for a weapon and spy the fire poker in the stand near the hearth. Hefting the metal rod over my shoulder, I tiptoe to the front door.

Through the bullet holes in the wood, I see a figure on the other side.

“Go away!” I yell in my deepest voice. “We don’t want any.”

“Now, I highly doubt that.”

Clay. I turn the knob and yank the door open. He stands on the porch in his clean cowboy best—short-sleeve button-down shirt, jeans, boots and his hat. In his left hand he holds a basket of apples, rolls and wrapped bacon. In his right hand is a bar of antiseptic soap. He lifts a dimpled reassuring smile.

I raise the poker as if to strike.

“Jesus!” He jumps back. “What’s a fella gotta do to prove he’s worth havin’?”

As I’m brandishing the poker, Ethan slides up behind me.

“Are you Clay?” His smile is wide and inviting.

“He was just leaving,” I say through clenched teeth.

“Oh.” Ethan’s face falls. He pulls his wounded arm up and clutches it to him. The wound looks awful. The skin around the bite is puffy and oozing. The iodine is long gone.

I look at Ethan’s arm and then at Clay, who’s eying the poker, waiting for me to strike. I have no choice. The poker thuds heavily against my thigh as I bring it down.

“Come in,” I say, stiffly. “Can we get you some breakfast?”

Clay scans my expression and then takes a tentative step forward. “Sure,” he says. “Just put away the brainin’ stick, will ya?”

I hand him the metal rod. “Take it. I’ll start the stove.”

Ethan leads Clay to the table and begins peppering him with questions as I try to figure out what the hell I’m doing. Mechanically, I open the stove, toss in the kindling and dig around for a match. When the flame ignites, the yellow-red tongues eat up the starter twigs until they are crumbled black husks of their former selves. Then there’s nothing left to do but make breakfast for my enemy.

Chapter Eight

I sit across from Clay as he eats bacon off my mother’s blue china plate. The three of us ignore the bullet holes shot into the table. Clay is telling some story to my little brother, who laughs and then chomps a rippled slice of bacon between his teeth.

I can’t laugh. I don’t even know what he’s saying. I pretend to eat and watch the words form in his mouth, but all I think about is Clay sitting in Arn’s chair. It makes me want to go find that stove poker again.

“Riley, did you hear that?”

“Huh?”

“Did you hear what Clay said? He said Mama and Auntie are still in town. He can take us to see them if we want.” Joy dances across Ethan’s face.

I stop eating and stare up at Clay. “Can I have a word with you outside?”

Clay gives a wary smile and drops his napkin on the table. “Sure.”

I lead him out onto the porch and shut the door tight. On the porch the air is searing, a perfect match for how I’m feeling inside. Clay clomps out, leans his hip against the rickety porch railing and offers me his smile again.

“I mean it, you know. I can take y’all into town. We’ll have to be caref—”

“You can get the hell out of here right now,” I say, trembling. I point to his motorcycle. “Just go. I had enough of your lies.”

“I’m not lying. Your ma’s in town. Won’t be for long, so if you want to see ’em, we need to shake tail.”

I clutch my hands together until my knuckles are white. “It’s just another trick. Another way to get us into town so you can finish what you started.”

Frustration deepens the lines between his eyes. He shakes his head slowly back and forth. “You’re really irritating, you know that?”

I stare at him with my jaw dropped. “Me?”

“Yeah, you.” He grips the porch rail and it rocks under his weight. “What do I have to do to prove I’m sorry? I saved y’all during the raid, I brought you food, medicine. What do I have to do?” He flaps his arms in frustration.

I cross my arms over my thrumming heart. “You can start by bringing my stepfather back to life.”

He winces and drops his head. “Wish I could.” He grips the porch railing and stares sadly off toward the barn. “I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. When they told me we were going on a raid, I had no idea we were coming here.” He points to my bullet-riddled house. “Then I saw you and your brother in the yard. I locked you in to keep you safe. By the time I got back, your pa was toe up. Nothing I could do.” Clay lifts his sorrowful eyes from the dirt to meet mine.

“Do you think feeling bad is enough? You were a part of this whether you shot him or not.”

He digs the toe of his boot along a crack in the porch floorboards. “That’s why I’m trying to make amends. I may be Sheriff’s number two, but I don’t like his politics. I don’t mind rustling criminals, but I can’t abide this. Taking you to see your ma is the only decent thing I can think of to make up for what I did.”

I dig deep for more fury, but the wellspring runs dry.

Then it dawns on me. If Clay’s not our enemy, he might be useful. A plan hatches. I look down the road toward town. “You said you want to help us, right?”

Clay stands straighter, thumbs in his belt loops. “Yeah.”

“Good.” My mind’s still reeling. I take a few steps across the porch, swivel on my heel and face Clay again. “Where they keeping my family?”

Clay’s eyes widen and he shakes his head. “Now hold those flyin’ horses of your’n. There’s one thing you gotta understand.”

“No,” I say curtly. “There’s one thing you gotta understand. I’m getting my mama and auntie out of there ‘fore the Breeders come. I don’t care what I got to do. I’m not letting those monsters take ’em.”

Clay rubs a hand over his head, mussing short brown hair. “Sorry, chief, but Breeders are coming tomorrow. And don’t nobody get in their way.”

I stare out over the dusty landscape of our yard until my eyes light on my mother’s garden. “Then we go today.”

He shakes his head. “Now wait a minute—”

I point my finger at his chest. “You want to make up for what you did? You helped lock ’em up. You get ’em free.”

He screws up his mouth and begins worrying the chipped paint on the porch rail. “I’d be strung up or kicked out with nothin’.”

I shrug and wave my hand at the desolation that used to be our family farm.

Clay rubs his smooth palms over his face. “Ah, God. This is crazy. You understand what you’re asking me to do?”

I nod.

Clay blows out his breath. “Fine. I’ll help you bust ’em out, but Sheriff can’t know I had a hand in it.”

For the first time, I let a smile slink up my face. “Deal.”

Clay stares at my expression for a lingering minute. With my hate no longer clouding my judgment, I realize how reckless I’ve been with my secret. My breasts are bound tight, but I’ve done nothing to disguise my voice or the rest of my features.