Wild Sorrow (26 page)

Kerry came across the room and kissed my forehead. He smiled down at me with a face I adored—that slightly crooked smile, those nearly fused eyebrows, the long lashes over his green-flecked brown eyes, the scars on his chin.

“What did you get from Roy's goodie bag?” I asked.

He held up a short silver plastic cylinder. “I bet I got the best one,” he said.

“What is it?”

“A battery-operated nose hair trimmer,” he said and winked. “Want me to try it out on you?” He reached one arm around my back to pull me close and playfully aimed the cylinder at my nose.

I pushed his arm away, laughing.

“So will you come with me to Washington?”

I stopped laughing, but held a big smile. It almost dashed my daydream, thinking of leaving this place I so loved. But in the next thought, I wondered if giving up my own path and following Kerry on his would be traveling the path of the heart that Tecolote had mentioned. “I'm thinking about it,” I said.

Kerry grinned at me. “You're thinking about it, huh? I'll take that as encouragement.”

I knew I had only been drinking ginger ale, but I felt drunk, giddy, and incredibly warm.
Maybe, somehow, this could work!

As Kerry and I were imagining our romantic options, the Boss came up and touched my sleeve. “We just had a call from the rancher who took out a grazing permit for the BLM land near the Rio Pueblo. He says that some kids have gone in through that gate up at the road with their ATVs and they're scaring the cows. You mind running by there on your way home?”

Under the Cottonwoods

It was already dark. I was almost to the gate that led into the BLM land by the river when I saw a truck on the side of the road with its hood up. I pulled over on the shoulder behind the vehicle. I could see two men leaning over the front, their heads beneath the hood examining the engine. The pickup had California license plates. I thought to call it in for a plate check but remembered that everyone was having a good time at the party and I hated to interrupt their fun—this looked simple enough. I wrote the tag number on my hand before I got out to inquire if I could help. I had failed to transfer the flashlight from my Jeep to the Blazer, so I left my headlights on. I grabbed my automatic in its holster out of the glove box and clipped it to the back of my jeans. “You stay,” I told Mountain as I closed the car door.

The two men looked up as I approached on the driver's side of the car. I held up my badge. “You guys need a tow truck?” I asked.

Before I had gotten abreast of the front quarter panel, the one nearest me lunged forward, seizing me by my extended arm. When I moved to push off his grip, he grabbed my other arm and yanked me forward, and I toppled toward the asphalt and crashed with a thud, my chest and knees hitting hard as I arched my head back to keep from banging my face. The other man had run up behind me and was now trying to grab my ankles as I lay facedown. I flailed my feet and kicked at him with my boots, and I felt one jab connect with what might have been his shin—he gave a loud grunt from the blow. Meanwhile, I was wriggling and squirming, and I worked myself up onto my knees, but the man who had grabbed me pressed my forearms hard into the grit and gravel and brought a foot up to step on my good hand, leaving me butt-up and vulnerable.

“Grab that holster, don't touch the gun,” the one holding my arms said, and I felt the clip snap as it was pulled from the back of my belt, then heard a hard thud as my sidearm hit the blacktop and slid. “Grab her by the belt, pull her up.”

They dragged me, kicking and thrashing, into the nearby field, the one man never relenting in his fierce grip as he held my forearms above my head—while the other fought to keep hold of my feet, grasping the cuffs of my jeans. I lashed out and freed one leg, but they wrung me like a rag, forcing my upper body in one direction, and the leg still in custody in the other, painfully twisting my arms in my shoulder sockets until the man at my feet had hold of both legs again. I cried out for help, I yelled and cursed at them. Neither man spoke, but they grunted and wheezed with the effort of wrestling my squirming weight. They threw me down onto frozen-hard ground under a stand of giant cottonwoods, the one man still painfully gripping my forearms with hands of steel. While he held me, I studied Steel Hands's face in the dark, determined to remember every detail I could make out, but his face above me was in shadow. I saw wisps of coarse, dark hair escaping his stocking cap, a triangle tuft of beard left to grow in the cleft beneath his lower lip. The other man, heavier and much shorter—took a length of nylon rope from his coat pocket and looped it twice around my left wrist. They brought my two hands together as I struggled and screamed, and they tied them behind my back. When I saw Short Man move to grab my ankle, I rolled onto my side and drew up my leg and kicked, striking him square in the jaw. Suddenly, there were no hands holding me, but in a mere instant, I felt the blunt end of a boot drive into my back, and the air rushed out of my lungs as fountains of pain went off in my brain. A brick of a fist slammed into my abdomen, and another bashed into my right breast. I looked up at Steel Hands and tried to pull my knees up to protect my center, but Short Man moved to pin my feet to the ground while Steel drove his fist into my face, snapping my neck to one side and smashing the inside of my cheek between my teeth and partly into my nose. I felt blood fill my mouth and run from one nostril as another punch sledgehammered into my gut. My only thought was to buckle my body to try to protect myself from the next blow, but Short battened my boots to the ground—and whatever strength I had once possessed leaked out of me from a thousand weeping wounds.

Steel pushed me onto my back, my bound hands beneath me. “Get up here. Hold her down,” he said.

Short scrambled across the ground from my feet to my head, and he knelt above me, breathing hard, pressing a hand on each shoulder, his weight causing my back to arch over my trapped hands. Steel, on all fours now, drew down close to my torso and hovered above me, his chin just inches from my chest, his breath fogging in the cold. He grabbed my shirt in his teeth and threw his head back and to one side, popping the buttons. Short laughed at this, and Steel—encouraged by his audience—pressed his cold face into my breasts and seized the elastic between the cups of my bra with a bite that scraped my skin. He pulled up, stretching the elastic away from my body, then let it snap hard against my chest. Both men chuckled at this, and Steel brought his face up beside mine while Short looked down from above. Steel blew on my cheek, his breath hot and moist and reeking of beer. He reached a hand behind my neck and seized a fistful of hair and jerked hard, twisting my head to one side, forcing me to look at him. He pistoned his tongue in and out like a snake and then he licked my face. Short spoke for the first time, in the elongated vowels of a hip-Hispano accent. “Come on, man! Quit fucking around. Let's do this, bro!”

Steel pushed himself back, raised up on his knees, and reached down and unzipped his jeans. I felt Steel's hands at my waist, fumbling with my belt. Then I felt the rip of my own zipper and I heard Short's breath quicken with excitement as he watched. And I caught the sound of something else in the distance, something that took me a second to recognize. As Steel grappled and tugged to work my jeans over my hips, I could hear Mountain pounding at the windows of the Blazer, yelping and shrieking. I wanted to go to him, to comfort him, to snuggle up to him and sing to him, but I couldn't move because Steel had climbed on top of me and was trying to spread my legs but my jeans were still bound up around my thighs.

I couldn't breathe, I felt sure a vein inside me had opened and I was drowning in my own blood, and I began to sink, to drift beneath the surface of my own being. I looked up through the cottonwood branches at the night sky, at the stars, and I recalled Tecolote telling me to listen to the trees, and I remembered the trees dreaming a new world. I wanted to go to that world. I saw light play on the limbs, yellow-gold light. It washed across the cottonwoods and then died away into the darkness. Suddenly, I heard a dull thud—and Short, who had been holding my shoulders, slumped to his side. In the next instant, Steel, who had raised up at this new development, was suddenly running away. I heard struggling, muffled cursing, and blows landing on flesh.

It occurred to me to get up but I felt an acute pain in my side. My jeans, which had saved me from an even worse fate, still prevented me from moving my legs apart. After the clash subsided, I heard fast footsteps retreating, a car engine revving to life and then speeding away. I listened to the staccato, high-pitched yip of my wolf-child and then I felt blackness start to well up around me.

Eloy Gallegos looked down at me from above. He wriggled out of his coat and threw it over me as he knelt on the ground at my side. “Are you okay?” He reached down and put a hand under my head, lifting it slightly off the ground. With his other hand, he tenderly brushed blood and hair away from my mouth and nose. “Don't worry,” he said. “Those guys are gone.”

He half pulled and half lifted me to my feet, and he tugged on the waist of my jeans to pull them up. We stumbled forward a few yards but I could not seem to stand. My knees collapsed before we could make it back to the road, and Eloy caught me, picked me up, and carried me the rest of the way to his car. “Oh, my God,” he said. “What have they done to you? You're pretty bad off. I'm going to take you to the hospital.” He propped me, standing, against the side of a black vehicle as he opened the door to the backseat. He eased me down into the car, holding me beneath the arms until he felt my weight release into the seat. “Lie down in here and I'll take you.”

“No!” I said, seeing Mountain frantically pawing at the rear window of the Blazer parked in front of Eloy's car. The wolf yelped and looked through the glass at me with alarm. “No, I can't leave Mountain!”

“But you need help! You need medical attention. Your mouth is bleeding, you can't even walk! You need to go to the hospital.”

I rolled myself to the edge of the seat and pulled myself up. “I'm not going anywhere without my wolf. I'm not leaving him.”

“Okay,” Gallegos said. “Okay, I'll call an ambulance, and we'll get them to come get you—and your wolf. Sit down. I'm gonna take care of it. We'll get you some help.” He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and punched three buttons. “Hello, we got an emergency here,” he said, putting one hand on my shoulder to keep me from falling out of the car. “We need an ambulance. And send the police, too. A woman has been attacked.”

When he hung up, he turned to me, pulled a handkerchief from his shirt pocket, and pressed it against my mouth. Even through the blood and the swelling, I caught a hint of a citrus cologne on the fabric. It smelled clean and comforting. “Don't worry,” he said. “They're coming. Just hold on, they're coming.”

“My gun,” I said, half in and out of conscious thought. “My gun.”

“Don't worry,” Eloy said, retrieving the handkerchief from where it had fallen onto my chest and pressing it back to my bleeding mouth. “They'll find those guys who did this.”

“Give me my gun,” I said, and I pointed to the side of the road.

Fog Singer

I hate hospitals. My father spent the last few years of his life in and out of them, and finally died in one—unable to recover from a broken heart, the loss of an arm, and the disease of alcoholism. Since then, I'd had no faith in their ability to heal the sick or injured. And so, after I was poked and prodded and x-rayed in the emergency room, I checked out against medical advice with lacerations, abrasions, contusions, and cracked ribs.

According to the police, Eloy Gallegos had already given a statement that he had been driving out to his auntie's house at the pueblo when he saw the truck with its hood up, and the Blazer with its headlights still on, the wolf jumping in the back of the car in distress. He didn't see anyone else around, so he got out to investigate, and that was when he found the men assaulting and trying to rape me. He used an oversized metal flashlight to strike one man and then fought with the other, finally chasing the two of them off. He had declined treatment for his skinned knuckles.

The police had tried to take a statement from me as well, while I was in the emergency room, but Diane Langstrom arrived a few minutes into the process and told them the incident was part of an ongoing federal investigation. She dismissed the local cops. “Mountain's okay,” she said. “Kerry's outside with him. They won't let the wolf come in.”

“Your landlord—” I started to say.

“I heard,” Diane interrupted. “He's the big hero boy tonight. Well, I'm just thankful someone was there to help you, even if it had to be him.”

 

Diane followed as Kerry drove me and Mountain home in the Blazer. I slept on the way, my head lolling between the back of the seat and the soothing cold glass of the window. When Kerry was leaving to go back to town with Diane to get his truck, I asked him to bring in the sack that Tecolote had given me, and to put Mountain—who'd been cooped up in the car all evening—out on his chain.

“I'll be right back,” Kerry promised, propping my rifle beside the bed and putting my handgun, in its scarred leather holster, on the bedside table. “I'll get back as fast as I can.”

Although Kerry and Diane had helped me undress and get into bed, as soon as they left, I painfully worked my way to the edge and pushed myself up to a sitting position. I got myself on my feet and shuffled to the bathroom, grunting and groaning like an old woman, holding my side, half-bent over and hurting with every breath. I stared into the mirror over the sink. Diane had carefully lined up the bottles of medication they had given me at the hospital: a prescription for pain, an anti-inflammatory, and an antibiotic. I swept my hand across them and knocked them into the trash can next to the sink, and as I did so, I said,
“Unh, unh, unh,”
as the women at the pueblo would have done.