I meandered down the driveway, debating on whether a truckload of gravel would fill the gouges from the fire trucks and fire crews. Not that we pampered a green swath of manicured lawn anywhere on our place. Watering ornamental grass was a waste when we didn’t have enough water for our cattle. Or when our grazing land resembled a dust bowl. Or when one of our wells could go dry at any time.
Along the road, lavender starflowers waved in the wind, the cheery yellow centers nature’s smiley face. During my childhood, I decapitated those flowers and used the pretty blossoms as the crowning glory on my mud pies. My mud pies still looked better than my real pies, much to Sophie’s dismay.
I rested my forearm on top of the mailbox. A vehicle barreled toward me from the north, reminding me of the night I’d almost become a hood ornament. So many bad things had happened in the interim I’d forgotten about it. I wondered if Dawson had forgotten, too.
Rollie grinned from inside a rattletrap Chevy pickup. The jagged end of his braid swept the seat as he leaned across to open the passenger door. “Hoka hey.”
“Hey.” The makeshift vice-grip door handle clanked as I slammed the door shut. “Nice hat.”
His fingers swept the black felt brim. “My official PI hat. Makes me look mysterious and smart, eh?”
“Definitely. So, are we on official PI business, boss?”
“Yep.”
“Where we going?”
“Just for a drive so I can talk to you about them Warrior Society kids.” He shot me a sidelong glance as he shifted to third. “You still interested, right?”
“Yeah. But I didn’t think you were.”
“Guess mebbe I was curious so I asked around some.”
“You could’ve told me over the phone.”
He grunted. “Huh-uh. Face-to-face meetings only in this line of work. Do you know how much private and dangerous stuff people overhear because of phone conversations and the like? I prefer a controlled environment.” Rollie slapped the seat between us and a cloud of dust arose. “Like this one.”
Lucky me. “So how’d you get the information? Or is that a PI secret?”
Seemed Rollie might hedge. Finally, he sighed. “Verline. She was friends with Sue Anne. And with that Lanae girl who just up and took off. Verline went to talk to Bucky One Feather yesterday about what was going on with the Warrior Society. He told her.”
“Just because she asked?”
“No.” Rollie shuddered. “I don’t think she asked nice. Them pregnancy hormones are nasty.”
True. I thought of Hope the night she’d come to my rescue at the rez rec center. Not typical behavior for her. “What’d Bucky say?”
“Just he’s scared he’ll wind up dead. He wouldn’t tell Verline who was in charge. But he did mention you and your sister took a whack at them. That true?”
I nodded.
“Didja learn anything new?”
“Not a damn thing. It’s frustrating.” I directed my gaze out the window to the undulating prairie, rock-strewn hills, and the plateaus rising from nowhere-the unique topography that comprised our land. The austere beauty of the Badlands on my right; on my left, the pine-covered grandeur of the Black Hills and the jagged point of Harney Peak in the distance. I’d been on this road so many times I could’ve driven it in my sleep. I never tired of the dramatic view. What did that mean?
That this is where you belong.
Gooseflesh broke out on my arms.
I faced Rollie. “Did you say something?”
“No. Why? You look like you seen a ghost.”
No ghost. Just phantom ancestral voices talking inside my head. I’d rather it had been a damn ghost.
“Mercy? What’s wrong?”
“Ah. Nothing. Is that the only reason you called?”
“No.” He lit a cigarette and relaxed back, driving with his left hand. “Heard about the fire, hey.”
“Everybody heard.”
“I was on my way over to help when dispatch came on the scanner and said it was under control. Lucky thing it didn’t spread.”
Not surprising Rollie listened to the police scanner. “Yeah. It was hard to believe that so many people showed up to help out.” An enormous blackbird took flight from a broken fence post; the wings beat an iridescent blue in the blinding sunlight.
“Folks wanting to help out surprises you?”
“No. That used to be my biggest complaint about living here. Everybody knew everybody else’s business. Now that doesn’t seem like the worst thing.”
Rollie coughed and spit a loogie out the open window. “It ain’t. It’s what kept your dad sane after Sunny died, that sense of community and continuity. Sometimes it’s a pain in the ass, but it’s better than the alternative.”
“Like starting over someplace new?”
“Uh-huh. You lose the history and the connection. Once it’s gone, you ain’t ever getting it back and you become an outsider. Your family ain’t never been outsiders. Even after you’ve been gone two damn decades, the community considers you one of their own, Mercy. Being here is your destiny.”
I ignored the destiny comment.
“Case in point: them freaks that bought the Jackson place? They’re outsiders. Always will be. And I’ll bet a hundred bucks not one of ’em bothered to lend a hand when your place was on fire last night, did they?”
“Not that I know of.”
“You been by since they put up the electric fences?”
“Been meaning to… I’ve had other things on my mind.”
“I’ll take you past it before I run you back home. I ain’t gonna slow down, ’cause them white supremacists would probably love to shoot an old savage Injun guy like me, eh?”
“I’d protect you.”
“You carrying?”
“Always.”
After Rollie’s comments, I studied the scenery with a sharper eye. Cracked soil, ranging in color from chalk white to bleached orange, signaled cattle had overgrazed this section. Huge clumps of sage plants overtook the landscape, but it was still butt-ugly. Barbed-wire fence stretched as far as the eye could see. I recognized the scraggly copse of poplar trees marking the turnoff to the Jacksons’ driveway. Some things never changed.
Whoa. And some things changed more than I could imagine.
Electric fences surrounding the house and yard distorted the landscape into a military image reminiscent of the cold war. Warning signs were plastered everywhere. The skeletal forms of buildings being constructed loomed like metal monsters.
Three ATVs were positioned as guards inside the fence. And Sheriff Dawson was hunkered against the front bumper of his patrol car, red and blue lights swirling around him as he talked to another guy inside the fence.
I muttered, “Crap,” and plastered my back against the seat, out of Dawson’s line of vision. I blamed the bullfrogs jumping in my stomach on cruising downhill, not on my seeing Dawson. Or thinking he might’ve seen me.
“Changes them folks made are spooky, ain’t it? Couple of other people were seriously interested in buying it. They would’ve been a better match.”
Who would’ve been a better match? The Florida Swamp Rats? Kit McIntyre? I wanted to know; yet I didn’t.
“Gotta be doing something hinky there,” Rollie continued, “with all that security, doncha think?”
“That’s what Iris Newsome thinks. She’s been bugging me about signing some kind of petition banning additional building or some damn thing.”
“Might not be a bad idea. Rumor around Viewfield is they’re from some religious sect where they have multiple wives.”
Lost in my own thoughts, I shrugged. I wondered what Dawson was doing out there. Routine traffic arrest? On a secondary gravel road? Didn’t he have a more productive way to spend his time? Like looking for my nephew’s murderer?
Rollie sighed. It wasn’t a happy sigh. It was a weary sigh I used to hear from my dad.