Girl Who Came Guns aBlazin’

by Kennedy Dawn Stearns

Mama always said nothing made more of a ruckus than Kurt and I running down the tin steps leading up to her lone trailer with our canteens strapped to our belt loops knocking against our bodies. We were all bones then so by the time summer ended we had identical bruises the size of grapefruits ready for picking on our hips and bloated bellies filled with water that we would later piss out in the dirt, our streams crossing while we wrote the dirtiest of words we could think up.

The trailer stood in the middle of nowhere which I guess was actually somewhere I just never bothered to find out where that where was. As far as the eye could see was flat and at night you could hear the coyotes howling at nothing since there was nothing to howl at other than us. Mama of course owned an old car that was beat to shit and coughed out dust when you tried to turn the AC on. She’d take it into town every once in awhile for some pancake batter and water jugs but I had no interest in going along. I liked the trailer just fine. Kurt kept me company out in the desert he wasn’t my brother or nothing but he was pretty damn close considering I couldn’t remember a day he wasn’t living with us out there.

Everyday was the same we’d pass the Joshua tree and several piles of carefully placed rocks stacked up four high where we had dug up bits of pottery and cornhusk dolls and our most prized possessions the arrowheads. Nothing was better than uncovering an intact arrowhead from the compact dirt and washing away the clay clumps from the crevices with our water streaking burnt sienna up our arms. We’d test the sharpness by placing the point in our palm and twisting it down into the other’s skin until they pled mercy. None were ever really sharp anyhow. Worn down from years buried beneath the surface pushed down further by boots and hooves.

We’d howl and whoop and romp around banging our fists on our chests when we’d find one throwing our hands in the air the sun picking up on Kurt’s down in his pits. Dirt would plough up as we shuffled about throwing our bodies against one another and down onto the ground writhing about in hysterics and glee and hysterics again like twin snakes going after the same mouse.

Mama would sit up in the trailer reading her romance novels in the static of her boxed television playing game shows with blinking lights and beeps as the wheel spun and spun and somehow someone always won something. She told me once how a lady with no legs in a wheelchair won a treadmill. She told me always be grateful always say thank you but what good is a gift if you can’t go use it. What is that lady with no legs going to do with a treadmill if she can’t even shit by herself?

Anyway one day Mama was reading her romance novel with the man on the front with his shirt buttoned down to there and his hair blowing behind him and his pectorals highlighted to show just how well built he truly was and she was pouring syrup on my pancakes not paying a lick of attention but they ended up just how I like them. Soggy. Kurt was lying on the cigarette burned couch feet stacked on the arm and watching the wheel turn and turn and his head moved along with it until I thought for sure he was going to get dizzy sitting there doing that so I hollered at him and told him to knock it off. Well he flipped me the bird and Mama crept up behind him and bopped him on the head and told him to mind his fingers and watch what they been saying because it wasn’t polite.

As soon as she turned her back to answer the knock on the door Kurt jumped out of his seat and brought his hands flexed to the side of his head and stuck his tongue out at her rear. I laughed behind my mouth full of pancakes while Mama welcomed in a little tyke of a girl in bright red cowboy boots with spurs that never even seen a speck of dirt and introduced her as my sister! I spit that pancake mush right back out on my plate like garnishing and said I ain’t heard nothin about no sister my whole damn life. Before I knew it Mama’s hand met my cheek in just two seconds and I howled right on out of my chair.

No matter how much I protested Mama made me take this tot along with us out to the desert even though I explained to her that little girls don’t survive out there with the snakes and the heat and she’d be much better off inside playing with dolls. Well the girl pointed her toy pistol between my eyes and told me I’d better watch it if I knew what was good for me and though I’d never admit it to no one I shook a little. Now I knew it was only a toy and I saw the cap at the end of the barrel but I didn’t trust this girl one bit. So Mama pushed us right out the door and Kurt and I ran on ahead hoping to leave her behind but she hoisted up her holster and knocked her heels together and just about passed us.

She was annoying as hell I’ll tell you. Asking all these questions about nothing or something. Asking why she never heard of me and asking why I called that lady Mama. I stopped her then and set it straight telling her I was the one who done never heard of her and to mind her own damn beeswax about who I choose to call Mama. Well she stood her ground and put her hands up on them hips and jutted her chin out so far I thought for sure it was going to fall right off and away like a tumbleweed picked up by a ghost wind. I sighed right then the greatest sigh a ten year old could muster in my short little life digging up arrowheads and explained to her that she wasn’t my actual Mama but she might as well of been considering she was the only Mama I’d known.

I don’t think she listened to a word I’d said because she just stomped on through us and kicked over one of them rock piles we’d left out to know where not to dig. I watched her shuffling up dirt clouds that engulfed her small body for a second and then dissipated into nothing that blended in with the dull blue of the sky that really showed off her red boots and hat that were now twirling about until she nearly lost her balance. Kurt clucked his tongue as a dribble of spit jumped down his chin and went on shaking his head at her.

Out of our better judgement we took the girl to our next excavation site and set her to digging. We didn’t think she’d get far with only her little hands and her toy pistol breaking ground but she did it. Not even ten minutes into our dig she had mounds as big as anthills circling her in and a clump of clay raised above her head like an offering. Well she starts a yelling and calling about how she got something she got something and I can hardly believe it. I tell her she’d better quit hollering like that and prove she’s got something when she snatches my canteen from my loop and washes off the clay splattering her clean as a whistle spurs and matting down the hair on her arms with a chalk like paste. And I’ll be damned what does she got? None other than a beauty of an arrowhead.

Well we let bygones be bygones and took her over to our secret stash of arrowheads we’d been collecting tucked beneath the couch in the suitcase I came with years ago. It was a tiny little case decorated with cartoons I don’t even remember the names of just big enough to hold a few shirts and a pair of jeans and my own little pistol at the time but now it was lined with dish towels we’d stolen from Mama and our arrowheads laid two inches apart five across and two down two layers thick. Kurt let the tyke do the honors of starting the third layer in the case and she placed it as careful as if it were a moth with them papery wings that break right off in your hands if you didn’t watch it. Sitting there in the light you could tell it was the best looking arrowhead we got. The edges raw and jaggedy sharp. Ready. She clapped her hands over her mouth and admired that arrowhead like a goddamn baby doll with rosy cheeks and eyes that open and close and open again when you move them just a hair.

I gave her a pat on the back and my bunk that night because I figured she was tired and Kurt and I split the couch curled knees knocking against each other in the heaviness of cicada’s ticks and outer dark. We played tug of war all night with the quilt that was still all twisted up at one corner where I’d stuck it in my mouth as a kid and drug it behind me and he kicked me in the elbow when I’d hogged it too long. Mama never had washed the damn thing because she didn’t want to lose the love her Mama had woven into it but I think that’s just plain gross and I told her that too. Well Mama did what Mama does best and waved me off like a pesky fly and went back to whatever the hell she was doing.

I woke up bare but sweating more than I ever had with Mama cooking pancakes and announcing that the air was out again so we best open the windows quick before we turn into batter ourselves. I went in to wake the girl up and order her to help to find her bunk empty and unrumpled as if she’d never even slept in it. Well I stomped on out to Mama and asked where the devil that girl gone and Mama set the table for two and just shrugged and said she’d gone.

Well Kurt began tugging on my shirt sleeve and I almost wacked him in the head to get him to stop that now ain’t the time for no foolishness but he pointed under the couch and motioned for me to join him. I got down on my hands and knees and put my cheek against the linoleum and peered beneath the couch skirt to see nothing. I think my face turned blood red right then and I puffed up my chest and took to hollering for chrissakes you better me shitting me! And as Mama came storming towards me hands a blazing I heard Kurt by my side say well kid I think we’ve been robbed.

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Kennedy Dawn Stearns lives and writes in Arizona. Other work can be found at Queen Mob’s Teahouse. She is co-founder and editor of ELKE “a little journal”.