Comanche. Brett Riley
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it in gravy. How come?
Because I majored in vodka and minored in smokin blunts with frat boys. I was on academic probation after my freshman year. Daddy like to killed me, so I settled down. Took a couple of summer courses, came home for six or seven weeks, and headed back in the fall. One day, I got invited to a party. Figured, what the hell, I’ve been good. They had enough Jell-O shots to get most of Dallas drunk. I barely remember the rest of that semester. They suspended me for the spring, but I could tell I’d never make it there. Too much temptation. So I came home and worked at Brookshire’s for a year and a half. Got into Tarleton and majored in nursin. After graduation, Community Hospital hired me. And you know what? I’m happy. I like my job. I know most everybody. And I love the cheeseburgers here. They’ll probably put me in my own ER one day.
She smiled. Her teeth were white and straight, her skin tan. Her long, dark hair spilled over her shoulder.
Thornapple took a long swallow of tea and then said, So what do you think about this business with our ancestors?
It’s pretty cool that somethin happened in this town once.
The mayor shook hands all around and excused himself. John Wayne tapped Garner on the shoulder and launched into a dirty joke about a Baptist minister, a farmer, and an automatic milking machine. Garner laughed so hard, his belly shook the table. Pat Wayne rolled her eyes and started a conversation with Joyce Johnstone. A few minutes later, Thornapple joined them. Wayne eventually turned back to her husband, but Thornapple and Johnstone kept chatting. At some point, Lorena Harveston left, too. Red Thornapple did not think of her again until he heard her scream.
Chapter Eight
July 4, 2016, 9:05 p.m.—Comanche, Texas
Lorena Harveston left the diner alone, with her purse slung over her shoulder. She had not wanted to spend her off evening with people at least twenty years older than her, but their stories and their laughter had been entertaining, even though that Thornapple guy had barely written down anything she said. The big truck driver—Garner? Garland?—and that John Wayne guy, whose parents must have hated him if they saddled him with that name, had made her cackle and blush with their awful jokes. The woman named Joyce had complimented Lorena’s skin and earrings. Even the mayor, who cut out early, seemed nice enough.
Overhead, the waning moon was a great piece of chipped marble. A few clouds drifted across the sky. Fireworks shrieked nearby, shrill and earsplitting as trains’ brakes must have been. The July air was hot and smelled of gunpowder. She smiled. Not so long ago, this kind of evening would have made her long for a big city near an ocean, a place as different from Comanche as possible. Funny how things changed, what kinds of evolutions your life wrought.
Lorena stopped and turned back toward the diner. Framed by a window’s drawn curtains, a couple bent over their food. A waitress passed behind them and appeared in the next window, this one otherwise empty, before moving out of sight again. Three evenly spaced carriage lights illuminated most of the porch and two or three feet of the grounds. A Kenny Chesney song blasted from the jukebox the Redhearts liked to crank up after dark. When my friends at college asked me what small-town Texas was like, this is the kind of picture I wish I had painted, instead of makin us all sound like redneck ignoramuses. She turned back toward the lot. The streetlamps along Austin provided plenty of light.
She reached the end of the concrete walk before they flickered. A cold breeze passed over her. Gooseflesh broke out on her arms and legs. She shivered and looked about.
The hell?
In front of the diner’s storage building, something moved. All the lights in the diner dimmed and then went out. The muffled music from the jukebox cut off midsong. From inside, cries of surprise and dismay.
Lorena peered into the shadows. A man stood in front of the building. He did not move or speak. His arms dangled at his sides.
The lights, that weird wind, this guy—it was all a little too much like a scene from a bad horror film. He was so still. She had never considered how often people shift or twitch, even when standing in one place. Nobody just let their arms hang. They clasped their hands at the waist or stuffed them into pockets. This man seemed more like one of those life-size cardboard cutouts of famous people.
Screw this. Lorena turned on her heel.
When she reached the grass, the figure moved out of the shadows, ten feet in front of her.
How did he get over here? Nobody’s that fast. Yet there he stood. She backed onto the concrete lot. An icepick stabbed her lungs.
Don’t panic. Don’t you dare run.
He came forward as she backpedaled, keeping perfect pace with her, always ten feet away. She looked about. No one in the lot, on the street, on the diner’s porch.
You come any closer and I’ll scream, she said. Go on now. Leave me alone.
She struck an SUV, the front bumper hitting the backs of her knees. She managed to stay upright and leaned against the grille, heat radiating from the engine. The man stopped, too.
Her voice trembling, Lorena whispered, What do you want? Her throat and mouth had gone dry.
The man said nothing. He just stood there, watching her.
I’m not waitin on him to jump me. I’m callin the cops.
She dug through her purse, fingers slipping over her keys, through loose change and lipstick and mascara and eye shadow, until they found her phone. She yanked it out and dropped the purse. It hit the concrete, and everything spilled out like the guts of a dead animal someone had left in the middle of field dressing. She dialed 911, willing her hands not to shake. But before she could even raise the phone, it exploded. Tiny pieces of plastic and metal shrapnel, hot and sharp, scraped her arms, her torso, her face. She screamed and clawed at the wounds, her hand numb from the impact. The phone’s misshapen remains, gnarled like a fragment of a crashed airplane, clattered to the concrete. She wheezed. The world began to go gray.
Harveston slapped herself across the face as hard as she could. Her head rocked to one side, her teeth clicking together, and the parking lot swam back into focus. The man stood there, ten feet away. In one hand, he held a gun big enough to kill a rhino. It was aimed right at her. He was so pale, he practically glowed, like a television tuned to a dead station.
Jesus Christ. He shot my phone. He shot it right out of my hand.
She ran for the diner, sprinting as if all hell were after her, heart hammering in her chest.
If I can just make it inside. If I can just make it inside.
A bang, and pain exploded in her right thigh. She fell to her knees and onto her chest and face, skidding between an old Buick and a Chrysler with rusting white paint, her head near the Buick’s front tire. A nail protruded an eighth of an inch from the tread. Dried mud had caked on the car’s undercarriage.
Her face and chest ached. She touched her nose, and her hand came away bloody.
If I can just make it inside. If I can just make it inside.
Six or eight people emerged from the diner. They were talking, though she could not make out the words. Then one of them, a woman, raised her voice and said, I’m tellin you, I heard somebody scream.
Probably a firecracker, said a man’s voice.
Help, Harveston screamed, her chest aching. Using the Buick as a crutch, she pulled herself to her feet. With every heartbeat, fire raced from her leg to her chest.
There she is, in the lot, someone said. Come on, fellas.
The pale man still stood ten feet away. He looked like someone’s black-and-white drawing come to life. Only that was not exactly right. He was gray, as if age had consumed all the natural hues, leaving only shades of blacks and whites. His hair spilled from under his wilting cowboy hat in long, greasy jags. His body was slender but strong. He wore what appeared to be jeans, chaps, a shirt made of some woven fabric, a leather vest, a gun belt festooned with bullets, and holsters slung low on each hip.