Ryan
The man studied him. “What makes you say that?”
“You have no idea. Can I have a smoke? I’ve got a migraine like no other.”
“Better than nothing.”
It had been midnight, and The Chief had been dying.
“I see it. I see it,” The Chief had wheezed. The old man let out a gasp of tears. “The world purged in silver light. The time where all time stops. Twelve souls to begin again. A man in gabardine with blood on his blade.”
In the dark of their own cell, Ryan had whispered to Hunter, “What the fuck is he talking about?”
Hunter had been silent, which was how Ryan had known the man was afraid.
No one called the guards. No one came to help.
The Chief said, “It sleeps. It wakes.”
“It sleeps. It wakes.”
“IT SLEEPS. IT WAKES.”
The Chief might have been Indigenous, but he never really talked about his heritage.
He wore a feather around his neck, but it felt like more of an accessory than a symbol.
He didn’t pray to anything. He didn’t talk about the past, or ancestral spirits, or tomahawks, but he did once punch the lights out of a dickhead in the yard for calling him a medicine man and prancing around with some bullshit war cries.
For a man pushing seventy, The Chief still had a good right hook.
Things changed. In the wake of the visits that a strange beauty named Sarah Powers had started paying him, The Chief had grown pensive.
He’d dug out a leather pouch from his belongings and started carrying it around with him everywhere.
Ryan and Hunter had always shared their meals with the man, but lately The Chief had become so distant they felt like they weren’t eating with anyone at all.
But speaking of Sarah Powers, on the night The Chief died, in the middle of his delirium, the man had suddenly fallen into a silence that was worse than all the babble. Ryan had listened as The Chief dragged himself from his cot. As he’d made his way to the cell’s barred door.
“Hunter,” The Chief had whispered. “Hunter, please, I need you.”
Ryan had watched from his own bunk as Hunter went to their door. “What is it?”
“I know you do favors for the guards. I know they do you favors in return.” (That’s one way to put it, Ryan had thought.
Hunter had a skill for eliminating problems the prison had grown tired of.
At least if the rumors were true. Which they were.) “Please, do this for me, Hunter. Sarah Powers is coming to see me tomorrow. Meet with her. Don’t let them turn her away. ”
“Why would they turn her away?”
“Because I’m dying.”
Hunter had said nothing.
“Make sure they give her this. Please. Sarah has to have it.”
Hunter had reached through the bars to take something The Chief had offered. “A letter?”
“And this.” Later, Ryan had found The Chief had passed Hunter his little leather pouch. “Hunter, tell her… tell Sarah the mountain—”
Ryan came back to the present as Hunter worked his way down his cigarette.
The man was giving him the lay of the land.
Apparently, Sarah Powers, of all fucking people, was here, at the Brake Inn Motel.
She was working for Frank O’Shea, though Ryan felt like this should bother him more.
It didn’t. Somehow, for reasons he still couldn’t explain, Ryan felt like Frank O’Shea was the least of his problems tonight.
The mercury lamps burst to life over their heads. A halo of light spread around the motel. Out in the dark, an owl let out a nerve-splitting SHRIEK that made every hair on Ryan’s arms stand on end. It made Ryan want to get back inside.
Hunter wanted to know what Ryan was doing here, which was fair enough, but Ryan didn’t go into much detail about Penelope or Stanley or the drive from Mexico City, and Hunter didn’t pry. Ryan rubbed his throbbing skull. Why wasn’t the nicotine helping this headache?
For his part, Hunter seemed just as distracted. Or maybe haunted was the better word. In a small voice, almost a frightened one, “Do you remember that last night with The Chief? The way he wanted me to pass a message to Sarah?”
Hunter was still just as unnerved by that night as Ryan.
Ryan replied, “ ‘The mountain is getting restless.’ Did you ever figure out what he meant by that?”
Hunter grew still, his cigarette halfway to his mouth. He stared across all that desert past the edge of the motel’s lights. All that dark.
He was silent so long, Ryan said, “You all right?”
In reply, Hunter turned to look down the back of the motel, and Ryan found himself following his gaze. They both saw the same thing, though Ryan struggled to believe his eyes.
“Am I crazy?” Ryan said. “Or does that mountain look bigger than it did a few minutes ago?”
Hunter looked away. He shook off some shivers. “You got another cigarette?”
“You can have the whole pack. They aren’t helping.”
“I just need the one.”
Ryan handed it over, though he wished his friend wouldn’t partake. Considering the wheeze in the man’s lungs, the Hunter of Huntsville should probably quit while he was ahead.
“Can you do me one other favor?” Hunter said.
Ryan hesitated, a cigarette between his fingers. He was bad with promises. “I can try.”
“I’m with a man. Ethan. Tall kid with a nice face.
” Hunter tucked the cigarette between his lips.
“I don’t know if you’d ever talk to him, but on the off chance…
don’t let him know how we met. He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
I don’t deserve him. It would probably kill him to know who I am. ”
“Of course,” Ryan said. It was the second promise of his life, but it was a hell of a lot easier than the first.
Flicking open his Zippo, sparking the flame, Ryan asked a final question. “The day after Sarah came to the prison for the last time—right after The Chief died—there was a fire in the woodshop. They said it had killed you, yet here you are.”
Hunter lit up. “That was the deal. Remember the Aryan Brotherhood asshole, the one who hung himself in solitary?”
“That was you?”
“Light work. He was cutting into the warden’s side business. Office politics.” Hunter spat. “She got me out when I did the deed. Smuggled me onto a laundry truck with all the confusion in the fire. Feels weird, honestly—on paper, I’ve been dead six weeks.”
“I don’t think anything could kill you, son.”
Hunter said nothing.
Ryan looked at his watch. It was a few minutes shy of 6:25. “I’m going to grab some shut-eye. I might need your help later, getting Polly out of here.”
“You know where to find me.”
Ryan left Hunter and headed around the corner of the motel. He went around back, listening as the man took a long pull on his cigarette. Ryan walked in the dirt so the creaky boards of the porch didn’t betray him. He needed sleep, badly.
He wasn’t going to get it anytime soon.
The back door of room 9 opened without a sound. A tall boy with brown hair and deep eyes stood there, a shotgun braced against his shoulder and aimed at Ryan’s head.
This must be Ethan. Somehow, Ryan knew that even though the boy was holding a gun, Ethan didn’t want to hurt him. Instead of being afraid, Ryan pulled his eyes from the shotgun, back to his watch. Back to the time.
6:30.
The time, Ryan thought. Why was the time so—
And then he remembered. All in a rush, just like that: Ryan remembered last night, and with a sensation like a loose tooth being pulled from the gum, his headache evaporated.
He stood very still for what felt like forever, his mind reorganizing itself in a blur, and then he gave Ethan a nod. He knew the score.
Ethan lowered the shotgun, motioned for Ryan to come inside. He did, his feet silent as a cat’s.
Ryan whispered, “She doesn’t have much time left.”
Ethan nodded. The boy was way, way ahead of him. “You need to do exactly as I say.”