He laughs and stares at the closed-up tent.
“Don’t touch her,” I growl as I read his thoughts.
“Why?” he asks as he stands up and walks over to the tent. “It’s not like you can do anything about it.”
I get up onto my knees and then pull myself up on to my broken and wobbling legs as I watch Clay unzip the tent and hear Ambers shriek when he goes to pull her out from it.
“Let her go,” I shout as I lunge forward at him.
My movement is not at all successful in getting to him, and instead my legs give out from under me and I fall right back down to the ground with a painful thud.
Clay bursts into a hearty fit of laughter and he makes sure that I am watching before he grabs Amber by the waist of her jeans and lets his fingers dip inside her waistband. He lurches his face forward toward her and sticks his tongue out to lick her lips. When she tries to turn her head away, he grabs her jaw with his other hand and shoves his mouth onto hers. I am so filled with fury that I get to my feet again even though my body is crumbling beneath me. When Clay sees me out of the corner of his eyes, he pushes Amber away from him and starts to laugh again.
“Oh for God’s sake, just stay down. It’s not like you’ll be able to do anything at all except break yourself further.” Then he turns to look at Amber. “Don’t worry, there will be plenty more where that came from soon enough.”
Amber looks at me horrified and rushes to my side.
“Go back inside the tent,” I say to her.
“Not without you,” she says.
“You two are welcome to the tent for now,” Clay says as he sweeps his arm in a welcoming motion toward it. “I don’t want to be too awful of a host.”
“You’re crazy,” I say as Amber helps me to go into the tent with her.
“Probably.”
Amber
Idon’t even hear the tent unzip. It’s not until I feel myself getting pulled away from Granite’s arms by my ankles, then I realize what is happening. I start to scream in order to wake Granite up, but his eyes flash open as soon as he feels my body moving against him and he sees what is happening.
“Stop!” he shouts as Clay drags me from the tent.
Clay’s breath is infused with the potent stench of festering whiskey. He’s drunk and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. Clay shoves me down onto the ground so hard that my head knocks against the dirt and sends pain shooting down through my neck. When he climbs on top of me and starts trying to undo his pants, I know exactly what will happen next if I don’t find a way to stop him. Even drunk, he is still stronger than I am.
I can see Granite standing just outside the tent as he tries to come toward us and pull his brother off of me. But Clay just pushes him away with one hearty, drunken shove, and Granite teeters backward before his legs collapse beneath him. Even with all the shattered bones, Granite rises again, unwilling to let his brother touch me.
It is in this moment that I react without thinking, something that I have found myself doing more and more frequently as of late. I reach down to grab the crotch of Clay’s pants, in a move that I hope will catch him off guard, which it does. Then I put all of my strength into lifting my knee up and planting my right foot onto the ground so that I can roll Clay off of me. It works, and as soon as he is rolled to his side, I shove him with all the might I have left in my muscles.
We are close to the edge of the mountain, close enough for me to win this battle and close enough to end the threat of Clay once and for all. Even in the darkness with the dim light of a dying fire, I can see Clay’s body roll off the side of the mountain. If we had been somewhere else, if he had chosen a campsite that was further away from the edge or even one that was next to a more steady slope instead of a drop, this wouldn’t have happened. Granite steps gingerly over to me and then drops down onto his cracked kneecaps to hold me.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say as I start to cry. “But I killed him.”
Granite lets me go and carefully creeps to the edge of the mountain to look down over the side.
“Yeah,” he says. “You did, And I’m glad.”
“Now there are two murders between us,” I sob. I’m not even sure why I am so upset. Clay was gone and we were alive and together. Things are good now and pushing Clay off the mountain is the best thing that could have happened. But killing someone is an awful feeling, even if they deserved it. I feel like we will never be able to outrun the things we had done.
“You defended yourself,” Granite says. “There’s a difference, a big one.”
He comes back to wrap his arms around me and I help him back inside the tent because it is still bitter cold, and the fire is almost out. As soon as we get inside, we curl around each other, exhausted and completely spent of energy and thought. Now, at least, we have all of Clay’s things to help us. We have his tent, and extra blankets, and enough food to last another day and night. Granite pulls the blankets up around us and we fall asleep in the aftermath of the brutal act that has freed us.
* * *
The next daywhen we wake up, the tone of things is already changed for the better. Even though Granite is still hurt, and we are still in a precarious situation, there is a new day ahead for us together. There is a first aid kit inside of Clay’s large knapsack which I use to start setting and bandaging up Granite’s injuries.
