Chapter Four
HORSE CAME AND got me himself, and that was how I knew it was bad.
He didn’t knock so much as fill the doorway, big and awkward with it, turning his rag of a bandana over in his hands like he’d forgotten what hands were for.
Horse didn’t come to my cabin. In all the years I’d been out back, I could count the times he had on one hand.
He sent prospects. He sent word. A man like Horse would rather crawl over hot asphalt than let another man see him needing a damn thing.
He looked like he needed something.
“It’s Brenda,” he said, before I could ask.
“She ain’t — ” He stopped. Worked his jaw.
“It’s been two days, Rune. She won’t eat what Josie brings up.
Won’t hardly drink. Amy and Fiona been takin’ turns sittin’ up with her at night, and they got maybe an hour of sleep out of her last night and none the night before, and she’s just layin’ there starin’ at the wall, and I can’t — ” His voice did something and he shut it down hard.
“I can’t do a damn thing with her. Won’t let me near, and I don’t blame her.
But you. You got somethin’. For sleep, or…
I don’t know what you got. You got somethin’. ”
I did. I was already running through the shelf in my head, figuring what I’d steep and how strong I could make it on an empty stomach without making her sick, because that part of me had switched on the second he said Brenda’s name.
The rest caught up a beat later.
Amy and Fiona had been up with her two nights.
Which meant Amy would be in that room.
I’d spent months arranging my life so I didn’t have to get close to that girl, and I’d gotten damn good at it too, right up until Horse stood in my doorway asking me to walk straight into a bedroom where I knew she’d be sitting.
Didn’t matter. Brenda was family, she hadn’t eaten in two days, and I was the man Horse had come to because I knew what might help.
“Give me ten minutes,” I said. “Tell Amy to boil some water and get a clean cup.”
Something eased in his face, just barely. “So you’ll come.”
“I’m coming. Go on.”
I put the blend together at the counter without having to think much about it: lemon balm and chamomile for the base, a little skullcap, a little passionflower, valerian last and not to much, because too much would leave her groggy as hell tomorrow and she already had enough to deal with.
I tied it off in a twist of cloth and put honey and the good salt in my kit, because my mother swore a body that hadn’t eaten wanted salt and I’d never known her to be wrong about a body.
I told myself it was work. Brenda needed something and I knew how to make it, same as some brother showing up bleeding. Amy being there didn’t matter.
I was full of shit, and I knew I was full of shit. Had plenty of practice at that lately.
Her room was down the far hall, the civilian side, past Amy’s. The lamp was on low behind the curtain and I could smell it before I got there, that stale, shut-in smell a room gets when somebody’s been grieving in it with the windows closed. I knocked soft with one knuckle and pushed the door.
Amy was sitting on the end of the bed.
I’d known she would be. I’d spent ten damn minutes getting myself ready for it, and it didn’t do a thing, it never does, because there is no getting ready for her.
She had her back half to me, bent over Brenda, she was wearing some old soft shirt with the sleeves pushed up and her hair was down, all that purple I’d never seen on another living soul, she’d been up two nights and it showed, and she was still the only thing in the room my eyes wanted.
She turned when the door moved. Saw it was me.
And everything in her face just — closed. Disappeared. Gone before I’d gotten a good look at it. She’d gotten good at that, same as I had. We’d both had the same months of practice at the same thing.
“Rune’s here,” she said to Brenda, gentle as anything, and then she looked at me and the temperature dropped about ten degrees. “She’s not going to want it.”
“She doesn’t have to want it.”
I came in and set my bag on the dresser and kept my distance.
There was hot water waiting in a mug where I’d asked, still steaming, I dropped the twist of blend into it to steep, stirred in the honey and a pinch of the salt.
Then I got my first real look at Brenda, and it took some doing not to let it show on my face.
She’d shrunk. Two days of hurt had damn near emptied her out.
She was on her side facing the wall with the quilt pulled up and her eyes open, not sleeping, not anything, and when I said her name she didn’t turn.
“Brenda. It’s Rune. I brought you something for the sleep.”
“I don’t want it, honey.” Barely a voice at all. “I ’preciate you comin’, but just wanna lay here.”
“I know it.” I crouched down by the bed so I wasn’t standing over her, so I was down at her level where she could see me if she wanted.
“You don’t have to sleep. You don’t have to do anything.
Just take a little of this so your body gets an hour, and then you can go right back to laying here. I’ll leave you be. You have my word.”
Nothing. She just looked at the wall.
I’d worked on plenty of bodies that didn’t want working on.
Men too proud, men in shock, men who’d have rather bled than admit they needed a hand.
There’s a trick to it and the trick isn’t the medicine, the trick is knowing when to shut your mouth and wait.
But Brenda wasn’t proud and she wasn’t in shock.
She was just done. And done is harder than proud. Done, you can’t argue with.
I looked up, and Amy was already looking at me.
For a second neither of us did anything with it.
First time in months our eyes had actually landed on each other and held, no room to pretend otherwise.
That violet. The exact shade I’d spent all that time trying to forget and hadn’t managed to.
It went through me about like I figured it would, which is to say it hurt in a place the valerian couldn’t reach.
Then she looked away, down at Brenda, and she made a decision I could see her make.
“Let me,” she said. Not to me. About me. To Brenda. “Bren. It’s me. Sit up a little for me, not for him, for me. Just a sip so I quit worrying. You’re scaring me, and you don’t ever want to scare me, remember? Come on. Up.”
And Brenda moved. For Amy, she moved, got an elbow under herself, let Amy get an arm behind her shoulders and bring her up against the pillows, doing it because Amy asked when she didn’t have enough left in her to do it for herself.
That was the thing I hadn’t been ready for.
Not seeing Amy again. I’d set myself for that.
What I hadn’t expected was watching her be good at it, watching her hold a broken woman up off a mattress with exactly the right amount of pressure in exactly the right place, murmuring the exact thing that would work, none of it learned in any class across that river.
She’d learned it the way you learn it. She’d been the one in the bed once.
She knew what worked because somebody had once had to do it for her.
“Cup,” Amy said, still not looking at me, one hand out.
I poured it and I gave it to her, and our fingers came near on the handle the way they had to, close enough I felt the warmth come off her skin, and she took the cup without letting them touch, clean as anything, a little maneuver she did without even seeming to think about it.
She’d thought about it. You don’t get that damn good at avoiding a man’s hand by accident.
She held it to Brenda’s mouth and got a sip into her.
Then another. Talking softly to her, that same unbroken stream, there you go, that’s all, one more, good.
I stayed crouched where I was and did the one useful thing left to me, which was tell her what to watch for.
“Small sips, let it sit, if she keeps that much down she’ll go under in ten minutes.
” Amy nodded, short, taking the information and none of the rest of me with it.
We got maybe half of it into Brenda before she turned her face away and was done. It was enough. Half was plenty. I’d built it strong.
“That’ll do it,” I said. “Let her lay back down.”
Amy eased her down like she was made of something breakable and drew the quilt back up, and Brenda’s eyes were already going heavy, the skullcap and the valerian getting their arms around her, pulling her down toward the first real dark she’d had in two days.
Her hand came out from under the quilt and found Amy’s wrist and held it.
“You’re a good girl,” she slurred, half under already.
“You’re too good for this place, baby, I keep tellin’ you.
Better’n all of it. All these — ” her eyes drifted, found me crouched there by the bed, held on me for a long fogged second with something in them I couldn’t quite read and didn’t much like — “all these men,” she finished, and then sleep took her mid-word and her hand went loose on Amy’s wrist.
The room got very quiet.
I knew what that look had been. Foggy as she was, two days destroyed, she’d still had it in her to clock me down on the floor next to the girl she was always steering clear of men like me, and to get one last warning out sideways before she went under.
All these men. She meant me. She’d have meant me even if I was the last man on earth with a kind hand, because she’d learned what she had the hard way, the same way Amy had, the same way I had, and she wasn’t wrong.
I’d just spent an hour watching what a lifetime of a club man’s half-measures does to a woman.
Watching it lay there in a dark room and refuse food.
And here I was, the man who’d done his own version of the exact same thing to the girl holding her hand.
Kept her close and kept her out. Gave her just enough and then took it all back in the cruelest way I could rig up.
And I hadn’t even had Horse’s excuse of grief to hide behind.
I’d done it on purpose. Cold. Called it kindness.
I got up off the floor slow. Something had shifted in me down there and I didn’t like the feeling of it.
“She’ll go seven, eight hours,” I said, gathering my bag. “Don’t wake her for anything. There’s more in the tin, same measure, if she needs it tomorrow night. Steep it eight minutes, not less.”
“I know how to steep tea.”
There was just enough bite in it to make me look at her.
“I know you do.” I did know. I shouldered the bag.
There were a hundred things between us, and standing beside a sleeping woman at the end of the worst two days of her life wasn’t the place for any of them.
So I said the only thing left that was true and clean.
“You should sleep too. You’ve been up with her two nights.
It doesn’t help her any if you go down next. ”
Amy looked at me then. Really looked, for the first time since I’d come in, and there was a lot in it, tired, pissed, cold, and something underneath all of it I recognized because I was the bastard who’d put it there.
“I’ll sleep when she’s alright,” she said. “That’s how it works. You show up for somebody, you stay.” A tiny beat. “But I guess that’s not really your area.”
It landed exactly where she aimed it. Girl knew where to stick the knife.
“No,” I said. “I guess it’s not.”
I didn’t defend it. There wasn’t any defending it that wouldn’t turn into telling her the truth, and the truth wasn’t a thing I could hand her over a sleeping woman at midnight and then walk out on.
So I let her have the hit. I’d earned it and about a hundred more like it, and taking them was the closest thing to honest I had left where she was concerned.
I let myself out. Horse was in the hall, of course, planted against the far wall with his arms crossed, waiting like a man outside a surgery.
“She’s down,” I told him. “Amy’s got her. She’ll sleep the night.”
He nodded, and his shoulders came down an inch, and he didn’t say thank you because men like us don’t, but it was in there.
I started past him, got three steps down the hall and stopped long enough to look back.
I’d always told myself the difference between me and Horse was that I’d done it clean.
Made a decision, made it stick, spared her the long slow version.
Told myself I was the smart one, the kind one, the one who loved her enough to cut it off quick.
Standing over Brenda I’d finally seen it clear. There wasn’t any clean version. There was just the woman left in the dark either way. Horse at least knew he’d fucked it up. I’d been dumb enough to think I’d done Amy a favor.