Spider took a pair of brushes from the tack wall, tossed one to her, and they began to tend to the horse, each to a side, using gentle circular motions with the curry combs. Dust and grit fell away and Gordo tossed his head, enjoying the attention there in the coolness of the barn. Then Gutsy took a hard brush and ran it from nose to tail, following the grain of the thick hair, while Spider used a pick to remove a few small stones from Gordo’s hooves. Sombra sat in the cool shade and watched.
They did not speak, and Gutsy knew that Spider was allowing her some space. She appreciated it. Spider and Alethea were her best friends, and they’d both helped bury her mother the first time.
There were different rituals in town for dealing with family members who reanimated. Some used metal spikes to sever the brain stem. Others went for the more gruesome decapitation. The Catholics in town, though, restrained their dead, binding them with ropes blessed by Father Esteban, and then wrapped the thrashing bodies in white sheets on which prayers had been written. It was called “shrouding,” and the people who followed the tradition believed that it was both a mercy and a religious requirement. Father Esteban preached that this process of slow decay inside the buried shroud was a kind of penance for whatever sins that person had committed in life. It was a new interpretation of purgatory that would ultimately allow the spirit, now cleansed of all sins, to ascend to heaven.
Gutsy was not as devout a Catholic as Mama had been, but this was what her mother had wanted. The process was horrible, though.
Beyond horrible.
It was probably insane, too. Maybe even cruel. People in New Alamo had been arguing about that ever since the End. Gutsy wasn’t sure if she believed in purgatory. She believed in hell, though. Absolutely. That was where she lived. She wasn’t the only person in town who shared her belief, that the living were not the lucky ones but rather those who, for whatever reason, had been condemned to serve out their sentences in a hell here on earth. When her own time came, Gutsy wanted a spike and then cremation. Wasn’t that in the Bible too? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust?
But Mama had wanted the shroud and the grave, so that was what Gutsy did. Her friends proved how much they loved her by helping. Gutsy loved them for it, but somehow it didn’t really help. It made a bad night worse, because now other people would remember the way Mama’s body twisted and fought even when the first shovelfuls of dirt fell over her.
And it was Spider who had put it into the right words as the three of them stood panting beside the grave.
“The world is nuts,” he said. “This proves it.”
11
GUTSY FILLED GORDO’S MANGER WITH fresh hay, beet pulp, and grain, then stood for a moment gently stroking the horse’s neck as he ate.
“Tell me about the dog,” said Spider, standing with his fists on his lean hips, bony elbows stuck out at right angles. He was ten inches taller than Gutsy and looked like a stick bug than a spider.
Gutsy gave him an abbreviated version but mentioned the collar, the vultures, and how Sombra had spotted the living dead long before she or Gordo were aware of them.
“Nice,” said Spider. He knelt and held out a hand. Sombra flinched away. “I won’t hurt you. . . .”
Sombra looked at the hand, then at Spider’s face, then up to Gutsy, but he didn’t come closer. He began to tremble.
“God, he’s scared out of his mind,” said Spider.
“It’s okay,” said Gutsy.
Nothing. It seemed that now they were out of the desert and out of danger, the coydog’s natural wariness was taking hold. That, and whatever emotional damage he’d sustained from what he’d been through.
“He wants to run,” observed Spider. “Poor thing.”
Gutsy thought about it, went to her cart and got more strips of jerky, came back, crossed her legs, and sat down on the stable floor, indicating for her friend to do the same. Sombra watched all this with frightened eyes, clearly caught between his instinct to flee and his need to stay near people.
“Whoever hurt him like that . . . ,” began Spider, but left the rest unsaid. His hands were balled into fists.
“I know,” agreed Gutsy. “Double that.”
“What do you think happened to him?”
“Dogfights,” said Gutsy.
Spider made a rude noise. Dogfights were illegal in town, but there was a traveling dogfight show that set up beyond the town limits every spring. Some of the people in town went to it. Gutsy knew which ones did and she hated them all. She and her friends had no mercy or compassion when it came to people like that. This was summer, though, so it wasn’t likely to be the Cerberus Circus, as the show was called, named for the three-headed dog that guarded the entrance to hell in Greek mythology.
She tore off a piece of jerky and tossed it to Sombra, who jerked backward from it. He stood with all his muscles locked, eyes wild.
“Wow,” said Spider.
They sat still for nearly four minutes before Sombra relaxed enough to take a single hesitant step forward, bushy tail tucked between his legs. He lowered his head and almost took a sniff at the jerky. Stopped, withdrew. Waited. Tried again. On the fourth try he gave the jerky a lightning-fast lick. Then he studied it. Maybe it was then that the memories of eating it in the cemetery came back and overrode his fear. When he leaned out again, he snapped the jerky up, retreated again, and chewed it.
When Gutsy threw the next piece, there was only a small flinch before Sombra ate it.
After that he waited for each new piece. She never threw hard, of course. Then she handed the jerky to Spider. His first piece lay untouched on the stable floor for two whole minutes, during which Sombra eyed him with equal parts naked hostility and interest.
Sombra ate the jerky.
They fed him like that for almost ten minutes. Tossing small pieces, because Gutsy wanted to overcome the coydog’s fear and build trust as much as she wanted to feed him.
Gutsy and Spider sat on overturned wooden buckets, not saying much, watching the dog. People walked past the open door of the barn. A few stopped to offer belated sympathies to Gutsy; others merely nodded. When a slender girl with long, gleaming black hair and cutoff jeans walked past, Gutsy tried not to look. Or be seen to look; but the girl gave her a brief glance as she passed. Was there a smile? Or a hint of a smile? Or was that wishful thinking?
Once the girl had walked on out of sight, Gutsy relaxed, but then heard a soft chuckle and turned to glare at Spider. “What’s so funny?”
Spider nodded, showed a lot of teeth. “So . . . Alice Chung, huh?”
“Shut up.”
“Does she know?”
“I said shut up.”
“You ever tell her how you feel?”
“Do I have to punch you?”
Spider kept grinning. “Last week it was Corey Hale. I think he does know. Not so sure Alice does. Not so sure she’d be into it.”
“Into what? I haven’t said anything about anything to anyone.”
“Yeah, yeah, Gutsy the Pure. I get it. But you’re going to have to pick a side. Guys or girls.”
Gutsy shrugged. “Why do I have to pick one or the other?”
Spider thought about that, picked up a couple of the tiny pebbles he’d pried from Gordo’s hooves, and tossed them out into the street. He made no further comment.