Sadie's Mountain (41 page)

Before I reach him, I’m yanked backward by my hair. I feel an intense blow to my back. I fall forward and roll, kicking and punching as hard as I can, making contact with some part of Donnie’s stone dense flesh.

My cheek stings as he swats me with the back of his hand so hard I taste metal in my mouth. I’m dizzy and out of breath as he yanks me up and flings me around so that I’m facing Dillon. He presses up against my back with his chest—just like before.

I want to run. But then I feel it. The cold end of his gun as it’s pressed into my temple. “I’m sorry, Dillon,” I say, closing my eyes. “This is all my fault.”

“Let her go, Donnie!” Dillon yells into the chilly mountain air. My eyes open and face reality.

The look on Dillon’s face at this moment will never leave me. He’s off the horse, holding his chest as his blue sweatshirt is gathering a darker color around his left hand.

“Dillon!” I cry. At the end of his outstretched arm is his weapon pointed straight at me—wishing I wasn’t in the way.

He squints his eyes, obviously in pain. His breathing is too fast, too shallow as blood comes out and moistens his lips a deep shade of crin. “Dillon! Go get help,” I say. My voice shakes. The knot in my throat is the size of a golf ball.

“I’m not leaving,” he says, clear, resolute. He coughs, wicking blood to the surface of his lips that he wipes with his shoulder. The dark spot around his hand is widening, and my knees feel about as sturdy as water.

“Drop your gun, Dillon,” Donnie says, in his booming cop voice. “I don’t got no problem shootin’ her right here, right now. Cept’, I was plannin’ on some alone time with ‘er first. But, hey, I’m just livin’ out the last moments ‘a my life right now, too. Think I’m gonna let y’all send me to prison?”

“If you’re caught, Donnie, why do you have to take her with you?” Dillon says, ignoring his demands, buying time. He keeps his gun up and takes a step backward. It doesn’t look planned. He’s stumbling, forcing himself to stay upright.

“Because she’s mine!” Donnie screams through my eardrum. With his right hand, he starts running his bear paw up my ribs under my right arm. I squirm in aversion to his touch.

Think strategy
, I tell myself. He doesn’t know I have Daddy’s gun strapped up under my other arm. I push it into my ribs until it hurts.

As his hand moves upward, I writhe in revulsion and he leans into my ear, whispers, “I’ll shoot ‘im again. This time it’ll be in the head. Hold still.”

I hold my breath. I’m helpless like a groped statue as he moves his hand up my coiled stomach. He stops just under my breast. I know what’s coming, but there’s nothing I can do to protect myself. 

“You see this,” he says, louder, directed at Dillon who’s just as helpless as I am. I blow out a pained breath as he begins to knead at my breast. I cannot look at Dillon. I’m so ashamed as forceful tears stain their way down my face. It makes me sick to my stomach, but my fear keeps everything down.

 “Keep your eyes open, boy,” he says, as he squeezes at me so hard that I cry out. 

“That’s how she likes it,” he says, as he lets go, and slowly moves his hand down my stomach, surely toward the apex of my thighs. “This is how I felt watchin’ you with her, all these years!” he hollers.

“Donnie!” Dillon says; it’s a demand to stop.

Just go numb
, I think.
I can’t do this again.

“I told ‘er she needs a real man,” he says, rubbing up against me with the sick arousal he has growing between his hips.

“Stop, Donnie!” Dillon yells through the pain, through the panic. He stumbles again and nearly falls, but keeps his gun straight and takes a step forward.

“Just remember who was here first,” Donnie says into my ear, relishing me as he starts to put his hand down the front of my pants. “And the last.”

Those words again just like in the shed. The feeling of being pinioned, being forced, being used by him again, now, right in front of Dillon, fills me with a rumble of adrenaline.

I look at Dillon directly in his eyes; will my thoughts into his brain. I nod slightly to where my gun is under my left arm as if I’m asking him for permission. He nods his head yes. ‘Do it,’ his eyes say as he points his gun, steady.

But Donnie is nearly all the way down the front of my pants. I squeeze my thighs shut. I can’t let this happen—not again. It’s at this precise moment when I know it. I will not let him turn me into a numb victim again.

I will not let him push me into the sickness that is his world. My hand moves across my chest, under my arm— just like in front of the mirror.

I feel the handle of the gun, and with the boots still harboring the evidence of the last time he tried to take my life, I stomp down making contact with his foot, turn and knee him in his groin.

I was quick enough,
I realize, as he cries out and bends at the waist, trying to ease the aching pain I’ve induced upon him for the first time in my life. I step back, widening my stance and cock the gun, my Daddy’s gun. The one he taught me with and I know is as precise as a thin piece of thread.

“You’ll never touch me again,” I say, my arm steady as I point my weapon at the teeth he uses to mask the demon hiding behind them. “Drop the gun!” I demand.

“Bitch, I ain’t droppin’ my gun,” he says, trying to straighten his back.

“Sadie,” Dillon wheezes from behind me. “I’ve got this. Just call for help,” he says, and coughs.

“Yeah, Dillon’s got this, Sadie.” Donnie laughs; it echoes all around us. “We’re all gonna die today,” his voice bounces around the trees like a demon. “It’s just a matter ‘a who I’m gonna shoot first.”

How many times have I wished him dead? How many times have I visualized the look on his face as he realizes I’ve killed him? He’s straightening his back, as his hand squeezes around his gun. Dillon needs help right now. And Donnie is just in the way.

I move my gun slightly to the left and close my left eye to take aim with the right one—just like Daddy taught me. Donnie sees it in my eyes. Just like I did in the mirror last night. These eyes are alive again. These eyes are proof that I’m a survivor. He straightens his back and begins to lift his arm.

 I squeeze the trigger.

The vibration of the golden bullet sliding against the metal gun barrel reverberates through my arm, through the air like I’ve let lose my fears in that one crush of my finger against the curved metal trigger. Donnie’s arm flings backward as the bullet rips through his forearm causing him to let go of his gun.

With my arm still outstretched, I walk toward him, relishing the stunned, terrified look on his face as he holds his arm. I kick his gun, slamming it into the trunk of a tree. As I stand here, my feet are firmly planted to the ground—the ground of my ancestors, the ground that he chased me from but I’ve reclaimed again.

I feel the crisp air as it passes by the skin on my face, my outstretched hand. I hear the cooing of doves; Dillon’s pained breaths from behind me. Everything is suddenly so very clear.

As Donnie’s eyes line up in front of my gun, I know what I have to do. I have every reason to; no jury in the world would convict me for it.

But, I don’t want him to die. Dying is too easy. He needs to pay for what he’s done. He needs to be penned up like an animal. He needs to feel it—what he’s lost, every day. He needs to rot.

“What are you waitin’ for?” he asks. “Just do it!”

“Dillon, please call for help,” I say, clearly, but resolute. That’s when I hear him fall. It’s a soft thud. An emptiness in the air where he should be standing. “Dillon?” I yell, frantically, never taking my eyes off Donnie.

“I’m okay,” he says through pained breaths, but I don’t believe him.

“Just put the gun down,” says a breathless voice from the trees.

“Who’s out there?” I yell, as Officer Howard comes out, pointing his gun.

“I’ve got this, Sadie,” he says, winded but forcing his voice to seem calm. “I’m gonna handcuff him. Just put your gun down.”

“Dillon needs help. Is someone coming to help us?” I ask. My voice echoes against the trees. I back up with the gun still pointed at my opponent who’s on his knees, his head bowed and limp, his arms empty and powerless. He looks defeated. The ice finally broke under him, and with that, the link between us seems to fizzle away like dead leaves crumbled in my outstretched hand.

“We need a rescue chopper, now! Two shot. One in custody,” he says, into his radio.

I hear the static laden response as Officer Howard pushes Donnie face-first onto the ground, pulls his arms behind his back, and clicks the metal handcuffs in place. “You have the right to remain silent...”

I tear myself away from this scene. A scene I thought I’d never see. Donnie in handcuffs.

 “Dillon,” I say, as I crawl over to the man I love. Put my right hand under his head and press the wound with my other hand, cradling him like he’d done to me the first time we were able to physically express our love for one another.

“Sadie,” he says, and coughs. Gently, I wipe his mouth with my jacket sleeve.

“Dillon, baby. Look at me,” I beg.

He opens his eyes and I stare into those Tahoe blues, try not to panic at the sight of blood wheezing out of his mouth in a fine mist. I hear the buzz of Dillon’s phone.
It must be Jenny
. She’s calling about the blog—but that can wait.

What can I do? How can I help him?

The verse from the Song of Songs that Dillon quoted to me, “the season of singing has come.” That’s when I remember the song. The one he taught me on his granddaddy’s dulcimer. The one that I was singing when we ran into each other on this mountain. And I know if there’s anything that can reach him now, it’s that song.

 “I’m going to sing to you, baby. Our song, but you have to promise to stay with me. They’re coming for us with a helicopter. But you have to stay awake,” I say, pressing my palm into his wound, trying to stop the outpouring of his life into my hand.

“I promise,” he says, his breathing is short and unsteady. He’s forcing a smile, trying to be strong—for me.

“You are my flower,” I sing to my lover, my best friend.

“that’s blooming in the mountain for me

You are my flower

that’s blooming there for me

Hmmm...hmmmm...hmmmm.”

As I’m finishing the first part of the song, I hear the chopping sound of the helicopter rotor as it comes to rescue us. Men rush toward us. They place him on an orange gurney as I hum the song to him. The one that he taught me a lifetime ago, back when life had grace and dignity.

“Hold my hand,” I say, “Don’t let go,” as men load him into the helicopter and pull me in beside him.

“I won’t let go,” he says, as they cut his shirt from his chest, and examine the bloody hole left behind by a brother’s sinful obsession. “Sing to me, darlin’” he asks, and so I do.

“The air is just as pure

The sunlight just as free

And nature seems to say

It’s all for you and me

Hmmm...hmmmm...hmmmm.”

My voice mixed with the whipping sound of the rotor is almost as soothing to me as it is to Dillon. I look down and see the man who took everything from me. He’s handcuffed, defeated. He’s small like a driver’s license photo, and getting smaller as we climb upward, force strength into the wind, and leave him behind where he belongs.

I look at Dillon, and sing,

“You are my flower

that’s blooming in the mountain for me

You are my flower

that’s blooming there for me”

Hmmmm...hmmmm....hmmmm...”

And as we fly away from the mountain, my hand in Dillon’s like knotted wood, I wonder if this is what justice feels like? It
is
a little bit like having wings.

Epilogue

I’d heard it once at a wedding as the couple said their vows, but it’s never made more sense to me than now.
“Love is friendship...caught fire,”
they said.

I can think back to when we were kids, our shoes slapping against this dirt path on our way to swim, or to try our luck at catching red tinged trout in Rich Creek. I can hear us giggling under our tree, the one that as I look up, still has the shabby rope tied to it, now threadbare, weathered and worn. My breath comes out in puffs. It’s December now—white ice and snow covers everything in a fine lining of mostly see-through white.

What I know is that our friendship is the foundation for such a profound connection that my life has been forever altered by it—I wouldn’t be the person I am had I not been blessed with him, with his essence of kindness.

“Dillon. Look,” I say, pointing up. “It’s still here. Your rope. The one you’d climbed up there to tie. You accidentally fell and I couldn’t stop laughing. Remember?”

When I look behind me, he’s not there. “Dillon?” I say. “Where are you?”

“Here,” he says, and I start walking toward his voice, crackling ice and snow under my feet.

“Don’t play with me. You make me nervous,” I say.

“Ah, but I have a surprise for you,” his voice says, and I follow as the wind blows my hair out from the warm hat around in gentle circles.

When I make it to the rock with the woman’s face embedded into its façade, it feels like a moment of déjà vu—oddly familiar but a reminder that I’m right where I’m supposed to be.

“Dillon?” I say, looking around.

As he walks out from behind the rock, I watch as his boots stroke the ground on his way up to me. He’s smiling that secret smile. The one when he’s hiding something from me—something good.

As if in slow motion, he bends down on one knee and holds up his hand for me to place mine in his.

Oh my gosh! This is happening!

“Sadie Jane Sparks,” his voice is soft, earnest, “you are my best friend, my love, my joy, my dream manifested. Will you be my wife?”

He’s smiling the I’m-yours smile. I hold his hand for dear life. I want to memorize this moment—paint it in my mind with soft wet brushes.