The Benders (4 page)

“You okay?” he asks, reaching for me. His eyes travel over my body, looking for injury.

I nod and pull him forward. “Ethan.”

We run to the truck cab. Stepping over the dead man is awful, but I’m so worried about my brother I manage to avoid looking at the splattered pieces. Yanking open the door, I haul myself into the cab.

“Ethan?”

My brother sits with his back to the passenger’s side door with Clay’s knife clutched in his fist. His eyes are wide and his hands tremble, but he’s alive.

“You okay, bud?” I ask, crawling across the bench seat toward him.

His eyes drag up to my face and slowly he nods. He points through the open driver’s side door to where the body now rests in the dirt. “That guy said he was gonna eat me.”

“He ain’t eating nobody,” I say, resting a hand on Ethan’s hair. I stroke his fine brown locks and offer a smile. “You knew we were coming for you, right?”

He nods again, this time a little more surely. “You always come.”

My smile deepens. “That’s right. I’ll always come.”

He looks out the window. “But I could’ve taken that bastard.”

I raise an eyebrow. “You coulda, huh?”

He nods, showing me the hunting knife. “I remembered all you taught me. I saw him coming up the walk. I didn’t yell ‘cause I thought I could maybe deal with him myself. But he was bigger than I thought. And the crossbow.” He leans over and looks down at the mangled body bleeding into the dust. “If he hadn’t had the crossbow, I coulda killed him.”

“Listen, Ethan”—I say, feeling cold despite the baking heat outside—“I know you’re nine now and working on being a man, but you’re still a kid. You shouldn’t be taking on men like that by yourself.” I take the knife from his hand. “Next time you see someone coming, holler. You got no idea what these people can do. He could’ve had a gun.”

Ethan frowns. “Clay says I need to learn to defend myself. How’m I gonna do that if I never get the chance to fight?”

I glance at Clay, who’s been listening all this time. Suddenly he’s real interested in the dead man’s pockets. I blow out a breath. “You don’t need to go looking for a fight. Fights seem to come to us.”

Ethan says nothing. I grab his shoulder. “Look at me.” He glances up and then back at his knees. “Look at me, Ethan. Do you think Mama would be happy if something happened to you?”

He sniffs. “Mama’s dead.”

It’s like a punch. I suck in my cheeks. “She died saving your life. Don’t throw it away pretending to be a man.”

Ethan stares up at me with tear-filled eyes. “You’re acting just like dad when you wanted to go into town. He didn’t want
you
to learn how to fight, but look what happened.”

“I was sixteen.”

Ethan stares into my face, his eyes hollow and his chin trembling. “Doesn’t matter when someone’s trying to kill you.”

I take a breath, but he turns, opens the passenger door, and slips out before I can stop him.

“Ethan!” I call as he runs over the yard and up the porch.

A hand on my arm stops me from going after him. Clay slides into the truck beside me.

“I’m not his Mama,” I say. “I can’t do this.”

Clay puts his arm around my shoulder. “Ri, there’s nothing you cannot do.”

I sigh and lean my head into his shoulder. “If only that were true.”

That day we sleep inside my parents’ farm house. Ethan holes himself up in Mama and Arn’s room upstairs. Through the cracks in the floor, I hear him crying. Maybe stopping here was a bad idea. Clay and I decide to let him have the house for a little while and take refuge in the barn. It’s cooler there and the animal smell has faded.

Before we settle down, I poke around Arn’s workbench and find a few of the tools no one wanted. The broken chair’s still upturned on the workbench, waiting to be fixed. I touch his rags and his stool, worn smooth by him sliding on and off all those times.

“Hard to face the past, ain’t it?”

I turn and Clay’s standing beside Arn’s shelves, peering into them. All the useful stuff’s gone, but Clay touches the few items that remain—a broken saw handle, a rusty screw driver, an empty glass jar.

“I met Arn only once, but he seemed like a right decent fella.” Clay sets the glass jar down and looks at me. “What was he like?”

“Arn?” I ask, running a finger along the rough wood of the desk. “Quiet. Hardworking. Good at fixin’ stuff. You know, like most men out here.” I swallow over a giant lump in my throat.

“He wasn’t like most men,” Clay says, leaning against the work bench. “He hid three women under the noses of the Breeders
and
my pa. Had guts.” Clay thumps his fist against the desk, one corner of his mouth lifting. Then he goes quiet. “I ever tell you how he died?”

I lower my eyes to the dirt and slowly shake my head. “Do I wanna hear?”

Clay rubs a hand along his neck and sighs. “I don’t have to if you don’t want.”

I take in a deep breath. “Tell.”

Clay nods, running a hand down my arm. “When I got back from lockin’ you and Ethan in the cellar, they’d already overtaken your parents. Had ’em pinned down behind your kitchen table. My pa called out, sayin’ if they came out easy, no one would be hurt. But Arn seemed too smart for all that noise. He walked your ma and Auntie out, and just when he was about to hand ’em over, he lunged at my pa. Almost got ’im with a knife. My pa was so shocked he stumbled down the porch and fell on his ass.” Clay shakes his head. “That’s when he told his boys to shoot Arn.”

“That’s an awful story,” I say, rubbing a hand over my mouth.

“What I meant to say was, Arn never stopped fightin’. Until the last.”

I say nothing, just stare at Arn’s workbench and try to remember—he had deep-blue eyes that winked out of his tan face like a sliver of sky peeking through clouds. And he loved my Mama. Loved her fiercely. I hope they’re together somewhere, Arn and Mama.

“He wasn’t your pa, though, right?”

How have we never talked about this? “Nuh-uh,” I say, shaking my head. “He was Ethan’s daddy, but I’m a Breeder’s baby. No daddy for me.”

Clay goes back to peering into stacks of yellowing how-to manuals. “Everybody’s got a daddy, even if yours left a deposit and went on his merry way.”

I stop, my hands on the dusty wood of Arn’s desk. It’s strange, but I never really stopped to think about having a father before. Most of the time I pictured doctors concocting me out of some goop and hatching me in a petri dish, but I know that’s not the case.

“You think one of the men at the hospital provided the…stuff that made me happen?” I ask, squeezing my hands together.

Clay nods. “Somebody had to. Mostly likely candidate would be a doctor or one of the staff. I doubt they take
deposits
from outsiders.”

I run my hands over my arms. This line of talk is twisting my insides. All this time I pictured myself made up of only my mama. And yet, Clay’s right. There has to be a man who makes up the other half of me. The idea spawns countless other thoughts—what he looked like, what he was interested in—until my head’s spinning.

Clay comes over and takes me in his arms. I press my face to the worn softness of his button-down shirt. “Don’t waste your time wondering about a father you may or may not have,” he whispers into the crook of my neck. “It don’t change who you are.”

I nod, and his lips find the soft places along my collar, turning my worry into want. I tilt my head up toward his and he cups my chin with his hand. He leans in to kiss me and kiss me he does. His mouth moves expertly over mine until my body burns for him. He pulls me closer. I wrap my arms around his neck and press my lips to his throat, to the V of skin peering through the fabric of his shirt. I let my fingers undo the buttons there and touch the smooth, lean muscles of his chest. He breathes against my collarbone as his hands lace into my hair and pull my lips back to his. Then he lifts me into his arms and carries me into the fresh hay.

In the dark and stillness of the barn, we’re together. Together is all I’ve ever wanted.

At dusk we head back to the house to find Ethan. He’s curled in the corner of my mama and Arn’s old room asleep. Tear streaks trace through the dirt on his peaceful, sleeping face. I squat before him and touch a finger to those trails of tears. The problem is, I still see the baby I carried on my hip. The roundness of his cheeks, the pout in his lips. I probably won’t be able to think of him as a man when he’s twenty, let alone nine.

Clay squats beside me and looks Ethan over. “He keeps asking me to teach him to shoot, to fist fight,” Clay whispers. “I think he’s seen too many people die. It’s messed with his head.” Clay sighs and drums his finger on his knees. “Wish I coulda kept him from seein’ all he has.”

I nod. “I wish he could just be a kid, you know.” I lift my eyes to the window and the graying sky. “I had such a happy childhood. My parents sheltered me from most of the bad stuff. I’ve failed at that.”

Clay shakes his head. “You do what you can. We all do. “Sides, he needs to be tough. It’ll keep him alive.” Then he puts his palm on Ethan’s shoulder and gives it a gentle shake. “Bud, wake up. Time to go.”

Ethan stirs, his lips twitching. Eyes flutter open. “What’s going on?”

Clay stands, brushing dirt off his knees. Then he presses his cowboy hat on his head and lifts his chin, all business. “Tonight we drive to town and I take back what was mine.”

The road is dark and empty as we drive in tense silence toward town. Even though I barely slept during the day, the raw anxiety about driving back into town squeezes my insides. We need to get Auntie back. After the sheriff was killed, there’s no telling what happened to her. Clay seems to think he’s got plenty of men in town loyal to him and not to the warden, but he’s been gone for a few months. There’s no telling what these men might think of him now. Still, I’ve promised Clay my trust, and he’s assured me he has this handled.

The drive is eerily familiar. Memories of driving this path in reverse as we fled the sheriff and went in search of my mama and Auntie play in my mind as we drive over the moon-drenched patches of pitted highway. I recognize car husks and abandoned buildings. The only sound is our truck burning through the night.

When the barricade appears across the road, I lose myself to worry. The town’s barricade is made up of pillars of wood, topped with barbed wire and broken glass. A twenty-foot watch tower holds an armed guard ready to shoot anyone who seems out of sorts. It’s a bad situation no matter how you slice it.

Clay pulls the truck behind a mound of concrete rubble that used to be a shop and kills the engine.

“I’ll go on foot from here,” he says, grabbing a backpack and filling it with guns, most of our ammo, and some water. “I’ll find out who of my compadres is still inside and rally the troops. Then I’ll pop back out to collect you.”

I bite my lip to hold back the flood of uncertainty that’s threatening to spill over. He makes it all sound so easy, but nothing in this life goes down just like you think it oughta.

“If you’re sure,” I say.
Trust,
I remind myself.
You promised to trust him.

He locks eyes with me and gives me his confident smile, blue eyes blazing. “Before I left, there were guys in there who would lay down their life for me. I know some of ‘em still will.” He leans in and pecks me on the forehead and ruffles Ethan’s hair. “I’ll leave you the shotgun. Just sit tight. Be back in a few hours.”

“And if you aren’t?” I ask, unable to stop myself. All of this feels rushed, ill-advised. “I mean, what if you don’t come back? How long should we wait until we come for you?”

“Can’t we stay with you, Clay?” Ethan whines, his head drooping in his forlorn puppy-dog look.

This time Clay ignores Ethan’s sad, brown eyes. “I’ll come back. Don’t worry.”

And he’s gone, out the door, loping into the moonlight with his limping gait. He looks so strong and confident striding over the desert that I almost believe this plan will work.

Almost.

I wake to the driver’s side door creaking open. I fell asleep? Dammit. The empty rifle comes up in my arms before I can even see who it is. “Stay where you—”

“Ri,” Clay says, holding his hands out. “It’s me.”

“You’re back.” I sit up, stretching the kinks out of my neck. It must be nearing dawn. The sky’s a gray-blue and the horizon sports the thinnest rays of pink dawn.

Ethan stirs from where he’s lying on my lap and looks up. “Clay.”

I study Clay’s face for an answer on how things went down, but his jaw is tight and his brow furrowed. “How’d it go?”

“Okay,” he says hesitantly. “I think it went okay. I met up with two of my old stompin’ buddies. Told ’em what I wanted to do. They say they’re behind me.”

“Just like that?” I ask, setting the rifle down. “They’re ready to go up against the warden just like that?”

Clay nods. “Warden is a ruthless bastard and a terrible leader. Greedy, selfish. They told me a story ’bout him gutting a tower guard and leavin’ him moanin’, insides spilled in the street, for fallin’ asleep on guard duty. My friends figure it won’t take much to turn everyone against him.”

“Okay,” I say. “What’s the plan?”

Ethan sits up straighter. “We goin’ in shooting?” The glee in his voice is disturbing.

I shush him, but Clay smiles at my brother. “Goin’ in shootin’ ain’t always the way to go, little man. Goin’ in quiet, that’s the best way. That’s how we’ll do it. My boys are gonna let us in the gate tomorrow night when all’s quiet. They’ll set us up with a place to hide while we build up a team. Then we strike when the time is right.” Clay punches his fist into his palm with the bullet wound in the middle, making a dull
thunk
.

He’s so confident, so happy, I almost feel happy, too. I push down my dread and bring up a smile. “Let’s go over the plan, and then you need to get some shut-eye. You have a big night ahead of you.”

We go over the town’s layout, the names of his friends, the warden’s cronies. We talk about weapons, who’s good at shooting and who can’t shoot worth a lick. We imagine scenarios until my brain hurts. Ethan, bored after the first twenty minutes, has moved into the truck bed and practices cocking and firing an empty revolver.