Dying for Dominoes Page 13

  Her eyes played the side of the road, ever vigilant for the familiar flash of green that would tell her deer were present, their eyes glowing when the headlights shone into them. Deer crossing the road at night were hard to see and even harder to avoid, but she knew to look for the flash of green on the edge of the pavement.

  She shivered. No doubt the Hummer would plow a deer down like a piñata, but she had heard stories of deer crashing through the windshield, hooves kicking the driver to death in its final thrust to escape.

  Suddenly the brights of car headlights flashed in her eyes from behind. In that instant, she knew with certainty that the car had been following her with its headlamps off. Now light filled the cabin with such intensity that everything blurred white around her.

  She flipped the rearview mirror up, although it didn’t help. Gunning the Hummer for speed, she forced distance between the two cars. A yellow caution sign loomed ahead, warning of a triple S curve. She steered the Hummer to the center of the road and the vehicle behind her followed.

  The Hummer’s tires squealed, holding fast to the road as she careened from one tight curve to the next. Ahead of her, the highway was as dark as tar pitch, and behind her was nothing but blinding light. Hoping for a straight stretch, she pressed the gas pedal, and the Hummer shot forward, traveling the solid centerline like Pac-Man chewing its way through the maze. This was no game. If she met a car coming from the other direction, that would be it. She would never be able to maneuver the Hummer back to her own lane in time.

  How far could she travel this fast on these curves? How long before she missed a curve and sped down the hillside? Her foot instinctively lifted from the gas pedal and the Hummer dropped its speed.

  Her head snapped back as she felt the impact, the headrest whacking the back of her head with a heavy thud. Light filled the cabin, and the roar of an engine filled her ears as the car rammed again into the Hummer with deliberate force. Again. And again. Each time a speck of time lapsed, as if the world stood still while the car behind caught up with its mark.

  The two vehicles rode together, locked bumper to bumper, for what seemed like forever. Then the car behind her let go. Space filled the gap between them. She glanced in the rearview mirror just as one headlight winked out in the car behind.

  Was she going to die right here and now?

  Somehow the thought was strangely calming, like watching the credits roll in a movie that kept you tense in your seat, fingernails bitten to the quick. Was this how Zack felt as he lay bleeding to death? Did he see the car coming at him from behind? Did he know in that instant that his lies were coming back to roost, like a pigeon with a message from Death?

  Glancing in the side view mirror, she now saw the one headlight that was still intact shift to the center as the car moved farther into the left lane, a one-eyed creature intent on the kill. She gripped the wheel.

  With a final blow that shattered the last headlamp, the car rammed the corner of the Hummer, the squeal of metal on metal filling her ears. She swerved, but she felt as if a giant magnet was pulling her off the edge of the road.

  It seemed like a dream, then, a flash. Trees blurred in front of her as she sped down the mountainside. The Hummer bounced against the branches that grabbed at the windshield, cracking off like fingers on some wretched hand. Down. Hurling down toward the inevitable bottom, she sped. The impact snapped her hands against her chest and her head against the back of the seat as her seat belt held her tight. The dream faded, then there was the dark sea of nothing.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rian felt the air kick up like it always did the moment before the sun set as if the earth needed to fill her sails to make the journey to the other side. From her dock, she watched the sun catch in the deep vee of the valley and then hang over the horizon like a brilliant red ship, the reflection in the water now turning copper-red.

  She sat still until dusk took over and the whip-poor-wills took up their chant. The chimney swifts congregated over the old house ruins on the other side of the lake, whirling and fluttering their wings like bats in the evening air. Overhead, the birds hunted the sky for one last feast before disappearing into the remains of the crumbling chimney.

  When dark closed in around her, she rose, reluctantly, and at the edge of the dock, she grabbed the shovel she had brought with her from the garden shed.

  She had a task to do.

  Jamming the shovel into the ground, she lifted out a spade of dirt, tipping it onto the mound piling up beside the hole. The miner’s lamp made a bull’s-eye of light on the surface of the dirt at her feet, casting beams into the woods beyond when she lifted her head. She leaned forward on the shovel handle, took a deep breath, and blew it out sharply. Just a little deeper, she thought and plowed the spade into the dirt again.

  She dug near the little pet cemetery that rested under a sour cherry tree about halfway between her cabin and the dock. The path between the two veered off to a bench where she could sit and look at the lake in the shade and talk to a whole generation of dead dogs and cats, even a dumb old chicken that fell off a Tyson truck. She had contemplated a meal out of that chicken—waste not, want not—but she brought her home in the trunk of her car and let the hen peck for ticks in the yard until she met her mortal demise sometime later.

  There hadn’t been a new hole dug for a pet death in quite some time, but last winter after a period of paranoia, she buried her coveted starter seeds. These were not just any seeds. These were the descendants from Bangladesh she had nearly risked her freedom to smuggle in. She flew over as part of a vacation tour with a group of Episcopalians, and while they were collecting trinkets at the local bazaar, she was buying seeds to start an undercover career in cannabis. Not just any cannabis, this Cannabis sativa seed was from a family who had been growing this particular strain for generations. She had made this connection in college, and their friendship held fast over the years even though there were many miles between them now.

  The seed she brought back to her farm was perfect as it was, but with experimentation and her knowledge of botany, she created a hybrid strain for the North Arkansas climate that had become her signature crop. Her weed became known for its sweet, fruity taste and creative, euphoric high. Hers was not the skunky street weed that glued partakers to the couch. Hers was a wholesome, cerebral high and some of the best homegrown money could buy in Arkansas. She was proud of that. It made delicious cookies, too. The kind of cookies that helped folks get beyond their pain and suffering.

  Pride. It was a funny thing.

  Proud of her crop. Proud of her freedom. Proud of her body, too. She was muscled and toned from hiking and hauling. Growing pot undetected meant hiking into the mountains with whatever she needed in a backpack. Once, but only once, after she twisted her ankle in the rock scree on a hill, she contemplated a pack mule for help. She had gone so far as to hunt down a livestock auction before paranoia took over. She was far less obvious headed to the woods with a heavy backpack and walking stick than with a braying mule. She’d never met a mule that worked without complaint.

  The crop grew in the fertile soil of a valley between two gentle slopes of land her family had owned for generations. It was a strenuous hike, but it was discreet. The valley ran from east to west, so the sun shone on it all day in every season. When it rained, the water from the mountains brought all the right nutrients down to nurture the soil. She had carved a path with a heavy pick for the water to follow and irrigate the crop, lining the makeshift riverbed with rocks as it moved through the plants. She swung a pick for weeks, and her muscles had never ached like that before or since.

  She ran a hose camouflaged with lichen and pieces of rock downhill from a deep spring to the patch so that if rain was scarce, she could still pull water from the spring. Bamboo potted from a nearby stand served as stakes to support the plants, but mostly it was for camouflage. By cutting away all but the leaf blades at the t
op of the bamboo culms, she hid the garden from spying eyes above.

  It had been more than ten years.

  Zack had ruined it in less than ten months.

  He had surprised her in the woods that day, showing up at her secret camp. No one, absolutely no one, knew of its whereabouts—or so she thought. He stepped out from behind a tree with a smug smile on his handsome face. How long he had been following her, watching her, she didn’t want to know. The very thought of him spying on her unaware made her skin crawl.

  A month later, at the new moon, two men had shown up at her house. They were oily, and she knew in her gut they were the kind of men who lived without a dime of remorse. They claimed to have taken a wrong turn and gotten lost. She knew better. The black Lincoln was out of place on the country road. The mud-covered license plates were Pulaski County, and as she watched the car leave her ranch, she thought they had drug mafia written all over them. She didn’t know who they were, and she didn’t ask. But she knew they were there to send her a message.

  We know who you are, and we know where you live.

  Zack had ruined everything.

  And now, Zack was out of the picture.

  She had been thinking about this for days now, wavering between regaining the confidence to resume her trade once Zack’s death blew over and the realization that it no longer felt safe or sacred. Zack muddied the water when he blackmailed her into making him part of her business. Now she felt soiled as if there was blood on her hands that had to be washed clean, purified by fire, and embedded in the ashes of time. She knew what she had to do.

  She owed it to the ancestors who honored the sacredness of the herb, as they honored the Great Spirit. She owed it to the ancestors who taught their people how to accept the herb’s gifts. If it were right for her to rebuild her business down the road, she would know it.

  But for now, this was the right thing to do.

  And Ben. This was for him, too. She could never have what she wanted with him as long as he was a cop and she grew weed. She knew he put himself in jeopardy to be with her.

  Feeling a pang of regret, she stopped shoveling and wiped the sweat from her face and her tears along with it. Again, she heaved the shovel with determination and heard the clank of metal against metal. The old Nabisco tin had been part of her grandmother’s kitchen for as long as Rian could remember. Now, as she pulled it free of its tomb, it was faded and dirty, spotted with rust. She laid the shovel down and pried the lid from the can, pulling out the burlap, then the jar. This seed was no longer viable, but it was a treasure just the same. The light from her lamp shone onto a piece of history that had changed the course of her life. For the better. Or not. That depended on one’s perspective.

  There was no way to understand what people had against cannabis. It was part of the history of the world, with a twelve thousand-year-old vita of medicinal use and healing. Cannabis was part of the spice trade some scholars claimed marked the very start of the modern age, an exploit that created vast empires and revealed entire continents to explorers. If they hadn’t gone in search of cannabis, where would we all be now? Those explorations tipped the balance of world power from the merciless traders to the royals who wanted pepper on their meat, clove in their tea, and cannabis in their pipes. If marijuana was good enough for the Chinese Emperor 2,700 years before Christ, why wasn’t it good enough for red-blooded Americans in the twenty-first century?

  Sorrow filled her.

  Caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol weren’t illegal. That cannabis was, didn’t make sense.

  Here, on her home soil, Native American tribes that came to the healing waters of the Ozarks called it an herb of power that could heal people and places of whatever sickened them. She believed that and she believed in its power.

  After striking a match to the brush she laid in the firepit, she watched the flame take hold and grow. She unscrewed the jar and then dragged the burlap bag out onto her lap. Pinching the seeds between her thumb and forefinger, she offered a prayer of thanks—to the herb, to the elders, to the belief that what she held was so much more than something white men called illegal and coveted all the same. With each pinch, she offered a prayer of gratitude—for her freedom, for her right to be free, for her right to be free of those who would tell her how to live.

  Then she tossed each pinch into the fire, the seeds popping as they met the heat, her prayers rising to the heavens in the smoke, climbing to the Great Spirit, the maker of all.

  And with each prayer, the tears flowed. She and the jar emptied at the same time.

  She dug into the pockets of her jeans and pulled out a worn little black book. It was here, coded in a shorthand only she understood, that she kept track of her journey. The little pages held detailed notes of breeding and pollination techniques, annual weather and rainfall, crop yields, and of course, the names of her clientele. Her buyers weren’t the average users on the street. They were movers and shakers with money. Hers was a small, discrete clientele of people who could afford the best.

  The code discreetly detailed the habits of her buyers. She knew that 5R6 Green held a party every year at his cabin in the remote wilderness near the Buffalo River. His green brownies were legendary. She knew how much to set aside for his recipe each year. She kept track of who, what, when, and how much they consumed over the years. It was how she planned the crop and projected her earnings.

  It was time to let it all go.

  She tossed the book into the flames and watched the pages curl and wither.

  The light from the fire reflected in her tears. The clouds in the sky accepted the clouds of smoke as if one of their own as the smoke curled and rose from the little valley she called home.

  Patting the ground beside her, she stretched out beside the fire, now glowing with embers. The last of her smoke-filled prayers disappeared in a sky covered with stars even older than God. Then she closed her eyes and slept.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Amy opened her eyes to deep darkness. The stench was overwhelming.

  She swept a dry, swollen tongue over her lips and tasted rust. Her tongue touched a spot on her bottom lip, and she groaned. Tenderly, she licked at the place that felt split, making two plump bottom lips instead of one.

  Turning her head to the left and then to the right, she saw nothing but darkness.

  As she listened to the sounds around her, she hoped to get a sense of place and at the same time block out the smell. That gagging smell. She forced herself to listen in the silence—for the sound of an armadillo digging in the bush somewhere close, a nighthawk landing its prey, the wind rustling in the pines . . . anything that would help her know where she was.

  There was nothing. No sound at all.

  The stench filled her breath again, and she turned her head. Something soft was underneath her, not the hard ground.

  She lifted her hand and then cried out as the pain shot up her right arm, her teeth clenching as she fell quiet again.

  The crash came reeling back to her then: the light of the headlamps behind her, the hard thump against the Hummer, and the squeal of brakes and metal. She remembered the blur of the trees banging against the Hummer as she sped airborne down the hill.

  She licked her lip again gently. How long ago was that? Minutes? Hours? Days?

  The pain in her chest made her choke on the air as she inhaled. Was there something across her chest? It could be a dead animal. A tree. Another body? Fear raced through her and prickled the back of her hands. Was she still in the car? Maybe the roof had caved in on her.

  Opening her eyes, she saw nothing but darkness. She raised her left hand and patted the space above her. There was nothing there. No car, no dead animal. She moved her hand to her chest. There was nothing there, either—just her shirt. Her fingers touched sore, bruised skin, from the seat belt that held as she tumbled down the hill. There was no seat belt against her now.


  Again, using her left hand, she patted the air surrounding her, expecting to feel the rough edges of leaves and brush. The surface was hard. Scraping it with her fingernails, she knew it couldn’t be a tree. It was smooth, solid. Sliding her hand against it, she let her fingers discover the surface and she found thin little grooves. Like paneling. Paneling?

  She patted herself where she could reach, surveying her body inch by inch, pat by pat. She felt whole, at least, yet achy. Reaching across she tapped her right arm, and the pain shot through her again. A dull thud radiated from the tips of her fingers to her shoulder. She could sense that her arm was bound with something soft like a bandage or scrap torn from a sheet. Tenderly, she touched her arm again and discovered that the binding material was stiff. Blood. Her blood. She licked her lips again. There was blood there, too.

  Directly beneath her felt soft. Again, she raked her fingernails across the surface. Flat, but not a car seat. Relief flooded her. She was definitely alive.

  Fear filled her just as suddenly, bile rising in the back of her throat.

  Where was she?

  She lifted her head slowly, her neck moving stiffly yet without pain. Slowly she willed herself upright, holding her right arm as still as possible as she strained to sit up.

  When she moved, the air stirred and the stench rose around her. What was that smell?

  It reminded her of ammonia. Or sulfur. Or an Easter egg left hidden way into June. Her eyes burned, her head ached, her throat was raw. She blinked and then swallowed.

  She fought the panic trying to overtake her. Her heartbeat banged against her bruised chest, and she felt the beat all the way down her arm to her fingertips.

  Suddenly, lights flooded over her. In that brief illumination, she saw where she was—on a bed in a room surrounded by paneled walls, a door at the end of the bed by her feet. The lights filled the room and then went out. Car lights. Again she was left in darkness.