Kiss the Morning Star (3 page)

It’s a joke. We’re the only people at the Sage Creek Campground. I park at the far end of the field, taking a moment to marvel at the beauty—those eerie hills rising up out of the prairie all over the place. “Tent or no tent?” I look for Kat, but she has already taken off—a whirl of cartwheels across the grass.

“Run with me, Anna babe! Shake off that driving!” She veers back toward the car, where I’m trying to unload the trunk and get everything organized. Kat swoops in and grabs me by the arm. “Fly with me!” She drags me away.

“Katy, stop! I want to get the camp set up before dark.” I look back at our stuff, lying on the ground by the car.

“Fly with me, or else! Fly or die!” Kat shrieks loudly, hauling me across the field. “FLY OR DIE!” Her eyes are closed, her feet bare and skipping across the grass. I look down.

“Kat!” I’m slightly out of breath, my own feet heavy in my stiff new hiking boots. “Watch out for—”

But Kat’s foot disappears into a prairie dog hole, and we both tumble to the ground. Her face goes pale, and for a moment I’m certain that this is it. The end of our road trip. She’s broken her leg or something, and we’ll have to go back home. It surprises me how much it bothers me. How disappointed I feel.

Kat hops, with my help, all the way over to our picnic table. By the time we get there, her face has some color again. She insists that she’s fine, but she holds a plastic bag full of ice from the cooler against her foot while I set up camp.

For the first five minutes or so, I’m silent, unpacking gear from the car and stacking it on the picnic table. Okay, so maybe I set down our plastic tub of kitchen stuff a little more forcefully than necessary. Maybe I kick the bag of tent stakes with a little more zeal than it deserves when it slips out of my hands and lands on the ground. So maybe I’m a little pissed.

“What if you had broken your leg?” I snap at last, my voice grating against the quiet of the campground. Immediately I want to slap myself; I sound so lame.

Kat bursts out laughing. “You’re worse than my mom,” she says.

I sulk to keep from smiling. “It’s not
that
funny.” I pull the stoves and fuel bottles from their sacks and slam them down on the picnic table in front of Kat. “There you go, Miss Katy Kat, Bringer of Hilarity to Sage Creek. I believe you said you would make me some dinner.”

“Hey! I’m an invalid!” She groans for effect.

“You’re full of shit is what you are.”

“Do you need me to get soap for that mouth?”

I smile, but then I hear the sound of tires crunching along the Sage Creek Rim Road, the distant roar of an engine. At the horizon, a low cloud of dust rises behind a big black SUV. Something about the way it approaches—fast and reckless—makes my stomach plunge. “We’ve got company.”

Kat slides off the table and attaches the two cookstoves to the fuel bottles. “Well, so we do,” she says, keeping her voice light. “Let’s hope they’re well-behaved company.”

I focus on my clipboard for a moment and then get back to work, pulling the tent, ground cloth, poles, and stakes out of the trunk and fishing around for the hammer in my little red toolbox. I move around the tent, pounding in stakes, keeping my eye on the black truck, which has parked at the opposite end of the field. I count five men. I tighten my grip on the hammer as they pile out of the vehicle and start spreading out across the grass. I don’t need to be afraid of these guys.

Kat has her attention fixed on them—wary but calm. She sets up the stoves without too much trouble at all for a first-timer, and she puts two pans of water on to heat. “I’m going to make us some coffee.”

I finish with the tent and check the time on my phone. “Went up faster tonight than last night.”

“You’re such a geek,” says Kat.

“You’ll thank me for being a geek if we ever need to get this tent up in the middle of a rainstorm.”

“Yeah, okay. I’ll watch from the car.”

“You can’t cook in the car.”

“What makes you think I’m cooking in a rainstorm?” Kat starts the rice and pours boiling water into the coffee filters.

I watch the men set up camp. Why do five people have to be so loud? Two of them are splitting up a huge pile of wooden pallets, ostensibly to make a campfire. They jump on the pallets to break them up, shouting and cursing as they splinter.

“These boys have been drinking,” says Kat, pouring lentils into the other pan. She hands me a steaming cup of coffee, which I slurp, instantly burning my tongue and the roof of my mouth.

“Whatever happens, stay calm. Don’t say a word,” says Kat. “What do you mean, don’t say a word? So I can’t even talk now?” I scowl and set my coffee down on the picnic table. I don’t want to talk to these creeps, but why does she get to decide who talks?

“Anna.” Kat’s voice is terse, and I look up to see that three of the guys are moving across the grass, weaving a little as they approach.

The hammer. It feels solid in my grip, heavy and powerful. I can feel the muscles across my arm and shoulder, still poised for action after pounding in the stakes of the tent.

The men advance, bringing their cloud of noise with them—a sing-songy, taunting kind of noise that blurs together in my ears. “Good evening, fair maidens!” shouts the one in the middle, raising his beer. “Would ye care for some beer ’round our fire?”

The other two guys laugh in a vaguely lecherous way.

I don’t really mean to speak, but I’m still annoyed by Katy, telling me to keep my mouth shut. “We’re trying to get our camp set up before the light is gone, but thanks.” I keep my tone polite.

The men move right up and around Kat’s car, edging in toward our picnic table. I step closer to Kat without taking my eyes off them. Just the way the air moves ahead of them makes my skin crawl.

“C’mon, join the party!” This from the guy on the left. His teeth are a mess. I imagine his breath and cannot keep the look of disgust from my face.

“What? Aren’t we good enough for you girls?”

“We’re busy,” says Kat. “We said no thank you.”

Something flashes across the face of the man in the center, and I follow his eyes over to Katy, who looks exactly as she looked a moment ago when I watched her stirring lentils except that now she has a gun in her hand.

The other two spot it. All of them, it is clear, fully believe that Kat would put a bullet through them. My heart races, and I wonder if it’s true, if Kat would really shoot someone. I mean, I’ve known her since seventh grade, but seeing her there with a gun in her hand—she’s like a complete stranger.

“Excuse me, miss,” says the man in the middle, once again raising his beer. “We was hoping to trade you some firewood for some water.” He nods to the guy on his left, who drops a bundle of pallets next to our picnic tables. “We…uh…
neglected
to read the signs saying there was no water up here. If we could trouble you for some water, you’ll see no more of us, I promise.” He places a couple of bottles of beer on the picnic table, moving slowly with his eyes on Kat.

The man on the right holds out two water bottles, and I fill them from our five-gallon jug. “It’s good to be prepared before you head out into the wilderness,” I say. “You never know what you’ll run into out here.”

They slink away from our camp, and Kat calmly cooks our food, as though nothing unusual has happened. I try to concentrate on building a fire, even though the lack of a campfire grate makes me worry that it’s against the rules. Like it matters when you consider how the freaking
gun
is against the rules.

“Dude, what the
hell
?” I whisper, when we’re settled with our dinner in front of the crackling pallets. “What’s with the gun? Don’t tell me it’s loaded!”

Kat scoops up a forkful of rice and lentils and holds it poised in front of her mouth. “Hell of a lot of good it’s going to do me unloaded,” she says.

“Katy! Oh my God! You could have shot them!”

“I never shoot people when they’re well behaved. Beer?” She opens one of the bottles left by the men and holds it out to me.

I wrinkle my nose but take the bottle. “
God
, they could at least drink decent beer.”

“I know, right?” Kat sits in one of our new camp chairs and leans back, tipping up the beer while she looks into our campfire. Her face is thoughtful. “I wanna go find a buffalo,” she says.

A buffalo. No thanks. “I don’t want to get anywhere near a buffalo. Have you ever seen how huge they are?” I hold out my arms. “Their heads are bigger than this.”

“Maybe we could find a
baby
buffalo.”

“Yeah, with an overprotective mama. So, Katy? What’s with the gun, hey? ’Cause that was pretty crazy, you know?” I take a gulp of my beer, making a face. At least it’s cold.

“Those assholes.” Kat shrugs. “They won’t give us any trouble now. We’re all going to act civilized-like.”

“Kat. The gun. What the fuck?”

Kat laughs. “Yeah, well, actually, the gun is stolen, and I used it to kill three cops back in Minnesota.” She takes another swig of her beer.

I glare at her. She laughs.

“It was my grandpa’s gun, Anna. His service revolver when he was a cop. He gave it to me three months before he died, but he taught me to shoot it when I was like ten. I’m a good shot. Or at least, I was when I was ten.” She flexes, Rosie-the-Riveter–style, and grins at me. “I may be flighty, but I can fight, too.”

“And it was loaded.”

“
Is
loaded. Don’t worry about it, Anna.”

I shiver, even though the night is comfortable. I can’t get used to the idea of Katy having secrets from me, things I don’t know. All at once the sheer distance of the last eight months stretches out between us. The drunk guys have been quiet since their visit, but I can still sense them, like a scent on the wind almost, or like tremors in the earth—making me uneasy.

“Well, there you go,” says Kat, nodding. “Nothing happened. First proof of God’s love.”

“Shut up, Katy. You can’t prove
something
when
nothing
happens. That’s like, saying something is true just because nobody argues against it. Ridiculous.”

“Okay, all right. But still. Nothing happened.”

“So if we had been attacked by those guys, would that be proof that God hates us?”

Kat pulls her hair into pigtails and twirls them around in her hands, right behind her ears. “Oh, Anna, I don’t know. You know I always sucked at math. I barely graduated. True story.”

“You are such a liar!” I throw the pack towel at Kat and miss. “This isn’t a math problem. It’s completely irrational. I don’t even know why we’re here.”

“I know why I’m here. Sure, it’s Kerouac and art and God and whatever else. But you know what? I’m here because of the way you look right now.” Kat points at me with the mouth of her beer bottle. “Look at you,” she says. “You’re awesome at this.”

I force my face into a scowl. “You keep saying that.”

“’Cause it’s true. You’re, like, happier than I’ve seen you in forever. We get out here in the middle of nowhere, and instantly you’re all saving the day with a big jug of water and the perfect little stoves and these comfy chairs…I mean, you put all this thought into everything. You’re actually…” She stops talking.

“I’m actually what?” I take a drink. Actually good at something?

“Actually fun again,” says Kat, her voice hard to discern over the crackling of the wood combusting at our feet.

“Oh.” I can taste the sour hops from my last swig of beer. Of course. I’m actually fun again.

“I mean, you’re not as fun as, say…Pop Rocks or illegal fireworks, or…oh, Anna babe, I know you’re trying. I mean, nobody is expected to be fun after…aw, don’t cry. Or…cry, if that will help.”

My whole body shakes, and I think I might be sobbing, except my eyes are dry; my mouth turns up at the corners and laughter rushes out—not any kind of laugh that has come out of me in forever. It comes from so deep within that I can feel the tremors of its origin, the path as it ripples up through my chest and explodes out of my mouth.

I am a little drunk. My cheeks burn.

“Let’s go for a walk,” I say, standing up beside the fire. “Let’s go find a buffalo!”

It would not be fair to say that the fire stole my faith, since in truth it has been slipping away from me all my life, flipping between my fingers like a shiny little minnow—such a far cry from the trophy salmon that dangled from my father’s fist.

I witnessed no epic battles between my father and his faith—no desperate dives, no fishing poles bent double with exertion. It came to him so easily. My father reached out his hand, and the fish swam happily to him. Although I long for his pride—for the ring of approval in his golden voice—again and again my own hands come up from the water empty.

My thumb creeps toward the switch on the side of my flashlight, but I don’t turn it on. My heart hammers in my chest. I feel something, something like excitement, and it’s almost like when we were kids—one of our secret late-night adventures in the dark. I press my eyes tightly closed for a moment as we walk, willing them to adjust. I see the bright campfire flames outlined on my eyelids.

“Don’t even say one word. Just try it,” Kat whispers, as soon as we’re out of sight of the drunk guy camp, behind some scrubby clumps of shadowy vegetation.

“What is this?” Kat slips a small metal object into my hands.

She passes me her lighter, which my fingers recognize in the dark. The last time I used one, though…my stomach lurches. “Smoke it,” Katy says.

It’s a pipe. “Oh,” I say. “No, I don’t think I can do drugs.” I know. I’m that lame.

Kat’s face slips into a smile. “It’s not
drugs
. It’s just pot, Anna. Smoke it. It will be fine.”

But I shake my head, stubborn and speechless, darkness hiding the stain on my cheeks, and I hear the tiniest puff of breath from her nose.

“Control freak,” she whispers, but then she takes the pipe from my hand, squeezing my fingers as she does. “You should lighten up a little, Anna babe.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me about this?” She doesn’t cough at all.

Kat dumps the bowl into the palm of her hand and then brushes it onto the ground. “You’ve been hard to talk to.” She tucks the weed back into her satchel and takes my hand. It’s funny how she can do that, how she can touch people like that—like it’s nothing. Is it nothing? My hand feels heavy and awkward clasped in hers. We trek across the field, heading toward what I hope is the road.

“Let’s stay up all night,” Kat whispers. “Let’s wait for the moon to kiss the morning star.”

There are so many stars. I tip my head back and smile into the night.

The tall grass brushes against me, tickles my hands as I walk. I’m still wearing my new waterproof hikers; I like their sturdy weight and stiffness of sole. I like their soft impact against the earth below, the way they connect me here, to this night. To this moment.

The night smells of prairie grass, some early wildflowers—I stop dead in my tracks as I notice the way the smell of the air has changed from daylight to night. “Kat,” I say, inhaling deeply. “I can
smell
darkness.”

Her grin by starlight is beautiful. She glows. I stare, my mouth falling open to speak, but it’s like I forget what speech is. I can’t stop looking at her.

“Smells amazing, Anna.”

It does. A laugh bursts out of me—
burst
is the perfect word, like the way flavor will burst out of a handful of ripe blueberries tossed in your mouth—and I bury my face in my sleeve to stifle the noise.

“Are you sure you’re not stoned?” She laughs, too.

But I frown, peering into the dim space in front of us. “Are there snakes here? Like, you know. Ones that bite and stuff?” I’ve been reading a guidebook about animals in the American West, and I search my memory for the little colored maps showing rattlesnake territory. The tall grass could be crawling with danger. I see a headline:
Teen Hikers Found Paralyzed by Deadly Venom—One Carrying Loaded Handgun
.

Kat shrugs. “I’m not afraid of snakes. I like them, the way they move, like a Slinky with attitude. And their sweet little tongues, darting out.” She pokes her forked fingers at me.

“But the poisonous ones, Kat. You’re wearing flip-flops.” I think of her little shiny toenails, imagining two huge holes in them, dripping with venom. “And your ankle…”

“Anna.
I’m not afraid of the goddamn snakes.”
Still, her voice has a thread of uncertainty that is new.

“Aw, don’t be mad at me, Katy. I’m not trying to be obnoxious, I swear.” I turn around and attempt to skip backward, facing Kat.

Kat smiles. “I’m not mad.”

I have about a second to be happy before Kat’s face is plastered with fear, and she lurches forward and grabs me with both hands. “But you,” she says, breathless, “are about to step off a fucking cliff.” I spin around, her arms tight around me.

It’s true. Two more steps—a step and a half, even—and I would have gone skidding off the edge and into a deep black hole, a steep, rocky abyss. I breathe, breathe. All I can do. My heart…I think I see sparks.

“Holy shit,” I say at last, when I’ve got the breathing thing down. I can feel Kat’s pulse in her grip on my arm.

“That would have sucked,” says Kat.

For some reason this understatement sets us off giggling, adrenaline releasing in waves as we cling to each other.

I hear a sound from behind us. A
big
sound.

“Kat!” The air in my lungs hisses out in a terrified whisper. “Buffalo!”

I can’t see much of it—a large dark splotch of steaming breath and glinting eyes and a sort of shaggy, heavy kind of presence there in the darkness. We hold very still, clinging together, shaking with fear and shock and leftover laughter.

The bison snorts a little, takes a step toward us. I feel Kat tense, sense her hand moving to the small of her back. What is she…
no
. No, she’s not.

“You keep a gun in your
Yoga
pants?”

The buffalo, hearing my voice, stamps a couple of times, and moves a few paces closer to us. Oh shit. Not good. The beast is agitated, nervous. It’s so huge. I can feel the void yawning behind us, the edge of the cliff at my heels, and the panic stutters in my chest, tightens around all my organs as the buffalo clomps ever closer.

Kat moves; I can’t let go of her, and suddenly the air beside us explodes, the flash searing across my retinas. The gun. Oh god, she
shot
it! The sound of the gunshot is so crisp and
immediate.
And loud. I’m blind, my ears are ringing, and I can’t move for fear of the buffalo and the cliff. So instead, I scream.

The poor animal, nervous to begin with and then faced with the sudden explosion of sound and flame only a few feet away, turns tail and gallops or whatever it is that buffalo do when they are hauling ass to get away—and runs across the field. Straight toward the camp of the creepy guys.

It’s remarkably loud when it crashes into their tent, stomps across their firewood, and flings their camp chairs to the side with its massive head. I wait, tense and terrified, for the sound of someone injured, but the men are reacting with a combination of shouting, swearing, and laughing.

“Uh, Kat?” My voice is quiet in the darkness.

“Yeah?”

“It’s not…exactly…
legal
to shoot at a buffalo, is it?”

“I didn’t shoot at it. I shot into the ground. Just to scare it.”

“But still.” I tug at the sleeves of my fleece. “Is it legal to shoot at the
ground
?”

Kat laughs. “It’s complicated.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning not exactly.” Kat takes my hand again, the hand I have finally successfully removed from its death grip on her forearm. “Look. They’re coming.”

It’s true; the men are moving toward us, their flashlights bobbing ahead of them, sweeping in wide arcs as they search the darkness.

“That was a gunshot,” says one of them, loud as can be. “You see anything?”

Kat pulls me along the edge of the ridge. “They know it was us,” she whispers. We scurry along with our bodies stooped down in the shadow, hoping to flank the group of men.

“Hey!” shouts one of the men, his voice thick. “Little girls like you shouldn’t be playing with guns!” The flashlight beams dance over the edge of the cliff, but we’re able to slip behind them and sprint back to our own camp.

“Let’s get out of here,” Kat says, tossing things into the trunk. “They probably didn’t notice too many details about our car. They were already wasted when they got here.”

We shove all of our stuff into the car as quickly as we can. My fingers fumble with the plastic clips that hold the tent fabric to the poles, and I’m glad that I practiced pitching and striking this tent. Who’s the geek now? With each action, my thoughts grow clearer.

“They’re coming back!” Kat hisses. She jumps into the driver’s seat and starts the car, and I run to open the passenger side door.

“The fire!” It’s down to embers, but still. “We’re not even supposed to have open fires!”

“Anna. Get in the car. The fire is fine.”

“But…leave no trace…” I’ve also been reading a guidebook to wilderness camping.

“We can’t leave no trace
and
get away from these freaks. Now get in, babe.”

I almost climb in, but then I glance over at the picnic table. “Katy, the
stoves
!”

Our two shiny new camp stoves, still attached to their fuel bottles, are sitting neatly on the picnic table. Without them, we’re screwed. “Anna, they’re coming!”

The flashlight beams are flickering over our camp now; it must be obvious that we’ve packed up. “Hey, girls!” shouts one of them. “Hey, little gunslingers!”

“Oh, laaaaaaaaaaaadies! Where are you gooooing?” This one calls out in a falsetto voice that dissolves into rough laughter.

“Don’t leave now! The party just started!”

“Get in the car right now,” hisses Kat.

I leave my door ajar and run over to the picnic table. I can’t abandon the stoves. I scoop them up in my arms and start running back to the car, but before I reach it, a man steps in front of me. His headlamp is aimed right in my face, so all I can see is a dark shape, and then his hands are grabbing me, wrapping around me, pulling me roughly toward him. I’m not afraid, oddly enough. I feel strong, ready to fight. His hands are on my ass and in my hair; his fingers curl into the base of my ponytail and grip hard.

“Get the fuck away from me!” The jumble of camp stoves and fuel bottles in my arms is just awkward enough to give the man some trouble as I shove hard against his chest. I grip one stove in my right hand, lift my knee toward the man’s groin, and swing the stove at him. The heavy canister of white gas, still tethered to the stove by a thick metal tube, connects solidly with the man’s forehead, and his headlamp drops to the ground. He goes down after it, clutching his balls.

I slam the car door shut behind me. “Move!” I shout, hitting the lock. “Get us out of here!”

Kat is already squealing out of the spot, tires spinning in the dust. “I told you to get in the car, Anna, are you crazy? You could have gotten killed or raped or worse for a stupid stove and some plastic fucking forks!” She shifts as she swears, whipping the car around and pressing the gas pedal to the floor. I grip the dashboard with one hand, the stove-weapon with the other.

“Do you think I killed him?” I think of the solid crack of metal on skull, the way the man had dropped to the ground.

“We can hope,” says Kat.

The car lurches over the bumpy grass toward the gravel, throwing me halfway across the seat. Kat flips on the headlights, and there, directly in our path, are two of the men. In the instant I see their faces illuminated by the headlights, they look dazed; their eyes seem unable to focus on the oncoming car. “Shit!” says Kat, and she snaps off the lights again, swerving to one side. “They’d better get the hell out of the—”

A thud—the car bounces as though running over a curb.

“Katy, stop!” I scramble in my seat, turning to see if I can catch a glimpse of the men behind us, but it’s too dark in the shadow of the ridge. Ahead of us, the moon faintly illuminates the path of the road, and I pull my seat belt tight across my lap as we speed away.