CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR:

Deane Scythe

The strangest things come to mind when you're unconscious. In my mind, I was reliving the days Moxie and I had spent together in the last two months. Some of this reminiscing was perpetuated by my lapses of lucidity during which I thought I heard Moxie's voice, but the dreamlike state I reverted to always featured those long autumn days that sloped into winter, first gently and then dramatically. First, I was shocked that she had made an effort to come out looking for me, but I was more stunned at how quickly we both accepted that we were in a situation that required us to look beyond our initial distrusts and prejudices of the other in order to focus on the effort of surviving. I think the moment when all that changed was when she put her head on my shoulder. It was a weird feeling, an uncomfortable feeling, and an inviting feeling that overtook me in immediate response. Next, I think of how I was getting comfortable with her head resting on my shoulder, until suddenly she slouched over and fell into my lap! Her snores were more audible then, and once more I was confronted with complicated feelings that – being incapable of working themselves out naturally – left me indecisive and ultimately being used as a large pillow. She moved, now and then, but very little, and I determined it was all I could do to try to sleep myself.

The next morning brought new discoveries, which my memory only vaguely recalls now. For one, the ring of Peacekeepers appeared to be around the Compound still, according to Moxie who determined it would be better for her to be a scout than me, since capturing her would be woefully unhelpful for anyone since she wouldn't say a thing. She made a point, repeatedly, to remind me that she was doing none of this for me, but even then I believe I knew she was lying. I can recall the first few days being long and drawn because I could do nothing except hide – on Moxie's express orders – while she ventured out to explore and to scavenge. We didn't eat very well in those days because Moxie was wary of venturing onto the Gaming Reserve, and when she did, the pickings were slim but relatively bountiful. There is, after all, only so much hawk you can eat before it stops feeding you. And the endeavor to claim hawk meat wasn't difficult; the weather at this time of the year was the most unpredictable, and those first few days were hot and very humid. It made Moxie irritable. The weather struck unsuspecting birds from the sky, and crows and hawks were like manna from Heaven, in a more or less literal sense.

We drank a fair amount of chamomile tea since chamomile was easy enough to scavenge and Moxie had been clever enough to find a source of water in the canyon. She claimed all Prairie Dogs knew about it, but I thought she was lying. Anyway, if she knew about it, she took her blessed time finding it. Once it was found, though, we escaped the danger of being dehydrated, and I can definitely thank Moxie for that. Another memorable aspect of those relentless days was that we spoke to each other very little. The easiness that had come in our first conversation had slid away, and at the time it seemed like it would never return. And then that pivotal breaking point came when our lives shifted from being adamantly apart to intensely together. I remember the conversation word for word because you don't tend to forget those moments easily.

It had been another mercilessly hot and equally viciously humid day, and so much so that Moxie allowed me to leave the cave to fetch water, after she had done the deed herself more than fifteen times. She had already described to me where to find the source, and I – being a diligent (or perhaps desperate) learner – found it with ease. The ledge upon which we had first landed – which hosted a small dirt path along the narrow edges of the canyon wall, some of which were smaller than a foot and forced us to shimmy our way along with our backs against the wall – crumbled down a slope, ultimately falling apart at the basin of a very thin ribbon of water leaking from the underground into the gorge of the canyon. From here, the drop was less than seven feet and could be managed with care, but most importantly, the canyon had a built in option with natural stepping stones jutting from its side, each about a stride's length from the next. We were able to skip from one stone to the next with relative ease, making an easier descent than a nearly vertical seven foot drop. These details would be meaningless if it weren't for the fact that they played an important role in helping us… well, me in this case… transport water. Dropping the seven feet could have been perilous because of the mess of stones at its foot, but scaling it was no threat, and once the water skin Moxie had brought was bulging with water, I used the stepping stones to hold the water skin while scaling the seven foot drop. In the end, the only thing to drop in the entire operation was the earth. I spilled not a single drop of water.

Upon returning to our cave, I found Moxie lying out on the stone floor. She didn't move as I came in and I thought she might have passed out from the heat, but when I went to shake her in alarm, her eyes snapped open and she gave me a terrific scowl that sent me back a safe distance from her. "Water?" she demanded, and I handed it to her. She drained the skin and tossed it back to me. "More." This process repeated itself several times more, until finally she held up her hand as I entered the cave and said, "No. You drink it now. You need it." When I'd finished the supply in the water skin, she took it and filled it again. When she returned, she sat across from me as I drank. "It was a long time ago," she said in a voice not wholly her own. "And I shouldn't remember it, but I do." She mopped her brow and met my eyes directly. "A day like this that led to a night like this that led to my mother dying and my brothers surviving." I felt that same feeling of discomfort and intrigue.

"My parents died too," I offered when the silence thickened the space between us. "But I can't remember. Or maybe I don't want to."

"Momma was having my brothers the night she passed," Moxie said at last. "Dad tried to put us to sleep, but she was crying like a wounded animal and I lay in bed holding onto Bess really tight, and I think Sissy was doing the same to Bess, and Elka to Sissy. Anyway, we were all awake and listening to Momma crying. Miss Vetta was there. She was birthing Momma. It was a heat that was suffocating, the heat that day and that night, the sort of heat and humidity that makes folks go mad. Every push, Momma got weaker. We're lucky the boys came out at all. I didn't know that then, but I know it now. And Dad was scared, even though he never said anything." She looked away. "We all got up at the same time and went into the eating place. Momma looked dried up like a prune; she couldn't speak. Miss Vetta handed Bess the baby and sent us outside, and I remember seeing those dark, dark storm clouds rushing over the sky dome. I remember asking the Fates to drop rain in buckets, to pound the dead earth with rain, to poison the demons taking Momma away. But Momma was taken away before my prayers were answered." She shakes her head. "Why do some folks get to live and other folks get to die?"

"It's all a game," I said, pessimistically. "The Fates throw the dice, we pay their gambler's price. It's all a game of life and death." I quote the Book of Verses.

"How did your parents go?" Moxie asked softly.

"Shotgun to the head," I say. "I think that's how."

"Where'd you come from anyway?"

"Not here. Pretty far away. There's another town with lots of folks in it, but they're all bad folks with weapons like guns and knives. If you're not with them, you're against them, and there it's every man and woman for him and herself. There's an evil place called a saloon where Dad went in to settle a score with some really bad guy. He never came back. I think that's how it went." I squeezed my eyes shut trying to remember exactly how it happened. "Oh… they saw Thatcher and he looked like Dad, so we had to run, him and me."

"What about your Momma?"

"I don't remember what happened to her," I said. "I think I have made myself forget because all I think about when I think of her is screaming, clothes tearing. It's awful."

"Drink your water, Deane," Moxie said as she got up and took a seat next to me. "Hey," she said after I finished the water. "We're not going to play the game the Fates play, are we?" I shook my head. "Good. Because I hate gamblers."

I think I can hear Moxie now. She seems to cut through my haziness, but when I try to open my eyes, everything hurts from my neck up. So, I surrender and drop back into the haziness of times past.

Moxie catches a pair of rabbits off the Gaming Reserve. The hottest days were shattered by an intense thunderstorm a few days before she catches the rabbits. After the storm, we have the first monsoon of the season and the rain comes down so heavily that I wonder if it won't break through the ceiling of our cave. It falls like that for a day and a night, and then it stops suddenly. When we check our little ledge-side pathway, we find that the basin of that ribbon of water has filled up, the ribbon replaced by a steadier stream, cascading from the erosion in its cliff-side wall. It's the first time we laugh together. If the Fates are up there gambling, we're on the upside of their spinning wheel of fortune. Just as the end of the storm drew us out, it also drew out the animals that survived it, and that makes easy pickings on the part of the Reserve nearest to us. It's a far corner of the Reserve that virtually no one visits, though everyone knows about it. Moxie lets me come along for the raid, only I have to collect the dead animals struck down in the storm.

"More than half of them will be poisoned, so it won't be worth it, really, but I hate seeing you all cooped up in that cave with nothing to do." That's her reasoning. I don't argue. My arms are full of dead animals when she manages to catch the rabbits. I've never seen her so happy. We take them back to the cave and inspect the other meat from the animals I gathered, and it turns out that most of our stock is edible. The poison from the rain merely kills the skin on the animals and some of that falls apart in my arms as we're coming back to the cave. Beneath it, the meat is pretty tough but not poisonous. And that's how we began to learn how to survive.

A few nights later, the temperature drops suddenly and the slow descent into the cold season ends. We're heading toward winter at a much faster pace because the next morning, the sun feels cooler than before. Moxie teaches me how to measure the arc of the sun with a stick and stones, and we set up what she calls a "sun dial". The stones trace the perimeter in a circle while a large stick is staked into the center of the circle. At the cardinal directions (which I teach her about) we put larger stones. After she explains to me how it works, I explain to her how we can tell the time of year by the shadows cast by the posts of the fences that mark up the Ranches.

"Short shadows and hot weather go together. Long shadows and cold weather go together also," I tell her.

She checks the view of the Compound, but it looks like nothing has changed. In the first day we spent here, she thought she heard something happen out there, but I thought I heard something too and considered it a distant stampede of livestock. On this particular day I'm dreaming about, I remember how concerned it made her to look out and see the Peacekeepers still standing there like they'd never moved.

"They're all so close together, I can't even see a peep into the Compound." She reported back to me.

"What about the road? Are the cowboys still there?" I asked.

"No. They've been gone since the storm. It's one reason why I let you go on the Reserve." I take that as a non-admission that she is concerned about me. "I want to go closer," she said. "Something's not right. I feel it in my bones."

"Okay," I begin. "But not today, please." She complies. I hope she takes that as my non-admission that I'm concerned about her too. She says the same thing the next day, and the next, and the next, and each time she complies when I ask her, "Not today, please?" And then two months have passed: we've been measuring time with her sun dial and my shadow tracking.

The evening when the season officially turned from cool to cold, Moxie asked me about Thatcher.

"What's he really like?"

"Well, he's my brother," I begin, not sure how to answer the question because I'm not sure what she's asking me. "He's a hard worker and he puts up with a lot of stuff."

"What's the one thing you miss about him?" She asks so suddenly I am caught off guard.

"His smile." I smile. "He always has one on his face. Well, not always but more often than not."

"Sounds like Bess," Moxie snorts. "She's always so darn happy! Well, not always but more often than not." I grin when she repeats my words back to me.

"What else do you like about Bess?" I ask, figuring it's a fair question.

"She sees good in me," Moxie says in a voice that is not her own. "Even when I'm wicked."

"I don't understand," I say, puzzled by this seemingly drastic turn.

"You know, she makes little comments about the most insignificant things I do, like brushing her hair in the morning or nudging her awake gently so she doesn't jump and hit the other girls, or how I seem to know when she's being annoyed by our brothers and stop them instinctively before they can start on her. Those little things."

"It sounds like she knows you well," I say, thinking about Thatch. "Thatch does something that really … " I'm at a loss for words because I don't know how I feel about it. It's when Thatch decides to cuddle with me when he gets bad dreams, and how powerful it is to hold him when he's fighting with his nightmares. It makes me feel like his guardian. "He's got this thing he does where he needs to be held when he's having a bad dream because it doesn't wake him but it helps him know that he's not alone. I think that's what it is."

"So… you sleep with him in your bed?" Moxie asks.

"No… but he asks sometimes and when he does, I let him."

"We all sleep in the same bed. I miss having my sisters next to me," she says. "When I had no other choice, it really annoyed me, but out here… I miss it."

That night, as the temperature drops drastically, I wake up and see her shivering. It's an instinct, not a thought process: I lie down at her back and put my arms and my blanket around her, hugging her as I would hug Thatcher on his bad nights. My warmth is willed into her shivering body, and when she stops shivering, we both fall asleep, soundly, hanging on to each other, and refusing to play the gambling game.

I come out of my dream in a different sort of haze. It's an external haze: the sort of haze caused by smoke. Something sweet rises up my nostrils and brings me out of my dream world. I blink a few times and see a rough face of a man leaning close to mine. "He's awake."