Lori Armstrong - No Mercy

True. I thought of Hope the night she’d come to my rescue at the rez rec center. Not typical behavior for her. “What’d Bucky say?”

“Just he’s scared he’ll wind up dead. He wouldn’t tell Verline who was in charge. But he did mention you and your sister took a whack at them. That true?”

I nodded.

“Didja learn anything new?”

“Not a damn thing. It’s frustrating.” I directed my gaze out the window to the undulating prairie, rock-strewn hills, and the plateaus rising from nowhere-the unique topography that comprised our land. The austere beauty of the Badlands on my right; on my left, the pine-covered grandeur of the Black Hills and the jagged point of Harney Peak in the distance. I’d been on this road so many times I could’ve driven it in my sleep. I never tired of the dramatic view. What did that mean?

That this is where you belong.

Gooseflesh broke out on my arms.

I faced Rollie. “Did you say something?”

“No. Why? You look like you seen a ghost.”

No ghost. Just phantom ancestral voices talking inside my head. I’d rather it had been a damn ghost.

“Mercy? What’s wrong?”

“Ah. Nothing. Is that the only reason you called?”

“No.” He lit a cigarette and relaxed back, driving with his left hand. “Heard about the fire, hey.”

“Everybody heard.”

“I was on my way over to help when dispatch came on the scanner and said it was under control. Lucky thing it didn’t spread.”

Not surprising Rollie listened to the police scanner. “Yeah. It was hard to believe that so many people showed up to help out.” An enormous blackbird took flight from a broken fence post; the wings beat an iridescent blue in the blinding sunlight.

“Folks wanting to help out surprises you?”

“No. That used to be my biggest complaint about living here. Everybody knew everybody else’s business. Now that doesn’t seem like the worst thing.”

Rollie coughed and spit a loogie out the open window. “It ain’t. It’s what kept your dad sane after Sunny died, that sense of community and continuity. Sometimes it’s a pain in the ass, but it’s better than the alternative.”

“Like starting over someplace new?”

“Uh-huh. You lose the history and the connection. Once it’s gone, you ain’t ever getting it back and you become an outsider. Your family ain’t never been outsiders. Even after you’ve been gone two damn decades, the community considers you one of their own, Mercy. Being here is your destiny.”

I ignored the destiny comment.

“Case in point: them freaks that bought the Jackson place? They’re outsiders. Always will be. And I’ll bet a hundred bucks not one of ’em bothered to lend a hand when your place was on fire last night, did they?”

“Not that I know of.”

“You been by since they put up the electric fences?”

“Been meaning to… I’ve had other things on my mind.”

“I’ll take you past it before I run you back home. I ain’t gonna slow down, ’cause them white supremacists would probably love to shoot an old savage Injun guy like me, eh?”

“I’d protect you.”

“You carrying?”

“Always.”

After Rollie’s comments, I studied the scenery with a sharper eye. Cracked soil, ranging in color from chalk white to bleached orange, signaled cattle had overgrazed this section. Huge clumps of sage plants overtook the landscape, but it was still butt-ugly. Barbed-wire fence stretched as far as the eye could see. I recognized the scraggly copse of poplar trees marking the turnoff to the Jacksons’ driveway. Some things never changed.

Whoa. And some things changed more than I could imagine.

Electric fences surrounding the house and yard distorted the landscape into a military image reminiscent of the cold war. Warning signs were plastered everywhere. The skeletal forms of buildings being constructed loomed like metal monsters.

Three ATVs were positioned as guards inside the fence. And Sheriff Dawson was hunkered against the front bumper of his patrol car, red and blue lights swirling around him as he talked to another guy inside the fence.

I muttered, “Crap,” and plastered my back against the seat, out of Dawson’s line of vision. I blamed the bullfrogs jumping in my stomach on cruising downhill, not on my seeing Dawson. Or thinking he might’ve seen me.

“Changes them folks made are spooky, ain’t it? Couple of other people were seriously interested in buying it. They would’ve been a better match.”

Who would’ve been a better match? The Florida Swamp Rats? Kit McIntyre? I wanted to know; yet I didn’t.

“Gotta be doing something hinky there,” Rollie continued, “with all that security, doncha think?”

“That’s what Iris Newsome thinks. She’s been bugging me about signing some kind of petition banning additional building or some damn thing.”

“Might not be a bad idea. Rumor around Viewfield is they’re from some religious sect where they have multiple wives.”

Lost in my own thoughts, I shrugged. I wondered what Dawson was doing out there. Routine traffic arrest? On a secondary gravel road? Didn’t he have a more productive way to spend his time? Like looking for my nephew’s murderer?

Rollie sighed. It wasn’t a happy sigh. It was a weary sigh I used to hear from my dad.

“What?”

“How long you had a thing for Sheriff Dawson, hey?”

My fingers rubbed my mouth. Was it obvious my lips were still a little puffy from last night’s encounter with Dawson? No. Rollie was perceptive, which made him good at his job. But I was good at mine, too, so I didn’t answer.

“Mercy. You know I ain’t gonna let this go.”

“Who says he doesn’t have a thing for me ?”

Rollie squinted at me through the smoke curling by his eye. “Same difference.”

Big difference, but I doubted he’d see one.

He said, “I should’ve known.”

“Known what?”

“That you’d go for a fella like him.”

“What makes you think you know anything about the type of guy I go for now?”

He followed up with a mean laugh laced with coughing spurts. “Because Dawson is just like your dad.”

That observation jarred me to the core. My mouth opened to argue, but he beat me to the punch.

“Don’t deny it. Dawson is big guy. Stubborn. Good-looking. Kinda mean. A little on the shady side. Another cowboy in a uniform.”

“My dad wasn’t shady.”

He grunted. “I won’t argue that point, outta respect for the dead.”

I bit my tongue.

“Besides, I thought you had some trust issues with the sheriff.”

“I do.” Denial or explanation of the change would sound like an excuse, or worse, a confession. I didn’t need to give Rollie Rondeaux any personal ammo on me because he’d use it.

“I understand the attraction to someone who ain’t good for you. Been with a woman like that a time or two myself. Worth a tumble but I’d never turn my back on her.”

My teeth left another chomp mark on my tongue. His situation with Verline wasn’t my business. However, I had a perverse need to keep my personal business with Dawson out of the public domain. “Do I have to ask you not to blab this, Rollie?”

“Nope. I don’t diss on my employees.”

“Got more than just me working for you?”

“Officially? Nope.” He grinned. “Unofficially? More than you can shake a stick at, Mercy girl.”

I smiled. Couldn’t help it. I’d always liked Rollie.

He dumped me off at the top of the driveway. “Keep in touch. You hear anything, you need anything, call me.”

“For another face-to-face meeting to keep Big Brother from overhearing us?”

“Yep. Or mebbe, keep me in the loop because I’m worried about you.”