Haints Stay (16 page)

The boy was dressed. Mary was excited for the chicken.

“Are we safe ?” said Mary.

“Yes,” said Martha.

“Is it over ?” said the boy.

“No,” said Martha. “When I'm gone you'll have to kill and cook the
chickens yourself. You will need to keep yourselves hidden and protected. Do you
know how to fire a pistol ?”

They did not.

She showed them how to pull the hammer back, point, and told them to
squeeze the trigger firmly.

“It is not a difficult thing to do,” said Martha, “firing a gun. But you
will find it difficult to hit your mark at first and I recommend you practice.”

“Show us,” said Mary.

“I am leaving,” said Martha.

“Where are you going ?” said the boy.

“After that man,” said Martha.

“Why ?” asked the children.

“Because he has taken a child and he was the man who
killed your father, Mary.”

“John was not my father.”

“Yes, he was,” said Martha. “He raised you. He was a father to you. He
made us a home. He was a good man who did not cross lines. He should be
avenged.”

“How do you know it was that man ?” said Mary.

“I feel it,” said Martha.

“Don't go,” said the boy.

“I am going,” said Martha. “You will do as fine without me as you did
with me.”

“It's not true,” said Mary.

“What is a venge ?” said the boy.

“Stay hidden,” said Martha, “and keep yourselves protected.”

To this day, Brooke did not know why his brother returned when he
did. He'd had no reason to. Their business was finished and they had not had much
love for one another growing up, outside of the unavoidable amount that came with
the need to know yourself a little better and have some camaraderie over the
miseries of your particular childhood. It goes without saying that their father was
a rough man. They had not known their mother. From Brooke's earliest memory, Sugar
had been a boy and their father had treated him as such. It was not until they were
old enough to ride horses and kill snakes with traps that Brooke identified Sugar's
body as being different from his own. And it was only a short while later that he
began to develop an urge toward those differences. They had a white room. A
cluttered white room that was used for no particular purpose other than storage. It
held the sunlight like a lamp. The windows sagged
and spiders hung
in the panes. Sugar was gentle then, but his father took that from them. Their
father toughened both of the boys until they were mean and capable. To the best of
Brooke's knowledge, that man was Sugar's first. Brooke had found them in that
cluttered white room. Everything had some bit of the man's blood on it. Every object
in the room announced what the boy had done and that they were now alone and without
a plan for how to proceed. There was a knife in Sugar's hand and he was crying. His
hand was as thickly covered as the blade it held. They buried their father where
they buried men and women who wandered beyond their fence, just beneath the apple
trees behind the house. It was a fertile yard. They had not cleaned the white room
but had sealed it off and let it stand. Years passed. They knew how to farm. They
knew how to trade. They made do. Most people did not ask about their father. He was
not well liked. One man came asking, claiming the man owed him some money for a pony
the boys did not know, and had heard nothing of. It seemed like a lie. A pony. What
use would their father have for a single pony ? Men were always talking to them
about ponies, as if it were the only thing boys knew or had any interest in. Sugar
had gone wild at this point, and would scream until whatever it was that was setting
him off changed in some way. Sugar set to screaming at the man who came asking about
the money for the pony and Sugar moved the man down the hill and down the road with
the screaming he did. The man protested and tried to stand strong but there was
something wild and frightening about Sugar in that mood and it would have taken a
very strong and confident person to stand against him. This man was too full of
flinches. He did not come back after he was finally gone. One night, years into
their life together on the farm, for no obvious reason, Sugar showed Brooke what
their father had liked to do to him. They got along, the brothers.
They worked in equal measure. Their days were not particularly difficult to get
through. There was no purpose to any of what they were doing outside of getting it
done and having enough to do it all again the next day. They lived like lizards. Or
the way apples keep coming back and falling to the earth. They sat on the porch
sometimes and drank grain alcohol and did not say much. When they did what their
father had liked to do, Brooke sometimes worried that Sugar would kill him. He would
vow never to do it again. But he always did it again, whenever the urge came — which
was fairly regular — until the day the barn burned and they lost their house. They
lost their minds a bit that night too. There was no way of knowing how the fire
started. A lamp in the barn, maybe, and a cow or a fox or a gust of wind. It didn't
matter. It mattered that the house lit and the fire spread and it was dry and had
been dry and everything had just been begging to burn. They took two horses and rode
to town. There was no fire there. So they went back and brought some of it to town
with them. Torches made out of tools from the barn. They were not good boys. They
were on the cusp of becoming not good men. It was a small town and the people had
not expected the kind of evil every man is capable of, if he has a partner and the
right state of mind. They brought the town down around them as the fire had brought
down their barn and their home and any claims they had to a legacy or permanence.
People died, but Brooke did not know how many people. More than he could think to
count, it was likely. They screamed and came spilling out of the buildings. One man
was diligent enough with the well and bucket to keep the fire from spreading to his
front porch for a time. There were houses scattered in the countryside that bled out
from the edges of the town, but Brooke and Sugar did not
bother with
the glut. There had been no plan and they were not clinical in their state, so they
finished the edges of what they'd started and left the town for the wilderness. They
rode for several days before Sugar split. It had been at least two since they could
last smell the smoke. Sugar made whatever kind of noise he wanted packing his bag
and saddling his horse, but offered no farewell or any other proper acknowledgment
of what was soon to pass between them. Still, there was no attempt to hide his
actions or intent. Rather than rising to join him or chase after him or even demand
that he explain himself, Brooke had simply watched his brother go and figured that
was the end of it. When Sugar finally returned years later — much in the fashion
that he had left — Brooke only noticed one discernible difference. Sugar didn't
scream anymore.

And Martha left. They called after her but she did not flinch. She
found a gelding in the same stable the killer had pulled from. She was not a fan of
bareback but had no time for saddling. She nudged the horse's shoulders, delicately
directing him over to a crate that would give her the height she needed to mount him
with little additional effort. She took the ride slowly at first, letting the horse
get a sense of her body and getting her own sense of the way the horse would respond
when she shifted her weight. She was not experienced, but the horse was
understanding and patient. After a few moments, she dug in and set off down the path
in pursuit of the killer.

The baby would not stop crying. Sugar did not know what to do or
where to go because he did not know the territory. Here, the
trees
were shorter than the ones he'd known, thicker and closer together. You could not
ride fast through these woods. They were heading higher and higher up between the
mountain ridges on either side. It was getting colder. There was a body hanging from
a tree overhead and Sugar passed beneath it slowly. He did not recognize the
clothing or the man. He felt then that this was what they had planned for him all
along. There would be no ceremony to his end. He held the baby against him and tried
to warm it. He could make out faint ruts hardened into the dirt, and he tried his
best to follow them. It would not hurt him to linger outside a populated area,
though he would need to establish a safe distance. His mind was not working as it
normally did. He could not focus with the child crying. He was overrun with thoughts
unrelated to the matters at hand.

He made a hard plan to stick to the ruts and see where they took him. It
would make it easier for anyone following him to track him, but they would not be
after him for at least half a day, if not more. It was entirely possible he had
taken out every living thing in that town, other than the horses and the hogs and
the chickens. He had been merciless. There was something divine to it, but he did
not feel elevated. He felt more self-assured. Brooke was dead and he was alone with
this child. Sugar thought that maybe if Brooke was here he would feel less
conflicted about leaving the child or drowning the child and riding on. As it was,
something was keeping the thing pressed to his chest. Something made him want to
warm it and stop it from crying. He did not feel a tenderness toward it, but felt a
strong desire to balance it out. To put the creature and himself on a more even
keel.

When night fell, he did not stop riding. The baby cried as if that were
its only function. It cried as a healthy man might breathe. It was a sound he found
impossible to ignore. When
the stars were out, Sugar slowed to a
trot and tried to feed the baby. He had some cheese in his front pocket, and a bit
of bread in the other, and he pressed small chunks of each to the baby's lips, but
it would not accept them. The bread gummed up there and broke apart and the baby
cried and sent the little balls down its neck or onto the back of Sugar's hand. The
horse seemed tired. He was huffing and lagging. Sugar was tired. The baby was crying
and, maybe, Sugar hoped, tired. They could not sleep until something in the
landscape changed, until they were more hidden. Sugar remembered then where he had
held the infant the moment after it was born. He opened his shirt and held the baby
at his chest. The baby gummed about for a minute then took hold. It was painful, but
ignorable. The minor irritation was far preferable to the crying. Sugar realized
suddenly how quiet this particular wood was. The baby was working his chest and
Sugar held it and rode slowly between the stubby trees. They needed to take it slow
anyway because there was no moonlight and Sugar could see only a foot or so ahead of
them at a time. The baby went on like that. It hurt a little more as the time passed
but Sugar thought of other things and let the pain melt into his other concerns.

He did not so much care who had been after them, who had caught them, now
that he had worked that town over and felt as safe as he ever could feel. He did not
prefer to ponder the mystery of what had happened, but instead preferred to set
himself up somewhere for a bit and try to get a few good meals in and a few good
nights' sleep. He was long overdue for a bath and a fizzy drink. These had been his
simple desires what felt like only a day or two ago. It had been much longer, but
the events did not come together in a way that suggested the passing of time.
Rather, his memory of the past few days was scattershot and
rough.
There was a lot of hurry to it all. The baby gagged and spit fluid onto Sugar's
chest, then settled back into Sugar's bent arm. Sugar did up his shirt then dug his
heel into the horse's side. They trundled along only briefly before the child burped
and fell to something like sleep.

The storeroom beneath the kitchen was full of jars and sacks of
food and smelled like clay. It was cool and pleasant to stand in.

“We might never have to kill a chicken,” said Mary.

Bird held a jar between his knees and pried loose the lid. He let it fall
to the floor, then set the open jar on a shelf and ate the jam inside with his
fingers.

“I would not mind doing it,” said Bird.

“But it would maybe be hard and chickens are tricky,” said Mary. She read
the labels on the sacks one by one. “Flour, grain, oats, flour, flour, salt, flour.
This little one is yeast. We can make a bread.”

“How ?”

“With these things and the oven,” said Mary. “We used to make bread every
week. You just mix these things.”

“How long before these things are bread.”

“Not long,” said Mary. “Once everything's in order.”

“I'd like to eat hot bread,” said Bird.

“Do you think we are the only people left here ?” said Mary.

“I hope we are the only people left here,” said Bird.

“I would be sad.”

“It's safer that way,” said Bird.

“People aren't bad,” said Mary.

“Bad ones are bad,” said Bird.

“Were you scared earlier ?”

“You just mix these three ?” said Bird.

“And water,” said Mary.

“Where's the water ?”

“I don't know,” said Mary. “That's why we need to find more stuff
first.”

“Fine,” said Bird. “Do you think Martha will come back ?”

“Yes,” said Mary. “When she's done. She is very dependable.”

“She's going to kill that man ?”

“I don't know.”

“I hope she does,” said Bird.

“Why ?”

“Because it seems like the right thing and I would feel safer and
better.”