AFTER HER RUN-IN with the guard, Becca found the guest quarters. The Indian women, along with Jeanine, sat in a circle of folding metal chairs. Their eyes were closed and their bodies swayed back and forth like seaweed in a current.
“Lord Jesus, protect these men from their unbelief!” chanted a heavyset woman with black hair that fell nearly to the floor.
“Lord Jesus, protect these men from their unbelief!” the others repeated.
“Save them from these pagan gods and devil spirits!”
“Save them from these pagan gods and devil spirits!”
“Protect King in his illness. Guard his soul from despair!”
“Protect King in his illness. Guard his soul from despair!”
“Oh Lord Jesus!”
“Oh Lord Jesus!”
Becca had never seen praying quite like this. She half expected somebody to speak in tongues. No one did, but their ranks grew more frenzied, all of them squeezing one another’s hands so tightly, their knuckles turned white. Their bodies moved faster, more erratically.
“Please, Lord Jesus!”
“Please, Lord Jesus!”
It seemed to Becca that she wasn’t watching twelve women but a single organism, all of their throats straining as a single voice. When Jeanine jumped from her chair quite suddenly, the circle shuddered in response to its severed limb. The two empty hands on either side fluttered and flailed violently, the ten fingers like sinews.
Jeanine crouched on her knees, her hands clasped in what struck Becca as a parody of prayer. She shook them at the ceiling, like she was calling on God to knock His heavenly fist through the roof. She grabbed her dress and twisted it as her body writhed. Watching her mother’s contortions made Becca feel a little sick. How could Jeanine, so stalwart and disciplined, appear so out of control? What would drive her to this?
Becca couldn’t think, nor could she bear to watch, so she ran from the guest quarters and made her way to the edge of Kleos. At the graveyard, she looked around frantically and then, not knowing where else to go, ran straight through the tangle of crosses. Her legs knocked the posts, but she did not stop. She ran toward the rocky slope that stood between the graveyard and the ghost towns. She stopped at the foot of the rise, panting. The sound of her blood whooshed in her ears. She turned to the north and looked up at the great mesa. After all these years, could her mother still be in love with her father? It seemed impossible.
“Hey!”
Becca whirled around to see a woman approaching, brown-skinned like the Indians but dressed more in Becca’s own style, in faded jeans and a T-shirt. Beside her walked an oversize ball of tinfoil with a head and legs.
“You’re Becca,” the woman said. She had a broad forehead and large, dark eyes. A guarded face. Not mean, but not welcoming either. “I saw you run out this way,” she continued. She looked down at the ball of tinfoil. “This is Jacob. I’m Lucy. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” But Becca did not feel fine and she suspected that she did not look fine either.
“You’re Ben’s wife,” Lucy said. “He brought us out here.”
Becca looked at the woman and child, incredulous. Ben had picked up a couple of strangers?
“We sold him frybread!” the boy said gleefully, as though this clarified everything.
“Ben went up to Hands of God to find your mother,” Lucy explained. “He found us instead. And now we’re all here.”
“Ben saved my life!” the boy exclaimed.
“I’m sorry?” Becca was confused and feeling frantic.
“My nephew was dumb enough to think he could swim that river over there.” Lucy nodded at the rise. “Ben dove right in. Didn’t hesitate for a second.” She tousled the boy’s hair roughly. “Though I will tell you, your husband’s got the worst mood swings I’ve ever seen. Worse than when my grandma went off her Prozac. And she was loony tunes . . .” Lucy pointed her finger at her temple and twirled it around. After a moment, her face fell. “Hey,” she said. “I was just trying to lighten things up. I didn’t mean to make fun.”
Becca wiped at the wetness on her cheeks. She turned away, hiding her face. But maybe it was funny—to call Ben’s problem “mood swings.” To liken him to somebody’s batty relative. Maybe she needed to laugh at all of this, just a little.
“He bought me a milk shake,” Jacob said. “He took me to the ball pit at Sonic.”
“He did?” Somehow, these details seemed even more extraordinary to her than what Lucy had said about the river.
Jacob nodded, his head rocking exaggeratedly up and down, like it was about to roll right off his neck. He was so earnest—he seemed so enamored of Ben—that Becca couldn’t help but smile through her tears. And soon enough she was laughing. She laughed at the absurdity of Ben and King and Jeanine and herself all showing up here at the same time. She laughed at her fucked-up life, the kind of life she’d struggled so hard to avoid. She laughed and cried, because none of this was very funny and because she had no control over any of it.
“You okay now?” Lucy asked when Becca had calmed some. Becca nodded. “Good. Now, let’s get down to work.” She told Becca that while Ben was swimming after Jacob, she’d been picked up by one of the guards and blindfolded. She’d been terrified, but when the car stopped and the guard let her free, Lucy realized that she was inside Kleos. She told Becca about how one of the guards had Tased Ben for trying to talk to Jeanine. Then she put her hands over Jacob’s ears. He squirmed, but she didn’t let go. “My sister says the men here have a ritual. They build these huge pyres in the desert.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “They’re burning people out there.” She looked at the sky as though she expected a shadow to descend. “I want to get out of here,” she said, finally releasing Jacob. “But not without his mother.”
The wind had blown the tears dry on Becca’s face and now her skin was tight with salt and dust. She shivered despite the heat. Two different sources had now told her about fires in the desert—about burning. This very morning, there’d been the pile of smoldering bones.
“We’re going to help you,” Lucy said, squeezing Becca’s shoulder. “We’ll help you get Ben and then we’ll all get out of here. We’ve got a big black beast of a car. It’s parked over the rise.”
The Death Star! Becca swallowed hard. “And my dad,” she said. “I can’t leave without my dad.”
Lucy stroked Jacob’s dark head with such tenderness that Becca thought, Why aren’t you his mother? You should be his mother. She thought about how her own mother had selfishly dragged all these women out here, putting them in harm’s way. And then she thought of Ben, who’d come out here following her. The moment she ran from Dry Hills, she might as well have written a summons to him across the sky. He’d hurt her too badly and loved her too much to stay put.