Black Locust Letters (14 page)

“
Now this bell was meant to be
unsteablable.
It had traps and fastenings
and all kinds of measures to protect it, so complex that only the
chieftain knew its secrets. Exica was a Gromil herself, a modest
one, and she fell in love with Tate, a handsome man from an equally
powerful family the Feigons. In order to prove her love, Exica
watched her chieftain very well and one day when her love could no
longer be contained, she stole the bell and gave it to Tate. Tate
took the bell, which was very small, and cast it into the furnace
and Exica and the other Gromils melted with the death of the
bell.”

Betty blinked in surprise. “That is depressing. And
alarming.”

“
Most of the stories do go like that, if stealing the bell
happens at the end. If it happens at the beginning, then it's some
quest for redemption or to die with pride or something like that.”
Jenny gave Betty a long, considering look which made Betty shift
uncomfortably. “The storytellers meet every third Thursday at the
drag races. They would be able to tell you more. I'm not sure how
accurate what I told you is.”

Betty nodded, swallowing as she considered involving herself
still further into the Never Were affairs. Would she be safe? She
doubted that Jenny would refer her to an event without reason to
think that she would be well, but one never did know.

Nothing was as it used to be, not any longer.

Betty couldn't believe that she was sitting in the passenger
seat, heater on full blast, in the cramped interior of the sports
car with Slim.

He
smoked a cigar, one from her father's stash she recognized by the
blueberry scent, in one hand and drove with the other up a winding
road. Normally Betty abhorred being in a tight space with a smoker,
but it meant that his right hand was on the wheel, not holding her
hand.

“
You
still haven't told me where we are going,” Betty said, peering out
the window at the steep incline out her side of the car. She had a
couple of ideas where they could be headed, in large part because
these roads didn't go very many places.

“
If
I were to tell you where we were going on a Sunday drive, then it
wouldn't be a surprise when we got there, would it?” It could have
been an arrogant dismissal, but the way he said it was warm,
charming, and he had a roguish grin which made her smile, too.
“Besides, look at the trees! The frost has been kinder to them
here. It's like the whole hillside is ablaze.”

When
they rounded the next switchback, Betty had to admit that he was
right about this: Yellow-leafed aspens stood out against red maples
and dark evergreens, and there were some trees whose name she did
not know with massive orange leaves. The wind had not yet brought
these down, and she thought that the hills would look like this for
perhaps all of a week before their beauty was stripped barren by a
storm.

Slim
held his cigar between his teeth while he downshifted, making the
car rev with power. Below them, a nearly dry creek bed wound its
way through bushes and boulders. Betty heard something—a picnic
basket, most likely-slide in the trunk of the car, and then came
the clink of glass bottles, brought either for drinking or target
practice.

Slim
was dressed in his best, choosing a charcoal suit and tan shirt,
the first two buttons undone, his finger tapping out a beat on the
wheel, the way it always had when he was nervous.

“
It's either the fishing lake or the lookout,” Betty said, to
which he smiled in the way she knew meant that she had guessed
wrong.

“
We've been to both those places. Nah, it's time for something
new.”

The
heater at her feet was scorching through her leather boots, but
when she moved, it meant that she had to lean in towards Slim, not
something that she wanted to do. When he gave her a hopeful grin,
she corrected him. “James, we are to be meeting on
business.”

“
Talker-Interpreter exercises only today, Betty. This is how
we train all our teams.” He motioned to the rocking car, to the
open window, and jabbed his thumb at whatever was clunking in the
back.

“
Not
in a conference room somewhere?”

She
sighed in annoyance, wondering why she had agreed to go with him
after her shift. Thank goodness he had said that they could meet at
a parking lot outside a shopping mall. She didn't want her
neighbours knowing about this, but she could ill afford to fall
under her father's suspicions by neglecting Slim.

“
Retention in a classroom setting is too low for the
importance of the work. Besides, we are supposed to have a meeting
of the minds, to draw references and allusions together, to have
conversations we can recall later. Memorizing a bunch of words is
all fine and dandy if you're just going to order a knight to K23,
but it won't work in our line of duty.”

“
Then how did you expect it to work last time?”

He
held up a finger. “It did work, because I was guiding you and
because the interpreter spent so long with you.”

“
Who
was it?” It had never occurred to her that if Slim had been feeding
her the information, that meant that someone else had been
receiving it.

“
Ah,
Betty, let's not dig into the past.”

“
James.”

She
could hear the thrumming of the engine's cylinders now, the first
time that his cheerful patter had come to a stop long enough to
notice the engine noises. He tried to smile. “Betty, it wasn't just
you and one other. There's a whole network of us. You were just a
trainee, an experiment, really, to see how well a new system would
work.”

Betty sighed and tried not to feel betrayed, tried to not
feel like nothing, the way she had all those years ago. It wasn't
working.

Slim
continued, “I know how hard this is. You wanted to be free. With
your father being who he is, I can't much say that I blame you.
He's left you alone now.”

Betty didn't know what to say to that, so she said
nothing.

They
came upon the dirt road turn off for the lakes, and Slim didn't
slow down so she knew they were passing those up. The lookout would
take another hour to drive to, and she didn't know how she liked
sharing a car with him while they talked about this.

It
was just too much for her, she knew that she wouldn't be able to
stay pouty and angry at him for much longer if he continued to be
his charming, understanding self.

“
Betty?”

She
didn't answer, not until she heard his finger resume its nervous
tapping on the wheel. She sighed and looked to him, saying,
“Yes?”

“
I
never told you, never had the guts to, I know that's cowardly, but
I haven't dated since you.”

She
laughed, but it wasn't a kind laugh, it was an abrupt, angry,
bitter sort of laugh that made him wince and her feel
guilty.

“
But
I suppose that you laid several girls in the meantime, haven't
you?”

“
No,” the word was flat, hard, in the tone that he used when
he truly meant something. “No, I haven't, and there are those who
say there's something wrong with me. But the truth is that I
haven't been with any other girl because....they're not you. And I
feel like shit. I have ever since you left.”

Her
heart soared and plummeted and twisted in agony. What was she to
believe? His words made an impact on her, she couldn't deny that.
Those words were things she had wanted to hear him say years
ago.

But
it was years ago, and she'd moved on. She had. Hadn't she? Betty
glared out the window, eyes unfocused as nearby tree limbs blurred
by.

“
Why
didn't you come out to find me, then?”

His
face went pale and he gripped the steering wheel too hard. “I
thought I wouldn't have to.”

“
What do you mean by that?” She snapped back, angry, no,
furious. Did he think that she would come crawling back to him out
of want of money? Or that she would be a frightened, scared little
girl needing a big man's protection?

Slim's face was set, studying the road in front of him, his
expressions blank, a fall back to his training. For an instant, she
thought he would practice his silence, too, but with a visible
swallow, he made his throat work.

“
I
thought... I hoped that you loved me enough to come back. Or at
least to say something to me, to tell me what it was that went
wrong. You never said anything, you just up and left. I came home
one night and half the house was empty. I would have started a
search party but for your note.”

Betty winced and looked out the window. The note! She'd
forgotten its exact content, but the basic idea had been to tell
him that she had gone away of her own free will and that she did
not wish for him to follow.

Betty wondered, now, how that had made him feel. At the time
she had been thinking only for herself; if she'd thought about him,
she wouldn't have gone through with it.

Out
of fear of being followed, she hadn't quarrelled with him or her
father in the days before, so that she could know that slipping
away would be a sure thing. She'd never stopped to think what
effect it would have on Slim, and now she felt bad about
it.

And
then she felt angry about him making her feel that way, so she
crossed her arms and slumped against the car door, looking out at
the road with a fixed stare which was soon making her stomach turn
over on the winding roads.

“
You
thought I couldn't care for myself?”

“
I
thought that I had no idea how I would live without you in my life.
I kept hoping that you would feel the same, and I'd hear something,
anything from you. I had so many questions and I was so furious
that I didn't dare to seek you. People told me that you were alive
and well, and I had to be content with that. What was the hardest,
I think, was that one day at the bottom of a whiskey bottle, I
realized that you could only have dropped your life and left so
completely because of the way I had treated you.”

Slim
tossed the cigar butt out the window and closed it, the car swaying
slightly with every turn of the handle, and then the car instantly
grew much warmer as the heater didn't have to compete with an open
window. His face was now nearly grey, and he continued before Betty
could speak.

“
That was a shitty realization. Know how that feels, to know
you're the reason the love of your life walked out the door, days
before the wedding? Made me think on all the things I'd do
differently if you gave me the chance. I didn't know why you'd
stayed away, and I tried to understand that you just didn't want me
anymore. I do more things for myself now; all the laundry, the
dishes, the cooking. I'm a proper working house husband now. I
swore I'd show this to you if you ever let me.”

“
James...” Betty's throat constricted and she wouldn't have
been able to say what was in her stunned mind even if he hadn't
held up a finger.

“
Let
me finish first, please. I have only so much bravery left in me. I
thought, when I last saw you, that you had turned mean-spirited,
but it didn't take me long to realize that the truth of it is that
you're scared of your father, aren't you?”

Betty didn't know how to respond to this. She whispered, her
voice husky, “I don't know. Maybe. I'm not comfortable with
him.”

Slim
nodded as though this explained it all. “Well, that cast everything
from the last few years into a new light. And, damn it, I know they
all think I'm his lap dog, but I'm not. I hate the bastard. Know
how many men I've seen him kill with his 'real men are tough and
tough men should be able to do this' mentality? For sweet Mary's
soul, let the men get there a day later if time isn't
important.”

They
turned off onto a gravel drive, one that was heading towards the
cabins Betty knew existed for officer's weekend getaways and secret
training sessions.

Betty said, her voice shaking, “I didn't know that was what
you thought of him.”

“
Oh,
it wasn't, not when you and I were together, but once you left, I
saw the way he raged and fumed, and heard what he said, and I knew
that none of it was true. Once you hear someone offend someone you
love so thoroughly, you have to wonder what else they've been lying
about. That's when I started to get wise.”

The
car slowed down still more, until it was moving at the pace of a
fast walk, because brambles dangled over the road in places and he
didn't want to scratch up the paint on his car. Betty worried that
the road would simply end, but instead the gravel came thicker
again and soon they were turning into a nice cabin with a mowed
lawn and a bbq grill out the side with the porch.

While Betty examined the woods around her, making note of the
presence of purple leaves, Slim parked the car, turned it off, and
continued, “So you see why I had to take us away from all the
signals. No chance someone will be listening in to us.”

“
You
trust me?”

“
Who
else could I trust?” Slim tried and failed again, to smile. “I wish
that I'd been smart enough to figure this all out while you were
still mine; before I chased you away. I'm sorry for that. I was
dumb, arrogant, and a million other things, and completely
undeserving of you. I won't ask your forgiveness, not until I've
earned it, and I'm not there yet.”