The Song of David

“You made them run, Tag?” Cameron was as surprised as I was. I had never fought back. I was a fat kid who tried to make everyone laugh. I didn’t fight.

“Yeah, Cam. I did. I beat the shit out of ‘em.”



My first fist fight. It had probably looked more like a squirming wrestling match between fat puppies, but I had come out the victor for the first time ever. I had been David then. And I had been Goliath too, I supposed. The boy who fought back, and the giant who made everyone run in fear. Now? Now I didn’t know if David still existed or if Goliath ever had, and the picture troubled me. It had obviously troubled Moses too, or he wouldn’t have called.

“Is everything okay, Tag?” Georgia asked softly. I turned away from the painting and met her serious gaze.

I nodded once, just a brief jerk of my head, and Georgia pressed harder.

“Are you going to tell me about Millie? Moses seems to think she’s special. Is she?”

“She’s special.”

“Is she special enough to tame the wild man?” Georgia was teasing me, trying to shake me out of the mood she obviously sensed I was in. Or maybe she was just a girl digging for romantic gossip. My sisters were like that too, or they used to be, when I knew them.

I slung my arm around her shoulders and turned us both away from the biblical standoff.

“Some things are born to be wild. Some horses can’t be broken,” I said in my best Clint Eastwood.

“All right. Well then I guess the question should be, are you special enough to let a blind girl break you?”

“It’s already happened. I just don’t want to break her.” My voice caught, and I pulled my arm from Georgia’s shoulders and shoved them into my pockets, striding away so she wouldn’t see the trembling around my mouth and the panic that I could feel oozing out of my pores. I was so glad Moses wasn’t here. I don’t know what I’d been thinking trying to find him. I wasn’t ready for Moses yet.

“I gotta go, George. Give Taglee a kiss for me. Give Moses a kiss too. He loves my kisses.” Georgia laughed, but the laughter didn’t lift the worry from her voice. I was acting a little strange, and I knew she was wondering what the hell was up.

“Don’t be a stranger, Tag. We’ve missed you.” Georgia called behind me as I strode to my truck.

“I’ll miss you too, George. Every damn day.”





MAYBE IT WAS Moses talking about Molly, but I found myself pulling off the freeway fifteen minutes after I left Levan, exiting at the truck stop in Nephi near the spot where they found my sister’s remains. The dogs found my sister’s body. The dogs found her when I could not. I’d looked. I’d looked so hard and so desperately that I’d almost convinced myself she couldn’t be found. If she couldn’t be found then I hadn’t failed. Not exactly.

Her grave was just a hole in the earth, marked by tumbleweeds and ringed by sagebrush. Almost two years we’d looked, and she’d been waiting in a litter-strewn field near an obscure overpass outside a little town everyone mispronounced. A town that meant nothing to the girl who was forced to make it her final resting place. Nephi. NEE FIGH. When I had first heard it pronounced I’d thought of the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk, yelling from his castle in the heavens, “FEE, FI, FO, FUM, I smell the blood of an Englishman.” FEE FI rhymes with NEPHI.

NEE PHI FO FUM, I smell the blood of your missing ones.

The dogs could smell her. But there was no blood. Not then. When they found her only bones and bits of fabric and several long blonde hairs remained. Some drug paraphernalia was buried with her, labeling her an addict, deserving of her fate. Suddenly she was no longer missing. But she was still gone. And for years we didn’t know who took her.

NEE PHI FO FUM, I smell the blood of your missing ones.

They say that most murders are committed by the family members. By the loved ones. But the man who killed my sister didn’t know her at all. And he didn’t love her. It turned out, he’d killed lots of girls. So many girls over so many years. All of them missing. All of them gone.

NEE PHI FO FUM, ready or not, here I come. And come he had. I’d put a bullet in the man’s head, avenging the blood of the missing ones, all the missing ones.

NEE PHI FO FUM, pull the trigger, now you’re done.

NEE PHI FO FUM, pull the trigger, now you’re done.

Oh, God. I didn’t want to be done. I sat in my truck and thought of Molly, staring into the field where they found her body. And I talked to her for a while. I asked her what the hell I was supposed to do. And I wondered if she was coming through to Moses because my time was up, if she was suddenly hanging around because she was waiting on me. If my time was up, I could deal. The truth of that settled on me. It surprised me. But I could deal. I could handle it. Moses had told me once that you can’t escape yourself. I’d wanted to once. Not anymore. I had come to terms with myself. I liked myself. I liked my life. Hell, I loved my life.