IT WAS THE SECOND TIME that Maya would visit the Powers family at their desert compound, but as far as she could tell, it was the first. She remembered nothing substantial of that peyote night a couple months ago. The roads were not familiar, and then there were no roads, and they had to switch to ATV trails, and then there were no trails even. She was beginning to think she had hallucinated the entire thing. Though the terrain had a sameness to it, it also shone with a hard beauty, and the park ranger, whom she had contacted to drive her through and past Joshua Tree, pointed out what he thought might be of interest, as if she had hired him as a guide. “Seven hundred fifty species of vascular plants found here.”
She’d google vascular later, but “plants” was enough, she got what she needed to get. He didn’t seem to see she was not that interested. “Half of those are annual plants that bloom in the spring. So it’s like a different planet, depending on when you come. Used to be a sea here but there’s not a ton of water now obviously, so not a lot of energy to burn, and energy is time, so time is different here in the desert. Slow. Not man’s time. Rock time, sand time, lizard time, geologic time. Look at those saguaro over there.”
“Oh, is that how you pronounce it?”
“Yeah, sawaro. They can live two hundred years.” He pointed: “Those guys over there knew Abe Lincoln. Imagine that. Look like men doing different things with their arms. Stick ’em up! Scare the shit outta me outta the corner of my eye sometimes. Cacti are to trees what man is to exoskeletal insects. They, like us, are soft on the outside, hard on the inside, have their bones, their wood, their structural integrity on the inside. Ever seen a dead cactus? You’ll see the wood. You can use the wood to splint a broken limb. Natives did. The original Spanish speakers called the Joshua trees izote de desierto—the desert dagger. That’s the nomenclature I prefer. Don’t worry, there won’t be a test.” Maya nodded and forced a smile. He was making her drowsy. “Over yonder that way is where the Chump administration, the Bureau of Land Mismanagement, wants to let Eagle Crest Energy Company build a hydropower plant and drain local aquifers in this drought-riddled world.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of Eagle Crest,” Maya said, without judgment.
“The fuckin’ devil if you ask me. I gotta watch my BP when I think about that orange ass clown.” He took a few deep breaths and shook his hands free of the bad juju.
“Anyway—you’ll see jackrabbits, horned lizards, kangaroo rats, tortoises, if you’re lucky.” Maya was gamely trying to smile his way; he was showing off, lecturing, like a proud cabbie in a favorite city. “Predators here are the coyote and Mojave rattlesnake, bobcat, golden eagle, you might wanna be careful of tarantulas, too.” The guide watched her face cloud over. “Not a spider fan? What about Spider-Man?”
“I don’t like snakes,” she said, pulling her knees up under her chin involuntarily.
“Snakes are misunderstood,” he said. “They really only mess when messed with.”
“I’m working on it.”
“They’re not for everybody. What are you doing out here, if you don’t mind my asking? Research? You from Hollywood? Netflix?”
“Something like that.”
“Netflix and chill.”
“That’s what the kids say.”
“The government?”
“I’m really not at liberty to say.”
“Ah, I get it. Top secret.” He nodded. “‘Not at liberty to say’—that is so cool.”
He smiled and checked his GPS. “I’ve never been to this place you wanna go. Heard tell of it but never been. Thought it was an old wives’ tale. According to this gizmo, won’t be but about ten more minutes now. Tough going.”
After about thirty minutes, a house finally became visible like a mirage up ahead, seeming to oscillate on the flat terrain. “Thar she blows. Look at her waving at us. You know why heat makes waves like that?”
“Heat waves? No, I don’t.”
“Has to do with refraction,” he said proudly, “when light passes between substances of different refractive indices—hot air and colder air—when it mixes, makes vibration and shakes the light, looks wavy.”
“That’s cool.”
“No,” he said, “it’s cool and hot. And it’s just another way the desert messes with your head. Seeing is not believing.”
The sound of the ATV must’ve carried for miles unimpeded in the wilderness, because the whole family was waiting outside the house, looking more like palace guards than a welcoming committee.
“They expecting you?” the park ranger asked. “’Cause they don’t look so friendly.”
“More or less.”
“Looks like less to me.”
“If you wanna wait here, that’s cool. I don’t want them to feel ambushed anyway. I can walk the rest.” They were about two hundred yards away now.
“Yeah, I think I will. Rattlers, bobcats, desert animals—I know them. Desert people? Not so much. That’s an animal I can’t read. They look odd to me, and honestly, I’ve heard tall tales that they’ve got the whole place booby-trapped like some horror movie. Ever see The Hills Have Eyes?”
“No.”
“Well, the sand probably has eyes, too. You tread carefully. I’ll be waiting right here. How long you gonna be?”
“Could be five minutes, could be a while.”
“Well, shit. Go do your thing. You’re paying for the day. I’m here if you need me. Just whistle.”
“Thank you.” She got out of the ATV and walked toward the house.
As she approached, the younger kids looked at her like she was an escaped zoo animal, and she searched out the one who had stuck her with an arrow. Though her memories from that night were disjointed and surreal, she retained an image of her redheaded attacker as clear as if he’d been minted on a commemorative coin. She went to him.
“Hi, my name is Maya,” she said, bending down.
“I’m Hyrum. And I’m sorry I stuck ya. I thought you were a coyote.”
Maya laughed. “That’s harsh. Coyote ugly, huh?” she joked.
“What?” Hyrum asked. She tousled his red-blond hair, which was so dirty, thick, and matted with sand that it felt like animal fur. He looked like what she remembered of Huck Finn drawings in books from her childhood.
“Hyrum,” one of the women said, stepping to them and pulling the boy away from her. She couldn’t make out if she was protecting the boy from Maya or protecting Maya from the boy. The woman introduced herself without extending her hand. “I’m Yalulah. You met me the other night but you probably don’t remember.”
“I’m sorry, I was in no shape…”
“No, you weren’t. Don’t touch the children, please. They’ve had no vaccines and have no defense against bacteria and viruses you bring to them from out there.”
“Oh,” Maya replied, mortified. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Why would you? How’s your arm?” Yalulah asked. “It shouldn’t have gotten infected; that boy may not bathe, but he keeps his arrows clean.”
“Good to know.” Maya tried to make light. It landed soundlessly.
Bronson, who’d been hanging back under the shadow of the roof, stepped forward and said, “We figured you’d be back. Come on inside out of the heat.” And then he raised his voice: “Does the ranger wanna come in, too?”
“I’m good!” came his overquick reply.
The kids were drifting toward the stranger in uniform, fascinated, like drivers who slow down at an accident scene. Bronson stopped them. “Hey, Beautiful, Deuce, Pearl—help me out here, wrangle the young ones. All of you—you got work to do. Leave the man alone. Don’t touch him.” Maya became aware that she was afraid, and wished the ranger and his holstered gun would come inside with them, but he was being a chump, and, to be fair, she’d only hired him for transportation, not protection.
Once inside the house, Bronson led Maya, Yalulah, and the dark-haired woman into what she figured was a huge classroom. Books everywhere, chemistry sets, paintings and instruments, none of it familiar to Maya from that night. Yalulah was intensely watchful and Maya was aware that she was clocking everywhere Maya touched and that she would scour the area clean of pathogens as soon as she left. Bronson began, “You met Yalulah, this is Mary, you can speak in front of all of us. We are one.”
“Would you like some water?” Mary asked. “It’s hot as the devil’s cunt today.”
Bronson barked a laugh and then admonished his wife, “Mary…”
“Thank you, and thank you for taking care of me that night,” Maya said, as Yalulah left for the water. Maya continued, “And I’m sorry for the unwanted attention that my visit has brought to your family. But here we are.”
“Yes, here we are. At home. My home. Where are you?” Bronson asked.
Maya noticed his forearms as he leaned forward in his chair, the strongest she’d ever seen, as sinewy as the roots of a small tree. She’d dated muscle-heads and gym rats before, but had never seen anything as naturally and functionally powerful as this man’s forearms. Maya handed them each a card that identified her as a vice president of Praetorian Capital. They each looked at the card in the same contemptuous fashion, exactly as if she’d handed them a shiny, laminated turd.
As succinctly as she could, Maya laid out the scenarios that now seemed to be facing the Powers family. She said that the new awareness of this family off the grid by the government was a cat out of the bag, a Pandora’s box that, try as she might, she could not close once it had opened. She apologized for that, as she knew she was the reason for this exposure. She showed them clippings of the Turpins and the Angulos. “I’m not saying you guys are at all like the Turpins, but the law can be a blunt instrument if you involve it and none of us could control where it ends.”
Mary looked at the photocopy of the newspaper article. “It’s 2018?” she asked, looking at Bronson, too.
“It’s 2019,” Maya said. “That case was last year.”
“My God. Time. Wow. Oh. So you’re accusing us of child abuse?” Mary asked.
“I’m not accusing anyone of anything. I’m not a cop, or a lawyer, or the state of California. In fact, I’m trying to keep the cops, lawyers, and state out of this.”
“We’re listening,” Mary said.
Bronson looked at his wife and said, “You’re listening. Not me.”
Good, Maya thought, cracks already in a unified front. This Mary could be her wedge in. She focused in on her. Now Maya floated the first scenario, where her company would buy a portion of the land, which would enable the Powerses to stay where they were while giving them the money they would need to play ball with the government—to pay their land taxes, or to relocate fully or partly or to use the money to engage in lawsuits if they saw fit. “No way,” Bronson said. “This is our land in full. Or not at all.”
“That’s right!” Yalulah yelled from the kitchen.
She felt no warmth at all from any member of the throuple for that option. And as she was talking, she was also thinking of the logistics of this arrangement in front of her. They were not one, they were three. Who had sex with whom and how often? Did they do it all together all the time or kind of alternate? Was he more into one than the other? Maya couldn’t help herself. It’s silly, but it’s human nature to wonder, she thought. The Mary one seemed gay to her; the way she looked at Maya was intense. Or maybe that was hatred. Hatred looks a lot like sexual attraction. Plus, there were definitely some wires crossed and soap opera shit among these three. Did Mormons go to throuples therapy? Did they have quadruples retreats?
She had to stop this line of thinking. She was joking in her head and these folks could be the Manson Family for all she knew. Anyway, she was no expert. She knew plenty of monogamous parents who fucked their kids up royally. And after her dad died, her mom was with Bill, her stepdad, forever, and still they were shitty parents despite the traditional configuration, so whatever … who the fuck knows … whatever floats your boat … rock on, Mormons.
“That’s bullshit,” Yalulah said, as she returned with a mason jar of water. “Once we sell a little, it’s a slippery slope. You’ll keep wanting more and more, governments will change and change laws, and we will have to sell more and more, and before you know it, my kids will be living like zombies in the suburbs.”
“I can see where you might feel that,” Maya said, and feeling her mouth dry, took a sip of water. “What about mineral rights?” she asked.
“I’m not selling mineral rights so you can drill and tear the ground from beneath our feet,” Bronson said.
“That’s another slippery slope you’re trying to get us on,” Yalulah added.
Maya watched Yalulah note exactly where her lips touched the rim of the glass jar, a nexus between the outside world and hers to be sanitized as soon as possible. Maya was secretly pleased that the Bronson family wasn’t biting at the first option; she was made to go for broke. She started with some swift business school platitudes. “There’s four types of deals in life—the i-deal, the or-deal, the no deal, and the real deal. This is not ideal. Unfortunately, you don’t have the legal option for no deal, and I don’t want this to be an ordeal for your family—so the deal I’m looking for is the real deal, and here’s what the real deal might look like. Because I disagree with Janet Bergram and the state of California, who would very possibly remove your children from here.”
Thus positioning herself on their side, and betraying her promise to Janet that she would not use her name like that, Maya launched into the idea for the grand wager—they would have a secret test in good faith, comparing the learning of the kids who stayed at home versus the kids who studied away in town. If the kids did better at home, Praetorian would walk away. If the kids did better in town, then the Powerses could either make a deal and sell a good bit of land to Praetorian with a promise that the company would be as noninvasive as possible or Janet Bergram would make this family known to the authorities, and hell could very well break loose.
When she had finished, she drained the rest of her water. Yalulah took the empty jar away and disappeared into the kitchen. Nobody said a word. But Mary’s aspect had changed. She was no longer looking at Maya like she wanted to strangle her. That look had changed to one resembling a person who is lost getting directions back home. Maya heard a glass shattering in the trash.
Bronson stared at his boots quizzically like he wasn’t sure why they didn’t just walk on their own and get him the fuck out of here. “That’s the most bullshit cockamamie thing I ever heard of. That’s like out of a bad movie.” Still without looking up, he said, “To your deal I say no fucking way. You stand to make a lot of money out here?”
“Yes, yes I do.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“I don’t see that you have much of a choice.”
“Seems like,” Mary interjected, “we can trust her or the government. I’d rather trust her.”
Surprised, Bronson looked up at Mary, like he was trying to see through her. Maya knew longtime couples spoke in code, and she was alert to decipher this throuple code, but unsure. Yalulah walked back into the room, drying her hands.
“We can wait them out,” Yalulah said. “They’ll get bored. Something else will catch their eye. I say we do nothing.”
Maya tried to shoot that down, lying again about Janet’s involvement precisely the way she’d promised she wouldn’t. “You could try, but I wouldn’t bet on it. This woman that works for the state, Janet Bergram, is a terrier—I don’t see her going away and forgetting about the kids. Statute 48293, subsection C—the court may order any person convicted of subdivision A (the provision to send your kid to school or do the appropriate paperwork and proof to show they are being educated) to immediately enroll the pupil in the appropriate school.” Normal folks would be intimidated by a woman naming and numbering statutes at them, but this family didn’t scare easily.
“I doubt that,” Yalulah said. “That lady seemed very impressed by our school, how we teach. And besides, that’s just paperwork.” Mary and Bronson both looked at Yalulah to see if she wanted to keep that fight going.
Bronson eventually looked away, but Mary held her gaze on Yalulah as something deep and difficult passed between them. Mary said, “Yaya.” And that’s all she said. Yalulah looked down and shook her head for a good long while. Nothing had happened, but something momentous had been decided. Maya somehow felt the weight of the room shift toward where Mary was sitting.
Yalulah exhaled deeply. She looked pained. She took Bronson’s hand and said, “This could be a test of our faith.”
“That it surely is,” Bronson said.
“The strength of our faith and what we’ve taught our children. What is our faith if it can’t survive a challenge from the outside?” Yalulah probed.
“What are you doing, Yaya?” Bronson asked.
“It’s not that simple anymore, Bro’,” Mary added cryptically.
Yalulah continued, “Don’t the Amish have their Rumspringa where the teenagers leave for a year or so and if they come back, they come back into the faith with renewed vigor because they’ve chosen this world over that one of their own free will?”
“We’ve given them no free will, Bro’,” Mary stated.
“Not free?” Bronson was incredulous. “They are as free in their lives as natural savages.”
“Not that type of freedom. In the mind. Of the will. Against temptation. Like we had before we came here,” Mary said.
“And how did that work out for you?” Bronson demanded, now standing right between Mary and Yalulah, as if trying to keep them from joining. “The children are free from the thought control and groupthink and despair of that diseased world and culture out there.” Maya sat back, fascinated, clever enough not to get in the way of this unit as it fought and processed; they no longer seemed like one three-headed being from Greek mythology.
“In Kirtland,” Yalulah said, “where Joseph Smith himself did not want to go, they doubled the Church in one day.”
“You’re talking about a mission?” Bronson sought clarification. “The mission is for age nineteen.”
Mary was nodding. She took Yalulah’s hand and said, “It’s a test of faith and a mission. Maybe it’s for the older kids, so maybe it’s a couple years early, they’re gonna go to college soon anyway, right?”
“I don’t know about that. That’s a couple years away, no.”
“Yes, Bro’,” Yalulah agreed, calming him and pushing at once. “You say yourself, we cannot pick and choose like from a ‘menu’ what we believe of the faith. How can we withhold our children from a mission if a mission is part of their faith?”
Mary piled on, “Maybe this is the sign you were waiting on. The sign you kept riding into the desert to see. The sign to tell you when to send them back into the world.”
Bronson watched in horror as his women seemed to be siding with this other woman, this stranger, and the dominoes underpinning his life began to fall—all the thoughts and fears that kept him up at night, that troubled his sleep, were being incarnated and voiced in front of him today. Each tumbling and toppling the next. He had to stop it. He pointed at Maya. “How do you know she’s not a temptation? An obstacle to be overcome?” he demanded. Usually it was Bronson’s domain to interpret omens and translate the unseen will of God in things that could be seen. Mary had usurped that place and seemed unwilling to relinquish it.
“Where the path is bad,” she preached his own words back at him, “the obstacle is good.”
“You think this capitalist emissary, this errand girl, is sent by our God?”
“God works in mysterious ways,” Mary said. Maya thought she heard something approaching contempt in Mary’s voice.
Trapped between them, Bronson stared into Yalulah’s eyes and then into Mary’s. He seemed defeated for a moment, like he’d heard his own words fashioned into clubs by the women he loved and then turned on him, seemed less the cowboy superman of Maya’s estimation and more like a beleaguered sitcom husband, and almost mortal, even old. He shook his head and looked down at his boots again, wondering at the speed at which worlds, which for years orbit in peaceful ellipses, can suddenly collide and destroy each other. Bronson’s was a full solar system, and there was much to track, too much at the moment.
Maya sensed this was her moment to strike, to play the card up her bloodied sleeve. “That night,” she said, “when your son shot an arrow at me. I don’t remember much of it, but it has come back to me over time in dribs and drabs. And I’ve remembered some of your speeches by your bonfire, something about bonobo monkeys?” Bronson squinted at her, and Maya continued, “And I also remember two graves, maybe three. Two small headstones and a larger one, or markers, for something very small, like a pet, or something.” She knew those were not pet graves. She let them know it, too. This was a serious threat, plain and simple.
No one moved. No one spoke. Maya swallowed and it sounded as loud as a gunshot to her. She watched as Bronson’s breathing grew faster and shallower. He jumped to his feet.
“Fuck it,” he said. “Fuck it to hell.”
Bronson strode quickly out of his house, his wives followed him, and Maya followed them. When they all got outside, Bronson was pacing toward the horse corral and calling the kids, all the kids. The young ones, alerted by an uneasy tone in Bronson’s voice, were dropping whatever chores or work they were up to and jogging to the corral. Three beautiful horses were flicking their tails at the flies on their rumps. A pretty teenager, whom Maya assumed was the eldest daughter, straddled one. Bronson lined the children up against the wooden fence. “Which one of these kids you want me to send to a public school in San Bernardino and which ones you want me to keep?”
His voice was so full of barely controlled anger, Maya instinctively took a step backward and her back brushed a horse, so she took a step forward again. It was a huge animal.
Maya tried to remain calm. “Well, I think that’s really up to you.”
“I haven’t said I’m gonna do it, or anything, but if I did, which kids you wanna take away from their family for their own so-called good?”
“I don’t know.” Maya was starting to feel anxious, her mouth getting dry. She felt close to achieving her goal, but also far away to the side from it. She felt she might be duped, or hurt. She heard the ranger start up his ATV and slowly roll closer.
“Well, I sure as shit am not gonna choose.” Bronson spat. “What was that movie? Sophie? Sophie something? She had to choose. I ain’t choosing. You know why?”
“No.”
“’Cause I am gonna win. Doesn’t matter who you choose. My kids are better off here, and after a year, they will come back here, and you will see that I am right.”
“There’s a good chance of that.”
“Oh, is there? A good chance? Go ahead, Sophie. Make the choice.”
Maya looked at the kids, and at the mothers, and at Bronson. A couple of the very young ones were crying as it dawned on the children what might be happening. Maya felt like shit, but this was business, she had to be cold-blooded, like some sort of desert lizard.
“You okay, ma’am?” the ranger called from his safe distance.
“Yes, thanks,” Maya called out, and turned her attention back to the group of kids lined up as in front of a firing squad.
“Well…” She bought time, thinking: Janet Bergram and she had decided on a couple older kids, high schoolers, and one younger kid—middle school, perhaps—as the best test group. And Mary, the mother, had just said that the older kids were probably going to college soon, so that seemed the way to go; those kids would be leaving home soon, anyway. No big deal. Time to grow up and leave the nest. That’s the way it goes. She spotted the oldest-looking boy. “Him.” She pointed. “What’s your name? How old are you?”
“Deuce,” the young man said.
“Deuce is the smartest of us all,” Bronson said. “He’ll end up teaching the teachers. He’s sixteen, seventeen, eighteen thereabouts, we don’t really keep track of ages like that.”
“Okay, Deuce.” Maya was relieved. “He’ll be a junior in high school, then.”
She could see Deuce was not happy, or at least wanted to let his father know he was not happy, maybe didn’t want to betray his dad. Maybe the kid was scared. Sure, it’s scary to leave home for the first time. He’ll be fine. But Maya definitely thought she saw some relief in Mary’s eyes; she started to think of the woman as a potential, secret ally. “So I guess you’ll want to pick a younger one now, too?” Bronson sneered.
“Okay. One down, two to go,” Maya said.
Mary spoke up. “Deuce has a twin—Pearl.” She pointed to the pretty girl on the horse. “We don’t separate the twins. And a missionary needs a companion, two by two, that’s the way. Pearl will go, too.”
Mary looked at Bronson when she said this, not at Maya, and not over at the girl, Pearl, seeming to dare him to contradict her. He held her eyes for a second, a look of incredulity on his face, then shock and embarrassment, before landing on the resigned but comprehending mask of a man who had betrayed and been betrayed in turn. He looked down. Then he glanced up at the sky, as if for backup. Only then did Mary train her eyes on Pearl on the horse. Something passed between them that Maya saw but did not understand, and knew that she could not ever understand perhaps until she became a parent herself. The love, protection, apology, and guidance Mary was sending the girl’s way was returned in equal measure with disappointment, competition, and rage coming back at the mother from the girl. Pearl then looked over at Bronson, but Bronson would not look down from accusing the sky of some unnamed crime.
“Fuck all of you!” Pearl screamed. She kicked at the horse she was astride. The animal took off in a gallop, skidding up an angry spray of sand, jumped the fence, and soon vanished into the distance.
“Pearl!” Mary called after her.
“Leave her be,” Bronson said, with a touch a venom. “She’ll be back; she got nowhere to go.” Then Bronson turned back to Maya.
“I think it’s going well so far, don’t you? One more, right? A young one, you wanted. You have two seventeen-year-olds, you want, like a ten-year-old? Ephraim? Three for the price of one. You want another girl? How about your girl, Mother Mary? Would that satisfy you? How about Beautiful? Beautiful?”
Two kids, Ephraim and Beautiful, stepped forward. Mary seemed to try to rein in any reaction, but she was wringing her hands so hard that Maya could see little specks of blood start to seep from her knuckles.
Maya looked at the kids. Her vision was blurry. She realized she was crying. She wiped at her eyes to clear them only to rub sand in from her fingertips and tear up some more. Bronson handed her a kerchief; the musk of it repulsed her. When she could see again, Maya thought she might throw up. Maybe she should have, but she hadn’t anticipated a scene like this. She couldn’t think. All she could see was the fucking kid with that fucking bow and arrow, the kid that had shot at her, Hyrum. It was the only name she was sure of among all the nutty Mormon and made-up hippie names. “Hyrum?” she said.
Now everything got fast. Maya heard the horse behind her make a weird high-pitched noise and rear up; she felt the air switch at her back. She watched Hyrum, impossibly fast, like watching a movie with frames missing, string an arrow on his bow and take a knee, aiming it at Maya’s heart. She heard Mary yell, “Hyrum! No!” as mothers have done throughout eternity when their sons are about to do something violent and stupid. Maya couldn’t turn, but heard the ranger, behind her in the distance, yell and start running toward them, pulling out his gun, bringing it up to aim at the boy, she assumed. She saw that in her mind’s eye, she knew it must be happening. Maya felt herself entering a kind of special time, like a sacred time; she felt both present and absent from her body and mind, somewhere between the here and now and a premonition of things to come.
Now everything got slow. Maya saw the boy’s fingers gently release, like setting free a bird, she watched the arrow fly at her, she felt she could see it from 360 degrees; even though time slowed, she had no time to move. The aim was true. She was dead. She knew she was going to die right now. That the boy had tried to kill her before, and now he was going to finish the job. She kept her eyes open and waited for the sting of the arrow through her flesh to her heart, hoped it would be quick and not too painful, hoped it wouldn’t get her in the face. Did she deserve it? She was simply trying to make money, make a life. Was that a sin, the sin? Was this justice for the pain caused by splitting up this odd family? She thought briefly but completely of the things she would not do in life. Children. See Greece. See Hamilton. She should’ve had more ice cream. Her Equinox-toned ass was about to be a useless accessory on a corpse, a thing of the past, worm food. She thought of her own father, hoped to see him again, if there was an afterlife. She keyed on the sound of the shaft as it flew nearer to her, ripping the air, and then, curiously, impossibly it seemed, missed her, continued past, and made a sticking sound a few feet behind her left ear.
It was only then that she heard the rattle. She turned, and there in the dirt, in front of the spooked horse still rearing and stomping its hooves, stuck into the ground wriggling, bleeding, and dying, was a big, angry rattlesnake inches from her leg. The snake stopped writhing and died, pinned by the arrow through its open, attacking mouth, like a science-room specimen, through its small brain to the earth.
Maya turned from the snake back to look at the boy. Hyrum was still on one knee, left arm extended in a fist clutching the bow, right fingers in a cocky freeze frame, elbow high by his ear where he had released the bowstring. He had a smile on his face and a full quiver, less one, so sure of his first shot that he hadn’t even reloaded.