Dynomite: A Stepbrother Cowboy Romance (27 page)

Sequoia continued to bawl. “Who the fuck cares if these two are stepsiblings? They’re not related by blood! Threatening to out them is like…like…”

I had gone to stand beside Sequoia. Not only was he my best friend aside from Dyno, he was the one with the gun. “The pot calling the kettle black!” I shouted helpfully.

“Let’s get ’im out of here,” one cowboy said to the other, and they began shuffling Marcus away.

Suddenly Dyno was behind me. “I ain’t letting him get away with this this time,” he muttered.

The second Dyno stepped in front of me, there was a flash of light. It blinded me for a few moments, and the loud report of the gun deafened me.

I stood there stunned while everyone around me scattered.

“Get out!” “Run!” “He shot him!” “Get the gun from him!”

In the confusion I didn’t know who was doing what. I tried to find Sequoia. He was underneath several pairs of stomping feet as men dashed right over him. I soon figured out Dyno had tackled him to the ground and was trying to wrest the gun away from him. It went off again, hitting the building. The two cowboys were still dragging Marcus inside the pool office, but now Marcus was dead weight on the ground, his cowboy boots skewed at strange angles, a brilliant splash of red on his chest that was turning almost green under the fluorescent lights.

It was clearly time to go. In my peripheral vision I saw at least a dozen people dialing their cells, no doubt calling 911.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

What was I thinking? Honestly, I wasn’t. Wasn’t thinking.

It was just human instinct to want to run from trouble.

Everyone at the fundraiser would know within seconds it was Sequoia who had shot the gun. Maybe I thought I could buy us a few more hours of peace, that was it. In any event, the three of us wound up running back to my car in the parking lot. We had to race right through the event, past white tablecloth-covered picnic tables, past the auctioneer standing behind the podium, his face white as yogurt. I remember seeing some people even dropping their wineglasses as we raced past. One guy had a forkful of something held up to his mouth, still as a statue. Time seemed to freeze.

No one followed as we piled into my car. I had my small purse on a thin strap around my neck, so I easily got my car keys out and started it up.

“Peel out!” shouted Sequoia.

“Where we going?” I asked.

“Wherever!” Sequoia said. He was in the back seat, and I remember looking in my rearview mirror at him. He’d somehow managed to swipe a fifth of whiskey from the bar area as we’d run past it. “As long as it’s away from this snobby, elitist place!”

Uncapping the bottle, he took a few swigs. His sigh was so deep I could smell the liquor from the driver’s seat. “Dyno, I’m never going to make it. I’m a loser, like they all always said.”

“It’ll be all right.” Dyno’s response to me seemed sort of lame. How could it possibly be all right? Sequoia had just shot my uncle. As much as Marcus deserved it, the law wouldn’t see it that way. Sequoia was right.

He was pretty fucking doomed.

DYNO

S
equoia was pretty
well screwed.

I knew it, but what was the point in talking about it? It was like taking a condemned man out for his last meal. April drove sedately once we were out of Last Chance town limits and into the unincorporated area where Hardscrabble resided.

Since it wasn’t like we were actually trying very hard to run from anyone, she slowed down to obey the speed limit and turned onto her own property. We were driving calmly as though in a parade, like we were wearing flashy cowboy hats and had flags fluttering from our antenna.

Only, we were driving a murderer.

I’d seen murder enough times to know that pervy uncle was dead. He was nothing but buzzard bait, and from what I’d known of him outside of his inclinations to fondle young girls, he was still a disliked man. Maybe a true cattleman can see a fake one a mile off. Marcus Seaver was as crooked as a barrel of fishhooks. He was so dirty he had horns holding up his halo. I knew they wouldn’t break any sound barriers looking for us, and I was right. For a while.

Without asking her to, April drove right past my corral, past my new cow boss’ home that used to be Javier’s. As luck would have it, there was a wide-open, glorious full moon, a blue moon, the second of the month. I could easily see the pathetic stand of birch trees I’d planted in the front yard in an effort to feel homey. Planting those trees now seemed like a hundred years ago. The knowledge that my best friend would be rotting in jail soon hung heavy over our procession.

But Sequoia sure didn’t seem to think much on it. Did he even remember that he’d just shot a man in the heart? He breathed booze on us from the back seat and we didn’t try to stop him from drinking. “I just tore up my last welfare check,” he bawled. “I said ‘Dad, we’ve got more pride than this. If I can’t make a success of myself in this life and support you like you deserve, then I don’t deserve to live.”

“Don’t say that,” I said for the millionth time.

“This universe is unpredictable! If I could get ahold of some jimson weed I could gain control, but that’s a risky thing, man. That’s a risky thing. It’s a risky thing, man.”

He was stuck in one of those loops again, and I was glad when April stopped the car near the Bull Gravy statue. We got out, leaving Sequoia muttering to himself in the back seat about drinking jimson weed. Apparently if he had a vision while under the effect of jimson, it would come true. He expected to gain riches this way. I knew it was part of his Cahuilla culture, but it still seemed a paltry thing to hang your hat on. Superstitiously expecting a plant to do wonders for your life seemed bound to end in misery and disappointment.

“He still has that gun?” April asked me.

“Yeah. I tried getting it away from him, but you saw what happened.”

“He’s a loose cannon, Dyno. Anything can happen when he’s in this mood.”

“As we’ve seen. I’m sorry about what happened. I was trying to subdue him but he kept getting more and more worked up.”

April sighed deeply. I put my arms around her from behind so we could both look at Bull Gravy, silvery and majestic in the moonlight, his erect dong glowing majestically. “I’m surprised how little I feel about it. He was dead, wasn’t he?”

“He gave up his guitar for a harp,” I confirmed.

She sighed again. “It was just as well. I don’t think he was ever going to stop trying to play with my bazongas.”

I bristled. “Is
that
what he was doing? I thought he gave up on that after that—seven years ago.” Even I was smart enough to never bring up that incident. I’d forgiven April for not standing up for me then, but not Cliff or Marcus. Their cover-up had only served to perpetuate the strife between April and me. We’d been finally mature enough to rise above it.

“Apparently not. He was threatening to expose our relationship to my dad, to the world. He said he knew you were the one who stole Bull Gravy, and he was going to dredge all that shit up again. Tell the mayor. Have you arrested, I guess, unless I let him suckle my watermelons.”

I held her at arm’s length. “Stop saying that! I don’t want to fucking hear it, do you understand, Miss Squarepants? I don’t want to think about any fucker nuzzling your melons while I was out back trying to subdue this fucking handful of a snot-slinging drunk.”

“It’s hardly your fault, sweetest! You were dealing, I was dealing, it sure seems like we’re surrounded with a lot of people who need dealing with. What’re we going to do about Sequoia?”

It was my turn to sigh deeply and fold my arms across my chest. “Fuck it. If we can get him to pass out, I can disarm him then. I mean, he’s going to jail. There’s no question about it. He shot Marcus in front of two dozen witnesses. There’s no getting out of this one.”

“It might mitigate it—a lot—if I say he was defending me against Marcus. Which he was.”

“Which he was. Hey, let’s take him up to those rocks. Make a fire. Let him have a few more happy moments before he has to face the music.”

“All right.” April looked at me with what I can only call adoration. “You have a soft spot for the outcasts, don’t you? You’re the only one who befriended Sequoia. I’ve never known him to have a friend. Except me. We used to play hide and seek and that sort of childish stuff until I grew up. Then even I shunned him. I feel terrible about it. You know how teens are. Wanting to run with the trendy crowds.”

“I felt sorry for him. I guess I wanted to be a savior. I wanted to bring him up by his bootstraps and elevate him above the common man. I wanted him to realize his potential and all of that Horatio Alger crap. But he never did, did he?”

“I think it’s because he felt doomed to begin with. He never had faith that he could rise above the muck. When your parents keep beating you down it’s hard to gain self-esteem. I should know. When my mother died I suffered a horrible crisis of faith.”

I gathered her close again. I kissed the warm crown of her head. “Well, you’ve got me now. I believe in you.” I really did. I believed in her so much, my brain was already wandering to Marcus’s will. His fifty-one percent of the ranch had gone to that fluff-headed wife of his because California was a community property state. But wasn’t there something about inheritances not being community property? Who, then, had Marcus willed it to? He had no kids—that we knew of. If April could somehow at least get the majority of the ranch, I knew she’d turn it into the finest ranch in the Coachella Valley.

She gave my neck an affectionate bite. “And I believe you’ll go to nationals in Vegas. You’re a born natural, Dyno. You’ll win the purse.”

“Still want me to quit?”

She was silent at that for a few seconds. “Maybe after Vegas.”

“Hey!” Sequoia was trying to get out of the Mustang. “Maybe we can find some jimson weed out here!”

She asked me, “Do you know what he’s talking about?”

“It’s
datura
, a highly toxic plant. I’ve seen it around here. Seen one cow die after eating it.”

“Okay. Maybe you can pretend you found some. Use something non-toxic.”

“Good idea. Can you gather wood? Use your cell as a flashlight.”

So we mustered up a campfire, which was actually sort of homey for a while. Sequoia sat on a flat rock I’d placed nearby, not close enough to fall into the fire or blow up his whiskey bottle.

It was hard, looking at Sequoia and seeing a dead man. Maybe April was right, though. Maybe she could argue her mitigating circumstances. I didn’t know how many people had seen Marcus maul her, but her testimony was good in the community. Miss Last Chance Rodeo Queen 2008 had a lot of sway in a cow town like that. And she single-handedly ran one of the biggest ranches in the valley. Sequoia wouldn’t get life.

“Jimson weed is used for broken bones,” Sequoia went on. “It knocks people out while the bones heal.”

I’d found some white flowers that he’d seemed to believe were jimson weed. “I can’t make you a tea, and I don’t want you eating this raw.”

Sequoia held up a hand. “That’s all right, my friend. I might as well be dead anyway. I’ve seen the other side. Have you?”

“Oh, plenty of times,” I muttered.

“I’ve seen it in my dreams, so I’m not afraid of death. There are spirits there who guide you through everything. It’s called
temelkis
, the land of the dead. All the
nukatem
live there, people from Creation Time. When are we getting our own place together, Dyno? Like we just talked about?”

He remembered two hours ago, a good sign. “Why don’t you just move in with me in Javier’s old house?”

“Oh, that’s a good idea,” April said enthusiastically. “It’s got three bedrooms. It’ll be fine for Sequoia and you.”

I mumbled, “What about when you and I want to move in together?”

That was abrupt, I knew. But things had been happening hell-bent for leather lately. Why the fuck not move in together?

April shrugged. “I never thought about that. Javier’s house is better for you, closer to the corral and the pens and all that. But my house is definitely nicer.”

“You’re leaving me?” bawled Sequoia. “We haven’t even moved in together and you’re already leaving me?”

I stopped stirring the embers with my stick. “No, I’m not leaving you, Yazzie! Don’t worry. We’re friends through thick and thin. We’re blood brothers.”

Suddenly Sequoia yelled, “Dyno! Don’t let them kill me without you, the survivors, holding the ritual! Ask my dad! He knows it!
Nukatem
need to participate, otherwise my
tewlavelem
won’t be able to cross over.”

“All right,” I assured him. “No one’s killing you, but if they do, I’ll make sure to ask your dad about the ceremony.”

“Good,” said Sequoia, swigging from the almost-empty bottle. “If I make it there, I can still send you guys advice and help. Wow. That is one damned hung bull.”

April giggled. “Makes sense that Dyno stole it. He doesn’t want any competition.”

“Hey now,” I said.

Sequoia said, “You love April, don’t you, Dyno? Say it aloud. If you never say it aloud it won’t be true and it’ll just die.”