“Your boys are stronger than I thought they would be,” Eagle said, turning to start toward the house with Kevin.
“They’re stronger than I am,” Kevin sighed, reaching up to brush tears away. “Thank you, Eagle.”
“For what?”
“Incensing the hill.”
“It’s not something my people did, but I know it’s important to you.”
“I haven’t practiced for years.”
“Don’t fault yourself. He is with us no matter what anyone says.”
Kevin pushed the door open and waited for Eagle to enter before starting up the stairs. As they ascended, Kevin stared at the photos that lined the walls. Before, when they were still together, his wife used to say that for every year of their children’s lives, they would place a photo slightly higher on the wall, to commemorate their lives, to mark for the world and family and friends to see their triumphs through adolescence and their conquest for the future. It seemed funny that his wife had wanted to do such a thing—to adorn the walls with images of the past. In hindsight, however, Jack found each and every image a cruel contrast to his horrific suffering.
When they came to the final stair, Kevin looked at the picture of Jessiah on his seventeenth birthday and broke down into sobs.
Eagle pressed his hand against Kevin’s lower back. “Come. We don’t want to keep him waiting.”
Taking a moment to console himself, Kevin closed his eyes, stepped off the final stair, then made his way into the room in which Jessiah had spent the last week of his life. It took him a moment to compose himself, to prepare for what he might see, but when he looked up at the bed, he felt a startling sense of peace at the sight that lay before him.
Eagle was right; Jessiah had simply gone to sleep.
“We’ll wrap him in the blankets,” Eagle said, stepping forward to pull the sheets free from the mattress. “You don’t have to help if you don’t want to.”
“I do,” Kevin said, stepping around the other side of the bed. He looked down at his son and pressed a hand to his face, tracing his cheekbone with the curve of his thumb. When he came to the boy’s ear, where his hairline began to recede to his sideburn, he leaned down and pressed a kiss to the boy’s cheek.
I love you, he thought, more at peace than he could have possibly been. I’m sorry it had to end this way.
No father deserved to outlive his son.
With that knowledge in mind, Kevin bent down, freed the sheets, then pulled them over his son’s body.
When Eagle tied the sheets together, Kevin lifted his son into his arms and pressed Jessiah’s head against his shoulder.
He turned, walked toward the door, and made his way down the stairs.
By the time they stepped up to the tree, Arnold and Mark had returned with the rocks and bark.
“This is it,” Kevin said, looking up at his boys. “This is where we say goodbye to your brother.”
Mark sniffled, tears coursing down his face. Arnold reached down and took his little brother’s hand in his own.
Stepping forward, Kevin lifted his leg, then pressed his foot into the bottom of the hole before maneuvering himself down into it. Once inside, he gently laid his son’s body into the natural part in the roots, all the while taking extra care to ensure that his head would not fall to the dirt.
“Goodbye, son,” he whispered.
After crawling out of the hole, Eagle bent down, took a piece of bark, then began to set it over Jessiah’s body.
“Dear God,” Kevin said, taking his own piece of bark and setting it over his boy as his sons and Eagle continued to do the same. “Please, hear my plea. Please take my son into your arms and take care of him until we meet again. I could not save him in life, but I know you can in death. Please, watch over both him and my family and guide us to the path you think is right. Amen.”
“I need you to help me with one last thing,” Kevin said.
“Anything,” Eagle replied.
“The barn. She’s still there.”
“Who?”
“Diana.”
He stood in the darkened space within the barn. Trembling, the gun in his hand, he stared at the single enclosed stall and tried to imagine the horror that stood behind the stable door. He knew, in essence, what was there—with its perfect hooves and its bashful eyes, it had once been nothing more than a horse, a beautiful creature Jessiah had fallen in love with when he was only thirteen years old. She’d been a foal then, still awkward on her too-long legs and her too-heavy body, but she had been beautiful, so beautiful, in fact, that she had captured his son’s heart with a single look and made it her own. Maybe it was that beauty that had ended his son’s life. Maybe it was her eyes that had sealed his fate.
“I don’t know what’s in here,” he said, looking up at Eagle, who stood in the open entryway. “If something happens, I want you to take the kids and go.”
“Where?”
“Idaho. It’s on the map. I marked it down.”
“I understand.”
“She killed him,” Kevin said. “She killed my son, Eagle, and I’ll be damned if I let her get away with it.”
Reaching forward, Kevin lifted the nail out of place and watched as the wooden plank swung out of view.
A snout appeared from the darkness, then her eyes.
Is this it? he thought. Is this really her?
The creature inside Diana’s stall opened her mouth.
When the sound came out of her throat—when it entered Kevin’s ears and killed every ounce of happiness that could have ever possibly existed within his heart—he knew that the thing that stood before him, no matter how changed or decayed, was Diana.
Kevin raised his gun.
And fired.
CHAPTER 12
A week later, after a complicated series of supply runs and waiting for the rain to bestow them with a necessary supply of water, the first part of the wall was up. Situated behind the three houses on the ground that separated the farm from the yards, it stood an astounding fifteen feet tall and looked exactly the way Jamie had initially envisioned it—sloped toward the ground and capped with an impressive display of miniaturized stakes which stood like sentinels to guard their eternal wasteland.
Standing at the foot of the wall and trying desperately not to breathe in the concrete dust, Dakota watched as Jamie nailed the final corner in place.
He did it. He really fuckin’ did it.
“Hey!” Jamie called down, waving the hammer in his hand. “Look at it!”
“It looks awesome!” Dakota laughed. “I can’t believe it worked.”
“‘Course it did! Why wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” Dakota chuckled, smiling as Jamie descended the ladder. “What about the other walls?”
“All they need is concrete and they’ll be done too.”
“How much longer will it take?”
“We could probably be done today if we’re lucky,” Jamie said. He slipped the hammer into his tool belt and ran a hand through his sweaty hair, turning his head to look toward where Steve and Ian continued to mix concrete. “I just wish we had some kind of pulley system. It sucks having to do it by hand.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Dakota offered.
“Not particularly. I mean, if we had more than one ladder, sure, you could help pour the shit. Right now though, there’s not much anyone can do. I’ve already got Steve and Ian mixing and passing the stuff up to me. Nothing much anyone can do other than watch.”
“Yeah,” Dakota sighed. “I know.”
“Can you do me a favor, if you don’t mind? Get me a bottle of water and check on Erik. I think he’s getting another headache.”