The other man had gone to lie down in the car and she could hear the soft pull and give of his breath from time to time. She looked up at the big man and then looked away again. He hadn’t taken his eyes from the fire in more than ten minutes.
Already the fire was dying, sputtering on the meager collection of fuel they’d managed to cull from the grasslands. The flames licking past the dried edges of wood while Sheri listened to the crackle of grass and sage. John Wesley watching the small twigs blacken, then falter, curling in on themselves like the last spasm of life in a dying spider.
She stood and turned to catch some heat on the backs of her legs, watching the night beyond the thicket of trees and listening to the drainage stream flowing past. Out in the fields the wash of a single car went past on the nearby road. It was the only sound besides the crack of the fire and the rolling waters of the stream she had heard in over four hours.
“This time of year it can get into the teens at night,” John Wesley said. He’d risen from the log he sat on and he stood now looking across the fire at her. Her legs white from the cold and beyond the flicker of firelight echoing out through the trunks of the trees into the night. John Wesley took off his flannel and brought it around to her. “This will help.”
He laid the jacket over her shoulders, and she felt herself jump and then tense, waiting for some punishment that didn’t come. He was gone back to his side when she turned. The white undershirt he wore stained in the armpits and around the collar from days of wear. “Thank you,” she said, crouching again so that the tails of the flannel fell over her thighs.
She turned and looked to where the car sat. The doors closed and the windows fogged with the heat from Bean’s lungs. When she turned back she asked John Wesley if Bean was waiting on a call. “I’ve seen him look at his phone a few times,” she said. “Is it my husband he’s waiting on?”
“Something like that,” John Wesley said. He picked up the willow switch and played with the fire.
“And you’re looking for Patrick?”
“Yes.”
He played with the stick for a long time, letting air into the belly of the fire and watching as the oxygen bloomed red with flame. When he looked up at her he asked, “Does it hurt?” gesturing to the welt at her cheekbone.
“No,” she said, bringing her wrists up and laying the back of her hand to the swollen side of her face. “It’s better now.”
“I’m sorry about it.”
She tried to give him a good-natured smile but it came out ghoulish across the fire. “I need to use the bathroom,” she said.
“I can’t untie you.”
“You don’t have to.”
He rose and came around the fire and pulled her up with one hand and she felt the power as he lifted her onto her toes and then placed her down again. They walked out past the fire to the edge of the trees and she felt his arm loosen and then release. “This good?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. She looked around at him where he stood, only a couple feet off. “Can you at least turn around?” she asked.
He looked her over for a second and then half turned, his eyes faced away from her as she squatted. Working with her hands bound she had to shimmy the shorts down. Her bladder at the point of exploding and steam rising from between her legs as she peed, the blue light of the moon everywhere in the night and the wheat shifting like waves across a distant ocean.
She felt abandoned and set adrift. What mountains she’d been able to see in the last long beams of sun lost from view and the night beyond black as it had ever seemed to her. She squatted, looking over the wheat field like a sailor looking for land.
She thought of Drake out there somewhere. She thought of Patrick. She hoped for all of this to go away but she didn’t know how it could.
Behind, the crack of a twig in the fire. She turned her head to look at John Wesley, the corner of his eye on her. “You done?” he asked.
She nodded and looked once more toward the open wheat fields. John Wesley waited for her to pull her shorts back up before reaching a hand to her arm. She dodged his grip and before she thought any more about it she was into the wheat, high-stepping as fast as possible and trying to keep low. John Wesley somewhere behind, crashing after her. The wheat cut at her bare thighs as she ran and the flannel John Wesley had given to her fell behind somewhere in the field.
“YOU’RE SAYING YOU know those men.”
Morgan stood with his weight to the sink and his hands behind on the counter. He was looking back at his grandson where he paced the small room. “I’ve known them for a long time,” Morgan said. “They looked out for Patrick while he was away—made sure no one messed with him.”
Drake stopped and put his hands to the back of a chair, the window black with the night beyond. “And how did they do that?” Drake asked. He was not looking at Morgan, but at the old man’s reflection in the window.
“It wasn’t easy for Patrick. You should know that. I’m sure you’ve heard what it’s like for a lawman in there.”
“He promised them something, didn’t he?” Drake hadn’t moved and Morgan could see his hands tighten on the chair back, the knuckles grown white.
“He did.”
“More than cigarettes and little things from the outside,” Drake said. He turned and fixed his grandfather.
“Yes,” Morgan said.
“And now they’ve followed my father into our lives. Into my life with my wife, and into our home.”
“I don’t think Patrick meant for it to happen this way,” Morgan said.
“But it has.”
“Yes,” Morgan agreed. “Your father just wanted to get home. That’s all there was to it. He wanted to make sure of that. I don’t blame him for what he did. I don’t even blame him for what’s happened now. With all the wrong your father did it was always for the right reason. It was for you.”
Drake stared back at his grandfather, his jaw held tight and the muscles tense against his temples. “For me?”
“That’s all he ever talked about when I went to see him.” Morgan gestured to the letters once again collected in their box. “You can read it right there. You can read it for yourself if you don’t want to hear it from me.”
Drake just shook his head. His body now half turned to take in the box of letters on the table. He was shaking slightly and there looked to be little control left in him.
“I’m sorry,” Morgan said. “I’m sorry about how this has all turned out.” He patted his shirt pocket, looking for his cigarettes. “From what you’ve told me already I don’t even think Patrick knows these men are looking for him.”
“Why’s that?”
Morgan found his pack of cigarettes and thumbed one out. He replaced the pack again and began patting at his pockets once more, looking for his lighter.
“Why’s that?” Drake asked again.
Morgan stopped and looked back at his grandson. “Because technically they’re not supposed to be out of prison for the next twenty years.”
“WHY DON’T YOU call him Maury?” the girl asked.
“It’s not his name,” Patrick said. “His name is Maurice.” They were sitting on the couch in Maurice’s house. The second girl was back in the bedroom with Maurice and occasionally—over the sound of the living room television turned, still, dully on—Patrick would hear Maurice say something and then he would hear the girl laugh.