CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:
Moxie Tyler
I heard them coming, the hoof-beat pounding into the ground feverishly. In the prairie, you have nowhere to hide until darkness falls, and it wasn't that time yet. I lay flat in the grass and kept my head down, hoping it was enough to avoid detection, and all the while knowing that if I moved at all, I would be discovered and my chances of entering the Hunger Games would have increased. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, a prisoner trying desperately to break free of its cage. I had my ear to the ground, so I tried to pass the breathless seconds listening to the ground shake under the weight of the horses and the intrusive rolling of the Peacekeepers' motor car tires as they broke the ground we lived on and tore it out. When I was sure the motor cars had stopped, I hazarded a look up and saw that the Peacekeepers weren't fanning out into the grass but were forming a circle around the Compound instead. Their backs were turned to me, but I wasn't feeling courageous enough to move just yet. I pressed my face into the ground again and passed the time until sunset remembering why I was in this position.
It was earlier this morning.
"Wait!" Bess called out as the ranch hand, Deane, stalked off into the prairie with his pack slung across his back. I watched him go, wishing that the feeling I had was one of triumph: it was not, though. Bess turned on me. "Why did you have to be like that to him, Mox?" she demanded of me. She pushed me and I let her.
"He's not good for us, Bess. He's going to get us in trouble!"
"I vouched for him last night, in front of Dad! I cleared the slate for us all! And now he's been chased away by you!" She pushes me again, angry tears in her eyes.
"Bess," I say, gripping her shoulders tightly. "Listen, Bess, he's from another world and it's a dangerous world, and we have no part in it. Just like he has no part in our world either. We can't cross those lines, Bess!" I try to reason with her, but she's only getting more upset. I release her and try to hug her but she pushes me away.
"He's got as much right to start a new life as we do, Moxie Tyler!" She says angrily. "He's got nothing! He had something when he was at the Ranches: food, shelter, work, his brother! But he risked that to come out here and try again, and now you've taken even that from him!" She stomps her foot and brushes the tears from her eyes violently. "I will never forgive you if he gets caught and taken back to the Ranches by the cowboys." I decide, right then and right there, I will make things right for Bess, because I can't imagine being hated by her like she's promising to hate me, if he gets caught. I'll go look for him after school.
With those thoughts in mind, school and the viewing of the Hunger Games (mandatory) are a blur. We are granted recess to go home for the Hunger Games viewing, and the girls and I trek back to the Compound even though the screens in the town square are showing the Games. I don't really remember what happens in today's edition, but I'm sure it features kids dying. After all, that's the point of the Games. Once the television in the Compound common ground goes static, I get up and rush into the hovel, grabbing a bandana and a small parcel of goat cheese, some bread we were able to take from Miss Vetta, and a small bottle of water. I brush by Bess as I'm rushing out the door, and we exchange no words or glances. I hope she realizes that I'm doing this against my own will. Maybe she'll recognize the lengths to which I'd go for her.
The Compound is preparing supper as I'm leaving, so even though a number of my neighbors see me rush off, they don't try to stop me. It is okay: I could be going anywhere at this hour. No one will follow me because it's not practical to upset their supper preparations for a whim like that. I get to the Old Fifty Yards Tree and stop when something amiss catches my eye: a bit of the trunk has been broken off and replaced. I lift the broken piece off carefully and I discover the hollow beneath it. It's like a little cave naturally carved into the trunk of the well-loved tree. Whoever broke this bark didn't do it intentionally. That's how I know that it was Deane. I continue in a straight line, more or less. The path takes me past a mound with a cross on it, which also forces me to stop when I arrive at it. The letters "VST" are carved into it along with dates. If I wasn't clever, I would have thought nothing of it, but those dates and those letters are paired for a reason, and I take the moment of pause to connect them: it has to be a mysterious gravesite. VST is buried here, if it turns out that those are initials signifying a specific person lying under the ground upon which the cross stands. I continue onward, thinking about who VST might be, and a wicked voice in my head calls out the name Violet Tyler, but I don't know anyone of that name so it is meaningless to me and easily dismissed.
The prairie rolls gently up a small incline, the summit of which elevates me less than two feet. It is enough to see the Compound – pretty far away now – and what is happening there. The dust cloud from the road rises menacingly and from it emerges the motor cars. As they whirl around to face the Compound, their doors open and Peacekeepers jump out. I can hear them barking but the words are lost to me at this distance. I begin to run back toward the Compound, but then I see the band of cowboys riding at the far edge of the Gaming Reserve toward the road. The dust cloud is settling now and I can see the cowboys begin to fan out along the road. The sun is sinking but it is high enough in the sky that the cover of darkness is not likely to come for a few more hours. I have a choice to make, and I make it quickly. I drop down and lie flat on the ground, hoping that in the excitement no one has spotted my figure all the way out here. It would take them no time at all to cover the distance it has taken me a little less than an hour to cover.
That was how I got here: on a favor I owed to Bess. It had nothing to do with me and what I wanted, in the end. I'm doing this for Bess, who I love. I have time, now, to think more about her and to hope that whatever is happening at the Compound, it won't affect her. I begin to use senses that I'm not accustomed to using: the feeling of the sun on my back, knowing if it is still high in the sky or if the slowly receding warmth of its rays are an indication that it is dropping more steadily. I am listening to the ground to hear if the horses have stopped beating its earth, or if they are coming closer to capture me. I'm feeling the vibrations of the world to detect if the Peacekeepers are in their motor cars and if they are coming in my direction to take me with them. The answers to these questions are the same: no. I hazard another peek and see that the dust cloud is gone, the shadows being cast across the prairie are not (yet) dangerous to me, and the Peacekeepers have formed a large and unmoving circle around the Compound. I am not in danger, but I don't risk moving.
Sometimes I've had those dreams where it feels like someone is coming after you with the intention of doing you harm; my body reacts in only one way during those dreams: it freezes. I am incapable of any movement when I am gripped by those dreams, and I feel like I've strayed into such a dream now: I know I won't be hurt if I stay frozen where I am, but I also know that there will come a point when staying here will be more dangerous than moving. If only the darn sun would go down faster,, I think to myself. Before long, I can feel the sun dropping more steadily. The small mound I was standing on some time ago is casting a much longer shadow across the prairie. It touches me and covers me half-way. No one has moved from the road where the cowboys are stationed or from the Compound, where the Peacekeepers are still standing guard. I want to wonder why this is happening, but I choose not to wonder for the fear that it might cause me. It seems that I am safe to move now, though. I begin backing up very slowly, always watching the Compound and the road, but no one moves toward me. I've pushed myself up to my knees, and I allow myself to rise from the ground, slowly, so that I am kneeling. There is still no movement toward me. Now, I'm risking myself rising up and pushing off the ground to stand on my feet. For whatever reason, no one is coming after me. At last, I bring myself to fully upright position and find that I am safe to move about the prairie without being detected. That's when the sun slowly drops below the horizon, first burying an eighth of its mass. I feel as if I should tip-toe away as I move from my "hiding spot" and off toward the setting sun. It is brilliant as it illuminates the rim of the canyon and seems to set ablaze the borderline fence. If it hadn't been wet before, the goat cheese might have begun to stain a spot on my trousers. I don't really care too much because it is a spot I won't have trouble washing out when I get back to the Compound… if I get back to the Compound. It's still surrounded, that much I can see. Bess can hold her own. My task is to find Deane for her, and I am devoted to it, so thoughts of those I left behind will have to be pushed aside until I find him. After the Old Fifty Yards Tree, I haven't found any traceable tracks to follow. I'm going on a whim, now, fighting the idea that I'm pretending to find someone I have mixed feelings about. I wish Bess hadn't threatened me with excommunication if I didn't strike out into the prairie. There is nothing for it now: she has done it, and now I'm making good on my unspoken promise. I am keeping a relatively straight course toward the canyon, and it seems to me that if I was seeking to run away, that would be the place I'd go first. It is also just where I couldn't seem to get. I was making progress toward my destination, and yet it still looked so far away. The setting sun, which had been on my side, was now working against me, as was time itself, so it seemed. The long shadow off the horizon line now stretched out and encompassed most of my known world, and the sun's remaining third clung to the mantel of the world. I know that in less than thirty minutes, it will be dark. And then, what? The canyon was closer, but how close I couldn't say. I made the decision to pick up my pace, figuring that at more than 350 yards away and in the falling dark, no one at the Compound wouldn't see me.
Night sounds rise around me. I might have been frightened if I hadn't grown up around them, but I did. I'm not afraid of anything. I tell myself that as they grow louder and seem to come from all around me. My edginess has added enthusiasm to my quickened pace. I have a sense that the canyon will creep up on my when I'm not expecting it, but from where that sense comes I can't say. There are a lot of feelings and senses that are beyond my knowledge lately, like how I have felt when I watch Lutris but see Deane. I shake the thought clear from my head, I think, because I feel uncomfortable about what it means, perhaps. Bess… I think she knew better; I think she knew before I did. I don't know why I think that. Maybe it comes from the same place that told me not to trust everything on looks alone, because looks can be deceiving. That was a saying, I think, and as it comes into my head so does the scruffy chin, the short hair in need of proper cropping: the only details of the boy who I am seeking. I scowl, but the image doesn't go away. I never really could chase him away. I could remember him better following the first time I saw him, and I believe that was because I remember well the people I dislike. But the second time I met him, a new thought passed through me: intrigue. Now that he intrigued me, annoyingly, his image in my mind was fleeting! All I could remember was the scruffy chin and the messy hair.
The sun set completely, and I strained to see through the twilight, gauging the distance from the canyon. I blinked, Deane came to mind. I blinked again, Deane came to mind. I tripped, threw my hands out but gripped nothing. Suddenly I am falling, rolling down a rough grassy slope dotted with rocks, and I can feel them nicking and digging into me. The grass gives way to dirt, dust and jagged rocks. My arms flail, hands reaching out for a purchase on the terrain, for any small purchase to slow my quick tumble. Just as I think I've snagged one, the ground falls out beneath me, propelling me into free-fall. All I can do is flail and scream.
I feel strong arms grip me and hug me close, bringing me to a sudden stop. A foreign body with foreign parts presses against me and pins me to the dusty ground. I begin to realize it is a ledge, jutting out from a rocky, sandy wall and falling away down a bigger drop. Rocks tumble over the ledge and crash at the bottom of the canyon. I breathe hard and try to regain my composure. The body pressing against me detaches gradually until it is but a pair of strong arms holding me. They linger: I want them to hold me steady. I don't understand why I want that, and I wish I did. They remind me of a time in the past when I would be held by someone comfortable like Dad or Miss Vetta (when the occasion arose). I regain my balance and push myself to my knees. The arms retract and that strange comfort is gone. "That was close, Prairie Dog." I look around and find the owner of that familiar voice. It comes from a scruffy chin and a head needing a proper cropping. Shockingly, a new detail comes to me: hazel eyes, not cold or unkind but hard.
"Deane," I say, my voice shaking. He nods. I sigh. "Never thought I'd say this but I'm glad to see you." He says nothing. I hand over some cheese, which he takes with a questioning look. "Bess," I say to qualify the offering. He nods and takes a bite. I feel that sense of intrigue take me again. I watch him until he catches me and glares.
"What?" I say nothing, defiantly. He looks away, chewing slowly on the cheese. I like the way he chews. I hate myself for thinking that thought. But I like the way he chews. "Thanks," he says, not looking at me.
"I think this means we're also even," I say, amused with myself. He doesn't look at me immediately, but I continue to look at him. Finally he capitulates and looks at me.
"I was already even with you. Bess said so." I think I see his eyes twinkle a little. I shrug.
"I was saying that it's alright with me." I definitely see his eyes twinkle.
"She told you to come out, did she?" he asks. I nod. "And you wouldn't have come otherwise?" I nod. "Hmm. At least you're truthful." He looks away. I have an urge to correct him, to try to tell him that folks change their minds sometimes, and that it takes me a little longer than some to change, but the words don't come out and the moment, in all its delicacy, passes.
"Can I ask you what happened that day?" I begin. He looks out across the canyon and then looks at me.
"You want to know? Really?" I nod. "Okay. We went back to the Ranches and had to explain that a fox had caught three egg-bearing hens and had torn them to pieces. Thatch thought it was a believable story; I wasn't as sure. I was right. Our Cow-man didn't like the story my brother had to tell him, so he whipped him. He made me watch as he whipped him. Twenty strokes for each hen lost." He picks up a rock and tosses it into the canyon. The empty echo reverberates within me and I think within him too. I share this sin paid for by his brother. "I was commanded to shoulder his bloody body to the infirmary to have him taken care of by a gold-skinned woman from the Town. I did not leave his side. He never complained." He tosses another rock. "He's all I want in life… my brother. I don't expect you to understand."
"I do." I said quickly. "I love my sister more than I can tell her. And I told her once, because I needed her to know." He's watching me carefully. "Do you know what happened?" He shakes his head. "She was asleep, so she never heard it." He stays perfectly still, watching me.
"She heard," he says softly. "They always hear."
"We can't go back to the Compound," I say after a pause. "The Peacekeepers have surrounded it. There are cowboys watching over the roads. They're looking for you." I watch him, but he doesn't react. "I can't go back either. They'll question me, and I'll tell them if it comes to torture." The look in his eyes seems to reflect a feeling of betrayal, or perhaps I feel like I'm betraying him by being honest. "I won't let them catch you. I think there will be a day when I can't run with you, though. Is that okay?" He considers me for a long time. I take out the pieces of bread and hand one to him, blushing, just to get him to stop looking. He's far enough away from me that he has to move to come and get my offering, and I look away as he comes for it, only to be surprised when he continues toward me past the bread offering and comes to sit beside me. He puts an arm around my shoulder, which tickles me somehow, and then hugs me a little closer to him. I place the bread in his lap, both thrilled and not sure what is going on.
"I'll watch for intruders. You can use my shoulder as a pillow. I won't hurt you." He picks up the bread with his free hand and takes small bites. "In the morning, we'll figure out something else. Okay?"
I lean my head against his shoulder in response. It feels wrong, and I decide I don't care.