Matt grinned and Chance caught Donnie opening his coat. Chance fired in warning but the back of Donnie’s head came open and dusted the snow red. The other men scattered as Donnie fell. Chance backpedaled across the yard, putting the Suburban between him and them. He fired two rounds into the tires on his side, then ran straight for his truck.
He reached the cab and turned the key without hope, but the engine caught, and he hit the gas. One of Matt’s men raised his weapon and fired, putting a line of holes in the International’s side. Chance shot his gun dry through the side window as he tore out of the yard.
If they killed him, she was dead. If they got past him, she was dead. He had to stop them. But the pain in his ribs was suddenly very sharp and he felt a smear of blood spreading from his side.
The truck lurched and a plume of dark smoke boiled from the hood. Neither of them had long. In the mirror, the hobbled Suburban rolled slowly toward him. They couldn’t get far — but far enough to reach him. He had to stop them here.
Chance played his last card. He put the wheel hard over and the International roared off the road and toward the silo’s fence. It struck the chain link and went through, dragging fence and DEADLY FORCE signs and tumbleweeds through the gravel compound. He pulled a tight turn, mowing through antennas and sensors before the truck rocked to a stop against the squat blast door.
Chance coughed up some blood. He upended the pistol and thumbed the cylinder release. The spent casings dropped in slow motion, the last, the empty cartridge pinging off the wheel as it fell. He fished live rounds from the coat’s pocket and reloaded with a shaky hand.
He leaned against the door and fell to the earth. Rolling onto his front, he saw the Suburban stop below, tires gone on his side. He crawled beneath the truck and set the pistol in both hands.
The men in the rig paused, deciding. In minutes helicopters would appear over the rise. Men in Humvees with guns drawn would sweep in to kill anything that moved. They were caught one way or another. They might as well shoot Chance first.
He saw them coming now. Eighty feet maybe, yellow jacket in the middle. He thought he heard the thump of rotors. He could feel his heart beating against the earth his grandfather had once run through with steel blades. The men were coming as three. Chance just needed to kill one.
Part II
The Hi-Line
Fireweed
by Janet Skeslien Charles
Farm Country
It was Jim who found the body. Ten miles off the highway. In the middle of Sigurd Sorenson’s summer fallow. Fireweed had taken root, its dull green leaves nearly concealing the blond stubble — stubborn, rigid — that stuck out of the gray dirt. In a fifty-mile radius, no other farmer let weeds onto his fields. Slumped in the passenger seat of the Ford, the dead man was not wearing a seat belt. His body leaned toward the glove compartment. A line of blood had dried on his cheek. Like a tear, someone insisted the deputy said, though that didn’t sound like her. The gun sat in the driver’s seat. The bullet had gone clean through his skull and even the roof of the car. As always, the sky was blue, but anyone who knew anything knew that snow was on its way.
I squeeze behind the counter and grab the coffee pot while Flo waits for her order to come up. I’m waitressing for one last year before I go away to college. As she serves their breakfast, four farmers huddle around the table and talk about the stranger — Who was he? How the hell’d he get out there? — at the Town Dump. That’s what we call the Town Pump — the only café in town. The only gas station too. Like a boxing ring, it has corners: one for the Ladies’ Auxiliary, one for the farmers, one for county workers, one for the hot shit posse. No one likes the posse, a handful of businessmen who act better than everyone else. “If you think you’re such hot shit, why don’t you get out of this pissant town?” Uncle Jarl responded when John Junior called him a hick, and the name stuck. The posse are good tippers, though, always making a point of contributing to my college fund.
The posse lawyer likes to give me advice while I pour his coffee. Don’t take too many credits your first semester, College Girl. You don’t want to be overwhelmed. Take the billiards class, College Girl. When you start work and beat the good ol’ boys at pool, they’ll respect you. You should wear your hair down like that more often, College Girl. It looks nice.
I smile. Flo frowns. Though nearing retirement, she’s as nimble as the roller-skating teen she used to be. Truckers of all ages flirt with her. When she crosses her arms like that, she has the intimidating presence of a bouncer.
I move on to the farm table.
“Sorenson’s is a hell of a place to die,” Uncle Jarl says as I refill his coffee.
He’s right. Now that Sig’s in the nursing home, his farm is downright dismal.
Talk shifts to Sig. The first farmer to pull his tractor out of the Quonset to plow in the spring, the one with the highest yield. He lived on crackers and sardines washed down with vodka, and remained a bachelor until the age of fifty. Most people thought he was too smart to get hitched. He surprised everyone by marrying the Widow Crawford, who was half his age, and even adopted her son Billy. She’d been pretty then. How was anyone to know she wasn’t just a drunk, but a mean drunk? Once she hit Sig with a skillet and fractured his cheekbone. Not that he ever pressed charges.
“Phyllis,” the men say, remembering the dead.
“Her boy’s not much better.”
“Billy’s all grown up, turned thirty-one this fall.”
They nod.
Then my uncle says the worst thing you can about a man: “He has no ambition.”
“Did you see Billy’s summer fallow? I heard the damn car was half-hidden by fireweed.”
We live in constant drought. Weeds show apathy. Weeds take what wheat needs. And like gossip, weeds spread. If a farmer doesn’t take care of the problem, they become someone else’s problem.
The conversation swings back to the stranger. He’s been dead for five days, maybe more. “Of course it wasn’t Billy who discovered the body. He hasn’t spent a minute on the farm since harvest.”
“Heard he’s hiring custom cutters next year. Custom cutters! Do you know what that costs?”
“If only Sig had sold me the land, dumb bastard.”
“I heard the Ford in the field had New York plates.”
“I heard New Mexico.”
Either is suspicious.
“Maybe it was a suicide,” John Junior, the posse banker, says.
“I tell you right now,” Uncle Jarl says, “he didn’t kill himself. And the killer didn’t walk ten miles back into town. So there’s an accomplice. Someone who knows Billy Sorenson doesn’t look after his land. Someone who knows us.”
My uncle has birthed colts and babies. He’s roped calves as well as his share of thieves who think that if no one lives on an old family homestead, everything from the light fixtures to the wood-burning stove is theirs to steal. An ambulance-crew beeper squats on his buckskin belt. He skinned the deer himself. Uncle Jarl dresses like a hillbilly and blows his nose with a big red handkerchief, but everyone listens to him because he’s usually right.
According to the stranger’s driver’s license, Randall Sullivan was forty-two and had green eyes. No one could recall seeing him when he was alive. Not at church. Not at the grocery store. Not at the Town Dump. Anyone could have killed him. In a farming community, there is no shortage of guns. You never know when you’ll come across a badger or a rattlesnake. My whole life, my uncle’s had his rifle tucked in the gun rack of his truck. (Ford, Chevy, Ford, Chevy — never new, always alternating between dealers in Good Hope or south of here in Chaplain, so no one’s nose gets bent out of joint. We spend a great deal of time making sure all noses stay straight.) Though Uncle Jarl’s pickup changes every few years, the rifle doesn’t. We don’t lock our doors. The gun cabinet is only locked in December, to keep prying eyes away from the gifts stashed inside.