Broken Lands (Benny Imura 6)

“Not sure he’s all that tame,” said Gutsy. “Maybe he just wanted to be around someone who wouldn’t hurt him.”

Both men nodded, accepting that.

“So, you’re going to keep him?” asked Mr. Urrea.

“If he wants to stay,” said Gutsy, “then he can stay. If he wants to go, I won’t stop him.”

The Chess Players liked that, too.

Then Mr. Urrea’s face lost its genial smile, and he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “We heard about last night. About your mama. How are you?”

“And what are you doing to take care of yourself?” added Mr. Ford.

Gutsy took a long time deciding how best to answer the questions. She liked and trusted both of the old men, but her natural tendency was to keep things to herself. Spider and Alethea were exceptions, but she didn’t share everything even with them. Just as she hadn’t shared everything with Mama. It wasn’t exactly a lack of trust, but rather a desire to reserve the right to think things all the way through, at her own pace.

“I’m figuring it out,” said Gutsy. “I don’t know what I feel about it yet, but I’m working on it.”

The answer seemed to please them.

“If you need to talk to a couple of old farts who’ve been around and seen a few things . . . ,” said Mr. Ford, leaving the rest hanging.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’d better get what I came for and get on home. My friends are coming over for dinner.”

She went in and bought some supplies, but as she headed for the street, Mr. Urrea said, “Gutsy . . . ? Wait one minute longer, please.”

Gutsy paused, looking at them both.

“Your mother was a good person,” said Mr. Urrea. “No matter what, you need to remember that.”

Gutsy said nothing.

Mr. Ford said, “She didn’t ask for anything that happened to her.”

“I know that,” said Gutsy. “She didn’t ask for anything that was done to her either.”

There was sadness in the eyes of the two old men. Sadness and something else she could not identify and was not, at the moment, prepared to discover. They nodded to her, and after a few seconds she returned the nod, then walked home in the dark with a silent shadow trotting beside her. She could feel the eyes of the Chess Players on her the whole way, but when she stopped outside her house and looked back, the store’s porch was empty.

17

“GUTSY?” CALLED A GIRL’S VOICE from outside the house. “There’s a big, ugly, weird dog out here and he won’t let me in.”

Gutsy and Spider were seated across from each other at the small dining room table, about to eat the chicken tacos they’d prepared together.

“She wasn’t home, so I left her a note,” said Spider as he started to rise, but Gutsy waved him back.

“I’ll go.”

She walked through to the living room and opened the door. A fifteen-year-old white girl stood at the far end of the small patch of front yard. She was a little taller than Gutsy, heavier in a way that made older guys rubberneck at her and sometimes walk into walls. If the occasional jerk said she was too heavy, the girl withered them with a stare that could have stripped paint off plate steel. She wore tights that she had hand-painted so that the left leg was a sunlit desert after a rain, with all the popping colors of new flowers, while the right was that same desert under cold starlight. Over that was a T-shirt on which was written in flowing script: Curvy Is My Superpower. She had eyes that sometimes looked hazel and sometimes looked brown, and she insisted the color was “olive-brown.” Her hair was a spill of auburn curls, and she wore a little hand-glittered tiara. Alethea had at least twenty tiaras and was never seen without one, even in school.

Sombra sat in the middle of the garden path, ears standing straight up, eyes fixed on the newcomer. He wasn’t growling, but he also clearly wasn’t moving.

“It’s okay, Sombra,” said Gutsy, stopping next to the coydog. “Alethea’s a friend.”

The dog looked at Alethea but didn’t move. So Gutsy walked the rest of the way and gave her friend a hug.

“He’s yours?” asked Alethea.

“We kind of adopted each other,” said Gutsy. “Come on in. We just made dinner.”