Julia Spencer-Fleming - I Shall Not Want

He balanced on the beam and peeked through the small off-center window that looked out over the pasture. His rib cage lifted, expanded, when he spotted her making her way across the field, stepping over sheep droppings and swishing at early daisies. It was stupid, he knew. Stupid and dangerous. At home, if she had been one of them, he could have courted her, met her brothers, taken her to his parents' home. Here, they couldn't even be seen together.

No, it was more than that. Here, he couldn't let himself think about her in that way. She was anglo, a North American, part of a family that owned, as near as he could tell from their halting conversations, an entire mountain and the rolling farmlands around it. And she was tangled in darkness and violence. If he hadn't gotten that message on the night they met, he would have figured it out today, when Raul had stumbled across a murdered man halfway between her property and the McGeochs'. No. She was out of bounds, for more reasons than he could count.

It wasn't as if she were a great beauty. She was too pale, the bones in her face too square. It was, he guessed, because she reminded him of girls he had admired at home. She was rounded, womanly, but tough. A hard worker. Quick to smile, but not cheap and available, like so many of the women up north. And she needed him, needed his strength, in some way he hadn't yet identified.

She vanished from his line of sight, to reappear in a moment at the back door, swinging a paper sack up onto the hay before lifting herself over the edge of the doorway. "Amado?" She blinked in the dimmed light. "I have lunch. Um, la comida ."

He dropped down from the beam. "Oh!" She clapped her hand to her chest and said something in English too rapid for him to follow. He held his hand to his ear. "Eh?" he said.

"Eh?" She laughed.

"Lunch," he said. "I am hungry."

" ¿Yo hambre ?"

" Tengo hambre ," he corrected. He grabbed the quilt and snapped it open, letting it float down on the hay bales to make a picnic cloth. She opened the sack and removed paper napkins and sandwiches and corn chips and apples. They sat on opposite sides. Not touching. The sandwich was delicious, real bread stuffed thick with meat and cheese. He wondered if she had made it for him or taken one that was meant for another of her family. He wondered if she felt the high, hard bars that kept them apart. He wondered what she thought of him when she was alone.

" Por qué … you… here now?" she said, around a handful of corn chips. "No work por la día ?"

"Hide," he said. He swallowed the last of his sandwich. He didn't know if he was bringing trouble to her door, or if he was helping her avoid it, but he had to tell her about the dead man. It was too near to her land and too soon after her flight through the woods to be coincidental.

He spoke in Spanish, wanting to tell the whole story before trying to pick out the words and concepts he could convey to her in English. He told her about the smell, and the way it seemed to linger inside his nostrils all the way back to the barnyard. He told her about the surprise of seeing his brother Octavio's lady priest, and Mrs. McGeoch's near collapse, and about rounding up the men-again-and having to deal with their whining about the heat and boredom of the ancient farmhouse they bunked in. He told her about hiding in the woods until the last possible moment, watching the black truck roll up and disgorge two policía .

All the while, she listened intently, though he doubted she understood one word in ten. And when he finished, she tilted her head to one side, looked at him as if she knew exactly what he'd been going through, and said, "I'm sorry. Lo siento ."

He took a deep breath. "I find a dead man," he said in English. "By the water."

Isobel went very still. No surprise. No horror. Instead, her eyes, usually as brown and deep as rich coffee, went flat. As if she was looking in, rather than out. "By the water," she said. "Where? ¿Dónde es ?"

He didn't know the English word, so he made rippling, winding motions. " El arroyo ." He arched his hand up and over, representing the mountain, then traced the water's course along the imaginary edge of the property.

She drew her knees up and bent her head forward. Her face disappeared behind a curtain of hair. "¿La policía?" she asked, after a while.

"Yes." He felt sick at the thought she had something to do with the bloated thing he had seen that morning, but he had to curl his hands into fists to keep from taking her by the shoulders and drawing her near. She looked up at him. Her eyes shone with tears. She said something low and rapid he couldn't make out, and he realized, at bottom, it didn't matter what she had done, he would still help her in any way he could.

"I help you," he said.

She shook her head.

"Please," he said.

She smiled, just a little, and the change in her expression broke the water in her eyes so that tears rolled down her cheeks. She said something else-he caught the word "man" and the word "good"-and then reached out and took one of his hands in hers.

He squeezed it. "I help you," he insisted.

She looked at him for a long moment. Finally, she nodded. "Okay." She rose, tugging him up with her. She released his hand, scooped up the empty paper sack, and walked across the bales to the open doorway. She jumped to the ground with an easy grace, and he followed her as she slipped around the corner. She stopped, dropped the sack on the grass, and traced the edges of the clapboards where they butted against the stone foundation.

Isobel tugged one of the peeling boards. "Help me," she said. He stood beside her, wedged his fingers into the narrow gap between one board and the next, and pulled. Once, twice, and a four-foot section of board came off, reeling him backward. She plunged her hands into the narrow slice of darkness. There was something odd about it, a space where there shouldn't have been any more than a few inches to the interior lathing, but before he could get close enough to study it, she hauled out the biggest, ugliest pistol he had ever seen and thrust its butt end toward him.

He dropped it. "De qué joder!"

She was still digging around inside the gap. He stared at the gun, horrified. She dragged something else from the interior and turned toward him. She had a hard-covered writing tablet in one hand and a cell phone in the other. She followed his gaze to the gun. Her eyes widened. Whatever she said was unintelligible to him, but he got the gist of it. He grabbed the thing awkwardly, trying not to touch the trigger, the barrel, or the grip. He wound up pinching it between two white-jointed, sweat-slick fingers, as if he were holding a dead rat that weighed eight pounds. He eased the gun into the sack. He had no idea if it was ready to fire or not. He didn't even know how to check to see if it was loaded.

She dropped the notebook on the grass. Considered the sleek, flat cell phone in the other. Finally, she shoved it into her jeans pocket. Reaching back inside the space, she emerged with a large padded envelope, the kind of thing used to post books or small presents. She pressed against the sides, popping the top open and tipped it upside down over the paper bag. With a mixture of fascination and repulsion, he watched as brick after brick of American cash thudded into the sack.

She bent down, retrieved the writing tablet, and stuffed it into the mailer. She put it back into her hiding space. Picked up the board and fitted it over the gap. Wedged it back into place.

The sack was still dangling, open, from his nerveless fingers. Isobel took it and rolled its edges down until it resembled an oversized lunch bag. She held it out to him. "Hide," she said.