Once Rowan leaves I am hyper-alert, trying to compensate for my distressing lack of hearing. I wonder if I'll ever hear again. I try not to think about it. I try not to think about Lucy. Instead, I think about shooting Reynolds and how good it'll feel to leave him lying in a pool of his own blood. Maybe I'll break his other arm, first, just for a little symmetry. I finish my Red Bull and eat a nutrition bar while the girls play tic-tac-toe and hangman on the pad of paper their mom left behind.
The sun comes down past the lower branches of the tall, old, trees, lighting up the grass and undergrowth on the other side of the road. The cornfield beyond looks more gold than green. Dust motes and insects float in the sunlight. I pretend the silence I hear is actual silence, that the world really is so quiet and still.
I feel the rumble of an engine before I see a car. I tell the girls to get behind the nearest tree as I put on the windbreaker to hide my arsenal. My leg is killing me; I can hardly stand. But I do. I rip all the pages off the pad of paper, stuff them in a pocket of the windbreaker, and start writing field notes, just in case the driver stops to ask me what I'm doing here.
They don't stop. I wave, the farmer behind the wheel of the truck waves, and then I'm alone again with two little girls. I sit as gracefully as possible and try not to cry from the pain in my leg. I have no idea how I'm going to invade Reynolds' dairy with this leg.
Tilda comes up and reaches for the pad and pen. She looks at the "field notes" I've written then writes, "Why'd you write this?"
"To pretend I'm a naturalist," I say, "In case the guy in that truck stopped to ask about me."
She re-reads it, biting her lower lip in concentration. She points to a phrase, "pathology in monocrop microclimates."
"That means something like, problems in small climate, or weather, pockets -- not, like this whole area," I sweep my arm out to include the trees and the road as well as the field of corn beyond, "but a part of this area -- created by a field of one type of crop."
Tilda's brow furrows slightly. She looks like her mom. She writes, "r u a scientist?"
"No," I say, "I'm a hit-woman."
"how u know these words?"
"I read."
"ur smart," she writes. I shrug. She pushes on my shoulder to make her point. It reminds me of me, being little, pushing and hitting my older brother when he didn't seem to get the message or the passion behind what I was saying.
"Thank you," I say, just to get her to stop touching me.
"I want to be a hit-woman, too," she writes. My laugh comes out as a kind of snort.
"Yeah, you do that, kid," I say. She frowns and kicks my shoe. Luckily, it's on the uninjured leg. I raise my hands in surrender.
"You can do whatever you want when you grow up," I say, not bothering to mention how many bodies she'd have to climb over to do it.
I feel another vehicle approaching. This time the girls disappear without me having to say anything. I decide not to stand. I hold the pad and pencil in one hand, let the other one rest on the grass near the gun strapped to my hip.
It's a van, the type the city uses to bus disabled people. It slows and I see Rowan behind the wheel. She pulls over and stops and I wait for her to come to me. Her kids waylay her, run out from behind the trees and smash into her, their arms flying out to hug her torso. I look at the pad of paper, the scribbled notes I made up about the heat and humidity in and around the corn.
I'm still looking at them when I see Rowan's feet appear. I look up into her face. She looks concerned. She holds her hand out. I tear off the make-believe and hand her the pad and pencil. She sits next to me so I can read over her shoulder.
"U don't look good," she writes.
"I don't think I can go in alone," I say, "I don't think I can walk very far."
"We'll go in together," she writes, "I wear headphones, carry phone & speaker & gun to cover u. u 2-handed w/ guns?"
"Yeah."
"U = 2 guns then."
"And where are the kids during all this?"
"Was thinking while getting the veh: if u & I don't come out then girls r safe w/ FBI. We drop them @ ofc 1st."
"How long will that take?" I ask, "Have we already lost our chance to surprise them?"
"No surprise," she writes, "Reynolds prob. knew the moment U shot Williams. So we take our time, get our ducks in a row, be deliberate. The longer we take, maybe the more likely they'll think we just took off."
I nod. "We wait 'till dark, then," I say.
"yes," she writes.
"Then we kill them all," I say.
"yes," she writes. I grin at her and I'm not surprised to see she's grinning back.
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