Fic: SPN, WIP, R, bob, "Weary Upon That Road"
Title: Weary Upon That Road (1/4)
Author: hossgal
Rating: Bob, R for language, adult themes
Summary: She counts the miles by the dead things she passes, not the ones she brings with her.
Title: Weary Upon That Road (1/4)
Author: hossgal
Rating: Bob, R for language, adult themes
Summary: She counts the miles by the dead things she passes, not the ones she brings with her.
Warnings/Spoilers: OFC, no pairing. Minimal visible Winchesters. Set sometime around the end of S1, beginning of S2. Spoilers through current episodes of SPN (2.5 for this section.) This section 4,000 words.
Author's Note: Written (in part) for the spn_roadhouse ficathon. With thanks to Florastuart, SE Parsons and Barkley for looking it over. Currently a Work in Progress. Title from Emmy Lou Harris's A Ways to Go, from her Cowgirl's Prayer album.
Disclaimer/Permissions/Contact: Supernatural characters and universe property of Kripke and CW, et al, not me. This is a work of fanfiction, no copyright infringement is intended, no money is being made. Please do not archive without permission. Please credit the author if remixing/borrowing original characters/etc. Reviews, recs, feedback (positive, not positive, concrit: all welcome) need neither permission nor notification. Contact the author at hosscheka at yahoo dot com. All feedback emails acknowledged with a glad heart.
Part I
as many ways meet in one town;
as many fresh streams meet in one salt sea;
as many lines close in the dial's center...
--Shakespeare, Henry V
1973
Her mother was in the passenger seat - now, Maggie, you be a good girl, sit in the back - and so she had to sit in the back, alone, by herself. Her uncle Harry was driving, and the front seat was empty except for Momma and Uncle Harry and Momma's purse, and there was enough space for her, there was, so she shouldn't have to sit in the back with the suitcases.
But she was.
Outside, the world was dark. Some of the trees had snow on them - the lights of the car make the piles of white glow as they sped past.
Inside, the car was cold, and very quiet. The radio wasn't on.
If she kicked her feet, just a little, the heel of her shoe bounced off the edge of the backseat, and dug into the back of the front seat, just a little.
She did it again.
“Margaret Marie, stop that.”
She folded her arms.
“I still think this was a mistake,” Uncle Harry said, and Margaret stopped kicking to listen. “We could have left her with your sister -”
“No,” her mother said. “She'd, she'd know, that we - we have to take her with - Margaret Marie, if you don't stop that, I'm going to take a hairbrush to you, do you hear me?”
She didn't want to be left with Aunt Emma. Aunt Emma's house was nothing but books and stinky cats. She didn't want to be in this car, either. She was tired and she was in her good clothes, and she didn't know why.
Suddenly, her throat was tight and sore. “I want Daddy,” she said.
Momma's head turned right around when she said that.
“Maggie, honey, I'm sorry, we're not -”
“Told you it was a bad idea,” Uncle Harry said. Momma glanced at him, then looked at her again.
“We're not going to see your father tonight. Maybe later, okay?”
She frowned. “I want Daddy, now.”
“No, honey, we can't -” Momma broke off with a gasp as Uncle Harry said something hard and loud. The car made a screeching sound, and then a rattle, and she had to put her hands up to stop her face from hitting the back of the seat.
Momma said, “Oh, god, what happened to her?”
I fell into the seat, she thought, didn't Momma see that? But then the car stopped, and the door opened, and Uncle Harry climbed out of the car, leaving the door still open. She pushed against the back of the seat and climbed up, to look where Uncle Harry had gone.
Uncle Harry was across the road, where a woman in a white dress was standing. The woman had her hands to her face, and she wouldn't look at Uncle Harry. There were big black splotches on the woman's dress, like mud or pudding.
“Sit down, Maggie,” Momma said, and she turned to look at Momma, to say she was sitting, she had her knees on the seat, not her feet, but suddenly Momma gasped and put both hands to her face, Momma's eyes big and round over the ends of her fingers.
Uncle Harry had fallen down. The woman in the white dress had let her hands fall, but now her hair hid her face, as she looked down at Uncle Harry.
“Stay here,” Momma said, and reached across the seat to pull Uncle Harry's door shut, before she opened her door. Momma closed the door behind herself, before she went around the front of the car very fast, one hand holding her coat, the other hand trailing over the hood of the car. Momma stopped there, and looked back, down the road behind them, and she saw Momma's face turn white like the moon as the car's lights got brighter and brighter on Momma's face.
Then the car was past, and Momma ran across the road, to where Uncle Harry was lying on the ground. The woman in the white dress was still standing there, but Momma didn't look at the woman, only put her hands on Uncle Harry and shook him, shook him again and again.
Uncle Harry didn't move. Momma kept shaking him. The woman in the white dress stepped closer, and reached down to touch Momma.
The woman was going to hurt Momma. She was sure of it. She should shout, she should call out.
She had her hands to her face, like Momma, like the woman in the white dress, and she couldn't make words come out.
The woman in the white dress reached down and grabbed Momma by the shoulder and threw her backwards, threw her in the road. Momma fell and rolled, her skirt bunched and tangled and letting all of Momma's legs show. One of Momma's shoes was gone.
Momma was watching the woman in the white dress, now, and the woman kept walking forward, towards Momma. Momma stood up, in the road, and now the woman in the white dress was between Momma and the car. The woman held out her hand again, and if she touched Momma, she was going to hurt Momma.
Then the world was full of the huge noise of a big truck, and the lights of a truck, and Momma turned, but it was too late, the truck was too fast, and the lights were everywhere.
Then the truck was past, but still making the squealing sound that meant slowing down. The road was dark again, and the woman in the white dress was gone.
She couldn't see Momma, anymore, either. She sat there in the car, with all the doors shut, and looked and looked, but couldn't see anything that looked like Momma anywhere.
She thought it was a blanket, in the middle of the road, but when the truck came up, moving slow, so much slower than when it had gone past, the lights hit the lump, and she could see the tangle of white limbs, like branches with snow on them, all twisted and broken.
She turned around and sat down on the seat. She sat still, and was good, and only kicked the back of the front seat a little, until a big man with a big hat came to the car, and wrapped her in a blanket, and took her to sit with him in his car.
Daddy came for her, after all, but it was hours and hours later, and when he came, he smelled of stale sweat and something like medicine. She reached for him anyway, and buried her face against his neck, and it was then that she started to cry.
1981
“Yeah, I know it's been a while since I called. Probably thought, well, it doesn't matter.”
The phone booth was plexiglass on one side and open air on the other three, with a layer of sand blown in around the corner to make a mosaic of the blue and yellow shards on the scuffed floor. A pair of tumbleweeds rocked against the whole wall - rat, rat, rat, rat like a single drumstick against the rim of a snare drum.
“Yeah, I do. Guess that goes without saying, that I wouldn't call without a reason.”
The sun was a paper cutout - white, heatless, and fluttering beyond a high pattern of cirrus cloud. The shadows had shrunk to near-noon invisibility hours past - now they were bolder, longer, and mocked the figures that cast them.
“I was - I went back to Duncan Springs. To get some stuff from the old house, a book I thought we had, see if any of the rosemary made it through the winter. Yeah, by myself.”
The truck parked on the gravel lot was faded blue, bumper white where it wasn't rust. A shotgun hung in the window rack.
“Did I ever tell you - no, I guess not. Dad keeps a box there - in town, I mean. Mail box. And we always checked it when we went through town. Or, Dad did. So, I stopped to check. And there was this letter. In the box.”
One hand held the black receiver in white-knuckled fingers. The other tapped against the solitary wall - shave-and-a-haircut, shave-and-a-haircut, shave-and-a-haircut, two-bits. A brush through sun-streaked red hair, then back to the wall and the barber's jingle. shave-and-a-haircut
“It was for you. From Aunt Emma. And what she said - she said -” A sniff, a gasp. “You told her - you lied to her. You told her that Dad beat me - you told her that Dad beat you, and she believed you.”
A dash at tight-shut eyes, at the tears leaking out. A tug at a tight black tank top, at the waistband of loose denim jeans.
“She believed you, and she told you to leave, to go with Uncle Harry. I thought she was crazy, that she was sick, that something was wrong. But it wasn't. It was just old news.” A cracked laugh.
The free hand wiped at tears again, then made itself into a fist and smashed against the aluminum frame.
“I checked the date, finally. Eight years. Eight god damn years, that letter's been sitting in that box. Dad must have looked at it every time he checked the mail, and put it back again. Eight years, he let me think you - that you - that you wanted me, and that was why you took me with you.”
The barest of breezes caught the Texaco sign under the awning over the gas pumps, made the chains creak as it swung back and forth. A pair of mourning doves scuffled and cooed in the roof supports.
In the phone booth, breath still hissed in and out through clenched teeth. Slowly, the breathing steadied, calmed.
“Anyway. I just - I wanted to be straight with you. To let you know why I wasn't going to call any more, wasn't going to talk with you. I thought I owed you that much.
“Goodbye, Mom. I love you.”
The plastic receiver made a small click against the metal hook. Gravel crunched under worn combat boots, then spun away from the truck's tires as the Dodge accelerated out of the empty lot.
The wind picked up, made the Texaco sign swing faster, whined through the cracked plate glass of the empty building. Outside, at the phone booth, bare wires dangled from the connection rod, ragged copper strands going rat, rat, rat against the roof.
1999
The old man sat in his chair, wrinkled and hunched, fifty-six years old and withered like frost-killed squash vines. His hands shook as they clung to each other, his right creeping out to brush over the knee of his paisley pajama trousers. The knotted fingers rubbed over the fabric again and again in an unsteady rhythm, before the left hand recaptured it and drew it back in his lap.
Out in the hallway, nurses bustled past, fragments of conversations concerned with other matters hanging in the air, phrases broken by the squeak of rubber soles on linoleum. Neither the old man nor the woman leaning against the wall looked up at the sound.
He looked up from his hands and turned pale eyes to his visitor. “Have you seen my daughter? She was just here. Have you seen her?”
The woman swallowed twice before answering. “I'm not sure. What does she look like?”
The old man blinked at her, at the dark shape she made against the pale wall, at the sunlit curtains. “She - she's just a little thing.” The left hand reached out, wavering, approaching shoulder-high on the seated man. Unattended, his right went back to his knee, petting the narrow knob of bone. “Like this. She has the prettiest hair, red like fire, red like a rose. She was just here. Did you see her?”
The woman folded her arms and shook her head, making the ends of her roan-grey hair slide over her shoulders. “No. I haven't seen anyone like that today.”
The old man nodded. He collected his right hand again, and folded his hands. The woman shifted her weight and stared out the window at the lawn.
2002
She was five dead dogs, two deer and three coyotes out of Pueblo when the hail started.
The storm had come up out of the south like the last coming - huge and black and visible for miles before it hit. Sorrel kept the window down as long as she could, the cool wind washing over her arms and neck and stripping the day's sweat away. But when the gusts turned icy and a pair of hailstones popped against the hood, she rolled the window up.
At the next overpass, she pulled the pickup over, just far enough off the road to let her open the door, not so far that another vehicle could park beside her.
She'd been up for nineteen hours, and wanted no part of company.
The hail came first, starting just as she turned the engine off. Out of reflex, she started to prop open the door, but changed her mind when the first semi came barreling past, blinkers on and still doing sixty, racing a clock that had nothing to do with the wind and the roll of the world. When it was gone, Sorrel climbed out and shut the door, went around to the other side and sat there, playing with her lighter and puzzling out the graffiti painted on the sloping concrete wall.
the fire next time, one read, and another: mundu pax, the only actual words among the scattered obscenities, poorly rendered cocks and a couple symbols that she vaguely remembered from a trip to L.A., two years back. All strange, all human, all innocent.
She wondered, briefly, at the odds of an actual, real live Crip ending up out in the shortgrass prairie, at an overpass without even an exit ramp, and then dismissed it. Seen worse. Hell, she'd lived though worse.
The sound of the rain changed, and she let her gaze wander out past the wall of falling water to the plains beyond - gold-brown and dotted here and there with the red and black lumps that meant cattle out here. The hail had stopped, and now there was only rain, pouring down to drown the lumps of ice.
Another semi rolled past, shifting into the left lane as it approached and blaring out a greeting as it went by.
Sorrel lifted a hand without looking to see it go.
The weathered man who owned the mine hadn't faced her, either, not until the end, when she had packed up the sage bundle and cedar shavings together with the carton of sea-salt in the back of the truck and put her sleeping roll in the front seat.
“Well, girl, I guess you do the job as well as your old man.”
Better, Sorrel thought, but that was a new thought, and it still made her feel like swallowing ground glass when she thought it. She'd only grunted, and reached over to snap the tie down in place over the spare shovel.
“Bout what old Miss Yellowhorse said, you don't pay any mind to that. There's no telling what she's got mixed up in her head. And it ain't right to be giving heed to heathen nonsense anyway.” He'd hesitated, then, craned his head back to look at the sky. “Won't rain here for days. You be careful, though, when you get down on the flatlands. Thunderstorms every day, down there.”
The old woman had jerked like she'd been bit, when Sorrel had touched her arm, jerked and swung around and nearly fell, before catching herself on the table, making her jars of powders and mouse bones rattle. Sorrel, who'd only come to the shop because she needed clean muslin, unbleached and undyed, had stopped and lifted her hands shoulder high.
The old woman had stared at Sorrel, eyes pale and damp, mouth working up and down. Finally, words came out: “Storm coming, girl. Wind rising. You'll die, you stay on that road. Better turn off when you can.” And then the old woman had turned away, and refused to say anything else.
Wouldn't sell her the cloth she needed, either, and Sorrel had to drive three hours to the next town, over a hairpin track that left her sweating and her back cramped.
But with the spirit of Kara Jones sundered, and her devil wolf familiar sent back to hell, Sorrel rested her elbows on the side of the truck bed and waited for the old man to finish staring at the ridgeline. When his gaze came back down, she had said only, “Thanks.”
The old man had nodded, and turned away to hobble back to the office. The door had slammed before she got the pickup cranked. Sorrel had shaken her head and pointed the truck down the mountain, heading east.
Now, staring out at the slacking rain, she turned the lighter over and over in her hands, looking at the grass and weeds in the concrete seams. She was thirty eight years old. Still girl to an eighty year old man who had lived in the same house all his life.
And she wondered just how far the old woman could see, from her little shop of antiques and herbs, with her clouded eyes.
2006
Sorrel ran into Gordon Walker in an Army-Navy store in Shreveport, strictly by accident, and against her better judgment let him talk her into letting him buy her a drink.
At the bar, he was practically vibrating in his seat, as wound up as she had ever seen him, and with good reason.
“Bullshit,” she said, when he finished. “You need to get your story straight, Gordon. Either Elkins” - she stumbled on the name for a beat, having forgotten what the old man and Walker meant to each other, then pushed on. “- and Montague and you have wiped the nightwalkers off the continent, or you haven't. You can't be claiming one day that you're these mighty vampire exterminators, and the next talking up your next big kill. Make up your mind.”
Gordon had grinned at her, white teeth flashing around his stogie, and the arrogance was enough to make her teeth ache against the words she bit back. She'd tipped her bottle back and sucked down the last swallow. Fine. She'd drunk with him, now she could go.
“Come on, now, Sorrel, don't make me sit here and smoke by myself,” he'd said, still fussing with his cigar. And that summed up three of the reasons why she'd never gotten along with Gordon, but she fished in her shirt and dug out a pack of Newports, and lit her cigarette before tossing the lighter back across the table to him.
“Besides, I have a tip for you.”
She took a drag, leaned back and blew the smoke out. “Not for me, you don't. I got nothing to trade, and no need for anything new.”
“I told you, I've got my next month laid out, maybe more,” Gordon said, waving away her disclaimer. “Michigan bound, and likely east from there.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “But what's this? You serious about what you said at Jim's wake?”
Seventeen men and boys around the fire, and three women, and she had been the only one of the three there on her own.
You wouldn't have to be, the voice in her head said, if he'd tried to stay alive, instead of driving himself into the ground, rushing after death, if he'd cared about you, he'd still be alive, and here with you.
But it was an old voice, and easy to ignore.
The bottle had passed from hand to hand, and they'd all poured a drop, and taken a hit, and spoken a word, or stayed silent, as was their inclination. All the while, the sparks had flown up, swirling on the rising air like fragments of stars finally going home. Anton had spoken a blessing, his voice rolling out the Twenty-third Psalm like he had the Book there before him, deep and rich and strong, and pausing in all the right places, so that Sorrel shivered in spite of herself. When the bottle came to Kimmie Rockcat, the younger woman had said “Goddess take you and keep you, Jim, and make Her face to shine upon you,” and not a one of the gathered had laughed. Then Long Lou had taken the bottle. After he drank, he said, “Five dead weres, brother, to keep you company in hell. I promise you that.”
Then Lou had passed the battle to Sorrel. She had tilted the bottle over, over, still half full, and a spattering of liquid had splashed out, catching the gleam of the fire for an instant before falling into darkness.
“I'm out,” she'd said. “No more for me, brother. See you at the pearly gates.” And she had drank, and passed the bottle to the next hand, never looking to see who had taken it.
Now Gordon stared at her across the table, the hand with the cigar in front of his mouth even when he wasn't smoking it, and she wondered if it had been him, there in the darkness.
“Yeah,” she said. “I got one more job, and then I'm out.”
Gordon took a long draw on his cigar, set it down. “Wish I could talk you out of it. I know it's been hard on you, since your old man passed, but you're holding your own. You're good, got you a good niche, taking down the ball-busting bitches for us.” She blinked at him, wondering if there had been something else in the beer, or if he was really as dense as that. As dense as that, she decided when he went on, then forgot her irritation at his next words. “And we're losing too many. You knew Jim Murphy, right? Out of Blue Earth?”
“Knew of him.” She couldn't say that she knew many hunters, but they all knew of each other, knew their weakness and strengths and specialties and insanities, a mess of rumor and half-truth and legend. “He died, too?” Hell if she'd use the mealy-mouthed platitudes that civilians favored.
“Yeah. Throat cut, the word is.” No accident hung unspoken in the air.
“Mama Church got the body?” When Gordon nodded, she took a final drag, snubbed her cigarette out. “Good for them. Time to go. You take care, Gordon.”
“Where you headed? That last job?”
She hesitated, but he'd told her where he was bound, and courtesy demanded she return the favor. “Farst, Ohio. Got a ball-busting bitch to take down. For you guys.” She shrugged into her jacket. “See you around.”
She dropped a ten on the table and raised a hand to the bartender, and was gone.
***
This is not the story I mean to be posting tonight.
The rest of the Spn_roadhouse stories can be found in the community.
I am anticipating posting on this about once a week.
Author: hossgal
Rating: Bob, R for language, adult themes
Summary: She counts the miles by the dead things she passes, not the ones she brings with her.
Title: Weary Upon That Road (1/4)
Author: hossgal
Rating: Bob, R for language, adult themes
Summary: She counts the miles by the dead things she passes, not the ones she brings with her.
Warnings/Spoilers: OFC, no pairing. Minimal visible Winchesters. Set sometime around the end of S1, beginning of S2. Spoilers through current episodes of SPN (2.5 for this section.) This section 4,000 words.
Author's Note: Written (in part) for the spn_roadhouse ficathon. With thanks to Florastuart, SE Parsons and Barkley for looking it over. Currently a Work in Progress. Title from Emmy Lou Harris's A Ways to Go, from her Cowgirl's Prayer album.
Disclaimer/Permissions/Contact: Supernatural characters and universe property of Kripke and CW, et al, not me. This is a work of fanfiction, no copyright infringement is intended, no money is being made. Please do not archive without permission. Please credit the author if remixing/borrowing original characters/etc. Reviews, recs, feedback (positive, not positive, concrit: all welcome) need neither permission nor notification. Contact the author at hosscheka at yahoo dot com. All feedback emails acknowledged with a glad heart.
Part I
as many ways meet in one town;
as many fresh streams meet in one salt sea;
as many lines close in the dial's center...
--Shakespeare, Henry V
1973
Her mother was in the passenger seat - now, Maggie, you be a good girl, sit in the back - and so she had to sit in the back, alone, by herself. Her uncle Harry was driving, and the front seat was empty except for Momma and Uncle Harry and Momma's purse, and there was enough space for her, there was, so she shouldn't have to sit in the back with the suitcases.
But she was.
Outside, the world was dark. Some of the trees had snow on them - the lights of the car make the piles of white glow as they sped past.
Inside, the car was cold, and very quiet. The radio wasn't on.
If she kicked her feet, just a little, the heel of her shoe bounced off the edge of the backseat, and dug into the back of the front seat, just a little.
She did it again.
“Margaret Marie, stop that.”
She folded her arms.
“I still think this was a mistake,” Uncle Harry said, and Margaret stopped kicking to listen. “We could have left her with your sister -”
“No,” her mother said. “She'd, she'd know, that we - we have to take her with - Margaret Marie, if you don't stop that, I'm going to take a hairbrush to you, do you hear me?”
She didn't want to be left with Aunt Emma. Aunt Emma's house was nothing but books and stinky cats. She didn't want to be in this car, either. She was tired and she was in her good clothes, and she didn't know why.
Suddenly, her throat was tight and sore. “I want Daddy,” she said.
Momma's head turned right around when she said that.
“Maggie, honey, I'm sorry, we're not -”
“Told you it was a bad idea,” Uncle Harry said. Momma glanced at him, then looked at her again.
“We're not going to see your father tonight. Maybe later, okay?”
She frowned. “I want Daddy, now.”
“No, honey, we can't -” Momma broke off with a gasp as Uncle Harry said something hard and loud. The car made a screeching sound, and then a rattle, and she had to put her hands up to stop her face from hitting the back of the seat.
Momma said, “Oh, god, what happened to her?”
I fell into the seat, she thought, didn't Momma see that? But then the car stopped, and the door opened, and Uncle Harry climbed out of the car, leaving the door still open. She pushed against the back of the seat and climbed up, to look where Uncle Harry had gone.
Uncle Harry was across the road, where a woman in a white dress was standing. The woman had her hands to her face, and she wouldn't look at Uncle Harry. There were big black splotches on the woman's dress, like mud or pudding.
“Sit down, Maggie,” Momma said, and she turned to look at Momma, to say she was sitting, she had her knees on the seat, not her feet, but suddenly Momma gasped and put both hands to her face, Momma's eyes big and round over the ends of her fingers.
Uncle Harry had fallen down. The woman in the white dress had let her hands fall, but now her hair hid her face, as she looked down at Uncle Harry.
“Stay here,” Momma said, and reached across the seat to pull Uncle Harry's door shut, before she opened her door. Momma closed the door behind herself, before she went around the front of the car very fast, one hand holding her coat, the other hand trailing over the hood of the car. Momma stopped there, and looked back, down the road behind them, and she saw Momma's face turn white like the moon as the car's lights got brighter and brighter on Momma's face.
Then the car was past, and Momma ran across the road, to where Uncle Harry was lying on the ground. The woman in the white dress was still standing there, but Momma didn't look at the woman, only put her hands on Uncle Harry and shook him, shook him again and again.
Uncle Harry didn't move. Momma kept shaking him. The woman in the white dress stepped closer, and reached down to touch Momma.
The woman was going to hurt Momma. She was sure of it. She should shout, she should call out.
She had her hands to her face, like Momma, like the woman in the white dress, and she couldn't make words come out.
The woman in the white dress reached down and grabbed Momma by the shoulder and threw her backwards, threw her in the road. Momma fell and rolled, her skirt bunched and tangled and letting all of Momma's legs show. One of Momma's shoes was gone.
Momma was watching the woman in the white dress, now, and the woman kept walking forward, towards Momma. Momma stood up, in the road, and now the woman in the white dress was between Momma and the car. The woman held out her hand again, and if she touched Momma, she was going to hurt Momma.
Then the world was full of the huge noise of a big truck, and the lights of a truck, and Momma turned, but it was too late, the truck was too fast, and the lights were everywhere.
Then the truck was past, but still making the squealing sound that meant slowing down. The road was dark again, and the woman in the white dress was gone.
She couldn't see Momma, anymore, either. She sat there in the car, with all the doors shut, and looked and looked, but couldn't see anything that looked like Momma anywhere.
She thought it was a blanket, in the middle of the road, but when the truck came up, moving slow, so much slower than when it had gone past, the lights hit the lump, and she could see the tangle of white limbs, like branches with snow on them, all twisted and broken.
She turned around and sat down on the seat. She sat still, and was good, and only kicked the back of the front seat a little, until a big man with a big hat came to the car, and wrapped her in a blanket, and took her to sit with him in his car.
Daddy came for her, after all, but it was hours and hours later, and when he came, he smelled of stale sweat and something like medicine. She reached for him anyway, and buried her face against his neck, and it was then that she started to cry.
1981
“Yeah, I know it's been a while since I called. Probably thought, well, it doesn't matter.”
The phone booth was plexiglass on one side and open air on the other three, with a layer of sand blown in around the corner to make a mosaic of the blue and yellow shards on the scuffed floor. A pair of tumbleweeds rocked against the whole wall - rat, rat, rat, rat like a single drumstick against the rim of a snare drum.
“Yeah, I do. Guess that goes without saying, that I wouldn't call without a reason.”
The sun was a paper cutout - white, heatless, and fluttering beyond a high pattern of cirrus cloud. The shadows had shrunk to near-noon invisibility hours past - now they were bolder, longer, and mocked the figures that cast them.
“I was - I went back to Duncan Springs. To get some stuff from the old house, a book I thought we had, see if any of the rosemary made it through the winter. Yeah, by myself.”
The truck parked on the gravel lot was faded blue, bumper white where it wasn't rust. A shotgun hung in the window rack.
“Did I ever tell you - no, I guess not. Dad keeps a box there - in town, I mean. Mail box. And we always checked it when we went through town. Or, Dad did. So, I stopped to check. And there was this letter. In the box.”
One hand held the black receiver in white-knuckled fingers. The other tapped against the solitary wall - shave-and-a-haircut, shave-and-a-haircut, shave-and-a-haircut, two-bits. A brush through sun-streaked red hair, then back to the wall and the barber's jingle. shave-and-a-haircut
“It was for you. From Aunt Emma. And what she said - she said -” A sniff, a gasp. “You told her - you lied to her. You told her that Dad beat me - you told her that Dad beat you, and she believed you.”
A dash at tight-shut eyes, at the tears leaking out. A tug at a tight black tank top, at the waistband of loose denim jeans.
“She believed you, and she told you to leave, to go with Uncle Harry. I thought she was crazy, that she was sick, that something was wrong. But it wasn't. It was just old news.” A cracked laugh.
The free hand wiped at tears again, then made itself into a fist and smashed against the aluminum frame.
“I checked the date, finally. Eight years. Eight god damn years, that letter's been sitting in that box. Dad must have looked at it every time he checked the mail, and put it back again. Eight years, he let me think you - that you - that you wanted me, and that was why you took me with you.”
The barest of breezes caught the Texaco sign under the awning over the gas pumps, made the chains creak as it swung back and forth. A pair of mourning doves scuffled and cooed in the roof supports.
In the phone booth, breath still hissed in and out through clenched teeth. Slowly, the breathing steadied, calmed.
“Anyway. I just - I wanted to be straight with you. To let you know why I wasn't going to call any more, wasn't going to talk with you. I thought I owed you that much.
“Goodbye, Mom. I love you.”
The plastic receiver made a small click against the metal hook. Gravel crunched under worn combat boots, then spun away from the truck's tires as the Dodge accelerated out of the empty lot.
The wind picked up, made the Texaco sign swing faster, whined through the cracked plate glass of the empty building. Outside, at the phone booth, bare wires dangled from the connection rod, ragged copper strands going rat, rat, rat against the roof.
1999
The old man sat in his chair, wrinkled and hunched, fifty-six years old and withered like frost-killed squash vines. His hands shook as they clung to each other, his right creeping out to brush over the knee of his paisley pajama trousers. The knotted fingers rubbed over the fabric again and again in an unsteady rhythm, before the left hand recaptured it and drew it back in his lap.
Out in the hallway, nurses bustled past, fragments of conversations concerned with other matters hanging in the air, phrases broken by the squeak of rubber soles on linoleum. Neither the old man nor the woman leaning against the wall looked up at the sound.
He looked up from his hands and turned pale eyes to his visitor. “Have you seen my daughter? She was just here. Have you seen her?”
The woman swallowed twice before answering. “I'm not sure. What does she look like?”
The old man blinked at her, at the dark shape she made against the pale wall, at the sunlit curtains. “She - she's just a little thing.” The left hand reached out, wavering, approaching shoulder-high on the seated man. Unattended, his right went back to his knee, petting the narrow knob of bone. “Like this. She has the prettiest hair, red like fire, red like a rose. She was just here. Did you see her?”
The woman folded her arms and shook her head, making the ends of her roan-grey hair slide over her shoulders. “No. I haven't seen anyone like that today.”
The old man nodded. He collected his right hand again, and folded his hands. The woman shifted her weight and stared out the window at the lawn.
2002
She was five dead dogs, two deer and three coyotes out of Pueblo when the hail started.
The storm had come up out of the south like the last coming - huge and black and visible for miles before it hit. Sorrel kept the window down as long as she could, the cool wind washing over her arms and neck and stripping the day's sweat away. But when the gusts turned icy and a pair of hailstones popped against the hood, she rolled the window up.
At the next overpass, she pulled the pickup over, just far enough off the road to let her open the door, not so far that another vehicle could park beside her.
She'd been up for nineteen hours, and wanted no part of company.
The hail came first, starting just as she turned the engine off. Out of reflex, she started to prop open the door, but changed her mind when the first semi came barreling past, blinkers on and still doing sixty, racing a clock that had nothing to do with the wind and the roll of the world. When it was gone, Sorrel climbed out and shut the door, went around to the other side and sat there, playing with her lighter and puzzling out the graffiti painted on the sloping concrete wall.
the fire next time, one read, and another: mundu pax, the only actual words among the scattered obscenities, poorly rendered cocks and a couple symbols that she vaguely remembered from a trip to L.A., two years back. All strange, all human, all innocent.
She wondered, briefly, at the odds of an actual, real live Crip ending up out in the shortgrass prairie, at an overpass without even an exit ramp, and then dismissed it. Seen worse. Hell, she'd lived though worse.
The sound of the rain changed, and she let her gaze wander out past the wall of falling water to the plains beyond - gold-brown and dotted here and there with the red and black lumps that meant cattle out here. The hail had stopped, and now there was only rain, pouring down to drown the lumps of ice.
Another semi rolled past, shifting into the left lane as it approached and blaring out a greeting as it went by.
Sorrel lifted a hand without looking to see it go.
The weathered man who owned the mine hadn't faced her, either, not until the end, when she had packed up the sage bundle and cedar shavings together with the carton of sea-salt in the back of the truck and put her sleeping roll in the front seat.
“Well, girl, I guess you do the job as well as your old man.”
Better, Sorrel thought, but that was a new thought, and it still made her feel like swallowing ground glass when she thought it. She'd only grunted, and reached over to snap the tie down in place over the spare shovel.
“Bout what old Miss Yellowhorse said, you don't pay any mind to that. There's no telling what she's got mixed up in her head. And it ain't right to be giving heed to heathen nonsense anyway.” He'd hesitated, then, craned his head back to look at the sky. “Won't rain here for days. You be careful, though, when you get down on the flatlands. Thunderstorms every day, down there.”
The old woman had jerked like she'd been bit, when Sorrel had touched her arm, jerked and swung around and nearly fell, before catching herself on the table, making her jars of powders and mouse bones rattle. Sorrel, who'd only come to the shop because she needed clean muslin, unbleached and undyed, had stopped and lifted her hands shoulder high.
The old woman had stared at Sorrel, eyes pale and damp, mouth working up and down. Finally, words came out: “Storm coming, girl. Wind rising. You'll die, you stay on that road. Better turn off when you can.” And then the old woman had turned away, and refused to say anything else.
Wouldn't sell her the cloth she needed, either, and Sorrel had to drive three hours to the next town, over a hairpin track that left her sweating and her back cramped.
But with the spirit of Kara Jones sundered, and her devil wolf familiar sent back to hell, Sorrel rested her elbows on the side of the truck bed and waited for the old man to finish staring at the ridgeline. When his gaze came back down, she had said only, “Thanks.”
The old man had nodded, and turned away to hobble back to the office. The door had slammed before she got the pickup cranked. Sorrel had shaken her head and pointed the truck down the mountain, heading east.
Now, staring out at the slacking rain, she turned the lighter over and over in her hands, looking at the grass and weeds in the concrete seams. She was thirty eight years old. Still girl to an eighty year old man who had lived in the same house all his life.
And she wondered just how far the old woman could see, from her little shop of antiques and herbs, with her clouded eyes.
2006
Sorrel ran into Gordon Walker in an Army-Navy store in Shreveport, strictly by accident, and against her better judgment let him talk her into letting him buy her a drink.
At the bar, he was practically vibrating in his seat, as wound up as she had ever seen him, and with good reason.
“Bullshit,” she said, when he finished. “You need to get your story straight, Gordon. Either Elkins” - she stumbled on the name for a beat, having forgotten what the old man and Walker meant to each other, then pushed on. “- and Montague and you have wiped the nightwalkers off the continent, or you haven't. You can't be claiming one day that you're these mighty vampire exterminators, and the next talking up your next big kill. Make up your mind.”
Gordon had grinned at her, white teeth flashing around his stogie, and the arrogance was enough to make her teeth ache against the words she bit back. She'd tipped her bottle back and sucked down the last swallow. Fine. She'd drunk with him, now she could go.
“Come on, now, Sorrel, don't make me sit here and smoke by myself,” he'd said, still fussing with his cigar. And that summed up three of the reasons why she'd never gotten along with Gordon, but she fished in her shirt and dug out a pack of Newports, and lit her cigarette before tossing the lighter back across the table to him.
“Besides, I have a tip for you.”
She took a drag, leaned back and blew the smoke out. “Not for me, you don't. I got nothing to trade, and no need for anything new.”
“I told you, I've got my next month laid out, maybe more,” Gordon said, waving away her disclaimer. “Michigan bound, and likely east from there.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “But what's this? You serious about what you said at Jim's wake?”
Seventeen men and boys around the fire, and three women, and she had been the only one of the three there on her own.
You wouldn't have to be, the voice in her head said, if he'd tried to stay alive, instead of driving himself into the ground, rushing after death, if he'd cared about you, he'd still be alive, and here with you.
But it was an old voice, and easy to ignore.
The bottle had passed from hand to hand, and they'd all poured a drop, and taken a hit, and spoken a word, or stayed silent, as was their inclination. All the while, the sparks had flown up, swirling on the rising air like fragments of stars finally going home. Anton had spoken a blessing, his voice rolling out the Twenty-third Psalm like he had the Book there before him, deep and rich and strong, and pausing in all the right places, so that Sorrel shivered in spite of herself. When the bottle came to Kimmie Rockcat, the younger woman had said “Goddess take you and keep you, Jim, and make Her face to shine upon you,” and not a one of the gathered had laughed. Then Long Lou had taken the bottle. After he drank, he said, “Five dead weres, brother, to keep you company in hell. I promise you that.”
Then Lou had passed the battle to Sorrel. She had tilted the bottle over, over, still half full, and a spattering of liquid had splashed out, catching the gleam of the fire for an instant before falling into darkness.
“I'm out,” she'd said. “No more for me, brother. See you at the pearly gates.” And she had drank, and passed the bottle to the next hand, never looking to see who had taken it.
Now Gordon stared at her across the table, the hand with the cigar in front of his mouth even when he wasn't smoking it, and she wondered if it had been him, there in the darkness.
“Yeah,” she said. “I got one more job, and then I'm out.”
Gordon took a long draw on his cigar, set it down. “Wish I could talk you out of it. I know it's been hard on you, since your old man passed, but you're holding your own. You're good, got you a good niche, taking down the ball-busting bitches for us.” She blinked at him, wondering if there had been something else in the beer, or if he was really as dense as that. As dense as that, she decided when he went on, then forgot her irritation at his next words. “And we're losing too many. You knew Jim Murphy, right? Out of Blue Earth?”
“Knew of him.” She couldn't say that she knew many hunters, but they all knew of each other, knew their weakness and strengths and specialties and insanities, a mess of rumor and half-truth and legend. “He died, too?” Hell if she'd use the mealy-mouthed platitudes that civilians favored.
“Yeah. Throat cut, the word is.” No accident hung unspoken in the air.
“Mama Church got the body?” When Gordon nodded, she took a final drag, snubbed her cigarette out. “Good for them. Time to go. You take care, Gordon.”
“Where you headed? That last job?”
She hesitated, but he'd told her where he was bound, and courtesy demanded she return the favor. “Farst, Ohio. Got a ball-busting bitch to take down. For you guys.” She shrugged into her jacket. “See you around.”
She dropped a ten on the table and raised a hand to the bartender, and was gone.
***
This is not the story I mean to be posting tonight.
The rest of the Spn_roadhouse stories can be found in the community.
I am anticipating posting on this about once a week.