Lori Armstrong - No Mercy

He killed the engine beneath a cluster of cottonwood trees. Thin puffs of dust kicked up as he shuffled to the ledge of the steep bluff.

I doubted he’d do anything stupid, like pitch himself over, but I wondered how many teenagers’ last thoughts before suicide were ones of remorse.

Levi backed away and dropped to the ground. He huddled into a ball and shouldered Shoonga aside until the dog flopped beside him. It reminded me that Levi might act tough and grown-up, but he was still young and vulnerable.

Shoonga panted heavily, too tired to bark at me as I climbed off the machine and ambled across the hard-packed soil.

“I ain’t gonna kill myself, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Levi said.

“I’m not.”

“Then why’d you follow me?”

To see if you needed me. “To see your secret brooding place.”

Levi straightened up. “How’d you know I had one?”

“All teenagers have them.”

“Even you?”

“Especially me.”

“Where was yours?”

“Which one?” I plopped beside him and narrowly missed jabbing my ass on a tiny barrel cactus.

“You had more than one?”

“Don’t you?”

His cheeky smile was there and gone. “Yeah.”

“I liked to keep people guessing. I thought they’d gnash their teeth and weep and wail, distraught with guilt if they couldn’t find me in my usual spot.”

We watched a red-tailed hawk perform a loop-de-loop and soar higher on a thermal.

“Didja ever tell anyone where you was going?”

“Nah. But I think they knew. How about you?”

“Not usually. Ma don’t care. This is my favorite, but there is another spot with one old gnarled tree. It’s like I can see for a thousand miles.”

I knew that place, but was surprised he did, as it was fairly isolated. “How’d you stumble across it?”

“The person who showed it to me meets me there sometimes.” He tossed a flat piece of toffee-colored sandstone over the edge. It made a hollow chink. “She’s cool. She listens to me whenever I’m mad at my mom. Which has been a lot lately.”

“My brooding spots were directly related to who I was mad at. If it was Sophie, I usually stomped around the kitchen. Drove her crazier than if I’d taken off and left her in peace.”

The corner of his mouth twitched.

“If I was mad at my dad, I hid in that grove of old elm trees. I’d climb to the highest branch so I could see far away, since that’s where I planned to go.”

“Is that the grove where you practice target shooting now?”

“Yeah.” I fiddled with a knobby cottonwood twig and peeled the bark away, revealing the whitish-green meaty wood. “If your mom pissed me off, which was pretty regularly, I holed up down by the creek. I’d stand on that big boulder, shaped like a chef’s hat, and whip rocks in the water.”

Neither of us spoke. The hair on the back of my arms prickled from the heat. The occasional insect buzzed past my ear. No wind meant the leaves in the trees were as quiet as the air between us.

“Why didn’t she tell me?” He absentmindedly scratched behind Shoonga’s ears.

“No clue. What she did was wrong, Levi. I’ve explained the reasons for her actions most of her life. I guess maybe it’s easy for her to avoid taking responsibility for anything.”

“See? You’re still doing it. Making excuses for her.”

Smart kid. “You’re right.”

“Well, I ain’t gonna do it anymore.”

“Do what?”

“Make excuses. And I’m sick of hers. She’s gonna be pissed, and Theo will give me a lecture on respecting my mother if I say anything, and I cannot deal with either of them.”

“Does Theo do that a lot?”

“What?”

“Try to act like your father?”

“ Shee . If he ain’t yelling at me, then he’s ignoring me. Whenever Ma starts crying, which is all the time lately, he starts acting like it’s my fault… like if I were a better kid, she wouldn’t be sad. I hate it. Makes me wanna run away like Albert had been doing.” Levi nudged me with his shoulder. “Hey, maybe I could stay with you at Grandpa’s house for a while. I used to stay there a lot. That’d be fun, doncha think? You and me hanging out? Like we did that summer you were here? When you showed me how to make those cool native friendship bracelets?”

Like I needed more friction in my life, especially between my sister and me, but Levi needed someone on his side. Truthfully, it touched me he’d remembered those funky, wildly popular friendship bracelets we’d made the year he’d turned seven. I’d been determined to reconnect with my nephew during the four short weeks I’d been on furlough. And because the “craft” gene skipped me, I’d secretly burned the midnight oil, learning to braid, just so Levi and I could do an activity together that interested him. Some people are scared of guns; I have the same reaction when faced with embroidery floss.

“So what do you say?” Levi prompted.

“Sure. But I want you to do one thing first. Go home. Talk to her. Tell her how you feel.”

“About what?”

“About how she treats you. About your issues with Theo.”

“In other words, make sure Ma knows it wasn’t your idea.”

“Pretty much.”

“All right. I’ll do it tomorrow. I won’t be around tonight.”

“Where you going?”

“Out.” He sighed. “Trying to make new friends sucks, eh?”

Thorny silence again. No easy way to lead up to what’d happened to his friend, so I dove right in. “Speaking of friends… Do you think someone killed Albert?”

Levi looked at me strangely. “I dunno. Why?”

“His mom doesn’t think his death was an accident.”

He didn’t seem surprised by that observation.

“She thinks someone killed him and dumped his body here,” I added.

“Is she blaming me because he was found on our land?”

Our land . I liked how that sounded coming from him. “No. Why?”

“Because me and Albert were fighting for a while before he disappeared. He was drinking and shit all the time, not just on weekends. Every bad thing he was doing revolved around that Warrior Society. It pissed me off. That’s really the only reason I wanted to join, so I could see for myself why everyone thought that club was so fucking great, because it sure wasn’t great for Albert. But I’d never do nothing, to like, hurt him. Man. He was my friend.”

“Relax. She asked me to poke around, see if I could find out anything new from you or his other friends.”

“Good luck with that. None of them Warrior Society guys will talk to you because you’re white.”

My automatic rebuttal- I’m not entirely white -stayed stuck in my mouth.

His head fell to his chest, his hair blocking his face. “They ain’t talking to me for the same reason. Seems everyone I know is ignoring me or is dead.”

Poor kid. “I’m not dead.”

“Yeah, but you were ignoring me up until a couple of days ago.”

Oof . Guilt kicked me in the gut.

“Gramps is gone. And I miss having Albert-the old Albert-to hang out with. Me and him could talk for hours.” He toed the ground, unearthing stones, sending a mini-rock slide over the edge. Shoonga barked at the sudden noise, and Levi petted his head. “I could still talk to him, I s’pose, but he ain’t gonna answer back so it won’t be the same.”

Sometimes I thought if I talked to my dad out loud I could pretend he was there. But the Gunderson women already had the reputation for crazy behavior, no need for me to add fuel to the fire. “You have anyone else you can talk to?”

“One other person. She’s been through some nasty shit in her life, so it’s like she knows what I’m talking about.”