“Good for you, but don’t come any closer.” Elaine waved the pistol back and forth, as if she could brush Jeanette away. Or erase her.
Jeanette took another step. “Some people say he deserved it, even some who were his friends once. Okay, they can believe that. But the DA didn’t believe it. More important, I don’t believe it, although it’s true I wasn’t in my right mind when it happened. And it’s true that no one helped me when I needed help. So I killed him, and I wish I hadn’t. It’s on me, not him. I have to live with that. And I do.”
Another step, just a small one.
“I’m strong enough to take my share of the blame, okay? But I’ve got a son who needs me. He needs to know how to grow up right, and that’s something I can teach him. I’m done being pushed around by anyone, man or woman. The next time Don Peters tries to get me to give him a handjob, I won’t kill him, but I . . . I’ll scratch his eyes out, and if he hits me, I’ll keep right on scratching. I’m done being a punching bag. So you can take what you think you know about me, and you can shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.”
“I believe you may have lost your mind,” said Elaine.
“Aren’t there women here who want to go back?”
“I don’t know.” Elaine’s eyes shifted. “Probably. But they’re misguided.”
“And you get to make that decision for them?”
“If no one else has the guts,” Elaine said (with absolutely no awareness of how like her husband she sounded), “then yes. In that case, it’s down to me.” From the pocket of her jeans, she withdrew a long-barreled trigger lighter, the kind people used to fire up the coals in a barbecue. The white tiger was watching and purring—a deep rumbling sound like an idling engine. It didn’t look to Jeanette as if there would be any help from that direction.
“Guess you don’t have any kids, huh?” Jeanette asked.
The woman looked hurt. “I have a daughter. She’s the light of my life.”
“And she’s here?”
“Of course she is. She’s safe here. And I intend to keep her that way.”
“What does she say about that?”
“What she says doesn’t matter. She’s just a child.”
“Okay, what about all the women who had to leave boy children behind? Don’t they have a right to raise their kids and keep them safe? Even if they do like it here, don’t they have that responsibility?”
“See,” Elaine said, smirking, “that statement alone is enough to tell me you’re foolish. Boys grow up to be men. And it’s men who cause all the trouble. They’re the ones who shed the blood and poison the earth. We are better off here. There are male babies here, yes, but they’re going to be different. We’ll teach them to be different.” She took a deep breath. The smirk spread, as if she were inflating it with crazy-gas. “This world will be kind.”
“Let me ask you again: You mean to close the door on the life all them other ladies left behind without even asking them?”
Elaine’s smile faltered. “They might not understand, so I . . . I’m making . . .”
“What’re you making, lady? Besides a mess?” Jeanette slid her hand in her pocket.
The fox reappeared and sat beside the tiger. The red snake slithered weightily across one of Jeanette’s sneakers, but she did not so much as look down. These animals did not attack, she understood; they were from what some preacher, back in the dim days of her optimistic churchgoing childhood, had called the Peaceable Kingdom.
Elaine flicked the lighter’s switch. Flame wavered from the tip. “I am making an executive decision!”
Jeanette pulled her hand from her pocket and hurled a handful of peas at the other woman. Elaine flinched, raised her hand with the gun in an instinctive motion of defense, and stepped back. Jeanette closed the remaining distance and caught her around the waist. The gun tumbled from Elaine’s hand and fell into the dirt. She hung onto the lighter, though. Elaine stretched, the flame at the tip curling toward the knot of kerosene-dampened roots. Jeanette banged Elaine’s wrist against the ground. The lighter slipped from her hand and went out, but too late—guttering blue flames danced along one of the roots, moving up toward the trunk.
The red snake slithered up the Tree, wanting away from the fire. The tiger rose, lazily, went to the burning root, and planted a paw on it. Smoke rose around the paw, and Jeanette smelled singeing fur, but the tiger remained planted. When it stepped away, the blue flames were gone.
The woman was weeping as Jeanette rolled off her. “I just want Nana to be safe . . . I just want her to grow up safe . . .”
“I know.” Jeanette had never met this woman’s daughter and probably never would, but she recognized the sound of true pain, spirit pain. She had experienced plenty of that herself. She picked up the barbecue lighter. Examined it. Such a small tool to close the door between two worlds. It might have worked, if not for the tiger. Was it supposed to do that, Jeanette wondered, or had it gone beyond its purview? And if that was so, would it be punished?
So many questions. So few answers. Never mind. She whipped her arm in a circle, and watched the barbecue lighter go spinning away. Elaine gave a cry of despair as it disappeared into the grass forty or fifty feet distant. Jeanette bent and picked up the pistol, meaning to put it in her belt, but of course she was wearing her inmate browns and had no belt. Belts were a no-no. Inmates sometimes hung themselves with belts, if they had them. There was a pocket in her drawstring pants, but it was shallow and still half full of peas; the gun would fall right out. What to do with it? Throwing it away seemed to be the wisest course.
Before she could do that, leaves rustled behind her. Jeanette swung around with the pistol in her hand.
“Hey! Drop it! Drop the gun!”
At the edge of the woods stood another armed woman, her own pistol trained on Jeanette. Unlike Elaine, this one held her weapon in both hands and with her legs planted wide, as if she knew what she was doing. Jeanette, no stranger to orders, started to lower the gun, meaning to put it in the grass beside the Tree . . . but a prudent distance away from Elaine Nutball, who might make a grab for it. As she bent, the snake rustled along the branch above her. Jeanette flinched and raised the hand holding the gun to protect her head from a half-glimpsed falling object. There was a crack, then a faint tink, two coffee mugs clicking together in a cabinet, and she seemed to hear Evie in her head—an inarticulate cry of mingled pain and surprise. After that, Jeanette was on the ground, the sky was nothing but leaves, and there was blood in her mouth.
The woman with the gun came forward. The muzzle was smoking, and Jeanette understood she had been shot.
“Put it down!” the woman ordered. Jeanette opened her hand, not knowing she still held the pistol until it rolled free.