Once I was done cleaning the grave I stayed there for a time and then leaned over the grass, pressing my hands deep into its waxy depths.
“Hey.”
I jerked my hands back and turned around to find Jenny standing over me, in a T-shirt and jean jacket. The bill of Violet’s old baseball cap was pulled down low over her eyes. Back near the tree line, her horse, Wind, was tied up and munching on grass. His sandy flanks glistened in the sun.
“You must have ridden him far.”
“Farthest yet,” Jenny said, pulling off her rawhide gloves and stuffing them in her belt before flopping on the ground next to me. “I swear I could see the Rockies.”
“You could not.”
“Well… it was something.”
“Any trouble?”
“Oh yeah,” she said. “Always.”
“You didn’t have to shoot anyone, did you?”
Jenny pulled off her cap and leaned on her elbows in the grass. The sunlight hit her face like a splash of cool water. “Not today, Steve-O. Not today.”
Jenny closed her eyes and lay down next to me, her chest rising and falling gently, a glisten of sweat like a mist of diamonds on her forehead.
As soon as things calmed down, Jenny had set about tearing apart the Starbucks down the highway and hauling it in pieces back to town. It had taken her weeks, but when it was done, she’d been able to trade it all for Wind and a rifle of her own. From that day on, she’d throw herself onto her horse and disappear, always heading west, always pushing a little farther each time, stretching the boundaries of her world like a rubber band.
Every time she came back, we would stay up late and she would tell me stories of the things she had seen, so excited you would have thought she’d uncovered a field of gold when it was no more than a new tract of houses, or an abandoned car rusting in the woods.
“You should have seen it,” Jenny murmured into the air above us. “Animals everywhere. Everywhere. I saw elk and mountain lions and beavers. I even found this whole herd of buffalo. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe. I ran Wind right through them. It felt like flying.”
Her eyes were distant, locked on the cloudless blue, glazed with joy at remembering.
“Is today the day?” I asked… and immediately regretted it. Jenny’s eyebrows drew together, making a gloomy little wrinkle. She checked on Wind over her shoulder.
“I think so,” she said. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
I turned on my side to face her. I had said it a hundred times before and I’d say it a hundred times again. “It’s still dangerous out there.”
“I know that.”
“Dealing with the slavers wasn’t magic. There are others — the army and a thousand other—”
“I know, Stephen.”
Jenny turned onto her stomach. I plucked a blade of grass and settled it between my teeth. We had had this fight before. I knew when it was over.
“So, how’s shaping the minds of the next generation going?”
“I’m just helping out.”
“Then what?” Jenny asked. I could feel her staring at me. “Have you thought about it anymore?”
Jenny laid her head on my chest. Her breath went in and out, reminding me of a swing arcing up toward the sky and then falling again, over and over.
“Okay,” she said, and after a long while she drifted off.
I lay there, the heat of Jenny’s body beside me, the far-off smell of sawdust floating through the air.
Behind us, Wind shook his mane and stamped his foot into the grass, eager to be on his way.
“You ready, tough guy?”
When I opened my eyes, Jenny was adjusting Wind’s saddle and harness. Her rifle sat in a handmade leather case along his side. She pulled it out, checked it over, and replaced it. Then she drew on her gloves and cap and mounted Wind in one smooth, liquid motion.
Jenny guided Wind over to me. I pulled myself up onto the back of the horse between her and her rolled-up gear. Jenny turned Wind around and we trotted off toward Settler’s Landing, racing him when we reached the main road, his hooves making a machine-gun rattle against the asphalt.
We came to a halt out in front of the Greens’ just as Jackson stepped down off a ladder that led up to the house’s gutters. “Hey, cowgirl!”
Jenny slid down off Wind’s back. “Hey, Jackie boy! What’s happening?”
“I’m a gutter slave today,” he said, wiping the muck of wet leaves from his hands before giving her a quick hug. “Mom and Dad inside?”
“Yep.” Jackson pulled the ladder off the house and carted it around back. After Jenny got Wind tied up in the park across the street, we went inside to the smell of baking bread.
“Hey, you two!” Violet called out from the kitchen as we came in.
Marcus was coming down the stairs and grabbed Jenny as soon as he saw her.
“Whew! Somebody smells like a horse.”
“Yeah, I gave up on trying to make it go away.”
“Well, sit down,” Violet said. “We’ll have lunch ready in a minute.”
“So what’s out there these days?” Marcus asked once we’d all sat down and passed plates of food from hand to hand.
“It’s mostly quiet,” Jenny said, handing me a bowl of potatoes. “I hear about more towns going up though. Little ones, but it won’t be long until it gets crowded around here.”
“Are you talking to people?” Violet asked, trying to sound casual but under the table she was probably twisting a napkin into tight knots.
“Only if they look friendly, Mom.”
“And if they don’t?”
“I shoot them on sight.” Jenny grinned, but then pulled it back when Violet didn’t so much as crack a smile. “If I see more than a couple people together, I run and hide. I’ve gotten pretty good at it. It’s fine. I promise.”
We ate lunch while Marcus quizzed Jenny about how many people she had seen, what kinds of animals and plants, any sign of a government. Then we lingered there, drinking glasses of sweet tea that Violet made from an herb she’d discovered growing wild in the woods. It was my favorite time, everyone sitting there with the afternoon sun streaming in from the porch window, yellow as a dandelion, voices mixed with the bright clinking of forks and knives on plates.
The months after the fight hadn’t been easy, even for us. It had taken time to mesh back together again. But, like everything, it couldn’t last. I knew that as soon as Jenny slid her plate out in front of her.
“I’m going to go past the mountains.”
The silence was like a granite wall. Violet looked over at Marcus. He swallowed and set his fork down neatly next to his plate. “To do what?”
“To see what’s there.”
“It’s not a vacation,” Marcus said.
Jenny leaned across the table on her elbows. “Look, you need a scout—”
“Why does it have to be you?” Jackson asked. He was sitting across from Jenny, his fork still in his hand, his fingers white around its metal body. He was trying to cover it, but I could hear what was in his voice. Something welled up in Jenny’s eyes, but she pulled it back.
“Because I want to,” she said. “And because there’s no one who will be better at it than me. We can’t sit here with our heads down and hope everything’s going to be okay. The slaver, the one with the dreadlocks, is still alive, and there are more like him. You need to know if there’s danger out there, or people like us we can join forces with.”
Marcus and Violet exchanged a look and entwined hands.