The Reapers Are the Angels (Reapers 1)

They fill up a tumbler from the bottle and hand it to her, and she drinks and feels the whiskey radiate down her chest and into a tight ball of warmth in her gut. Then she tells them about her own wonderment—the Miracle of the Fish, and they all agree that it’s a marvel.

Horace scoops some beans onto his plate from a pot they have steaming at the edge of the fire, then he cuts some meat off the spit and passes the plate to Temple.

Have some, he says. We got plenty.

What is it?

That there is creeper meat.

Slugs? You aren’t telling me you’re eatin slugs.

Sure are, sweetheart, Lee says. Ain’t nothin wrong with it. Either they eat us or we eat them—which would you rather?

Ain’t it poison?

Not if it’s dressed right. We been out here goin on five years. So much food walkin around a man could live just fine by rifle and bow.

What about the rot?

We hunt the fresh ones—the ones that ain’t been around too long.

She examines her plate, tilting it toward the firelight to get a better look. The slices of meat are oily inside and charred black on the surface. She puts her nose to it.

It smells like rosemary.

The men smile, Horace looking hangdog and pleased.

Well, Lee says, just because we’re out here in the wilds don’t mean we have to forgo the finer things. Horace is a downright culinary wizard. What you’re smellin there is a spice rub of his own concoction.

What the hell, she says. I’m game.

She puts the meat in her mouth and chews, letting the juices coat her tongue and teeth. Then she swallows and looks at the men who are leaning forward, anticipating her response.

It’s good, she says, and they holler gladly. Tastes like sow.

Always said, Lee laughs, the only difference between man and pig is a good spice rub.

She eats more, and they pass the bottle around and refill their tumblers, and when they see a slug approaching in the distance Clive shows her how good a shot he is with the bow, pulling back the string and putting his cheek right up to his hand to aim and sending an arrow right through the eye.

She claps appreciatively.

Horace has a guitar, and he sings about moons and women and loneliness, and she gets sleepy listening to it and breathing the thick, smoky air.

Her head gets wobbly from the whiskey and the tiredness and the talk of God’s great earth, and they tell her she can lay down on one of their mats till morning—they sleep in shifts anyway. She eyes them suspiciously.

It’s all right, Sarah Mary, Lee says. We ain’t gonna mess with you. We know places to go when that’s what we want. Besides, you’re one of us. You might as well get a good night’s sleep. I got a feelin you’re gonna want to be goin your own way in the morning.

So she lays down and stretches out on the pallet, facing the fire to keep warm.

She begins to drift off, but before she does she remembers something and lifts herself onto one elbow.

Say, she says. My real name ain’t Sarah Mary Williams. It’s Temple.

We’re happy to know you, Temple, Lee says.

Yeah, she says. All right then.

And she lays back and looks at the stars, and when she closes her eyes she can still see them.

WHEN SHE wakes in the morning, there are two new men who weren’t there the night before. They are leaning on a truck, and Temple’s hunters are consulting with them. She sits up and puts her arms around her knees and wishes she weren’t still wearing that ridiculous yellow sundress.

The two new men are dressed in jeans and denim jackets and they have rifles hooked in the crooks of their arms, and their conversation seems friendly enough.

Lee looks at her and comes over to where she’s sitting. He seems concerned, his mouth moving around a lot as though the insides of his cheeks were itching.

Who’re they? Temple asks.

Just some friendly folk is all, Lee says.

How come you got that look then?

They been tellin me they had an encounter with someone on the road. Big guy. Rough lookin, bad teeth. Say he was lookin for a blond-haired girl, wouldn’t say why. But they figure it couldn’t of been good.

Where?

Just goin into Williston.

Uh-huh.

She gets to her feet and starts toward her car.

I don’t guess there are many blond-haired girls travelin this way by themselves, says Lee.

I don’t suppose so.

She opens the door to the car and unzips the duffel bag on the passenger seat and takes out a pair of pants and a shirt. Then she pulls the sundress over her head and tosses it into the backseat.

Lee shields his eyes and turns away. The other four men in the distance look at her where she’s standing in just her cotton underpants.

You wanna tell me what you did to get this guy on your tail?

I killed his brother, she says, slipping the shirt over her head and then pulling the pants on.

Did he deserve killin?

He deserved something—killin’s just the way it happened to go. You can turn around now.

Lee turns and looks at her. Then he looks squinting into the distance.

Where you plannin to go?

North. Just north. He can’t follow me forever, I got a lot of patience for travelin.

Yep. He nods and kicks the tarmac with his shoe and squints into the distance again. Then he says, You might think about comin with us.

He is a man at least two decades older than she, yet he possesses the intense frailty of boyhood.

Lee, that’s real nice. I want to thank you and Clive and Horace for bein so agreeable to me. You got somethin good going here. You’re seein the wonders of this wide country. But me, I got a chasin problem. I’m always either bein chased or chasin somebody. And I don’t expect I would feel right about pulling you all along with me, gettin you off your chosen course.

Well, says Lee.

Yeah.

I guess you’ve taken care of yourself so far.

I guess I have.

5.

Her hand throbs, and she reaches into the duffel on the passenger seat to find her pills but comes up instead with the plastic bag she put the end of her pinky finger in. The road is straight, and she keeps an even course while she holds the bag up to the light of the windshield to examine its contents.

The amazement is that it still looks like a finger—there it is, like a magic trick, like all of a sudden the whole rest of the body is going to pop out from behind a curtain and reattach itself to the finger with a lot of showy prestidigitation. The nail is still painted cotton candy pink, and the skin around the edge of the wound is drying out and shriveling slightly.

Strange to think how it used to be a part of everything she did for her whole life, and now it’s on its own. She goes to put it back in the duffel but changes her mind and puts it in the glove compartment instead.