“So one of them fell down and broke her ankle,” I said. “She didn’t die.”
Red grunted. “Ever been in a field? Ain’t always as flat and empty as you’d like to think.” He rapped his knuckles on the side of his head and made a popping sound with his mouth. “Hit a rock, stop stop stop.”
“Hit her head?” I was still wandering in a fog. “And she died? But it was an accident.”
In my mind’s eye I saw the two women in the field, Changed and fighting each other. One feints with a punch or maybe a kick, the other steps back and falls over. She hits the ground and her head bounces off a rock. Doesn’t have to be a boulder, could have been as small as a pebble smacking into her temple but it’s enough to do the damage and depending on how far they were away from the farmhouse, too far from immediate medical attention.
She passes out. Her opponent’s yelling, screaming for help and it takes the ambulance too long to arrive and the hospital’s too far away to make a difference. Wrong place, wrong time and now one’s dead.
Red cleared his throat and spat to one side. “’Cuse me.”
“So who died? And why would there be bad blood?” I frowned, trying to put the pieces together from Red’s erratic speech. “It was a challenge, pure and simple. No funny business, no one pulled a gun or a knife. No one broke the rules.”
He put his hand up in the air before letting it drop. “Maureen Middleston. Goes down, doesn’t get up.” He made a walking motion with two fingers. “Now Laura, she breaks her leg racing to the farmhouse to get help. Doesn’t see a dip in the field, bang smash and she’s down. Pulled herself close enough to the others to yell for help. Never healed proper, left her with a limp for the rest of her life. Chandlers say it’s all a bad accident and just straight-up bad luck.”
“And the Middlestons?”
“Family accuses Chandlers of choosing that field on purpose, setting Maureen up to fail. Laura breaking her leg on purpose to make it look like an accident. Only two witnesses—the seconds, standing by to watch what happens. One from each family and each backing their version of the story. One says Middleston’s guilty, other says Chandler’s at fault.”
“That’s insane.” I drained the last few bitter drops from my cup. “No one could have seen that happening.”
“Which is why the Grand Council ignored the Chandlers’ complaint and demand for a reckoning. Challenge was fairly offered and fought,” Red said. He overturned his mug and watched the last bit of tea dribble onto the ground. “But you know how family is. We never forget.” He waved the mug around. “We all heard about it. Good gossip ’bout bad luck. Stuff like that travels fast.”
I chewed on my bottom lip, taking in the information. It wasn’t really relevant to finding the two kids, not as far as I knew. But it was more than I had an hour ago and that was progress. Of sorts.
The feud was barely a generation old. Didn’t make it less important for those involved and I could imagine Mary Chandler and Jake Middleston becoming enraged that the grandchildren of the original warriors running off together. It must have seemed like the ultimate betrayal for their mothers.
“What about the men? Their mates? What did they do?” I asked.
Red tapped his cup against a nearby log, shaking out the last of the tea. “They raised their kids to hate each other. The widower Middleston had no brothers, couldn’t risk leaving his kids alone if anything happened to him so he just talked a good brawl. Old man Chandler, he had one sister who moved to another Pride to get away from the entire situation so he was alone as well with his daughters.” He smacked his lips. “They talk to friends and soon people’s choosing sides. A few fights, some challenges over drinks and now everyone’s got a stake in this. Business on both sides split up and start bidding against each other, stealing construction contracts.”
“Eventually the two men die.” I moved the timeline along. “So it moves down the line to the kids. Jake and Mary. The new family heads.”
Red inspected the cup. “Jake’s got one younger brother who isn’t married yet, still looking for a woman willing to take on the job. Jake got a good wife and she gave him a good family, boys and girls.” He squinted. “You know Lisa. Good kits, all of them from what I hear. Now on the Chandler side you’ve got Mary and her—” He poked a finger inside the cup. “Darned bugs. Get into everything.”
I resisted the urge to look into my own mug.
“Mary and her sister, they’re angry. Poisoned by their da from the day their mother Laura died. Get married and start raising kits as fast as they can but play it safe and make no direct challenges to any Middlestons or their kin, spreading rumors and doing what they can to screw them over through business deals and getting people to not like them.” He smiled. “Ain’t hard to hate Jake Middleston after a night of drinking with Mary Chandler, if you get what I mean.”
My head began to spin. Too much information and it wasn’t getting me any closer to finding the two kids and figuring out what to do.
“How do you know all this?”
He tapped his temple. “I listen. I don’t stay here all the time, I get out and walk around. People talk, family talk and some of them give me a dollar here and there to make themselves feel good.” Red grinned. “They buy me coffee and want to chat, talk ’bout things they can’t tell anyone else, things they don’t want others to know their opinions on. I listen.”
“Why didn’t anyone stop this before now? The Board, the Council—”
Red snorted. “You can’t make people like each other. And after a bit of time it’s easier to hate than admit someone was wrong.”
“This is ridiculous.” I shook my head. “Insane.”
Red scratched his chin. “To you and me, yes. But how many things have you seen that ain’t sensible?”
I swallowed hard, thinking of the many unusual things in my own life. Suddenly a family feud didn’t seem so silly.
I stood up and handed him the mug. “Thank you for the drink.”
He nodded. “Sorry but this is old folks’s camp. Ain’t gonna find your kits here. Too quiet for them.”
I started to dig out a business card then paused. “Do you have a phone?”
Red’s eyebrows rose. “Of course.” He pointed to the west. “There’s a pay phone over there by the store, one of the last ones in the world. Owner’s a good man, lets us pick through the Dumpster after dark as long as we don’t make a mess and keep quiet.”
I handed over the card. “If you see them please call me. Or if you need something.”
“‘Something’?” Red cocked his head to one side.
“We’re family.” I cleared my throat, trying to ignore the lump that had suddenly come up. “You need help or something, you call me.”
He laughed, a nervous chuckle at the end. “Okay, Susie. I’ll call you when the aliens attack.”
Red took my hand and led me through the makeshift shelters back to the hole in the fence I’d entered by. He patted me on the head and guided me through the gap, pulling the warped wire up so it wouldn’t drag on my leather duster.
“You be careful out there.” He wagged a finger at me. “Lots of bad blood out there. Splashes on the innocent and the guilty the same.”
Then he was gone before I could answer, blending back into the lengthening shadows.
I headed back out onto the street, a little shaken by the encounter. I’d never thought about finding family in a place like this.
It was both terrifying and strangely reassuring to know we could be just like anyone else, choose the path less taken.
A little voice at the back of my mind pointed out this could have been my reality, my day-to-day existence dependent on what I pulled out of the garbage cans or scrounged from strangers. When I’d been sent away from the Pride I’d been cut off from all family help, left to survive on my own. If I hadn’t landed on my feet in the foster care system and later on clawed out a place for myself in the human world, I could have ended up like Red.