SPIDER WALKED GUTSY HOME, AND sombra limped along behind.
The Gomez place was a shotgun house. Narrow but long, with six rooms lined up one after the other, from living room to kitchen, with a dining room, bedrooms, and a bathroom in between, and a narrow hallway running front to back. It was sturdily built from cinder blocks, with a pitched tin roof, and it was one of nearly two hundred identical homes that had been built before the End. A big, faded sign stood at the edge of town, its words only just legible.
IMMIGRATION DETENTION CENTER
A lot of rude and obscene things had been painted on the sign, but that had been done long ago too, and all of it had been nearly burned away by fifteen years of harsh sun, dry wind, and blowing sand. Most of the kids in town didn’t know much about the origin of the town, why it was built, who’d built it, who’d lived there, or why. That was part of the world that had died before they were born. Gutsy knew, though, because her mother had once told her the story about being arrested in San Antonio and sent to the camp. That was where she lived for nearly two years while the authorities on both sides of the Rio Grande tried to decide who wanted her. Neither, apparently, did. Or maybe it was fair to say that neither tried very hard to make her welcome, and by the time the paperwork had come through for Mama to be sent across the river, the dead rose and consumed the bureaucrats, the police, the soldiers, the border guards, and the governments who used people in the same way the old men in town now used painted stones as poker chips.
The thing that made Mama laugh while she told that story was the fact that all those well-built houses were intended to be mini prisons, and when the dead swarmed through the camp, the prisoners stayed safe behind their walls while the camp staff perished. Mama said that there was justice in that, but it was so far outside of Gutsy’s experience that she didn’t get the joke. She also didn’t agree. As far as she was concerned, there weren’t many people left, so any death was a bad thing.
The world was hell and the world was crazy. That was what Gutsy believed. But there were good people, even in hell. Spider and Alethea, the two old guys everyone called the Chess Players, a few others. Good people.
There were also innocents. Babies, little kids. The livestock.
She glanced down at Sombra. He was scarred and scared, fierce and feral, but he was innocent too. Just because bad things had been done to him did not mean that he was bad.
As they approached her front door, Sombra slowed and finally stopped, looking nervous and uncertain.
“What’s wrong?” asked Spider.
“Not sure,” said Gutsy. “Maybe he doesn’t like being inside.”
She opened the door and tried to coax the coydog in, but he came no closer than the rosebushes in the front yard.
Spider sat down on one of the plastic chairs positioned in the shade of a blue tarp Gutsy had long ago rigged as a canopy. “Now what?”
“I’m thinking,” said Gutsy. “He’s scared and we don’t want to make him feel worse, right? No one’s ever scared of something without a reason, not even dogs, right?”
“I guess.”
“So, trying to force him inside isn’t going to help. Got to come up with plan B, or maybe even have a plan C and plan D in case.”
“Sure,” said Spider, “so what’s the plan? Maybe he’ll let you pet him and, I don’t know, cuddle him? You think he’d let you do that?”
Gutsy shook her head. “I think that would be exactly the wrong thing to do.”
“Why? He’s scared. I like people around me when I’m scared. And when there’s a storm, Alethea likes it when we wrap a blanket around both of us.”
“Alethea’s a person and so are you, Spider,” said Gutsy. “You guys understand that you’re trying to be there for each other. She probably tells you she wants to hide under a blanket with you, right?”
“Well, sure, but who doesn’t need some affection?”
Gutsy knew there was a lot of Spider’s own life in that question. He had shadows in his past that she knew something—but not everything—about.
She said, “Sombra’s a dog. Dogs are pack animals, right? Look at how the strays in town all bunch together. They follow a pack leader.”
“Right . . . so?”
Gutsy went and sat down near the coydog, but she didn’t touch him, or try to pet him, or even look at him. Sombra twitched but didn’t move away. “The way I see it,” said Gutsy, “is that dogs react to two things—getting hurt and getting treats. Mr. Rayner’s dog, Pickles, will do anything for a piece of jerky. All those tricks she does? That’s all for treats, right?”
“I guess,” said Spider slowly, not sure where Gutsy was going with this.
“Pickles doesn’t know she’s supposed to be an entertainer. It just seems to me that Pickles knows that if she does this thing or that thing, she gets a reward. So she’s always ready to do a trick because that means food.”
“So?”
“Sombra’s scared right now. That’s what he’s feeling or thinking. He’s hurt. If I get all goofy with him and pet him and tell him he’s a good dog and all the stuff Mr. Rayner does, won’t I just be training Sombra to think that being scared means getting a reward?”
Spider shook his head. “You might be overthinking this.”