It strikes me as odd that she’s here in Texas on her knees in a church, night and day, instead of tucked up at home. I wonder what made her run away from all that money and safety. Daddy could have bought her handbags, designer dresses, sent her to one of the top universities in the country. Instead, she chose to run away. She was running the night I found her on the street. Right into my arms.
“What’s your story, baby? What’s a Cali girl like you doing all the way out here in Texas?” I ask fifteen minutes later, as I turn onto the interstate. “Maybe you got into trouble. Or maybe trouble follows you.” I change up through the gears and merge with the traffic into the third lane. “You’re not gonna make any trouble for me, are you? I don’t want to have to hurt you.”
Branwen hastily turns her face away from me and stares out the window. She’s definitely listening to me now and I let my threat sit heavily on the air. She’s not been any trouble so far, but that doesn’t mean she won’t be tempted to do something stupid if I don’t make it clear now how serious I am.
Between here and Napa, she’s not getting out of my fucking sight.
We’re heading west on the I-10 and I keep my eye out for an exit with a gas station. Just past Boerne, I see what I’m looking for and pull off the interstate. Branwen tenses and her eyes go large in the dashboard lights.
“Easy, baby,” I murmur. “Nothing’s going to happen to you if you’re a good girl.”
I park in the deserted lot and peer through the windshield at the attendant in the shop. It’s a boy. Alone. Bored. Skinny.
I turn to Branwen. “There’s a gun under my jacket, and a knife. If you scream, or do anything I don’t like, I’ll kill that attendant and make you watch. It will be your fault he dies. Is that clear?”
She stares at me, her eyes two pools of fear. I grab her jaw in my hand and squeeze, growling, “You don’t have to say a word, but you nod your fucking head when I tell you to do something. I won’t ask you again.”
As much as she can with me gripping her so hard, she nods quickly.
“Good girl. Keep this up and you and me will get along just fine.” I peer at her critically, realizing how strange she looks. “And take that headscarf off.”
Branwen does as she’s told, slipping the fabric from her dark hair. I go around to her door and let her out, and take her by the hand as we walk into the gas station shop. She looks down at her fingers in mine.
“Didn’t even buy you a drink first, did I? Let’s fix that now.”
Inside, I buy a bottle of whisky and some lighter fluid, never letting go of her the entire time. She’s real good about it too, keeping silent and not trying to get away from me or gesture for help. The attendant barely looks at us as I pay in cash. Just a man and his girl, road-tripping out west in the middle of the night.
As we get back into the car and I pull onto the interstate, a hard lump forms in my guts. This next part? This shit is going to be tough. I don’t know where I’m going to do it and as we drive, my eyes flicker left and right into the darkness. It needs to be someplace deserted. Where there’s no line of sight from the road.
I glance at Branwen. She’s sitting as tight as a spring in her little trainee nun’s uniform. If she freaks out, this is gonna get ugly.
A few miles down the interstate, I spy an empty truck stop and pull over. Immediately, Branwen splays her hand against the car door and the dashboard in alarm, bracing herself for something terrible.
“Easy, girl.” I fish a flashlight and the bag with the lighter fluid and whisky out of the trunk, and go around and unlock her door. “Get that icebox and come with me.”
She reaches back between the seat and grabs it, and scrambles out of the car. Her breathing is ragged with fear as I take her by the upper arm and walk her into the scrub. The plastic bag thumps against the flashlight as we walk, making it shudder violently.
Branwen trips on a rock and I pull her up short. “Drop that icebox,” I growl, “and I will fucking end you.”
She takes a firmer grip on what she’s holding and we keep going. I couldn’t tell in the dark but the landscape is as flat as a French crepe and I want to start swearing as we tramp and tramp and it doesn’t change. West fucking Texas.
Finally, the ground starts to dip and I drag Branwen down a slope and into a ditch. Her black buckle-up shoes slide on the scree but I keep her upright until we get to the bottom.
“Put the icebox down. Find some wood. Bits of sticks and shit. Anything to make a fire.” We have to do this together as she’s the one with the free hand. “There’s some.” I direct the beam of the flashlight at a dead bush. “And there. And there.”
After a few minutes of Branwen picking up wood and placing it in a pile, I look over to see we’ve got enough for a fire, and put the torch down onto the ground. It’s tempting to let go of her so I can open the lighter fluid but she’ll slip like a fish into the darkness and I’ll lose her. I open the bottle with my teeth and a cold, acrid taste fills my mouth.
I squirt the propellant all over the wood, dig a lighter out of my pocket, and regard the pile of sticks. I like fire. It’s purifying. Clean. Trefor must have died a terrifying, messy death. Bleeding. Screaming. There’s no God and nothing beyond this life but I feel a superstitious black presence whenever I think of him. As if he’s lost. As if he’s nowhere and nothing and never was. He needs to be remembered. He needs to know I fucking loved him.
I hold the flame to the wood until it catches, then wait until the fire crackles good and bright. Branwen’s pale face is lit from beneath.
“Open it,” I tell her.
She leans down and flips open the lid on the icebox. She makes the first sound I’ve heard from her in hours, a tiny gasp of shock. Then she clamps her lips closed and holds out the box to me, her legs shaking. Nestled on the ice cubes is Trefor’s severed finger. I study her closely, wondering if she’s figured it out yet, but there’s nothing on her face but fear.
I scoop the finger up from the ice and feel it in my hand, bony and unnatural now it’s been severed from its owner. The flesh around the base is ragged, as if it was sawn off rather than chopped cleanly with a cleaver. Trefor was probably alive, made to watch as Lange’s men cut bits off him.
I rub the crucifix tattoo with my finger, the little symbol that meant so much to him and made him feel things I never understood. I wonder if it was any comfort to him at the end as he watched them cut it from his hand.