Through a Glass, Darkly (Assassins of Youth MC #1) (18 page)

“Right. It’s BLM land, and maintenance should’ve been paid to them a week ago.”

We talked mining for awhile, and then I cut to the chase. “Listen, I know you’re not an MC member.”

“No. Sax never asked me to Prospect for The Bare Bones. I don’t really mind, although I do feel out of place sometimes.”

“Well, rumor has it that I was chosen to head up a new Assassins chapter here in Avalanche. Least, that’s what Tim Breakiron was screaming about before I buried him.”

Dust Bunny’s white face went a shade paler. “What? What are you talking about?”

I told him about Breakiron’s rampage. I gave the slightest details about what I was doing in Chiles’ book bindery—plausible denial and all that—but I was up front about how I’d plugged Breakiron. It was obvious it was self-defense, as Dust Bunny could see my stitches through the flimsy fabric of my T-shirt.

“If you’re gonna prospect for us, you need to keep all of this real close to the vest for the time being. I asked Sax if it was all right to steal you away from him.”

Dust Bunny nodded, in awe. “I’m with you, man. Managing—hell, even co-managing—my own mine has been my dream since I was a frigging kid.”

“And another thing. Stop saying ‘frigging.’ You can say ‘fucking’ now that you’re an MC member. I’ll get you a Prospect cut.”

“Fucking,” echoed Dust Bunny. He had a geology degree like Sax, but I believe his was from an Ivy League university. Sax’s was from the University of Michigan.

“For now you can keep staying at my house, but eventually I’m going to sell my Bullhead City house and use the proceeds to purchase another Avalanche house. Those homes are going for a fucking song since Chiles took over.”

“A fucking song,” agreed Dust Bunny.

“This is where I really need you to step up to the plate. Soon—it’s got to be within the next couple of weeks before I get well enough to go back to work—I’m leaving here with a woman and her daughter.”

Dust Bunny grinned. He liked that. “Someone’s thirtieth wife?”

“Fortieth. And I guess I should tell you right now, she’s Allred Lee Chiles’ wife.”

“Fuck,” marveled Dust Bunny. He had all the qualities a good Prospect should have—admiration being top among them. “I heard you were a ladies’ man, but that is acramazing.”

“And don’t say ‘acramazing.’”

“Sorry. So you want me to protect her outside these walls, is that it?”

“Well, hopefully I can protect her. But we need to take one of her sister-wives, and God knows how many of her kids.”

“You said ‘God.’”

“I did? Don’t worry. I’m not converting to Chiles’ brand of Mormonism. Or anything for that matter.”

“You don’t believe in God?”

“I didn’t use to. You’re a man of science. You’d probably say this near death experience I just had was caused by a lack of brain cells firing, or firing in the wrong sequence.”

“Not at all. There’s been scientific evidence that there’s a consciousness that exists separate from our earthly reality. Quantum physics teaches that events don’t occur until conscious beings observe them.”

I snorted. “You’ll get along great with our other Prospect. Hang on.” My phone had just buzzed with a new text.

MAHALIA:
Monte Brough went to Texas last week.

Well. That fucking answered my question. It begged the next question—who the hell would be
left
to run Cornucopia, to build new buildings and do the grunt work? They seemed to be transferring every man over the age of twenty to Texas. Everyone under that age was just dumped on the side of the road.

“Listen, Dust Bunny. There’s an urgent mine-related thing I need you to do, today if there’s enough daylight left. Can you authorize some deeper digging along the Streaked Wall Bench? Look for areas recently disturbed. It’s been staked off as long as I’ve been there as being played out.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Specifically, gold at two parts per million.”

“That’s mighty specific. You had some tip about this?”

I laughed, thinking about the source of my tip. “Yeah. Let’s just say it came to me when I was in a coma.”

“Cool,” said Dust Bunny, his face all lit up. “You know, the universe wasn’t created in one big bang. It’s a constant process, and it’s constantly being created, one observation at a time.”

I didn’t know what he meant, but I was glad he was taking me at face value. I had to trust him with my next nugget of information. “I want you to look for bodies there, Dust Bunny.”

His jaw dropped.

“Yeah. People have been overhearing things around here. Men have been vanishing. I know it’s not your usual thing to dig for.”

“To say the least.”

“And it’s asking a lot. Let’s just say that being in on the founding of a new chapter has a lot of messy requirements. If you don’t want the job, just say so. I’ll do it myself later, when I can.”

“No. You obviously need this information now. I’ll do it. Can I rest my case when I’ve found just one?”

“Well, more would be better. But yeah. One would confirm my suspicions. Keep it to yourself, of course. And can you go back downtown and check Breakiron out of his hotel room? Tell the hotel manager he was sent on a run or something—that sort of shit happens all the time—and put his personal effects in a closet at my house in case a relative pops up who wants his smelly old clothes. We’ll let the club take his scoot later on, when I’m ready to hash all this out with Papa Ewey.” Although not an MC member, Dust Bunny had his own scoot. He’d ridden all over the country with Sax for a few years.

“All right. And someone named Parley Pipkin came over to the mine. He wants me to get the men to work four hundred man hours and only get paid two hundred. Is this normal?”

“Yeah. He wants them to donate the work hours to his church. Happens all the time. It’s their way of tithing when they have no extra money to give. Just do it and shut up.” That procedure had irked me, as a member of the United Mine Workers of America. “Let’s not draw attention to ourselves.”

“Right. Don’t rock the boat.”

Dust Bunny seemed to understand then that I wanted to be alone. He stood. He was a shortish guy with an Afro of blond curls and a Van Dyke beard—the ultimate science dork, but Sax had vouched for his loyalty. “You know, I’m glad what you’re doing for these women. I’m more than glad to help. Women are better than men in so many ways. I was raised with women—all sisters. ‘You educate a man, you educate a man. You educate a woman, you educate a generation.”

I frowned. “Martin Luther King?”

“Brigham Young.”

MAHALIA

I
t was my
day to take the children out to Jeffersonian Butte, a craggy pinnacle of stunning limestone and sandstone, fiery fingers of the glory of nature that, revelation said, would lift us into heaven.

It was my opinion that Gideon was well enough to leave the cottage and get some air and I wanted to take him with me, but Allred didn’t allow that sort of liberty. No, he wanted to take Gideon with him to a couple business meetings. Maybe he thought he was gaining a new convert, not losing several.

I still wouldn’t believe we were being spied on, although Dingo told us how easy it would be to put a camera like a baby monitor in the cottage. Gideon hadn’t toyed with me again after that bathtub day, and I was somewhat despondent about it. Was he satisfied now that I’d jacked his dick? Did that tide him over until he could get on the outside and find another “lamb”? I’d found out that was what they called their women before they became old ladies—because sheep weren’t as easy to mold as lambs.

But just yesterday Gideon had mentioned again spiriting Vonda and me away. He didn’t seem to have a clear picture of exactly what we’d do, though. If we just went to his house, it would be simple for Allred to send some men to drag us back the second Gideon went to work—if he’d even have that job after pulling that stunt.

So everything was up in the air as I ferried seven squalling children in my king cab truck. Picnic stuff was in the back, and I had planned to take them up a trail to a waterfall none of them had ever seen, with a swimming hole they could frolic in, and a hanging garden to shelter them. I could tell them about the erosion of the freestanding natural arch on the way. My sister-wife Tazmin followed with a similar load of kids.

I lolled under a cottonwood just breathing in the beauty of the day. I was reading my favorite Langston Hughes poem,
To Artina
. He wrote,
I will be God when it comes to you
. I had to read the poem several times to let it soak in. He was obviously deeply in love to be playing God like that.

I couldn’t get over that Gideon wasn’t gone at the Altar of Sacrifice Mine like he normally was—he was sleeping soundly in my own backyard. Was it selfish of me to wish things could stay like this eternally? Things weren’t so bad there in the compound, when Allred wasn’t calling for me, whipping me with his belt or whatever handy item happened to be sitting there. I loved my sister-wives and their children and I was certainly never lonely. Aside from that unearthly desolation, that separation from my maker.

I knew that by binding with Gideon, I was buffering myself against this birthright of loneliness. Was I cheating God, taking away what he intended for us? Maybe eternal desolation wasn’t our birthright. Maybe consummating our love was.

For I was certain Gideon loved me as I loved him. He just had to, to spirit away an old woman like me and her child! With this in mind, I lifted my red dress over my head. I wore a modest one piece bathing suit underneath, more than I normally had been wearing, and I was dying to get into the water.

Tazmin and I couldn’t get our hair wet, so I did the breast stroke around the cool hole for awhile.

“Some of us have been talking,” Tazmin said, paddling in place next to me.

Uh-oh
. “Oh, yes?”

“About your Gideon.”

My Gideon
. I smiled inwardly. Already they knew he was my Gideon.

“We want our turn to nurse him, too. Why should you get all the fun?”

I was aghast. “Oh, so it’s ‘fun’ now, changing the dressing on a shooting victim?”

Tazmin was about five years older than my thirty, but she acted five years younger. “Why, yes, if you want to be blunt! Who wouldn’t want to get a chance to touch that gorgeous stud’s body? Let’s be blunt, Mahalia. I’ve lain with no one but Allred and frankly, that gets old. It’s worse than laying with no one, if you know what I mean.”

Did I know what she meant? I was blunt, too. “Does he beat you too?”

She rolled her eyes. “How do you think I broke my arm last year? It wasn’t from falling down the stairs. I’m not that clumsy. Listen, I know it’s our lot in life and blah blah. I have to live with the fact that I’ll never be touched by another man until my dying days. But you’ve got to share the wealth with that statuesque stud of yours.”

Stud of mine
. I liked that even more. “Well. He’s much better today. In fact, he went out on a few visits with Allred—”

Tazmin’s eyes turned round. She looked at something behind my shoulder. I paddled in a circle to see what she was looking at.
Oh, my squash
. A grinning Gideon stood there, plain as day. His gauntness was clear to see under the thin cotton of his t-shirt, under the cut that had been pierced by a bullet. He looked boyish today, freshly shaven, his lovely auburn hair almost sparkling in the lacey light and shadows cast by the cottonwood tree leaves.

Tazmin’s look was distinctly hateful. It was a look I thought we’d been taught not to give others. “Well, lookie here. You even get your own cabana boy.” And she swam to the opposite side of the pool, full of hate.

I splashed some water at her, just for the sake of doing it, and swam swiftly to Gideon’s feet. I hauled my torso out of the water, clinging to the red sandstone for support. Looking up at him this way, the package that swelled the crotch of his jeans looked enormous. His stomach was practically concave with the minimal amount of food he’d been eating, though he seemed to love the homemade sourdough bread I kept bringing to the cottage. “You finished with Allred’s visits?”

He just would not stop grinning. “Yeah. He just wanted me to go around to some mining suppliers, introduce me to them, that sort of shit.”

“So everything’s good with Allred?”

“Yeah. He gave me the deed to half the mine.”

“Wow. He must be
real
grateful you saved his life.”

“All in a day’s work.” Gideon squatted and reached a hand out for me. He pulled me out of the swimming hole and I felt like a giant beached manatee, streaming a river of water down the sandstone. “I brought my own picnic. I see the kids have torn into yours.”

I laughed, eager to wrap at least my lower torso in a towel. But Gideon kept snatching it from me, his face betraying no emotion. “Give me my towel!”

“You look better without it. We can use it to sit over here in this grove of cottonwoods.”

We picked our way through the little forest of cottonwoods mixed in with birch.

“We shouldn’t go outside of earshot of the kids,” I said, when Gideon seemed to want to push farther.