Mittman, Stephanie (3 page)

Whatever
it was, it scurried over her right leg and began burrowing under her left. She
held her breath and stayed perfectly still, reciting her prayers without even
moving her lips. She could barely detect a movement beneath her left thigh.
Would lifting it let the trespasser by, or invite him to taste her soft flesh
through her tough jeans?

Patience
is a virtue, Mary Grace. Be virtuous,
she told herself, aware that what might
be a scorpion was slowly working his way out from under her leg. A moment more,
two at most. Then she was up like a flash, stamping and jumping and shouting in
the dark as though the scorpion had actually hit his mark.

Well,
some people could sit in the middle of the desert and wait for the sun to rise,
Mary Grace supposed, but she wasn't one of them. She groped in the darkness,
heading in what she prayed was the right direction.

From
the blisters on her feet she guessed she'd been walking a couple of hours when
she finally saw the smoke. It was like a white cloud against the dark sky, and
it took her nose to tell her what her eyes were seeing. Civilization! She ran
toward the sooty haze, her feet burning as her blisters rubbed against her wet
socks and stiff boots, amazed by how much farther it was than it appeared.
Who'd have thought that you could smell smoke miles away?

Still,
she kept going, her bones aching, her body cold but her feet on fire, until she
saw the cabin. Lights
blazed in the window, a man's voice crooned a song that sounded like a lullaby,
and the smell of roasted chicken filled the air. But she couldn't go up to the
door. Not yet. Not until she could stop the tears and pull herself together. It
took a long time.

Finally
a man came out onto the porch, followed by a second, much shorter man and a
mangy dog who appeared to have only one ear. Were these the men waiting for
Benjamin? Could her luck be that good? And they'd been singing a lullaby. Was
Benjamin already here? She cleared her throat and the two men fell to the porch
floor. The dog bared its fangs and growled. In the dim light that came through
the windows, she could see that the two men were holding guns, and that they
were pointing them in her direction.

"Who's
out there?" one of the men yelled into the darkness.

She
wasn't sure how to answer. Her name wouldn't mean anything to them, and
identifying herself as a member of Child Seek might only anger them and end any
hope she had of tricking them into giving themselves away.

"I
am," she answered in a rather meek sounding voice. She cleared her throat
again. "I mean," she said more strongly, "I'm sorry to bother
you, but I've lost my way and I..."

"Come
into the light where we can see you," ordered the man who had spoken
before.

"And
don't try anything funny," the shorter one added. He looked younger than
the man who had called out to her, maybe still in his teens, and his curly
blond hair glowed in the porch light like a halo around his head.

"No
'Heeeeere's Johnny?'" she asked, trying to be facetious as she stepped
into the clearing in front of the
house. "No ten top ways to know
you're lost?" On closer inspection it was clear that the men were holding
rifles. It was just as the man at the store had said, two men with hunting
rifles. Only he'd forgotten to mention Fang, who was rigid with suspicion.

She
felt a nudge from behind her and screamed out, sure that one of the dog's
siblings had managed to creep up on her.

"Skitterish,
ain't ya?" a man said, and she turned to find a third man, this one holding
a rifle just inches from her middle.

"Oh
my God!" Mary Grace said. "You scared me to death. Where the hell did
you come from?"

The
man grinned at her. In the darkness he looked so sinister, the glow from the
windows glistening in his eyes, reflecting off a jagged scar on his cheek, that
for a moment she felt trapped in a made-for-TV movie. She just hoped she had
Victoria Principal's role. Victoria always managed to survive attacks by crazed
lunatics in the woods.

"Hey,
relax," she told him, drawing on a bravado she didn't feel. "Put that
thing down, OK? Look, if you guys want to be left alone, that's perfectly all
right with me. But could I maybe just stay on your porch tonight? I'm really
not too cool with all this desert stuff and I..."

A
cough came from within the house, a weak, sickly sound, and the men seemed to
forget all about her. The young man rose, put his gun down against the door
frame, and moved to go into the house, shaking his head. "Stay here,
Dukeboy," he told the dog, who returned his attention to Mary Grace. The
other got up, first to his knees and then to his feet, and leaned against the
railing.

The
man with the scar prodded her gently from behind and gestured with his head for
her to go up
toward the porch, where the dog and a man with two gold teeth stood waiting for
her. Both of them were drooling as they watched her mount the steps. It was
deadly silent. And then she heard a woman's voice. It was faint, interrupted by
coughs and wheezes, but it was definitely a woman's voice, and the men strained
to hear it.

The
youth returned, something on his boots jangling with every step he took, making
him sound like some janitor with too many keys. Spurs, maybe? No one wore spurs
anymore, did they? He whispered something to the man who still held the rifle
on her. He grimaced, his scar pulsing in his cheek, but nodded and put the
rifle down.

"She
wants to see ya," the young one said. He held open the door, and Mary
Grace shrugged and went in, grateful Dukeboy was left on the porch.

The
cabin was cozy, the light from an oil lamp casting a yellow glow on the small
room. It was cluttered with the debris of three men living without a woman's
care. Plates were scattered, their dried contents stuck to them and covered
with dust or soot. Someone had taken the care to put curtains on the windows
and doilies on the couch, but now they hung at angles and threatened to slip to
the dirty floor at any moment. Mary Grace fought the urge to straighten
something as she took in the room. A fire burned softly in the fireplace, its
hiss almost a whisper as if out of respect for the sick woman in the next room.

The
bearded man with the gold teeth stood impatiently waiting for Mary Grace to
follow him, obviously displeased with her examination of the house. Her eyes
lit on yet another rifle, this one leaning up near the doorway by which the man
stood. He followed the line of her eyes and frowned. Raising the rifle, he
jacked it
open and removed two bullets, or shells, or whatever it was they put in rifles.
It amused Mary Grace that he thought she would try to steal the rifle and use
it on them. She barely knew which end to point. When he returned the rifle to
its place by the door it was with such a thud that the noise echoed in the
room.

"You
ready now?" he asked her as he opened the door and signaled for her to
follow.

The
bedroom was darker than the main room had been. Darker, and cooler. It took a
moment for Mary Grace's eyes to adjust, and while they did, she hugged herself
for warmth. She'd given up any hope that her socks would ever dry, and was just
looking forward to taking off her boots and rubbing some circulation back into
her feet. Maybe they would let her stand in front of the fire for a while
before sending her back out into the night.
If
they sent her back into
the night. She felt a shudder in her chest. The cold? Or fear?

In
the center of a small bed lay a tiny woman, her body barely noticeable under
the heavy quilt that stretched across her. She had long blond hair, and it
flowed around her like a princess in a storybook. Her face was flushed, even
more so in the flickering light of the oil lamp near her bedside. Her eyes were
closed, but Mary Grace had no doubt that when she opened them they would be
china blue.

"Emily,
honey," the man said gently, and she opened her eyes. Mary Grace had been
right. "This here's the lady you was askin' on."

Mary
Grace watched Emily swallow. It was obviously a great effort. "Who are
you?" she asked. Her voice was so soft Mary Grace could barely hear her.

She
crept closer to the bed, where Emily could get a good look at her. Maybe Emily
could tell the men to let her take Benjamin and leave.

"My
name is Mary Grace O'Reilly," she told the woman honestly. "I've come
to take the boy."

Emily
smiled at her wanly. She closed her eyes and crossed herself. "Thank
you," she whispered toward the ceiling. "I've been praying you would
come. They love him, but what do men know about taking care of a baby?"

"We've
been doin' everything you told us," the man with the gold teeth said,
suddenly less fearsome in the sick woman's presence.

She
nodded. "You and Harlin been real good, Wilson," Emily said,
"considerin'. But a baby needs a mama, and I ain't gonna be here much
longer to see to him."

Mary
Grace looked around. No one disagreed with her. None of this made sense. Emily
wasn't Benjamin's mother, so why had the men brought Benny here? Surely they
couldn't expect Emily to take care of someone else's child in her condition.

"Has
she seen a doctor?" Mary Grace asked. "What's wrong with her, anyway?"

"Doctor
says there ain't nothin' he can do," the young blond man named Harlin
started to explain, but Wilson interrupted him.

"Shut
up," he said, and Harlin scowled but kept quiet. "Doctor's been here.
Twice," the man said. He stared at the foot of the bed, never making eye
contact with the woman in it.

"Look,"
Mary Grace began, "I don't know what's the matter with her, but it looks
to me like your wife needs a doctor pretty badly. Why don't you just take her
to a hospital?"

"A
hospital?" Wilson laughed. "Nearest hospital's in Jerome. Emily'd
never make the trip to the wagon in the barn, never mind all the way clear to
Jerome."

"Couldn't
you have her airlifted? At least call the
doctor again and maybe he can prescribe
something over the telephone."

Harlin
stared at her as if she had suggested they take Emily to the Mayo Clinic on a
bicycle. Wilson just snorted.

"Come
from the big city, don'tcha?"

Mary
Grace spun around. It was the third of the men speaking. She hadn't even heard
him following them, but then the short one's spurs jangled so loudly it was
hard to hear anything else when he was on the move. It was the second time this
man had sneaked up behind her, and the shivers that ran up her spine weren't
from the cold night air.

He
spoke again. "Ain't got a telephone way out here." He had an ugly
scar running down his cheek, and he turned so that it shone in what little
lamplight there was.

"Ain't
got nothin' out here," Emily said, her eyes on Mary Grace. "Nothin'
but sickness and death. Wilson, get me some water, will ya?"

Wilson
came over to the bedside and poured some water from a pitcher. Gently he lifted
Emily's head and placed the glass to her lips.

"Your
wife looks pretty sick," Mary Grace said. "Doesn't a neighbor have a
phone?"

"Ain't
my wife," Wilson said, the gold teeth catching the oil lamp glow and
shooting sparks into the darkness.

"And
we ain't got no neighbors," Harlin said, a smirk touching the corners of
his mouth.

"Is
she
your
wife?" Mary Grace asked the third man, the one whose name she
still didn't know. He seemed the calmest of the three, but in that calm lurked
a restlessness that made her more frightened of him than she was of the other
two.

"No,"
he answered, leaning on the door frame as though he hadn't a care in the world.
His eyes ran over
the sick woman's form, exposing the good side of his face, almost handsome in
the dim light. Mary Grace felt his gaze turn to her, but when she looked at his
eyes, they were focused on the far wall, as if the shadows held some
fascination for him.

"Well,
whosever wife she is, she seems pretty damn sick," Mary Grace said.

"You
got some mouth on you, girl," the man answered. "Where'd you come
from, anyway?"

"Yeah,"
Harlin seconded. "How'd you find this place, huh? How'd she find us,
Mason?"

Emily
reached out and placed a limp hand into Mary Grace's own. It was warm to the
touch, and Mary Grace put the back of her free hand against Emily's brow. Not
surprisingly, the woman was burning hot.

"I
fell from the sky, actually," Mary Grace answered, a note of exasperation
in her voice. She thought about her answer. It was true, almost. "What
difference does it make? We've got to do something about... this woman. Whose
wife is she, anyway?"

"Her
husband's dead," the third man said, pushing off from the wall and coming
into the room. "Died right after... well, you might say he died on his
wedding night." The three men laughed, and Mary Grace looked down at
Emily, questioningly.

"You
really did come from the sky, didn't you?" she asked, ignoring the men. It
took a lot out of her to say the words. Wilson put the glass of water to her
lips again and raised her head slightly to help her drink it. He looked up at
Mary Grace, pleading silently for her to agree with Emily. The dog howled
outside, a lonely, haunting call that ran down Mary Grace's back.