Moses can see the girl in the rearview mirror. Her head is turned sharply away from Fletcher, and she is gazing out the window as though pretending not to be present at all. But Moses can see her jaw shut tight, the muscles in her face clenched rock-like.
When they have been driving fifteen minutes, Moses pulls the car to the side of the road at the base of a stony outcropping. He leaves the motor running and gets out and goes around to the passenger side where he opens the door.
Get out, he says to Fletcher.
Happily, Fletcher says. It’s a lovely day for a nice sit.
The greasy man climbs out of the car and leans down to say farewell to the girl.
See you soon, fancy lady.
Come on, Moses says and leads him away to the shaded base of the outcropping where he tells him to sit.
Now you listen up, Moses says. We’re takin the girl. She ain’t part of your show any more. She don’t belong to you. You understand that?
You think she belongs to you? Fletcher says.
She don’t belong to anybody.
You got that part right, at least. Hell, take her. She can make you some money, but she’s bad business in the long run. I mean, Jesus, even the dead don’t want her. It’s a bad sign when those that’ll eat anything won’t even take a nibble from you. She’s a curse I’m glad to be got rid of.
Moses is staring at the man, considering these words, when he hears the car door open and close behind him. Then the girl herself is at his shoulder, and they both gaze down at the ridiculous oily man in the sombrero.
What’s going on? she asks.
We’re just havin a little palaver, Moses says.
What’s there to talk about? she says.
All manner of things.
You’re killing him, aren’t you? You swore to protect me.
See? Fletcher says. You see the bitterness in her heart?
I ain’t killing him, Moses says.
How come?
You see it now, sure, Fletcher says. Get shut of her while you can.
There was a bargain, Moses says to the girl. A bargain between us and them – and it’s gonna get upheld.
Respectable, Fletcher says. A man of his word. Let’s all be men of our words.
I never made any bargain, says the Vestal Amata.
There is something hard in her, something angry. Moses wonders what exactly he has sworn to protect, and he wishes to know it for what it is. He wishes to sound the depths of it so as not to get drowned in its tides or ripped to pieces on its shoals.
No, Moses says to her. You’re right. You never made any bargain. So you kill him.
The two gaze upon each other. She realizes she’s being tested. Their eyes lock, and Moses feels as though he is being watched by a giant caged animal – a panther pacing back and forth waiting for its moment to strike.
Give me the gun, she says, holding her hand outstretched.
But he doesn’t give her the gun. Instead, he kicks around the base of the outcropping until he finds what he’s looking for. A loose stone roughly the size of a bowling ball. He hefts it up and holds it out to her.
The shot’ll signal to them something’s gone wrong. You want to kill him, you gotta do it this way.
Hey, Fletcher says. Hey, wait a minute.
He rises to his knees, but Moses points the gun at his head.
Stay down, Moses commands.
We had a deal, Fletcher says to Moses. You can’t just let her do it. That’s akin to doin it yourself.
Akin to it, but not exactly the same, Moses says.
He can see the sudden fear in the man’s eyes. There is no doubt in Fletcher’s mind that she’ll kill him.
And, indeed, she takes the rock from Moses. The weight of it nearly topples her, small as she is, but she steadies it against her chest.
Jesus Christ, Fletcher says, raising one hand over his head and knocking the sombrero off to protect him from the stone and another palm towards the pistol to protect him from the bullet. He is, at the moment, a truly pathetic thing. Jesus Christ, he says again. Tillie, don’t.
The Vestal Amata uses all the strength in her small arms to raise the rock over her own head. She pauses for just a moment. Moses looks to see what’s in her eyes, and resolution is what he finds there. Deep, unquestioning resolution.
At the last moment, Moses reaches out, seizes the rock from her hands and tosses it to the ground where it gives a deep, earthy thud that makes Fletcher fall forward into a foetal position as though he has actually been struck.
What happened? he says.
What happened is you got a stay of execution, Moses says. Now sit tight till your people come for you.
Moses takes the girl by the arm and heads back to the car.
This is your last chance, Fletcher calls out to Moses as they walk away. He has regained his confidence now that there is no rock hanging over his head waiting to bash his brains in. You give her back now, and we won’t even charge you to take her off your hands.
And he laughs.
Before they reach the car, Moses seizes the Vestal Amata by the shoulders and looks down into her unflinching face.
You were gonna do it, he says. You were gonna kill him in cold blood.
That’s right, she says. And you weren’t.
He wasn’t no threat to you – not then.
He shot your brother.
Is that what you were gonna do it for? On behalf of Abraham?
No. I was going to do it on behalf of myself. And on behalf of decency.
Decency, Moses repeats and guffaws. That’s a mighty big concept for such a little redheaded thing like yourself.
Little nothing – I’m the Vestal. Or haven’t you heard?
Your name ain’t Amata. He called you something different. Tillie.
Amata’s the name that monk gave me. Tillie the Vestal just didn’t sound right to him. I didn’t use to always wear white robes either.
I guess you didn’t.
What’s that supposed to mean?
That trick back there with the slug. How’d you do it?
Her voice suddenly takes on a deep southern twang, as though in imitation of Moses himself. Though Moses can’t decipher the shifts in her dialect – can’t determine which voice is performance and which is real.
It ain’t no trick, brother Moses, she says. I’m speciallike.
You ain’t a holy woman.
Do you know what’s holy and what ain’t? You sure bout that?
I got a few ideas on the topic.
Well, don’t expect a deep dissertation on the matter from me. Let’s you and I visit a slug town together and see which one gets along better with the locals.
You also got a trick to save you from throttling by living men who just get tired of your talkin?
Ladies and gentlemen, she addresses the desert around them, my sworn protector. Take a bow, Mosey.
Moses turns and walks the rest of the way back to the car. The Vestal follows a little behind.
Everything taken care of? Abraham asks from the back seat.
Everything’s fine, Moses says.
Good, Abraham says. Cause someone better fish me the whiskey out of the back. The next time we stop you’re gonna have to dig a bullet out of my leg.
The Vestal is convinced that Fletcher is still after her, and Moses has suspicions in the same direction. So to disguise their trail, they drive west along the highway for two hours, then double back ten minutes and take the road north.
They move slowly, she says, Fletcher and his people – because there are so many of them. But they’ve got an Indian with them. A Zuni. He’s a good tracker.
What do you recommend? Moses asks.
I don’t recommend, says the girl. I’m just supplying information.
The road north is a small two-lane black-top crumbled to dust in some places, piled high with the shells of abandoned cars in others. They frequently have to slow to a crawl and navigate the sandy verge of the road, being wary about getting stuck since Abraham is useless to help at the moment. Moses looks intermittently in the rearview mirror, and so far he has seen no sign of Fletcher’s caravan. The one advantage of the slow road is that it will be even slower for Fletcher and his large, heavy vans.
Soon they see signs for what seems to be a cluster of large towns: Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa. The slug population, too, grows denser as they approach the city centre.
Do we go around it or through it? Abraham asks.
It’s up to you, brother. What do you feel like?
The sun is getting low on the horizon. The day has been a long one. They have been driving non-stop. Abraham has been drinking from a bottle of whiskey for hours, readying himself for the surgery he will have to undergo. He is sleepy and sputtering.
Hell, he says. Let’s stay in the big city for the night.
So they follow the road into the city, which is uninhabited by the living and dark as pitch when the sun falls. It is possible that the entire state is off the grid, all the survivors having moved on years ago to other, safer areas. Phoenix is a place gone to rust and ruin – massive buildings collapsed on themselves, weeds growing up through the cracked pavement, everything etched to a pale, colourless grey by the sandstorms that whip around the corners of buildings season by season.
The firebird city rises again only in the dead who wander its streets. It is a mystery what they are feeding on, these shambling slugs, for there are no signs of life. It is only when they arrive in the city’s downtown that Moses sees the soot and ash everywhere settled like new snow, the black char on the sides of many structures – and he realizes something. This place is not among the cities abandoned a decade ago or longer. No, this place is newly dead. There were people here not long before.
The gutters are stained with dried blood, and he knows what that means.
He knows from experience how to age blood – how, upon leaving the body and splashing on a brick wall, for example, blood will go from red to brown to black to grey, how it will flake off, eventually, in the desert heat, or how it will rehydrate and run in the rain, how it will eventually disappear altogether, leaving only a stain like the dirt of the earth – and how, long after that, even the stain itself will evaporate, because the elixirs of human life are unstable – because human life itself wants to merge again with the elemental world it was born out of and is kept separate only by the puny will of individual fancies.