Boondocks

Chapter 30: Minus Balls

FERN

"Come. Have seat." Sergio pulled a chair out from one of the many tables.

At least, I assumed the scrub of metal against wood was a chair. I couldn't see him. All I could see was a white cotton T-shirt and thick black leather.

"I'm not sitting anywhere until my men are armed." Tex's body vibrated. A tremor in his hands; a hitch in his breaths. He shifted his hold, and the jacket's zipper scraped my nose, my lips, as sharp and cold as his tone.

Sergio didn't speak, but he must have given some acknowledgement, because Tex dipped his mouth to my ear and breathed, "I'm in charge." His hands remained solid, one splayed across my back, the other palming my head, pinning me in place a little firmer with each new word he spoke. "Don't undermine me again."

I didn't argue or try to answer. My voice was somewhere in the bottom of my stomach, my bravery weighted beneath it. I'd seen him get mad at the men, but it'd never once been directed at me. The command couldn't make it past the breeze, but he may as well have shouted it. It felt like he had. Like I'd been scolded, and my cheeks burned.

The past painted the present in shades of that day and conjured every mundane memory of the past three years alone. Every decision had been crucial. Where I slept. What I ate. Where I hunted and how I rationed. What medicines and herbs to use when I was sick or injured.

Daddy had decided to die to help all those people. He'd chosen it. He'd sacrificed us all, but I couldn't find it in myself to resent him for it. Not anymore. Not moments after I'd made the same choice. I finally understood. I'd stood at the edge of the cliff and seen past the fall. To the bottom. To the flowers that bloomed from the corpses of the martyrs. Death could be beautiful. It could be something sanctimonious.

Tex loosened his arms and jerked his chin up at Merle and Cecil, and they retrieved their guns with cautious hands on their way over to us. The fact no one stopped them helped to ease my strangled lungs.

Tex passed me to Merle as if I were luggage, and Cecil refused to look at me. I had no doubt none of the other men would either. After all, they'd just been sacrificed. For me, and if I'd done as Tex had said, who knew what could have happened. The end of their army. The death of the hope it brought. My life wasn't worth that much, and the fact that Tex thought it was, that he'd placed me above the thing he lived and breathed for....

That was so much more than a sweet word or a first kiss. When I'd looked at him, thinking it was the last time I would, I hadn't felt any of the distance I'd insisted we keep. My mind raced, wanting to analyze every facet of what that meant but unable to given the immediacy of our situation.

Tex held Sergio's stare as he picked up his pistol and stuffed it into the waistband of his jeans, then he pulled out a chair and sat across from him.

If Tex was a hickory, Sergio was a boulder. They squared off like two roosters in the same henhouse. The air thickened, and I couldn't get a decent breath. I wished we'd never came. I wished I could go back in time and convince them all to leave that dump site. I should have done that the minute he mentioned the officials coming within fifty miles. We could have made a place somewhere more remote. I could have taught them how to hunt, and Julia would be alive, preparing for normal crops from a less abundant harvest.

Sergio clasped his hands across his bulbous belly like a father about to give a lecture about morals. "Why steal ship?" he asked. "What is purpose?"

Tex didn't answer right away. His back was to me, but I didn't need to see his face to know which Tex it belonged to. His personal shade of dark lingered, clouding the atmosphere and refusing to fade. When he finally did answer, it was a guarded, "My group is expanding." No mention of the bears or Savannah. No talk of the army or the war. He didn't trust him, and I understood why, but his hostility felt an awful lot like being caught mid-fall only to jump again.

I may not have known about battle strategy, but I knew these men could be an asset. They'd been prepared for this situation. They had weapons. They had the ship. But Tex didn't seem to care about who they were or what they had. He still wanted to fight. The memory of him flipping the table between him and Reggie flashed through my mind, and I prayed he wouldn't light a cigar.

Sergio scratched his beard, studying. "You are still mad I threatened pretty girl," he said. "This I understand." He lifted a finger. "But you brought pretty girl to steal one thing keeps us alive. Without ship, officials have no reason for Sergio. Pirate adventure is not nostalgia with just pirate and no adventure."

Tex stretched his neck, rolled his shoulders, then reached inside his jacket. The lighter flared, then the air sweetened with the scent of him. A cigar.

I grasped the bow tighter, prompting Merle to squeeze where he held my shoulder. His arm was draped across them, pinning me into his side.

Red glowed as Tex took a long drag. "I don't trust any man that works with them." He motioned to Sergio's stomach. "They've got you fattened up like a Christmas pig, and we all know how much pigs like to squeal. Who's to say Officials aren't on their way right now?"

Sergio lifted one bushy brow. "Next, you will want me to prove I am not camel. Is obvious. You have gun. We are sitting on deck, chatting like tea party." He tipped an imaginary teacup, pinky pointed. "Only person looks innocent is pretty girl." He motioned to me. "She is held like prisoner."

Tex turned his head just enough to glance at me from the corner of his eye, and he took a hard hit off the cigar. Smoke rolled from his nose, clouding around him.

He turned back to Sergio, and the silence stretched again. Deafening, skin-tightening silence. I held my breath, waiting for an explosion.

But it didn't come. Instead, Tex leaned back and spoke two words. "Butch Ericson."

I'd never heard the name before, but Cecil cursed beneath his breath, and Sergio's smile fell as he sent a sharp stream of Russian rumbling toward the open door.

"Shit!" Merle shoved me behind him and pulled out his gun.

Flood lights flipped on, blinding us all in bright, LED white. I squinted and looked away, blinking against the spots that followed my sight.

No men exited the building, and Sergio didn't make a move, hostile or otherwise. He took a closer look at Tex, lingering over his jacket, then his face. "You are free soldier." He settled back in his chair, interest clear in the curve of his mouth. "They say free soldiers extinct. All killed with Butch Ericson." He pointed at Tex's face and moved the finger in a circle. "You are same as him. Almost. Same face, different balls."

Tex took another hit, then flipped the ash over the railing beside them. "Using that ship to hide people is a waste of fucking time. You know it. They'll be found and slaughtered, whether it be here, or wherever it is they end up when it's time to go adventuring with The Greater Good." The last words were spat more than said, and he took another drag as if the smoke helped to quell the flames. "You're a billionaire sparing a dollar and calling it generosity. Before you start talking about balls, how 'bout you spit Arogander's out your mouth."

A stream of angry Russian echoed from one of the men inside, and Sergio answered with an absolute calm that spread. His eyes never left Tex. "Then tell me, Butch-minus-balls, what would free soldier do with ship?"