The darkness swooped down on him as if to vomit its poison into him, or breathe the foul air from its lungs into Joshua’s own, and he struck out, swinging his arm out, the sharp edge of the sandstone rock aimed at where he judged the side of the man’s head to be. At the last second, a vice locked on his arm, halting the arc, and dismayed, the boy felt the rock slip from his grip and fall.
He opened his mouth to scream a warning.
The man straddled him, forcing the air out of him again, and pinning his arms to the ground.
He wheezed, struggled against the man’s weight, sucked in a breath.
“Don’t,” his adversary told him.
The breath caught. Joshua tried to scream.
The man punched him in the mouth.
It felt as if the attacker had picked up the rock and rammed it into his face, and for a moment Joshua saw stars, felt teeth come loose and lodge in his throat. He coughed. His lungs burned. He tasted blood. His lips stung. And still he struggled, thrashing beneath the man who was sitting on his legs, kneeling on his wrists, his monstrous face barely visible in the dark, as if they were one and the same.
No, he thought, panicked. This can’t happen. He’ll corrupt me. He’s too close. Papa will—
Abruptly, the pressure left one of his arms as the man tore something with his teeth. In a moment of startling horror such as he had never in his life felt before, Joshua feared it was his flesh. It made a zipping sound as it came away from bone. But no, he knew the sounds of a flaying, and it never sounded like this. Most likely it was tape to bind him or keep him quiet. A second thought followed quickly on the heels of the relief: His arm was free.
He clenched his fist, dug the other hand into the stony earth and with all his strength, bucked his hips in an attempt to knock the man off balance. Success. The pressure vanished from his second arm as the man wobbled atop him. In one swift move, Joshua brought his left hand up and threw a fistful of stones and dirt in the man’s face. With the other, he punched wildly, hoping to connect, but the blow glanced off the man’s cheek. Adrenaline enhanced Joshua’s efforts and he planted his palms on the ground, using them to lever his body out from under his assailant.
“Stop,” the man said, but his words only made Joshua’s struggles more frenzied. He flailed his fists, and the man caught one of them, squeezing until Joshua feared the bones were going to snap like kindling. It didn’t deter him. He swung the other, his legs still pinned, an animal-like grunting low in his throat.
The man’s free hand shot forward and Joshua saw the silvery sheen of a roll of duct tape before it crashed into his nose. He reeled back, his fist suddenly free, and the attacker’s hands clamped around his throat, jerking him back and slamming him to the ground.
Dazed, Joshua wondered if it might be better to just concede defeat rather than return to Papa poisoned. The attack would seem like nothing if his father decided he needed to be cleansed. But instinct prevailed and he willed his head to clear, to enable him to see the man he was bound to rend asunder with his bare hands, as he had been taught. But his head wasn’t clearing because the man was leaning into him, increasing the pressure around his throat, refusing him the air he needed and forcing the blood to thunder inside his head.
Possum, he thought suddenly, and looked up at the man whose face was pure night, as featureless as the dark side of the moon. Possum. It was a trick. And he used it now.
His face contorted. He began to cry as much as he could without the air required to power it.
For a moment the man’s grip did not loosen or the pressure ease, but he could tell by the stiffening of his body that he was affected.
“God…help…me…” Joshua croaked, gagging as the tears trickled down the sides of his face into the dirt. “For…give me…”
As he wept, Joshua recalled the instances in which he’d lain on the road or on the forest floor sobbing while at the same time listening to the approach of strangers, their voices high with concern—“Son, are you all right? You hurt?”—only to find themselves surrounded while Joshua stood and brushed himself off, his hand moving to the knife tucked in his belt.
The knife.
If only he could remember what the man had done with his knife after taking it from him.
His attacker’s grip was slackening. Joshua scarcely dared believe it. Now, though drawing breath was still hard and burned his throat, it was progress, the first step toward turning the tables on the coyote.
The knife.
The man had stuffed it in his belt. He was almost certain. Joshua let his eyes drift down, imagined he could see the pale handle. He intensified his sobbing. “Please…I’m sorry…” and miraculously one of the man’s hands moved away from his throat. One remained, but the grip was loosening, merely holding him down and no longer strangling him. Once again, Joshua’s eyes found the spot where he imagined, knew, the knife to be. There was nothing keeping his hands pinned this time, and gradually, in excruciatingly slow movements, he allowed them to creep toward the man’s belt.
“Sorry…” he whimpered, fingers like spiders creeping down his own legs toward his attacker’s thighs.
Then the man’s arm came back around, and though there was insufficient light to see what the black shape in his hand was, there was no mistaking the sound of a hammer being cocked.
“I am too,” the coyote said.
The gunshot echoing about the valley was as good as a declaration of war, and Aaron flinched. In battle he imagined it would have been the signal for troops to start charging, but nothing so dramatic would happen here. Holding his position, he slowly turned his head away from the trunk of the pine tree. In the woods around the clearing, the darkness was thickest and that suited him, but he knew better than to make any sudden movements. The sound of a twig breaking or a sharp breath could be enough to bring about his doom. His eyes strayed to the source of the shot, where he saw a tall shadow, visible only as a darker shade of night against the backdrop of the stars, rising for one brief moment before vanishing down the other side of the mountain.
They got Joshua, Aaron thought, fire in his chest that made him want to tear strips of bark from the tree with his nails and scream aloud his plans for the Men of the World. But instead he did nothing, and this was well advised, for not thirty feet away stood one of them, hunkered down in the tall grass just inside the protective circle of the trees, a gun in his hand, a pair of binoculars held to his eyes. It was torture resisting the urge to run at him like one of the old Indian warriors Momma-In-Bed had liked to tell him about, but he knew well the folly of such a rash move. The coyote would cut him down before he made it clear of the trees. So he waited, as still as the trees, and watched.
Soon the man would move, and when he did, Aaron would be ready.
-34-
Pete stared out at the night, afraid to look at Claire for too long in case she snapped at him as she had already done more than once during the long drive. The journey had taken them nine hours, but it felt like an eternity, each one of those miles chipping away another part of the illusion he had held in his head for so long about the girl he thought he loved. He was at a loss to understand what had happened to her. Had she been like this since the hospital, or had she reserved her hostility only for him? If so, he couldn’t imagine what he had done to deserve it.