A Thousand Falling Crows (14 page)

Fear or no fear, it was stupid to stay there. She had to run again. With as much swiftness as she could muster, Carmen tapped the letter opener in the front pocket of her dress, then picked up the pillowcase and looked down the tracks. Nothing, not even a crow. It had flown out of sight.

She had no idea where she was or where she was going, but she damn sure wasn't going to sit there and wait to be found. There'd be worse things in store for her than stepping in a snake hole and breaking an ankle if she did.

For a brief second, the air was thick with humidity, and then, the next second, a dry blast of wind swept across the open field. The sun had burned away all of the moisture left behind by the rain in a short time. It was almost like the storm had never existed. Puddles were gone, and drops left on the brown grass had evaporated in the blink of an eye rather than soaked in. The grass was as brittle as it had been before the rain even came.

Carmen ran as fast as she could toward the first building she'd come to, a small white church that at any other time she would have ignored, fled from. It was a Sisters of Mercy church, an old white stucco single-level mission-style church—bell,
companario
, and all. It must have been over a hundred years old or older.

She was certain that she was being followed. Three coveys of doves, fifty feet apart, had exploded into the air behind her sequentially, and she was sure that she had heard footsteps behind her. But every time she looked over her shoulder there was nothing there. It was like she was being stalked by a ghost.

The pillowcase was not heavy, but it was awkward. Carmen shifted it from one hand to the other and back every so often. The letter opener made her run even more stiffly than she normally would. Her knees hurt. She had thought about putting it in the bag, but then it would've been hard to get to. She wasn't so scared that she couldn't think things through. If the opportunity to cut Felix Massey's balls off came again, she was going to take it. It would be a favor to the world and every girl in Collingsworth County.

She dodged a dip in the ground and made her way to the double-front doors of the church. With a hope and a prayer, she yanked on the right door and found it to be locked. Her heart sank. She looked over her shoulder again. Nothing. No one. But the birds were silent. There was not a sound in the world. Just her heartbeat.
Boom
.
Boom
.
Boom
. It rattled her ears, and her chest heaved with each breath. She couldn't remember a time when she'd run so fast, so far.

Luckily, the left door was unlocked. She pulled it open the best she could with one hand. The door was heavy, thick, made of oak, and the handle was cast in bronze, a winding chainlike design that allowed her fingers to fit like they belonged there.

Carmen stepped inside the church, closed the door behind her, and, out of habit and immediate need, genuflected, then made her way to the font, and dipped her fingers into the stoup. She splashed cold holy water across her face, allowing some to touch her thirsty lips, genuflected again toward the altar. Christ stared at the ground, crucified on a cross, his head cocked to the right, his head bleeding from the crown of thorns. It was a lifelike statue. The blood looked real.

The church was empty. A table of vigil lights sat off to Carmen's right. About half of the small votive candles were lit, flickering in the dim nave. Memorials for the dead and hope for the dying.

Shadows danced on the walls and ceiling, offering little comfort, but Carmen wasn't afraid now. No one would hurt her in a church. She was certain of it.

She made her way to the back pew, tossed the pillowcase onto it, and sat down. It took about five minutes for her to catch her breath, to settle down. All she could do was stare at the altar, at the lifelike Christ. She ignored the confessionals. Two stood empty on both sides. It wasn't time.

Just as Carmen was beginning to fully relax and try to figure out what to do next, where to go, the door opened behind her. She froze and forced herself not to turn around.

She began to pray silently.
May the hand of God protect me, the way of God lie before me, the shield of God defend me
. . . She repeated it over and over again as her fingers moved to her pocket, and she slipped the letter opener out of it as discretely as she could.

The door closed heavily, and someone stepped inside. They were not afraid of being seeing or heard.

There was no place to run.

She was trapped.

If she was going to die, she could think of no better place. The angels would find her here.

Carmen turned around slowly. She stopped when an image came into view, just in her periphery. It was not who she was expecting to see. It was not Felix Massey come to rape her. She took a deep breath and lowered her head. It was Eddie. He had come to rescue her. He was her shield and protector after all.

Carmen stood up and faced the boy, a happy, relieved look on her face—that disappeared as soon as she realized her mistake. It wasn't Eddie. It was Tió, and he was carrying the shotgun that he had used to kill the man at the market.

“I‘ve been lookin' for you, Carmen,” Tió said. “And now I‘ve found you.”

CHAPTER 15

“If you name it, you own it
,” Sonny remembered his father saying. The elder Ranger Burton had been tall as a tree, and when Sonny was a boy and he looked up to him, he had sworn the man's open-crease Stetson rubbed against the bottom of the sun. No matter where he went, his father wore the white hat. It had been a permanent fixture on his head, even in death.

Sonny had worn a similar hat his entire career, but he'd put down the hat, and his Ranger revolver, for that matter, when he'd left the service. He knew his father would have been disappointed in him.

The truth was, his father's tallness was just perspective, a mirage of childhood memories. So was everything else Sonny remembered now, as a man of sixty-two looking back—except, of course, the disappointment in him held by his father. He was certain that it was real. Still, he strained to hear the Texas in his father's distant voice. It sounded more like his own than a dead man's. But the wisdom that echoed through the years was certain as it whispered in his ear. “If you name it, you own it,” Sonny said out loud, just to see if he was right.

He wasn't sure, but Pete Jorgenson had told him just as much, and Sonny knew the minute he'd put the dog in the truck that it belonged to him—as long as no one came along with a claim to him.

It was a quiet, uneventful drive back to the house. Sonny was glad of that. He'd had enough excitement for one day, if it could be called that.

Hours before, the house had felt like a prison. Now it was a haven, a utopia that teemed with roaches, filth, and the comfort of familiar shadows and noises. When he drove up the clay road, his whole body felt lighter, almost like he was flying, relieved of the tragedies that he had witnessed, been kin to. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get the smell of blood out of his nose.

The dog had been a good passenger. It sat staring out the window, unconcerned about the movement of the truck, about being held captive inside a rolling metal box. It looked content, though troubled by the wrap on its leg, but that came in worried looks instead of chews, thankfully.

The groceries Bertie Turnell had put in the truck sat securely on the floorboard. As Sonny brought the truck to a stop, he wondered if there was anything in it fit for a dog to eat. Hunger was obvious in his own belly, and he assumed the mutt had struggled for a meal in the past few days just like he had. Its coat looked like a ratty black sheet thrown over a small, abandoned carcass.

Sonny eased out of the truck and walked to the other side of it, glancing to the house out of habit, making sure everything was in its place. It stood hollow and unattended, just like he had left it.

“Well, come on,” he said, as he opened the truck door, holding it with his left hand, staring down at the dog—unsure of what to call it, how to command it to do what he wanted it to.

It had been a long time since he'd been in charge of an animal of any kind. His horse, a big paint gelding, had lived to be a ripe old age of thirty-three. Snag had laid down in the pasture out back one day when enough was enough and never got back up. There had been no need to call Pete out. Sonny knew what was happening. No animal doctor in the world could've saved Snag from the inevitable. Martha had made the arrangements to dispose of the horse the next day. A short time later, two men showed up and winched Snag into a trailer that was hitched to a beat up panel truck that looked like it had done service in the previous war. Sonny hadn't stayed around to see them leave. He went into the office and shuffled paper for the rest of the day, wondering if he licked the glue of an envelope at some point in the future, if he would be tasting the remains of Snag.

Sonny never bought another horse. Snag was the last animal on the place, save a few chickens that came and went to the pot or to a coyote's litter. Never seemed appropriate, or necessary, to name one of the dumb birds.

The dog sat in the passenger seat, looking as unsure of what to do as Sonny did with the command.

“Well, I don't suppose it would feel too good if you jumped down, now would it?” Sonny asked the dog.

The dog cocked its head and stared at Sonny down its long hound nose. Its eyes were a dark brown with sunflower corneas; a curious contrast to the coat that Pete had said was blue, not black. The dog looked black to Sonny.

He took a deep breath and slid his arm under the dog slowly. He didn't assume any trust had been achieved between the two of them, and he was right. It was too soon for that. When he started to lift up on the dog, it growled slightly. It wasn't a warning, though, it was the voice of discomfort, which Sonny fully understood. He could barely stand to be touched when his right arm had been bandaged, before it had been amputated. A wrong move by a less than studious nurse had sent pain shooting down to his toes, and a look of rage shot out of his eyes, even if she had been one of the kindest nurses who'd tended to him.

Sonny stood back for a moment to consider another way to get the dog out of the truck.

Impatience took over for the dog and it angled itself down from the seat slowly, side-stepping the groceries until both of its front legs were secure on the floorboard.

A half-smile lit across Sonny's face, and he reached down to help it, but he was too slow. By the time he got to the dog, it jumped out of the truck, letting out a slight yelp as its bandaged paw hit the ground.

Sonny stood back and watched as the dog hobbled to the front of the truck and stopped, surveying the house in front of it, like it was trying to get its bearings, figure out where it was. At least that's what Sonny thought. In reality, he corrected himself, the dog was probably looking for a place to take a piss. He half expected it to hoist its leg to the front of the truck and let loose—but it didn't.

The sun had settled behind them both, hovering just above the horizon, casting a perfect golden light on everything that lay west, in its path. There was no breeze, and the air was hot. The humidity had wrung out of the air almost as soon as the storm had passed, leaving it dry, normal for this time of the year. From where Sonny stood, all the world looked right, like it was supposed to. He might not have known that if he would have stayed at the house, never gone to the market in the first place, or if he'd put the .45 to his temple. If that had been the case, he'd be dead. The world black as the dog's coat, and it would still be out foraging on four good legs.

“I‘ll be darned,” Sonny said to the dog, “You really are blue.”

The light soaked into the dog's dirty, mangy coat, and at its root, at the depth of the fur, it glowed blue from the inside out in the golden light. Not a sky blue but a dark blue, like the call of evening just settling over the trees at the end of a perfect day.

The dog looked back at Sonny but didn't move.

“Well, I think that settles it. I‘ll call you Blue, if you don't mind?”

The dog turned back and stared at the house.

Sonny assumed the dog didn't care one way or the other after that. It would take some time to see if the name stuck, if the dog came when he called it out.

Satisfied, he reached into the truck, grabbed his .45, stuffed it in his back waistband again, then looked at the grocery box.

The first thing he went after was a can of the Van Camp's. He tucked the beans under his arm and looked again. Somehow, Bertie had managed to wrap up a slab of bacon and had sent it on home with him. Must have been from a private keep, since the market didn't offer fresh-cut meat. Sonny grabbed the bacon and made his way to the house. He'd have to divide up the rest. The days of lugging in boxes were over for him.

“Come on, Blue, let's go,” he said, as he passed by the dog.

The dog had typical hound dog ears that flopped to the side, but the tops of them perked up when Sonny said, “Let's go.”