SHE ATE HER LUNCH BENEATH an oak tree, eyes on her brother.
The first week passed quietly, she did not speak to anyone. Thomas Noble made overtures, she dismissed him curtly.
Robin was in K2, they had their own area sectioned off by a low fence. Each day he played with the same girl and boy. They stood at the mud kitchen, Robin and the girl short-order cooks, the other boy fetching and delivering to oblivious others.
She didn’t notice she was not alone until shadow cut the light, shade falling over her as she looked up.
“I thought I might enjoy your tree.” Thomas Noble carried his lunch, a bulging sack, in his good hand.
She sighed.
He sat and cleared his throat. “I’ve been watching you.”
“Well, that’s not creepy at all.” She shuffled further from him.
“I was thinking. Would you like to—”
“Never.”
“My father said my mother turned him down the first time. But her eyes said yes so he persisted.”
“Spoken like a true rapist.”
Beside her he spread out a large, thick cloth napkin. Then he laid out a bag of potato chips, a Twinkie, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, a bag of marshmallows and a can of soda. “It’s a wonder more people don’t know about this spot.”
“It’s a wonder you haven’t contracted diabetes.”
He ate quietly, each bite muted as he pushed thick frames up his nose. He kept his bad hand holstered in his pocket. Watching him open the marshmallows with his teeth was painful.
“You can use the weak hand,” she said, finally. “Don’t hide it on my account.”
“Symbrachydactyly. It’s when—”
“I do not care.”
He ate a marshmallow.
Robin ran up to the fence and showed her a purple plate with a clump of dirt on it. He mouthed “hotdog” and she smiled.
“He’s a cutie,” Thomas Noble said.
“You some kind of pervert?”
“No … of course not, I just …” He left it there.
Behind was woodland, out of bounds, long timbers stacked to make fencing, bleached back to bone.
“I heard you’re from the Golden State. Beautiful this time of year. I think I have a cousin in Sequoia.”
“The national park.”
He went back to eating.
“Say, do you like movies?”
“No.”
“How about ice skating? I’m actually quite good at—”
“No.”
He shrugged off his jacket. “I like your bow. There’s a photo of me with a bow in my hair when I was a baby.”
“Do you have an inner monologue?”
“My mother liked to pretend I was the daughter she always wanted.”
“But then all that testosterone kicked in and shat on her dreams.”
He offered her a peanut butter cup.
She pretended not to notice.
They watched a group of boys pass. One of them said something and they laughed. Thomas Noble shoved his hand even deeper into his pocket.
She straightened a little when she saw a boy snatch the plate from Robin. Robin went to grab it back but the other boy, taller, held it from his reach, then threw it to the ground. As Robin bent to pick it up he was pushed over.
Duchess, up on her feet and moving, eyes locked tight on the kid as Robin began to cry. She watched other girls laughing, talking in clusters and twirling their hair, a different species altogether. She hopped the fence. There was no teacher, no lunch lady watching out. She helped Robin up, dusted his shorts down and palmed his tears.
“Alright?”
“I want to go home.” He sniffed.
She pulled him close and held him till he calmed. “I’ll get us home. I promise it. I’ve got it figured, when I’m done here I’ll get a job and a place and we can go home, right?”
“I mean home to Grandpa.”
His friends stood beside, the girl and the boy. The girl came over, plaited hair, dungarees with a flower on the pocket. She patted Robin’s back.
“Don’t worry about Tyler, he’s just mean to everyone,” she said.
“Yeah,” the boy agreed.
“You want to go fix more hotdogs for the diner?”
Duchess smiled and he left her. She watched him go play, nothing more to do above it, all forgotten.
She turned and found Tyler by the fence, going at it with a stick.
“Kid.”
He turned and she knew the look. “What?”
She knelt in the dirt, rough on her knees, the sun behind.
She grabbed his shirt and pulled him close.
“You touch my brother again and I’ll behead you, expletive,” Principal Duke said, fingers steepled over his stomach, his face tight with concern.
Duchess straightened. “I never said ‘expletive.’”
Hal smiled. “Well, that’s something. What did you say?”
“Motherfucker.”
Principal Duke flinched like the word cut him deep. “Now this does give us a problem.”
Duchess could smell the coffee on his breath, the cologne splashed onto his polyester tie just about masking the body odour beneath.
“I don’t see why.” Hal, hands red, skin cracked. He smelled of the acres, outside and forest. Radley land.
“It’s the nature of the threat. I mean, beheading like that.”
“The girl’s an outlaw.”
Duchess almost smiled.
“I don’t think you’re taking this as seriously as you should.”
Hal stood. “I’ll take her out now, the rest of the day out of school. I’ll talk to her, it won’t happen again. Right?”
She might’ve fought it then, made trouble because the bedrock was laid. She thought of Robin, already making a couple of friends here.
“If he touches Robin then I can’t promise—”
Hal cleared his throat loud.
“I won’t use those words again.”
Principal Duke looked like he had more to say as she stood and followed Hal from the office.
They drove out in silence. Duchess rode up front. Instead of making a left Hal headed east, the road opening up beneath a sky that flashed silver as the sun hid. A dairy farm, steel barns the color of mint, then a town nothing more than Main and the small streets that fed it. Down backwater roads before they met pines like skyscrapers. A river beside them shone like mica as it fed the gorge, the mountain that loomed frosted white at the peaks, lazy tracks winding their way up. They climbed, Duchess craning to see back as they cleared the trees and the waterway snaked its own path. They slowed for another truck, passing opposite, a cowboy who dipped his hat.
They parked by a bluff, rock sand and dust, the pines picking up again, growing out and wide on the side of the mountain.
Hal got out and she followed.
He threaded the trees and she kept pace, the faintest of gaps but Hal navigated like he knew the trail and where each of its branches would carry.
Montana unfolded in front, a thousand miles of natural shades, water and land. She caught pine scent, watched men in waders fishing the clearest water a mile up. Beside her Hal lit a cigar.
“Trout streams.” He pointed toward breaks, the fishermen like dots on a mighty canvas. “There’s a canyon fifty miles in, so deep people say it doesn’t bottom out till red rock. Take any trail, the backcountry, you won’t see another person again. A million acres free.”
“Is that why you ran here? Hide from the world?” She kicked a rock and watched it fall.
“You want to call a truce?”
“Not even a little.”
He smiled at that.
“Your brother tells me you like to sing.”
“There’s nothing I like.”
Ash fell to the dirt.
“The natives called this the backbone of the world. There’s water a shade of teal you’ve never seen. It’s so cold … the glacial melt and silt, nothing can grow beneath. It just stays clear for all time, no clouding, nothing hiding. There’s something special about that, don’t you think?”
She stayed silent.
“And that reflection, so true it’s like the world is nothing but sky, flipped on its head. I’ll take Robin out when he’s a little older, on the Jammer, maybe a boat trip if he wants to fish. I’d like you to come along too.”
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Talk about tomorrow like it’s real, like you’ll be here and we’ll be here.” She did not want to scream again, to shake up the still.
On the side were flat leaves, berries the darkest purple.
He picked one and ate it.
“Huckleberries.” He held one out. She did not take it, instead pulling her own free. It was good, sweeter than she thought. She ate a handful, then filled her pockets for Robin.
“Bears like them too.” Hal bent to pick them and she saw he carried the gun, the same one she’d shot with.
She took a breath. “You didn’t come back.”
He stopped then, straightened up and turned to her.
“You didn’t come back. You knew my mother. You knew what she was like and what life might’ve been like for us. You knew she could barely look out for herself. You’re bigger than me. You’re tall and tough and we needed—”
She broke off, fiddled with her bow, kept her voice even because she would not show him how deep the pain ran.
“So when you point it out, all this beauty, all this that you see and you think I see too. You should know it pales beside what I saw before. This purple—” She waved a hand at the huckleberries beside. “This makes me think of her ribs, beat dark like that. The blue water, that’s her eyes, clear enough to see there’s no soul behind them anymore. You breathe the air and you think it’s fresh, but I can’t even take a breath without feeling that stab.” She beat her chest hard. “I am alone. I will look after my brother and you will leave us because you don’t really care. And you can say what you like, what you think will make me feel better. But fuck you, Hal. Fuck Montana, and the acres and the animals and the …” Her voice shook so she stopped it there.
The moment stretched between them and out over the pines. It swept the sky and the clouds, buried the promise of new so totally. It reduced them to the nothing they were, so small against a backdrop endless in its beauty. He held his cigar but did not smoke, held the berries but did not eat them. She hoped to God she had shattered all the certainty he saw for them.
She turned and closed her eyes tight to the tears, forcing them back. She would not cry.