Kealan Burke - Kin

“Stop,” the man said, but his words only made Joshua’s struggles more frenzied. He flailed his fists, and the man caught one of them, squeezing until Joshua feared the bones were going to snap like kindling. It didn’t deter him. He swung the other, his legs still pinned, an animal-like grunting low in his throat.

The man’s free hand shot forward and Joshua saw the silvery sheen of a roll of duct tape before it crashed into his nose. He reeled back, his fist suddenly free, and the attacker’s hands clamped around his throat, jerking him back and slamming him to the ground.

Dazed, Joshua wondered if it might be better to just concede defeat rather than return to Papa poisoned. The attack would seem like nothing if his father decided he needed to be cleansed. But instinct prevailed and he willed his head to clear, to enable him to see the man he was bound to rend asunder with his bare hands, as he had been taught. But his head wasn’t clearing because the man was leaning into him, increasing the pressure around his throat, refusing him the air he needed and forcing the blood to thunder inside his head.

Possum , he thought suddenly, and looked up at the man whose face was pure night, as featureless as the dark side of the moon. Possum. It was a trick. And he used it now.

His face contorted. He began to cry as much as he could without the air required to power it.

For a moment the man’s grip did not loosen or the pressure ease, but he could tell by the stiffening of his body that he was affected.

“God… help…me …” Joshua croaked, gagging as the tears trickled down the sides of his face into the dirt. “For…give me…”

As he wept, Joshua recalled the instances in which he’d lain on the road or on the forest floor sobbing while at the same time listening to the approach of strangers, their voices high with concern—“Son, are you all right? You hurt?”—only to find themselves surrounded while Joshua stood and brushed himself off, his hand moving to the knife tucked in his belt.

The knife.

If only he could remember what the man had done with his knife after taking it from him.

His attacker’s grip was slackening. Joshua scarcely dared believe it. Now, though drawing breath was still hard and burned his throat, it was progress, the first step toward turning the tables on the coyote.

The knife.

The man had stuffed it in his belt. He was almost certain. Joshua let his eyes drift down, imagined he could see the pale handle. He intensified his sobbing. “Please…I’m so rry…” and miraculously one of the man’s hands moved away from his throat. One remained, but the grip was loosening, merely holding him down and no longer strangling him. Once again, Joshua’s eyes found the spot where he imagined, knew , the knife to be. There was nothing keeping his hands pinned this time, and gradually, in excruciatingly slow movements, he allowed them to creep toward the man’s belt.

“ Sorry …” he whimpered, fingers like spiders creeping down his own legs toward his attacker’s thighs.

Then the man’s arm came back around, and though there was insufficient light to see what the black shape in his hand was, there was no mistaking the sound of a hammer being cocked.

“I am too,” the coyote said.

The gunshot echoing about the valley was as good as a declaration of war, and Aaron flinched. In battle he imagined it would have been the signal for troops to start charging, but nothing so dramatic would happen here. Holding his position, he slowly turned his head away from the trunk of the pine tree. In the woods around the clearing, the darkness was thickest and that suited him, but he knew better than to make any sudden movements. The sound of a twig breaking or a sharp breath could be enough to bring about his doom. His eyes strayed to the source of the shot, where he saw a tall shadow, visible only as a darker shade of night against the backdrop of the stars, rising for one brief moment before vanishing down the other side of the mountain.

They got Joshua , Aaron thought, fire in his chest that made him want to tear strips of bark from the tree with his nails and scream aloud his plans for the Men of the World. But instead he did nothing, and this was well advised, for not thirty feet away stood one of them , hunkered down in the tall grass just inside the protective circle of the trees, a gun in his hand, a pair of binoculars held to his eyes. It was torture resisting the urge to run at him like one of the old Indian warriors Momma-In-Bed had liked to tell him about, but he knew well the folly of such a rash move. The coyote would cut him down before he made it clear of the trees. So he waited, as still as the trees, and watched.

Soon the man would move, and when he did, Aaron would be ready.

Pete stared out at the night, afraid to look at Claire for too long in case she snapped at him as she had already done more than once during the long drive. The journey had taken them nine hours, but it felt like an eternity, each one of those miles chipping away another part of the illusion he had held in his head for so long about the girl he thought he loved. He was at a loss to understand what had happened to her. Had she been like this since the hospital, or had she reserved her hostility only for him? If so, he couldn’t imagine what he had done to deserve it.

“Slow down,” she told him, and immediately he eased his foot off the gas.

Outside, there was nothing but endless fields to see, but Pete knew them better than he knew anyplace in the world. He had driven these roads a thousand times, and suspected the reason Claire wanted to stop now was because she recognized it too.

Surreptitiously, he watched her. She had rolled the window down and was leaning out, her hair blowing crazily around her face. The night breeze was cold around her, and Pete shivered.

She looked back at him. “Stop,” she said and he did.

“This is where Pa and me found you,” he said quietly.

“Yeah, I know.” She opened the door and stepped out. He waited for his cue to follow, but it didn’t come. Instead she just stood staring at the barbed wire that separated the field of cotton from the road. At length, she turned. “Do you have a flashlight?”

He nodded slowly. For Claire, he knew it was a simple request, but the small slim object, no bigger than a pencil, that he slid free of his jeans pocket came with a story she hadn’t given him the opportunity to share.

He had driven a shard of glass into the eye of its previous owner, and couldn’t remember taking it before he and Louise had left the apartment, but as soon as he’d sat down on the park bench, he’d felt it digging into his thigh and realized that at some point, despite the circumstances, his curiosity had gotten the better of him.

Afraid Claire might be able to read the story from the lines of guilt on his face the longer he withheld it, he gave it to her and looked away, studying the road, where his father had made a decision to save a life and end his own.

Maybe it was a mistake , Pete thought, and was startled by the venom that accompanied it. Then he decided that it was justified. Saving Claire had cost Pa his life and turned Pete’s upside-down, and for what? He glanced back at the girl, who was now leaning on the barbed wire, lowering it so she could climb over. He knew he should help, but staying where he was made him feel better. She was not the girl they’d rescued. Not the girl Pa and Doc Wellman, even Louise, had been willing to die for. She was a stranger, and perhaps he was the fool at the back of it all. Who was to say this wasn’t the real Claire? He hadn’t known her before the men tried to kill her and yet he’d invested his hope and his weak heart in her before they’d ever exchanged a word. Why should he be surprised that she was like all the other girls he’d fallen for over the years? He’d first seen her as a battered broken thing and his empathy had quickly become desire. She would wake, he’d believed, and she would need him.