Chapter 47
A jingle of reins meets my ear. The ridiculous thought that God has sent a sleigh for me enters my foggy head. But then I hear men’s voices, yelling. A sound like the whack of a shovel against something solid follows.
Then strong hands are lifting me up, as gently as a coat he is trying not to wrinkle, Flossie once said. “Koa,” I mumble. He hoists me onto solid earth, then swings a leg over the edge of the pit, gold flashing at his neck.
In the cemetery Simon Says kneels, clutching his head, blood glistening in his beard. Nash stands before him, shovel pulled back and ready to swing again.
“You wouldn’t dirty those pretty hands,” Simon sneers.
Nash scoffs. “Killed pigs a couple days ago. A worm will be easy.”
“Don’t you dare, City Rat. He’s mine.” Koa barrels forward, fists raised. “Get up, you sick son of a bitch.”
Using a headstone, Simon pulls himself shakily to his feet. “I pity you, Koa. Always her dog. Did you ever tell Lucy how you lied about getting that airplane job?”
Koa squares up, back flexing. He will pummel the life out of Simon Says.
Nash crouches beside me, dabbing lime from my face with his handkerchief. “Don’t cry, darling.”
“He never got a job!” Simon Says calls to me, his words sounding watery, like he’s speaking out of a whale’s blowhole.
Koa’s fist lashes out, and the priest’s head snaps back. The man stumbles but doesn’t fall.
Koa is playing with him.
Simon Says coughs up blood and grins. “That was a lie for Lover Boy to get you all to himself. Oh, the secrets I could tell.”
This time Koa’s knuckles connect with the priest’s face with a wet crunching sound—and then again, and again, until the murderer is back on his knees, a swaying tombstone of flesh and bone.
I feel like doing something violent.
My own words return to me as I witness Koa take out his rage on the man.
It warms my belly to see the priest in pain, makes my juices flow again to hear him moan.
To watch his blood spill in payment for the lives he took.
The misery he inflicted. If my legs worked, I’d get in there and kick him too.
But another life will be paid if Simon Says dies.
Handsome as a summer sunset. Watertight as a canoe, keeping me afloat all these years.
“Koa,” I croak, but he keeps up his attack. I paw Nash. “Stop him!”
Grimly, Nash moves toward Koa.
Simon Says will meet his maker one day, but Koa will not be the one to deliver him. There will be a trial. Mr. Tavernish will testify. I will make sure of it. It’s the least my grandfather can do.
With his shovel, Nash scoops up a bit of plain dirt and tosses it in Koa’s face. “That’s enough, cowboy.”
Koa’s barrage ceases as he clears his vision, his frustrated cursing music to my ears.
Someone calls my name. Half sitting, half lying on an elbow, I turn to see the sheriff cresting the hill, followed by his deputies, and Eva and Flossie. The horses—Goliath and Red’s mare—don’t even lift their noses from the fountain as the newcomers rush past them.
I think back to the day I first dared to wander among two black-and-white wolves.
No, I didn’t have a death wish. I just craved a pod of my own.
And somehow, impossibly, one has risen from that frothy in-between.