No Mercy

TWO

Hope waltzed into the house half an hour after the sheriff left. Perfect timing-avoiding confrontation, as usual.

Ignoring me, as usual.

Hard to believe we were full-blooded sisters; we were exact opposites in so many ways. She was small and round-softly feminine with an ample chest, hips, and ass-whereas I was tall, long limbed and leanly muscled. Not a soft thing about me, inside or out. Hope’s fairer skin, blue eyes, and curly light brown hair were courtesy of our father and his Germanic forbearers.

My straight hair was the color of mahogany, as my mother’s had been. My skin wasn’t the reddish gold of our grandmother’s tribe, but as a quarter Minneconjou Sioux, my pigmentation held enough of the darker undertones that allowed me to easily pass as an ethnic woman in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Bosnia, and the other war-torn countries I’d been lurking in for the better part of two decades.

Hope and I did share the sharp Aryan facial features of Dad’s European ancestors. I had mom’s eye color: an odd shade of hazel that changed from green to brown with my mood.

What was Hope’s mood today?

Dressed in a floral-patterned gauzy tunic and frayed 501 cutoffs, she looked like a teenage hippie. A hippie who’d either scored some premium grass, or who’d just gotten laid, if her rosy cheeks and glassy eyes were any indication.

Either scenario made me shudder. But I’d inherited Hope and all her problems along with the ranch.

She plopped in Dad’s Barcalounger and lifted the damp ringlets from the back of her neck. Then she snatched the remote from the TV tray and flicked on the TV like she lived here.

An ad for Depends blared. Apparently Sophie had caught up on her soaps over lunch. Hope left the volume at 200 decibels and scrolled through channels.

“We need to talk about Levi,” I said loudly.

“In a sec.” She flipped to Oprah and popped out the footrest.

I snagged the remote and vanquished the Queen of Daytime TV.

“Hey! I was watching that.”

“Tough. Did you hear me say we needed to talk?”

“Can’t it wait until my show’s over?”

“No.”

Flower-child appearance aside, the petulant act wasn’t becoming on a thirty-three-year old woman. I inhaled a deep uji breath. Dealing with my sister required patience, and mine was in short supply today.

Hope had suffered more emotional trauma before age five than most people did their whole lives; consequently, when we were kids, I’d always let her have her way. Our father had fallen into the same trap. As an adult I refused to get sucked in.

“Where’d you go today? Sophie said she saw you at seven and you were sleeping.”

“Out.”

“Out where?”

“Just out, okay?”

I sipped my tea, the picture of nonchalance. “Out where?”

“I don’t report to you.”

“You do when your kid’s been in trouble and no one knew where you were, including the sheriff.”

“What happened?” She scrambled out of the chair. “Is Levi okay?”

“He’s fine.”

Hope sagged next to me on the loveseat. “Where is he?”

“Unloading hay with Jake.” During my brief rundown of Levi’s transgressions, her anxious expression changed to defeat.

She reached for my hand. Hers was so soft and frail. In comparison, mine felt hard and tough as an old baseball glove.

“I’m sorry. You got enough to worry about without adding Levi to the mix.” Tears spilled down her cheeks, leaving black mascara tracks on her ashen face.

I softened my tone and passed her a Kleenex. “The last month has been rough. On all of us.”

She delicately blotted the corners of her eyes. “Know where I was today?”

“Where?”

“At the cemetery.”

“Doing what?”

“Talking to Daddy.”

“Really?” To keep a conversation going with her, I had to respond to every question. Luckily one word answers were sufficient.

“Yeah. I go there sometimes. Do you?”

“No.”

“I feel like I have to go, because I don’t want to forget him like I did her.”

Her. My pulse quickened. “It’s not the same, Hope. You were only three when she died.”

The window air conditioner kicked on and packed the void with cold white noise.

“What do you remember?” she asked softly.

My breath froze in my lungs.

“I mean, what do you remember about her? Mama.”

An unwanted image of my mother appeared-sprawled face-first in the horse stall, blood matting her hair, pink splotches soaking through her white eyelet blouse. Tan leather riding glove clutched in her right hand; the pulpy red mass that’d been her left forearm stretched out in the filthy hay. The rank smell of nervous horse sweat. Horseshit. My own urine-soaked jeans. The horse’s continual, loud, moist grunts of distress.

Mostly I remembered my helplessness, peeking through the slats at her motionless body.

Three decades later, the scene still haunts me. I’d neglected to take the saddle off the Thoroughbred we’d been boarding before I’d corralled her. The saddle had slipped beneath the horse’s belly, and the temperamental mare spooked. When my mother entered the stall to correct my oversight, the horse’s powerful hind legs connected with her head. Several times.

“Sometimes when I’m out there I try to talk to her,” Hope continued, oblivious to my guilt and grief, “but I can’t remember the sound of her voice.”

I’d never forget my mother’s high-pitched shrieks of pain. Her last words, garbled from a broken jaw. How she screamed at me to stay out. Screaming at me to run and get my father.

In her confused state, she’d forgotten Dad and Hope were in town, spooning down ice-cream sundaes so she and I could go riding alone. My mother had understood my obsession with horses. She’d shared it. Encouraged it.

That day cured my equine fascination. I haven’t been on a horse since.

Hope giggled, a tinny sound that startled me back to the present. “I’m sure folks who were driving by the Gunderson Cemetery thought, ‘There’s that crazy Hope Arpel, talking to herself in the family graveyard again.’”

“No one thinks you’re crazy,” I lied.

Before I braced myself for the million reassurances Hope always needed, the kitchen screen door banged.

Levi stormed in and slumped in the doorway, sweaty, covered in muck and fine pieces of hay, disaffected scowl distorting his face. “About time, Ma. Can we go home before Jake finds another shitty job for me to do?”

“Watch your mouth.”

“Why should I? Aunt Mercy swears all the time.” His brown eyes challenged me. “She even swore at me today. In front of the sheriff.”

Traitor. Next time we were alone I’d do worse than swear at him.

“Don’t blame her because you were caught breaking the law. I would’ve cussed you out too if I’d seen the sheriff hauling you from a cop car in handcuffs. You’re just lucky your grandpa ain’t around to see how you’ve been behaving.”

“Ma-”

“Don’t you ‘Ma’ me. You aren’t stupid. Why would you break into Mr. Pawlowski’s house? He’s such a sweet old man. Never been anything but nice to us.”

“Like you care.”

“That’s not fair. I care and you know it.”

“No, you don’t. You told Aunt Mercy where you’ve been?”

I lifted a brow.

Hope’s cheeks flushed, but she didn’t acknowledge his taunt. “That’s why you stole? To make me worry about you? To punish me for not being at your beck and call?”

His scraggly hair curtained his face as he dropped his chin to his chest.

“Why’d you steal, Levi? For the money?”

“Jeez, Ma, I didn’t do it for the money.”

“Then why? I’m serious, Levi. You better come clean about every sneaky thing you’ve been doing lately.”

My focus shifted to Hope. Raking Levi over the coals? Almost a responsible parental reaction from her for a change.

Levi kicked the doorjamb.

“Stop acting like a two-year-old and answer me.”

“I did it for an initiation thing, for a… club.”

“A club? Or a gang?” She leaped to her feet and got right in his pimply face. “Don’t even think about it. Those gangs on the rez are bad news. You know that.”

“It ain’t a gang.”

“Then what is it?”

“I told you. A club.”

What type of “club,” besides a gang, made potential pledges commit illegal acts?

None.

“Besides, it don’t matter now,” Levi added. “I got caught. They ain’t gonna let me in. Can we go? Shoonga’s been cooped up all day. Probably ripping the place apart.”

Shoonga was Levi’s corgi, a gift from Dad on Levi’s seventh birthday. While Levi had debated on what to name his new pet, Sophie and Jake had taken to calling the unruly pup the Lakota word for dog, which stuck.

That was the only year I’d been home for Levi’s birthday. Now, as I watched my nephew and the surly teenager he’d become, I wondered what’d happened to the boy with the ready grin and sweet disposition.

I half listened while Hope harangued Levi for another minute, which seemed to last an hour. When Levi began kicking the oak molding again, I said, “Enough. Take him home. Make sure you call the sheriff.”

Levi shot me a grateful look. It shocked me. Maybe getting arrested had been a good thing for him. For us all.

Hope twirled her keys and brushed past me. “We’re leaving. Right now.”

No good-bye. No thanks. No surprise.

Sophie didn’t stick around after she’d made me supper. I could’ve terminated her employment after Dad’s funeral-as a single woman I didn’t need full-time help in the form of a maid and a cook. I insisted on washing my own clothes and cleaning my space upstairs. But Sophie had taken care of our family since my mother’s death, and she’d struggle without the salary we paid her. In some ways, it’d be like throwing her out of her own house.

I wandered through the main floor, at loose ends. I hadn’t revived my TV habits since I’d been home from the war because I couldn’t stand watching the news. Protestors and pundits and pansy-asses blathering on about what we were doing wrong over there-without having stepped a goddamn foot on foreign sand. They had no idea what it was like spending a night waiting for the patrols to return, not knowing which one of your fellow soldiers was headed home in a flag-draped coffin.

I had no interest in reading the thriller Sophie had bought at Besler’s grocery. I had lived that edge-of-your-seat thrill ride every damn day, and it wasn’t nearly as fun as depicted in fiction.

Sadly, no lover waited in the wings for my call. Too early for bed. Too late to head into Rapid City to catch a movie. When in doubt, I exercised. I laced on my running shoes and took off.

The gravel road in front of our place has little traffic in the early evening. I hated to run. But there’s nothing like it for keeping in aerobic shape. At times my life depended on being able to make a quick getaway.

But I almost stopped when I realized it was the worst time of day for me to see. Hazy purple twilight: not quite day, not quite night. I’ve always taken my perfect eyesight for granted. I never believed my body could fail me. Or medical science couldn’t cure what ailed me.

Retinal detachment. The words were like shrapnel in my soul.

It’d come as a total shock when black shadows obscured the vision in my right eye. I’d been alone in Hilah, two days away from medical help. By the time I made it back to camp, a shrapnel wound and severe dehydration accompanied the eye injury.

Luckily, a Mobil Ophthalmic Surgical Team (MOST) performed the surgery on my eye immediately. Chances were good I wouldn’t completely lose my eyesight, a better prognosis than initially expected. I should feel thankful.

Instead, I felt restless. There was no gray area in my field of expertise. Either I was 100 percent or I’d be reassigned to a military desk/teaching job.

Or I could take my twenty and retire. Put my skills to use in the real world. Problem was, there isn’t a big market for female snipers.

With my assorted injuries, the loss of my career, the grief and stress of losing my father, and my having to make a decision on the ranch, I doubted my life could get more complicated or out of my control.

Famous last words.