Ezekiel Prater drove his ancient Ford pickup along Doffin Road, enjoying the cool night air that streamed through the open windows. His daughter, Savannah, had never understood why he had spent the time and money to restore a sixty-year-old vehicle, but she sure liked riding in it.
“Turn it up, Daddy,” she pleaded from the passenger seat, barely turning from her open window. “I love this song!”
He smiled and obliged her, though it was one of those bubblegum pretty-boy songs all the young girls seemed to love and anyone over the age of sixteen wanted to scrub from their brain. Zeke felt eighty years old when such thoughts entered his head, but he couldn’t help himself. Savannah’s preferred entertainment might have had rhythm, but it didn’t sound much like music to him.
“So, who’s going to be there tonight?” he asked.
The wind blew through the cab of the old pickup and carried his voice away. Savannah put her head back against the seat and closed her eyes, letting the breeze whip her hair across her face. His heart melted just looking at her. Savannah had gotten her big blue eyes and the spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose from him, but the copper skin and dark brown hair and lovely, sculpted features had all come from her mother, Anarosa, who’d found the lump in her left breast too late.
Zeke felt the familiar pinch of grief, but by now it had become his bittersweet friend, his reassurance that he had found love in his life. Seven years had passed since Anarosa’s death and he still missed her constantly. Once in a great while he would find himself realizing that he had gone an entire day without thinking of her and the guilt would nearly suffocate him. Savannah always saved him with some bit of prattle about her day, a fight she was having with a girlfriend or a boy who had paid her some special attention.
He turned down the music.
“Hey, bud,” he said when she shot him her patented irritated-teenager look. “Who’s going to this thing tonight?”
“Most everyone, I guess. We talked about this already.”
“Refresh my memory. Terri, Vanessa, Abby . . . ?”
“Abby can’t make it,” Savannah said, twisting slightly in her seat to face him, the seat belt fighting her. “She went to Austin to visit her brother.”
Zeke flexed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Her parents are okay with her sleeping in her brother’s college dorm room? She’s thirteen!”
“She’s fourteen.”
“Oh, well, that’s so much better.”
He laughed and shook his head, watching the road for the potholes that had played hell on his gorgeous whitewalls a few months before. The October moon was so bright that it suffused the ranchland that rolled away on all sides with a golden glow. Zeke had known people from up north who believed they had a claim on autumn, and on October in particular, because they believed folks down south never had a proper autumn. But the moonlight in South Texas this time of year had a certain quality to it—a kind of soft, tender magic—that made the world seem a kinder place, rich with possibility. Nights like this made the threats of an uncertain economy and the dangers of living so close to the border seem far away indeed.
“Daddy, please. You know Daniel. It’s not like he’d let anything happen to his little sister.” She rolled her eyes with a huff.
“I just don’t want you gettin’ ideas in your head, is all. You’re not sleeping in any boy’s dorm room, even when you get to college!”
She smirked and cast him a sidelong glance. “And how will you know if I do?”
“Twenty-four-hour surveillance, kid,” he joked. “Three hundred and sixty-five days a year.”
“Better be careful, Daddy. One of these days you’re liable to see something you don’t want to see.” She waggled her eyebrows in a way that seemed goofy rather than suggestive, and that silly, innocent part of her warmed his heart. “Besides, one of these days you’re going to want grandchildren. You can’t keep me away from boys forever.”
“Slow down there, girl. I’m not halfway old enough to be a grandfather.”
“Oh, don’t have a heart attack. I’m not in any hurry.” Her voice grew quieter, though he could still hear her over the wind. “You’ve got nothing to worry about, anyway. The boys I like never like me back, and the ones who do make my skin crawl.”
Zeke swallowed hard. Nothing pained him more than hearing the hurt in her voice.
“I’m sure that ain’t true, Savannah. Maybe it seems that way—”
“It seems that way because it is that way, Daddy. I know it won’t always be, but for now, that’s my life.”
“What about that Marco boy? I know he’s been flirting with you. He texts you often enough.”
“Oh, he likes me all right. He just likes Kasey Mason more.”
Zeke scowled. “That’ll pass, honey. A boy that age, why, he’s just mesmerized by how much faster Kasey’s filling out her bra. The rest of you girls will get there.”
Savannah gave him an amused look, one corner of her mouth lifted in her trademark smirk. “Well, there you go,” she said. “Right there is a stretch of conversational road I hope we never traverse again.”
“What’s the matter, bud? You uncomfortable talking about bras with the guy who pays for yours?” he teased. “Or is it just me talking about Kasey getting boobs that—”
“Ding ding ding! We have a winner! Daddy, please—”
“Boobs. Breasts. Knockers—”
“ ‘Knockers’? Wow, you’re old.”
“—titties—”
“Ugh. Now you’re just gross.”
“Next I’ll start talking about nipples or pubic hair or—”
“Okay, Daddy, okay!” Savannah cried, her whole body cringing as she covered her ears. “Enough, enough. I surrender!”
They shared a laugh and Zeke couldn’t wipe the grin off his face. Embarrassing his daughter always felt like a triumph. Slowly, though, his smile slid away.
“Listen, honey, I know you don’t like talkin’ about this stuff, but—”
“Daddy,” Savannah said sharply, her tone turning serious. “I know, okay? We went through this when I was ten, and again when I got my period, and again and again. Without Mom around, you had to step up and have some talks that most fathers probably avoid like the plague. And you did great. I’m not kidding. Sure, sometimes it got weird, but I don’t know . . . I feel kind of lucky to have a father I can talk to about anything.”
“You can, y’know.”
“I know. Really, I do.” She took a deep breath. “But I’m thirteen now—”
“And you’ve acquired the wisdom of the ancients.”
“No!” she snapped. “I’m not saying that!”
They fell silent for a moment, cast adrift on a sea of shared awkwardness.
Then Zeke let out a breath, all trace of amusement gone. “Sorry, honey. I really do understand. And I trust you. Hell, I wish I’d been half as smart and savvy as you when I was thirteen. It’s just that you not needing me so much is gonna take some getting used to.”
“Don’t worry, Daddy,” she said. “I’m always gonna need you. I’m sure some boy or other is gonna break my heart soon enough—”
“Well, it has been at least a couple of weeks.”
Savannah smacked his leg. “—and I’m gonna need a shoulder to cry on.”
“Well, I’m good for that much, at least.”
“Always,” she promised.
Savannah turned the music back up and Zeke smiled and sat up straighter behind the wheel, a sly smile on his lips. His daughter was growing up to be one hell of a young woman.
He studied the road ahead, enjoying the rattle of the ancient Ford and the thrum of the wheel in his hands. His day-to-day truck was less than a year old, a red beauty he used both on the ranch and on longer drives. But on a lovely fall night when the temperature had fallen to the midsixties and they could have the windows open to let in a breeze that was actually chilly for once, he hadn’t been able to resist the F1. He’d done most of the restoration himself, including repairing a sizable dent in the clunky metal grille, which he’d painted white to match the whitewall tires. The rest of the truck was a crayon-box blue that had just seemed right. Bright enough to satisfy the little boy in him, who had thrilled at the idea of restoring his grandfather’s old pickup when he’d rescued it from the crumbling ruin of the ranch’s original barn, and yet manly enough not to draw ridicule from his friends, who’d been envious as hell once all his hard work had paid off.
“Daddy?” Savannah ventured.
Zeke glanced at her. “Bud?”
“I just want you to know that I’m okay,” she said. “I wish Momma had been here for all of this. But even if she had, I’d be saying the same things to her now. I’m almost fourteen. I know about sex and I know boys are pretty much like puppies who’ll piss everywhere and hump your leg unless they’re properly housebroken.”
A wonderful pride swelled Zeke Prater’s heart, and yet it was also melancholy. An end-of-an-era sort of pride.
“You’ve got that right,” he said.
His little girl smiled and reached over to take his right hand off of the steering wheel. He squeezed her hand and she held on tight for a minute, and then they were approaching the turn onto Hidalgo County Road and he wanted both hands on the wheel.
He slowed at the corner, waited for two cars to pass—high traffic for the area—and then turned right, traveling parallel to the new fence Bill Cassaday had put up along the eastern edges of his ranch. A couple of horses grazed in a pasture and Zeke frowned at the foolishness of leaving the animals out this far from the barn after dark. They were two miles from the Rio Grande here—two miles from the Mexican border—and while old-time horse thievery was a thing of the past, there was never any telling what might happen to people, property, or livestock. That was the whole reason the Texas Border Volunteers had been formed—Zeke and Cassaday and Alan Vickers and a bunch of others taking it upon themselves to improve the policing of the border, at least in Hidalgo County. They’d installed lights and hidden cameras and had been reporting drug- and human-trafficking activities to the government for half a year, leading to a flurry of deportations and drug seizures. Just five nights ago, they’d caught a trio of hikers coming through the well-trodden paths at the back of Vickers’s acreage, each carrying a hundred pounds of cocaine from the Matamoros cartel. They’d come across the river on a raft and would have been long gone if the Volunteers hadn’t picked them up on video and reported them. The border patrol had caught them before they’d made it to the highway.
It was hard on the younger folks, living out here. Their elders all knew it, and over the past few years had been dreaming up one program after another to give them alternatives to sneaking off into the fields to drink beers or have sex. Dances and clubs and outdoor movies projected on the back of the Praters’ barn. Tonight was the best of all, the first annual Lansdale Music Festival. People had laughed at first, mocking the idea that a town as tiny as Lansdale, Texas, could draw enough people to warrant such an event, but every roadhouse in the state had a band or two dreaming of bigger things, and right there in Lansdale they had Annie Rojas and Jesse McCaffrey, both of whom were gifted musicians and had lovely voices.
Lansdale had been founded in 1912 and only then because of the five huge, sprawling ranches that surrounded it—thousands and thousands of acres. The ranch families had wanted a post office closer than the one in Hidalgo and then it had seemed only natural to have a grocery and a hardware store and a gas station, and soon enough Jesse McCaffrey’s grandmother had opened a dress shop and the saddlery had been replaced by an auto mechanic’s shop and someone had the bright idea to open a bookshop. Decades had passed, and there still wasn’t much more to Lansdale than that. They’d never had a movie theater or anything as precious as a florist; the grocery had rented videos when such things were still of interest, and the hardware store had a garden center these days. Not long before the twentieth century gave up the ghost, a medical equipment company with its factory in Hidalgo had moved its home office to Lansdale, bringing an influx of out-of-towners. Half a dozen border patrol officers called it home, as well. There were only a few hundred houses, but the ranch owners and workers and their families were all a part of the Lansdale community, swelling its ranks.
When Zeke was growing up, it had been a nice little town.
Now it lay squarely in the path of drug smugglers and the coyotes who guided illegal immigrants across the border, and Zeke Prater wore a gun belt that made him feel like an idiot, as if he were some kid playing cowboys. Tonight he had left the gun belt and his Smith & Wesson 1911 back at the ranch . . . but he had a high-powered rifle in the backseat of the rattling old pickup, just in case.
Around his daughter, Zeke wore a mask of confidence, doing everything he could to cast an illusion, but he kept vigilant at all times in order to assure her safety and the safety of all of the people who worked on his ranch.
He glanced over at Savannah just as she pushed her hair away from her eyes, and the gesture caused his heart to stumble. God, she’s so beautiful, he thought. Too beautiful. He knew that all fathers must have similar fears, but he worried about his daughter not only because she was pretty, but because she looked older than her age. She often drew the attention of older boys and even young men who misjudged her years, and like most girls, she relished the attention. Young girls were apt to be persuaded to do almost anything to maintain a constant stream of such affections.
Not Savannah, he told himself. You’ve always been blunt with her, always open and fair. She’s too smart.
But Zeke figured lots of fathers told themselves the same things about their daughters and ended up being dead wrong.
“I assume Ben Trevino’s going to be there,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road. He had attempted to keep his tone neutral and hoped that he’d succeeded. Savannah was in the eighth grade, but she liked the older boys just as much as they liked her; the Trevino boy was a sophomore at the high school in Hidalgo.
“I assume Skyler’s going to be there,” Savannah said.
Zeke shook his head. “Touché, kid. Touché.” He’d been on half a dozen dates with a waitress at a diner in Lansdale called the Magic Wagon, and Savannah knew that he’d fallen hard for her.
Rounding a corner, they came in view of the lights of Lansdale and Savannah sat up straighter. Zeke smiled as he took in the multicolored bulbs that had been strung from lamppost to lamppost, like Christmas had come early. With the windows open, they could hear the discordant jangle of instruments tuning up.
“Wow, this is going to be loud,” Zeke said.
“You really are getting old,” Savannah replied.
He couldn’t argue. Forty-one didn’t feel old, but if his first reaction to the volume of the speakers set up for the music festival was something other than excitement, maybe he truly had gotten ancient before his time.
They found a parking space behind the post office and Zeke locked up the pickup, hoping he wouldn’t regret having brought the antique to town. He patted his pockets to make sure he had his wallet and phone and keys, and then they set off, walking out to the main street and joining the flow of people moving toward the park in front of the town hall, where a stage had been erected just for the event. Zeke glanced around, admiring the size of the gathering even as he searched the crowd for Skyler, who’d told him that she’d be wearing a yellow hat.
Beside him, Savannah bumped into a thirtyish woman Zeke didn’t recognize, and he realized that she’d been looking down at her phone, texting someone.
“Hey, bud, pay attention,” he said, gently pushing her arm down. “Why not put the phone away?”
“Terri just texted me. She’s here. I’m just trying to figure out where.”
Zeke took a breath and decided not to fight her. They weren’t used to having this many people downtown at once, and it would be hard for Savannah to find her friends in this throng without texting them.
“Just watch where you’re going,” he said.
They were half a block from the town hall when the first band began to play. People howled and applauded and groups of young people put their arms around each other and swayed together. Zeke figured there must have been six or seven hundred people—not exactly throngs, but a massive gathering for Lansdale. Glancing around, he saw faces and the backs of heads, sweatshirts and T-shirts and jackets, and then a quick flash of yellow glimpsed between moving bodies.
Skyler?
“Daddy, I see Vanessa!” Savannah said, tugging his arm. “Can I go hang with those guys?”
“Just a second,” he said, rising to the tips of his toes and moving around, trying to get another glimpse of that yellow flash, hoping to find that it had been Skyler’s hat.
“They’re just over there in front of the bookshop,” Savannah said. “I have my phone. Can I just catch up with you in a bit?”
There! Another glimpse of yellow.
He hesitated, turning toward Savannah and then glancing over at the little bookshop across the street, its windows dark, the CLOSED sign on the door. A group of kids clustered on the sidewalk there and he thought he did recognize Vanessa amongst them.
“All right,” he said. “But don’t leave this block. I’ll text you in—”
“Thanks, Daddy!” Savannah cried in triumph, waving at him as she pushed away through the crowd.
The band’s first song ended. In the moment between the last chord that rolled out of the speaker system and the beginning of the audience’s applause, Zeke heard the roar of car engines coming fast.
He turned and saw the headlights, frowned as he saw the pair of dust-coated, jacked-up pickup trucks with their blacked-out windows—
—began to shout as he saw the figures that crouched in the beds of the pickup trucks and the guns they held in their hands, a rainbow of multicolored festival lights gleaming off of the barrels and the truck hoods and the windshields.
The band charged into their second song, a country-rock anthem everyone in the crowd knew by heart, but people had already begun to shout, and when the first gunshot split the night and echoed off of the storefront windows, they began to scream.
“Savannah,” Zeke barely whispered. And then he shouted her name.
Hurling himself through the crowd, shoving people aside, he caught sight of her at the edge of the lawn, nearly to the sidewalk. She’d raised her hand in a wave to her friends across the street but stood frozen there as she turned toward the roaring engines and the gunfire that erupted in the very same moment, silencing the music but not the screams.
Zeke had his arm outstretched, reaching for her, no more than five feet away when the bullet punched a hole through her chest. Her white denim jacket puffed out behind her, the fabric tugged by the exiting bullet.
Savannah staggered several steps backward but remained standing for a second or two, a sad, mystified expression on her face as a crimson stain began to soak into the pale blue cotton of her top.
He froze, fingers still outstretched, still reaching for her as she lifted her gaze to focus on him. Zeke was sure of that. Savannah saw him.
And then she crumpled to the street, bleeding, her mouth opening and closing as if she desperately wanted to speak, until at last her chest ceased its rise and fall and Savannah lay still.
By then the gunfire had stopped and the sound of engines had faded, but the screaming went on and on.