nest of pine needles, I want so badly to leave. Haven’t I already accomplished something just by escaping Sand? Isn’t it enough that I found the bullet catcher? That I even spoke to him? I could start again in that new town on the other side of the mountain. Maybe it’s better. Maybe it sits by a river, and everyone has water and fresh food and fat cattle. Or maybe it’s just like Sand, and I’ll end up exactly where I started, with nothing but the desert in my lungs and my sunburns for the effort.
I open my pack and take out the hunk of flesh I cut from the desert fox. Its blood has turned to jelly and makes my hands sticky. My fingertips are red with blood. I rake them down my face. War paint. I am the warrior girl. I stand and march back into the bullet catcher’s camp. Warriors don’t run away; they keep fighting until they can’t draw breath. Warriors don’t go to town and wash dishes; warriors fight.
The bullet catcher is at the clothesline, unhanging each item and folding it carefully, setting the folded clothes in a basket by his feet. Even this mundane activity is full of focus. Hearing me, he turns slowly. His look stops me dead. Then he turns back, finishes folding the shirt he has in his hands, and picks up his hat from where it sits by the basket. He turns and puts it on. His face is relaxed and expressionless. He doesn’t move. Does he expect me to act first?
I reach into my breast pocket and wrap my hand around my gun. It’s warm from being nestled close to my body. I draw the gun and point it at the bullet catcher. I hold it loosely, my arm bent. I’m just showing it to him, I’m not really aiming. My legs should still ache from the miles I walked, but they don’t. Even though I haven’t had enough to drink, or enough hours of sleep, my mind feels sharp, my trigger finger quick. The bullet catcher straightens his back, spreads his feet into a ready stance. He relaxes his hands at his sides and shakes them to get the blood flowing.
“I didn’t come here to fight you!” I call across the clearing.
“A gun is not a threat, young lady. It’s a promise.”
Looking down at the gun in my hand, I feel suddenly foolish. Shaking away the feeling, I point it again at the bullet catcher and say, “I’ve come to train as a bullet catcher.”
“There are no bullet catchers.”
“I saw you in Sand. You killed that man with his own bullet.”
“You’ve been too long in the desert. Your mind’s playing tricks on you.”
I’ve come too far to take no for an answer. What would Nikko have done? I thrust the gun forward and say, “I’m not asking, bullet catcher!”
He stares down the barrel of my gun. He doesn’t care that the gun is small, old, mostly broken. He respects the gun. He takes nothing for granted. “There are two paths before you,” he says. “You can either pocket that gun and walk out on your own two feet, or I can come over there and take it from you.” He pauses a moment, then adds, “It will hurt.”
“I’m not dropping it!”
The bullet catcher doesn’t say anything else. He marches toward me, his eyes cold.
“Stop! I’ll shoot!” I scream. I take a step back and my feet tangle.
He reaches out and grabs the gun. I curl my fingers tighter around it and rip it away. My momentum sends me tumbling backward, the gun still clasped in my hand, pointing at the bullet catcher. My left hand hits the ground to break my fall; the impact shoots through my body all the way to my trigger finger. The gun goes off.
The trees, surrounding us on all sides, swallow up the report of the gun. For a moment, there’s only the smoke leaking from the barrel. The smell of exploded gunpowder.
Time seems to slow down. The bullet catcher moves gracefully. He flicks his wrists. He pivots. My back hits the ground with a thud, knocking the air out of me. A sharp pain runs through my body. I try to scramble to my feet, but there’s no strength in my arms, my lungs won’t fill with air, and when I lift my hands in front of my face, they’re covered in blood.
I don’t have to look down to see where I’m shot. I know it’s bad, bad enough to take the feeling out of my hands so that I drop my gun. And the last thing I see, before everything goes black, is the shadow of the bullet catcher crossing over me like the moon in front of the sun, turning day to night.
Episode 3
The Bullet Catcher’s Apprentice
1.
It’s raining when I come to. I smell the rain before I open my eyes. I hear the rain in my dream that is not a dream, but a memory of rain. Nikko and I play in the mud that minutes before was burned desert. Our parents sit on the porch, Father for once not grumbling about the crop withering in the sun. Mother comes down the porch steps to play with us, muddying the hem of her skirt. Father smokes and smiles, a little.
I try to stay in that memory of home. The image of my mother and father is sharper than ever before. My mother wears a crooked smile because in that moment she’s truly happy, but she can’t forget the sadness of the empty desert. It’s a hard life out there. So she smiles with half her mouth and frowns with the other. Father is stoic, strong, square-shouldered, and looks like I remember Nikko looking, only all grown up, and with eyes that are deep set and dark and tired.
When I manage to sit up, I’m not looking at the shabby warmth of the old homestead, but into the clearing, from inside the bullet catcher’s tent. The rain patters on the canvas roof. The air smells of pine needles and earth.
I am stiff all over, and my chest is dressed in bandages, clean and bright white except for the perfect red circle just above my right collarbone. My right arm is tied to my body so I can’t move it. Besides the stiffness, there isn’t much pain, though I’m wrapped so tight it’s hard to breathe.
This is my first rainstorm since childhood, and despite everything, I can’t force down that deep, long-forgotten wonder that used to accompany all new things. On my hands and knees, I crawl out into the rain. I lie on my back in the mud. I close my eyes and open my mouth and drink in the cool rainwater. It is the cleanest, coldest water I’ve ever tasted. It’s the most water I’ve drunk at one time, and even though it hasn’t been so long since I was shot, I feel vital and alive in a way I never have before.
I lie on the ground and drink until my belly is full and I can’t drink anymore. Then I just lie there and let the cool rain pitter-patter on my sunburned skin. When I open my eyes the bullet catcher is standing over me, looking down.
“Only children and pigs play in the mud,” he says.
“But it’s raining. It’s actually raining.” It’s all I can think to say to the man who put a bullet in me. Who then dressed my wounds—it could only have been him—and let me rest in his camp while I healed. If I were keeping score that would make it twice he’s saved my life and once he’s tried to kill me. Does that mean he doesn’t want me to die or that he owes me one? The wound pulses with new pain, like it recognizes the man who made it.
The bullet catcher looks up at the sky, as though to confirm that it’s raining. He grunts and ducks into the tent. I lie in the mud, afraid to move, until he says, “If you stay out in the cold your wound will become infected and you will die of fever.”
Only when I’m back inside the tent do I start shivering. The bullet catcher points a bony finger to a quilt and I wrap it around my shoulders.
“You’re
