Den of the Bear (Vanished, #6), page 11
He drops his gun.
“Chief?” I get this crazy thought that maybe Blood Eyes shot back or somethin’. The sun is behind him and I’m having a hard time focusing, and just when I can see him clearly, Chaco drills me in the temple with his beak hard as hell.
“Don’t look at him! Do not look at him, Grant!”
I get it now. All it takes is a bird to the brain. I reach for Joey. “Keep your eyes on the ground!”
But when I grab him, Joey’s as stunned as Yokana. Worse, even. It’s like he’s a cow in the kill chute, getting pulled forward with slow, staggering steps.
“Pull their eyes off him!” Chaco yells, his voice pounding in my head.
“How?” I ask, staring at the ground. It’s crazy hard not to look at a thing when all you wanna do is look at a thing.
“How do you think? Hit ’em in the face! I’m going after Blood Eyes,” Chaco says then launches before I can even utter a word.
Their collision is strangely quiet, barely more than a baseball hittin’ a mitt. Chaco’s wings flutter, and I hear the knife slice of his raking claws while I find Joey’s feet and trace up to his face. “Sorry buddy,” I say, then I deck him, fist to chin. If it takes knocking him out, I will.
He crumples, but at least his eyes close. I turn to the Chief next and hesitate only a second, thinking how it’ll look down at the station if I break his jaw. But then I think what’ll happen if there ain’t no Chief, and I swing at him too—sideways, not up. I pop his temple, and he staggers then drops, groaning. Tough old goat.
Chaco screeches in pain, and that’s when I make my mistake. I can feel it happening as I do it. I know I’m gonna look, but that’s my buddy, and he’s hurt and—
I look just as Blood Eyes slaps my bird off his face. Chaco hits the ground hard, one wing out of place. He does a sad little flop and tries to take off again but doesn’t get far. Chaco got a few good cuts in, but it doesn’t look like it did much to deter him. He takes two steps after Chaco, like he aims to crush my bird with his filthy black boots, and that’s all it takes to make me run at him.
I get about two steps before he looks at me full-on. He has no real eyes I can see, only weeping pits that go on and on and on, and the urge to find out where they bottom out is like a desert pool to a man dying of thirst. I just want to throw myself into it.
Then I’m caught like a fish on the line. I can’t do nothin’ but bite, and when I do, he sets the hook in my soul. His eyes get bigger, darker. They drip blood then drop blood then drool blood. They become everything, and I can’t look away.
My own vision wavers, and in its place, I see a child at a graveyard.
Not just any child and not just any graveyard. I know this place. It’s been a few decades, but before I found the bell, I spent a fair bit of time here.
The kid is me, and my parents are buried here. I sit in my usual spot, this time against Mom’s stone. Tomorrow, it’ll be Dad’s. I alternate so that neither one gets lonely.
“I miss you, Mom,” I say. That’s what I always say. But this time, she talks back.
“You’ll see us soon,” she replies. She sounds for all the world like she’s right there on the other side of the stone. Us back to back.
Mom isn’t supposed to talk back. That’s not how it works.
My mouth is clammy with fear. ‘No. I can’t. I have things to do.”
She slams against the tombstone, and I grip the dead grass with both hands.
“Do you even remember my face?” she asks, her voice a hiss. “Or when you think of mother, do you think of her?”
Caroline. And she’s right. More and more, I do think of Caroline as Mom. And it’s true, I’m having a hard time really remembering the face of the woman who’s supposed to be under this earth.
“It’s not like that, Mom. She’s family too. Just like you.”
“You killed her. Just like you killed me. Just like you killed your father.”
That ain’t right. A freak accident killed them, a car wreck so bad nobody was at fault and everybody lost. I know this. But what I know ain’t holdin’ water right now.
A dirty finger curls its way over the top of the gravestone. Then another. Black fingernails. A filthy wedding ring.
I scramble away. “Mom, please—”
“You hold death inches from your heart,” she says. “You have for your entire life. Even when you didn’t carry the bell.”
Two more fingers then all five grip and push. I see Mom’s dark red hair rising over the other side, but it’s clumped and matted with grave dirt.
All I can do is watch.
“With you in this family,” she hisses, “there can be no ending but death.”
Her eyes crest the chipped stone, and they’re those same weeping pits, and the bell yanks me down. Onto the ground. Under the ground. The grave dirt squelches between my fingers and pushes into my mouth. I feel bits of things, parts of people. Soon, I’m pushed through the ground and back to the cracked mud of the Arroyo, somehow still staring at this creature. I’m caught well and true, and Blood Eyes is smiling, licking his lips. He’s eating this up.
The bell pulls tighter.
“Take it!” I scream. “Please! Take it! I can’t carry it anymore.”
Blood Eyes comes closer, and I hold it out, tears in my eyes. The air has the bittersweet taste of a forbidden dream, the kind where you make dumb decisions and wake up terrified at what your brain showed you.
Blood Eyes grabs the bell. That much is real. And when he does, the words of Tsasa ring deep inside.
His eyes lie.
I need the truth. And what’s true is that my bird is limping his way back up to this monster, clawing himself up while Blood Eyes is lost in the bell. A lion drunk on the feed doesn’t give a shit when a bird walks up its back, right up until that bird jams a beak full of dirt in its eye.
Blood Eyes screams and reels, digging at his eye with his fingers, and the spell snaps in an instant. I grab the bell from his other hand, terrified that the darkest part of me finally won out, that I really gave it up. I feel relief and a strange type of sadness I ain’t ready to deal with as the bell tucks itself away near my heart in the same place it’s been for twenty years. Mine still, for better and for worse.
“Get to the hogan!” Chaco says, but that’s all he gets out before Blood Eyes backhands him with a sound like a dropped watermelon. Chaco flies backward and lands crumpled in the dirt.
Blood Eyes wipes his hand on his shirt, disgusted. “Filthy creatures, crows. I’ll never understand why my brother eats them.”
His eyes are draining blood again, but I ain’t about to look any longer. I’ve learned the hard way that when Chaco says run, you’d better run.
The horrors of being trapped in that stare flit from me like a bad dream as I pound the mud back toward the hogan. I feel like I was lost for hours in the depths of those pits, but I bet it was nothing more than a few seconds. Terror is strong stuff like that. And this guy looks like he’s dealing the pure shit.
I hate to leave Chaco, but he’s got a lot of history in that bird brain, so as long as this thing leaves him alone, I think he might be okay. That’s what I tell myself anyway, trying to forget how broken he looked, hobbling up that monster’s clothes with a beak full of dirt. Trying to forget that split-watermelon sound.
I try to run to the hogan, but the bell has other ideas. It likes death, and this thing behind me leaves death everywhere it goes.
The bell drags me to the ground like an anchor. My knees cut out, and I stumble right into the dirt trench I helped dig out, and there I stay, exhausted, pinned like a butterfly on cork.
All I can do is listen to the crunch of those filthy boots comin’ my way.
19
KAI BODREY
I’m holding the chant the best I can with Tsasa, Hos, and the Smoker. It’s hot in here and white with smoke, and all things outside are muted. That’s the point of a sweat. But then again, I ain’t never had a sweat where shit is really going down outside.
I can’t hear the fight, but I can feel when Grant stumbles. His fall hits me like a phantom pain right where I pull in breath. Chaco’s muffled cry from somewhere out in the desert seals it.
Grant wouldn’t have gone down if Joey wasn’t down. And if Joey’s down, that means Yokana’s down ’cause he would’ve gone out in front, all coplike. That means everyone’s in trouble. I drop the chant, open my eyes, and wipe the sweat from my face and brow up into my hair with shaking hands. Maybe I can at least drag Grant and Chaco back here. If I beat the Gambler at his game, I can beat this thing too. I look at Hos and find his eyes already on me, open for the first time in a long time.
Hos drops the chant and makes his way over to me. The Smoker falters but picks up the thread. He watches Hos with concern, but that’s nothin’ new. He’s been lookin’ after my brother for decades.
Hos wicks the sweat from his arms with his hands and rubs the smoke and heat into his hair. He’s dripping but somehow smells cleaner than ever, like every pore has been washed and this is the real him.
“They’re hurt out there,” I say, quiet and low. “That thing took them down.”
“I know,” Hos says.
“We gotta go help—”
“When you were a little girl, one time you took a punch for me,” he says, cutting me off. “You remember that?”
Swallowing is painful. I look for the water jug. “What? Hos, I can’t let that thing take Grant—”
Hos hands me the jug from next to him and talks right over me. “Dad was beatin’ my ass over nothin’. Maybe three jars deep, whalin’ on me, and you just… stepped in. Took one right in the face. You were maybe six.”
I don’t like this story, not because I can’t remember it but because I don’t like that he’s sayin’ it right here and right now.
“Hos, what the hell are you gettin’ at—”
“I ain’t ever faced somethin’ that can kill with a look. But I been stared down by killers plenty. The scary ones ain’t the ones tryin’ to cock off and show how tough they are. The scary ones trick you into seeing yourself as weak.”
He reaches forward and takes a handful of ash from deep in the fire. I can smell his skin singe, but if he feels it, he ain’t showin’. He looks at the ash like it’s an old friend and rubs it all over his hands and arms like soap.
“Little sister,” Hos says, “it’s time to stop taking punches for me.”
The ash mixes with sweat to form a paint that he smears across his own eyes, ear to ear, and when he’s done, a change comes over him. He paints two long, thick brushstrokes down from his eyes. Tsasa sings stronger and more clearly than he has since this chant began.
Hos looks at the fire like a long-lost friend. “When I was upstate in ABQ on those concrete yards and those concrete floors, concrete beds, concrete chairs, all I ever wanted was this earth,” he says.
Hos grabs another fistful and turns to me. “Watch me,” he says, smiling that old, wicked smile, the one I loved and hated. But this time, it’s different. This time it’s dangerous in a good way. “Witness my coup, little sister.”
He unfolds himself and crawls from the hogan, and I scamper out behind. He stands outside, steaming, and cracks his neck right and left. He’s my brother still but something else, too, now. Something different. It’s like the violence came back the right way.
“Blood Eyes!” he screams, so loud that it ripples the tents across the half-moon flat. The dark creature is crouched over Grant, eyes dripping, but he snaps his attention up.
“Look at me!” Hos screams.
Blood Eyes looks, and I have a sick, wavering moment when I almost look back—he almost catches me—but then I find my brother again. Whatever sickness this monster gives, whatever it is that laid Grant, Joey, and Yokana low, it hits Hos full on.
He staggers back like a boxer who expected the hit, who wanted to taste it and see what he’s workin’ with.
“That was good,” Hos says, wiping his face, smudging the ash, keeping the eye lock. And I can’t even think what kind of horrible shit this thing is throwing at him. He’s been the “ultimate disappointment,” the absolute poster-child cautionary tale of an Indian. You name the crime, he’s either done it, been in on it, or covered it up.
“That was good,” he says again, nodding. “But I seen it before.” Tears are cutting the ash, but his voice is strong. “I seen it all.”
Hos walks forward. I catch the monster’s stutter step back. I get the feeling this thing has no idea what to do with someone that takes his full gaze right to the face and then keeps walking toward it.
Hos clears his throat and spits. “The thing about hitting rock bottom is that there ain’t nothin’ you can show me that I ain’t already beat myself senseless with, no poison of mine I ain’t sat in for years.”
Hos takes careful steps. “Show me,” he whispers to the thing, deadly quiet. “Show me all of it.”
I don’t know what he’s seeing, my brother, but I know he keeps walking. Slow boots making slow crunching sounds. At some point, he starts laughing. Or maybe he’s crying. His steps come to a stop, and I see him dig his heels into the Arroyo dirt and hear his low growl. His back is tense, his arms all corded up. He bends down and grips the earth in both fists like it’s the only thing keeping him standing.
His voice is as sharp as a razor when he says, “I told you to look at me.”
Hos runs at this thing like one of those big freight trains that blares through the desert night. I follow his fists as he pops Blood Eyes once in the face with a boxer’s jab, and when the thing recovers, he comes at him with the other fist, right to his throat.
Blood Eyes coughs and wheezes, and for a second, I think maybe he did it. But I should know by now when it comes to people my brother wants down, coughing and wheezing ain’t enough.
Hos squares up and tackles him low, hits all the air out of his chest. His black boots scrape, footing lost. He falls, and Hos presses with arms in a cross bar and I think, We’ve got this, then it rolls. It rolls back and throws Hos off and staggers to standing, and all of a sudden, they’re out deep in the flats, and it’s like we’re back where we started.
I follow, walking past Yokana, walking past Joey, looking for signs of life and maybe seein’ them.
The sun cuts sharp over the canyon now. If I shade my eyes, I can see the pitch-black silhouettes of the two of them out deep in the mud flats now, near the lip.
They circle each other. Blood Eyes stands straight and follows Hos with small ticks of his head. My brother circles low, arms wide.
“Look at me!” Hos screams again, running, hitting it low, getting thrown and coming right back. Getting thrown again and coming back. Getting beaten about the face and coming back. My brother drips black from his face, and it ain’t all sweat and ash.
Chaco fires off a series of caws that rips a line through the air between us. He’s limping toward Grant, and he’s scared. I pick him up without thinking and sprint there faster.
Grant is belly down, his face pressed to the dirt. He’s breathing. I think he’s just lost in whatever this thing showed him. Looping, maybe. I’ve been there. Chaco tucks in at his neck. I don’t know what to do. I never know what to do.
The sound of my brother slamming into the meat of this monster pulls my attention back to the flats. The sun stretches their shadows long, well past me. The two of them are wavy now in the early-morning heat. Blood Eyes grabs him and presses his face right up to him. Eye to eye with my brother. How dare this fucking thing.
They stare into each other. Both of them. Grapplers at a standstill, they hold each other and stare. And somewhere in the back of my mind, an alarm is blaring that says they are almost at the lip of the canyon.
Hos breaks the stare first. I don’t blame him. I won’t blame him anymore. I’d have been burned inside and out by this thing. But then he looks right at me, and I know he broke the gaze on his own terms.
I know he sees me because of how his face softens, blood and ash and all.
“Look at me,” he says, again, strong and clear, but with love behind it this time—words just for me.
He bear-hugs Blood Eyes and rips out a war cry as he hucks himself off the lip of the cliff.
The two of them go full sail into the empty air, and there’s a moment when the sun burns their outlines against the red canyon beyond before they drop like stones.
20
OWEN BENNET
As it turns out, when you decide to follow crows, you end up in the deep desert. And I mean considerably far out. We’re on a swath of land that the BIA map colors a weak lime green, where no designated towns exist for ten or so miles in any direction, with no named roads to speak of. We’re following a two-rut path that I would likely have lost five miles back if not for the crows.
These blessed corvids are the one constant here. Over a hundred of them are alighting in batches alongside us like a moving blanket in the air. The BIA map is in the back seat, next to my sleeping daughter. I’m traveling by crow now.
My daughter is quite the trooper when it comes to the rattle of desert driving. My back is about slaughtered, but she’s sleeping like a rock, her little hands curled around that feather.
I can’t help but think of names. Names are a nice dose of reality in all this, a sign that we’ll go on. Or some of us will, at least. Maybe we name her Feather. Feather Bennet? Will that work in high school?
I know it’s ridiculous, but the girl has to have a name. She can’t be “Baby” her whole life. It doesn’t show well on a resume.
This isn’t to say she has to be a Bennet. She could easily be an Adams. Caroline and I aren’t legally married. Neither has taken the other’s name. Maybe she’ll hyphenate all of it, and she can be Feather Bennet-Adams.
Yikes. I’ve got to find Caroline. There cannot be a world in which I even consider naming this child Feather Bennet-Adams. That’s the kind of thing that happens when men are left alone for too long.
