Battleborn: Stories by Claire Vaye Watkins Page A

through the blinds he can see the paper-lined drawers of her dresser pulled half-open and empty, and the bed where he last saw her, stripped bare. He looks in the other trailers. He calls for her. There is no answer.
    Somewhere in the night Amy comes and pours more shots. She lines them up on the bar like tiny monuments. They drink them together, one after another. “Where is she?” he says finally, a stinging in his voice.
    She pours them another round. “Here.”
    “Tell me.”
    “I don’t know,” she says. “She was just gone. I swear.”
    Near dawn, Manny appears from the darkness of the hallway and puts his hands on Michele’s shoulders. “Walk with me, honey.”
    As he follows Manny out the back door, beyond the lights and sounds of the compound and into the desert, Michele looks to the sky. So this is what Renzo looked upon as he died, naked and faceup in the dirt: the wide brightening sky, the fading stars, the waning moon white like a jaw on the horizon. A peacock caws. A part of him—the part that speaks in a ghost’s voice—knows he’ll never see Darla again.
    •   •   •
    T he peacock coop is shaded from the pink-purple of dawn by palm leaves and canvas overhead. The air is thick with the scents of seed and dust and bird.
    The boy hesitates before coming inside. “These are, ah, your pets?”
    “Not mine, my boss’s. I hear you’re headed out of town. You’re leaving.”
    “Yes, I go back to Italy.”
    “And you think you’re taking Darla with you.”
    “She, ah, would like to leave. She has told me.” A bird rustles in its nest. “I, ah, like Darla.”
    “I liked her, too,” says Manny.
    “I love her.”
    “Honey, I know. But she didn’t love you, okay?”
    “She does,” he says, though he says it like a question.
    “American girls, you don’t know how they are. All they care about is money, okay? Especially these girls. Don’t you know? It’s all business. Even with Darla.”
    “Where is she?”
    Manny combs his fingers through a trough of seeds, letting the breeze winnow away the empty shells. “Don’t worry about it.”
    “Tell me where is she.”
    “This is a business, kid. She had somewhere else to be.” There is a stillness pulled tight between them. Outside, dawn lightens the landscape but the last dregs of night linger in the coop. “They found your friend, didn’t they?”
    Michele picks at the chicken wire. “Yes.” Then quickly, “No. They said he is dead. They stopped looking.”
    He turns away and hooks his fingers through the chicken wire. His broad shoulders start to tremble. He begins to shake the entire wall of the coop back and forth, harder and harder, until Manny fears he might snap the old two-by-fours. The birds, startled from their roosts, squawk and dart around, frenzied, among them the bright albino flash of White Pine. All the while Michele wails, a feral, guttural sound.
    “Fuck, kid,” says Manny, too quiet to be heard. “Come on.” He pulls Michele back and turns the boy to face him. Michele’s face is wet and slick where he’s bloodied his nose against the fence. Manny embraces him. The boy writhes at first, then goes limp and lets his head fall to Manny’s shoulder. He is sobbing.
    “My boss, Jim,” Manny says, maybe just to have something to say. “The one who owns these birds? He’s dying, too. Half the time he doesn’t even know who I am. You think it’s not going to happen, and then. But these girls—”
    “I, ah, have to take her,” Michele says, shrugging him off. “I love her.”
    Manny takes Michele by his shoulders and turns him gently to face the yellow lights of the ranch in the distance. “Kid,” he says softly. “Look. There’s no love in there. Trust me.”
    Manny lets his arms wrap around the boy’s waist and presses him close again, from behind. For a moment—just a moment—the birds are still and Manny feels warmth against him.
    Michele wrenches away, shaking his head. “No—”
    “She