Neal Barrett - Through Darkest America

He glanced to his left and saw the two riders. They were throwing dust and coming up fast. He knew what they had in mind, they wanted to drive him back past the stock to the Rebel siege engines. Ahead was open country and no place to go. They’d sure never make it to the distant line of hills. Not riding double.

“Howie,” Kari moaned behind him, “I’m getting sick.” “Not now, damn it!”

“I… can’t help it.”

She clutched him tighter and he heard an awful noise and felt something warm on his back.

“Aw, hell, Kari…”

There was no use running, and he knew it. He reined up hard, jerked Kari off the mount, and shoved her into high grass. “Just hold the godamn horse,” he shouted, “and keep your head down!”

Seeing him go to the ground, the riders came on harder than ever. One had a rifle, the other a pistol. They kept shooting and yelling war cries at him as they came. Howie ignored the shots and the shouting. Pardo had told him more than once that you might scare a man to death bearing down on him from a mount, but it took more than a fair shot to hit anything that way.

He got the first rider square in the chest. The second had more sense. He reined in and bore down on Howie with his rifle. But he was breathing hard and madder than hell about his partner; the shot went wild. Howie wasn’t mad at anyone. He was just bone tired and anxious to get as far away from soldiers as he could.

When he got back to the narrow draw under the hill Kari was hunched up in a tight little ball, her knees up to her chin and her hands wrapped around her ankles. She had the blanket they’d taken off the horse draped over her shoulders but it didn’t help much.

“We’re going to freeze to death,” she said flatly, without looking up. “If you’d gotten clothes off those soldiers we’d have something to wear, anyway. You should have, Howie.”

Howie let out a long breath. “We been all over that. More’n once. Ain’t any sense goin’ over it again. There wasn’t no time, Kari.”

Kari muttered something he didn’t hear.

“Okay,” he told her, “we might have gotten the clothes. An’ we might’ve gotten killed, too. I don’t reckon you thought about that, did you?”

But Kari wasn’t listening. She’d curled herself up tighter than ever and pulled the blanket over her head.

It was going to be a miserable night, he knew. It was plenty warm during the day but when the sun went down in the shadow of the big peaks to the west, it sucked all the heat out of the earth. There was still maybe half an hour before dark and he could feel the promise of a chill in the air. Howie had decided he wasn’t going to start a fire, even if he could. No matter what Kari said. The city was behind them, but it couldn’t be far enough, as far as he was concerned.

After he dug the shallow depression in the ground, he lined it with as many dead boughs as he could find. There weren’t many, but they’d have to do. They could get under the blanket and out of the wind, anyway, -and maybe pull in dirt and more boughs to keep out some of the cold.

Kari gave the sleeping arrangements a dubious eye. The little crease between her eyes started working and Howie could see it coming. On top of everything else, it was just about more than he could take. He didn’t even give her a chance to get started.

“It’s goin’ to be pretty godamn awful, Kari,” he said sourly. “You’re going to have to touch me without no clothes on, and you’re goin’ to have to get ’bout as close as you can to keep from freezing. ’Course, if you think it’ll make you sick or somethin’ you can always sit up naked all night and talk to the horse. It don’t make no difference to me.”

She studied him warily, “Couldn’t I just keep the blanket and stay up here, Howie?. I think that’d be a better idea. Then you could have the hole all to yourself.”

Howie didn’t bother to answer. He got up and walked over to her and jerked the blanket off her shoulder and left her sitting bare on the ground. Then he got into his bed and started pulling dirt and leaves in after him. She watched him a long moment, scowling, and shivering in the chill air. Then she got up and moved in beside him, keeping as far away as she could. He could feel her shaking, but she made no effort to touch him. The sun went down and the cold wind swept out of the mountains to frost the earth.

“Howie?”

“What.”

“If I turn over and get close you won’t… feel anything or do anything, will you?”

“If you do that,” he said wearily, “there won’t be no way I can help feeling you, Kari.”

“You know what I mean.”

He didn’t answer.

“Howie. Please turn over and h-hold me. I’m freezing to death!”

He turned and took her in his arms and she came to him, pressing herself against his body, burrowing into every hollow she could find.

“Howie,” she said after a minute, “I’m sorry. I know the things you want to do to me and I guess this makes it a lot harder not to do them, doesn’t it?”

“There ain’t nothin’ I want to do to you, Kari,” he lied, “go to sleep.”

“Yes you do. You like to see me without any clothes on whenever you can, but I know you want to do more than that. You want to now, Howie.”

Howie ground his teeth. “Kari… just shut up and go to sleep. I don’t want to talk about it.” She’s got to know what’s happening to me, he thought helplessly. There ain’t no way she couldn’t!

Kari suddenly went rigid. “You’re… going to, aren’t you?” He caught the small edge of fear in her voice. “Even if I don’t want you to. I can feel that and I don’t want you to do anything! ”

Howie shuddered and moaned to himself. He jerked roughly away and turned his back to her. She stayed away a long moment. He could hear her breathing, and thought she’d fallen asleep. Then she moved up against him again and her flesh was like fire.

“Howie. I’m sorry.”

“You always been like this?” he asked harshly. “You didn’t ever feel nothin’… with anyone?”

Kari hesitated. “Some… I guess.”

“Where was that? In High Sequoia?”

She stiffened at his words. “What do you know about High Sequoia, Howie?”

“I don’t know nothing. Pardo mentioned it once.” “Pardo did. About me.” She sighed against him. “Pardo always knew things you didn’t figure on.”

“What is there to know, Kari?”

“There isn’t anything.”

“All right…”

“Howie, it’s a place is all.”

“And you come from there?”

“No”

“But you said you’d… felt something for someone. I thought maybe…”

She gave a sad little laugh. “Not there, Howie. You don’t feel things there. You feel everything and not anything. You’re supposed to, anyway.”

“That don’t make much sense.”

“I don’t want to talk about it any more, Howie. Not any at all. Okay?”

Howie shrugged. He lay still and listened to the wind. He felt her heart beat against him and smelled her hair crushed up on the back of his neck. The cold ate into the place where his eye had been and made him want to bite his tongue with the pain.

He tried to think about something else. What they’d do the next day. They’d go south, maybe. Where it was supposed to be a lot warmer all the time. They’d get food, and clothes, and there wouldn’t be any soldiers anywhere. He’d take them so far nobody there would even know about the war. He wondered if there was a place like that.

He was puzzled over what Kari had said—or hadn’t said, really. Something pretty bad had happened to make her like she was. She hadn’t always been like that. She just couldn’t have been. And people didn’t have to stay like they were, did they? They could change, and be something different. And Kari just had to. Because whatever she was, there wasn’t anyone else he wanted. Not anyone.