The Ballad of Decker Crane Ch. 09

Harp here. So, I'm just loading the queue and the mediators will release chapters on their judgment. As a result, I'm writing this before the first chapter posts. I don't know what's going on. I hope you like it and are commenting. Thanks for reading.

All characters are under the age of eighteen

Chapter Nine

(Decker)

Decker waited until he thought Bane and the herd were elsewhere and went looking for his pistol. His replacement sat-reader still hadn't come, although he'd fucking paid for it. Things were gruesome as he sifted through what the brikens had left uneaten, which wasn't much. There was no way for him to identify the particular parts of Emmet or his duster. Decker kept his eye on the horizon.

After a time, he gave up. It was useless. He was disappointed. He'd liked that pistol. It had been with him a considerable time, like an old friend.

They only had five pistols and a shotgun left. All of them needed to be armed. He carried another he'd had, but it felt strange on his hip, the weight off by just a little. It nagged at him. He squatted in front of what was left of a gristle-ridden human ribcage, the remains of armor still clinging to it, one of the five men who'd been wearing it. Decker reached out and turned it over, wiping his hand on a rag.

When he saw it, he went still, staring at what was in front of him. He shook his head. That wasn't possible. The chest plate was pierced through, a huge hole rimmed with gore. Nothing could get through Prime armor except safron-tipped bullets. Yet there it was. Decker stared down at it, but he wasn't seeing it.

Instead, he was seeing Josie. Josie, who'd been in Rocher Prison for almost twenty years and Decker's cellmate for two of the three years Decker had spent in that shithole.

Josie had told him all about Briken Ranch, trapped in their cell with nothing to do. He'd made it out to be a paradise, talking about the healthy woodlands and the streams and meadows, things Decker hadn't ever seen before. Sometimes it had pissed him off, but Decker had killed his previous cellmate with his hands, and the one before that, too. Anybody could annoy someone else in constant proximity, and Decker had hated being locked up.

At that point, the guards had gotten together to beat him, the cowards, and made it clear if Decker did it again, they'd put him in the hole and let him rot. They weren't just saying that, either. They did that sometimes. Prime didn't care about the rights of criminals.

Josie had been dying at the time. Decker wasn't even sure Josie had been aware what he was saying. Certainly not to Decker, who'd barely spoken to him, listening to him go on day after day and endeavoring not to kill him.

But when Josie went, it wasn't Decker who took him. Josie had gotten into a fight with another inmate and their jailers had put Josie in the hole for a couple weeks in the cold. When he'd come out, Decker could tell right away he was going to die of it.

"It's good there with the brikens, where a man can breathe," the older man had wheezed in their cell at the very last. It was where they'd dumped him, no doctoring and his lungs ruined by the damp. His face had been bright red with fever and his fingers blue. It had been the same old things he'd been saying for two years.

At the time, Decker had just been looking forward to the relief of the man finally shutting up. The heat had been coming off of him in waves.

"The caves. The brikens. It's in their heads," Josie had said.

"What's in their heads?" Decker had said, deciding to talk to him at this point. Josie had never said anything like that before.

"Safron. The brikens guard it. They arrested me before I could get to it."

It was bullshit that hadn't made any sense, and after that, Josie had simply raved, talking about his sister in mid-system. After a time, he wasn't talking about her so much as to her, asking her forgiveness, which was pitiful. Decker didn't talk to him after that. Maybe it comforted Josie, thinking she could hear him. He'd died shortly after.

Decker's next cellmate had been Kay, probably because they were each people to whom the guards gave inmates they didn't like. Decker heard later they'd taken bets. After Kay had decided not to try to rape Decker and Decker had decided to let Kay live, they'd gotten along. He was sure it had been a big disappointment all around. They'd found they were both evil, sensible men who liked dakas and could maybe work together. When they'd gotten out, Decker had invited Kay to do a job and it had stuck between them.

When Decker had been released, he'd been just as wild as when he went in. But he'd also increasingly seen his own fate tending toward Josie's. When one of their jobs had paid well, he'd toyed with the idea of going straight for a time and seeing what that was like. He had wanted to see if he could leave his name, which had grown larger than he was, in his opinion, behind himself. So, out of curiosity, he'd come to Sur to see this ranch Josie had talked about incessantly.

When Decker had seen it, he'd bought Briken Ranch that same day. It was everything Josie had described, and he'd found himself pondering sometimes on the old man. Maybe if he'd known Josie was being truthful, Decker wouldn't have minded listening so much. Well. At least he hadn't killed him.

Decker hadn't believed about briken heads made of safron in the caves, of course. Men in prison often wanted to appear to be more than they were, and stories about outside exploits were a part of the everyday patter of prison life. Boasting and promising. Chatter and natter. Men liked to talk. Insisting and giving their opinions. Decker had ignored most of them, which was him being friendly, and they'd avoided him.

Prime had mined this place. The safron was too dispersed in the soil. It wasn't concentrated anywhere. There were a few caves, sure, but they were deep in briken territory, far from any shelters. The rough ground made it impossible to bring in air transport or even drop anybody in there, and it hadn't ever been safe to get so close to the animals with no way to protect yourself.

Which made it the perfect hiding spot, if you thought about it.

Now, looking down at the pierced chest plate, Decker was remembering Josie's words.It's in their heads.

Decker's eyes focused again. He looked up, his nape prickling. Cote began dancing and snorting. Bane was there, silhouetted, his row of horns, gold at their base, white at the ends, strangely translucent. Like safron metal was translucent. They ate animals who ate plants out of the same soil, didn't they?

The brikens shed those horns every six years, after which they grew back, the animals looking bald in the meantime. But unlike the deer he bred, Decker had never found even one shed briken horn on the ground in the briken enclosure. It had been a mystery to him. It was like they knew and went somewhere to do it. His eyes shifted to the caves in the far hills.

Beyond sifting through huge piles of briken shit while dodging Bane, which he had no interest in doing, Decker supposed he had to accept that his favorite pistol was gone. He got himself and Cote out of the briken enclosure before Bane attacked.

But he thought maybe he'd take a small trip to the caves deep in briken territory soon.

#

When Decker returned, he was ambushed. There he was, sitting at the table in peace eating synth rations, and here they came. Bai sat across from him, reversing the chair and straddling it, Dawine next to Bai. Then it was Chione. Even Kay was there, Adya leaning on his chair. Persya arrived last. She was in on it, he could tell.

"What," he said, wary.

"Dawine wants to start a garden," Bai said, starting things off. "She likes gardens. They had one on Pedige."

"Persya likes to garden, too," Dawine said. "She could help me."

"I hate gardening," Persya said to Dawine, frowning lightly.

Dawine shook her head. "You said you liked it."

"Well, I don't, Dawine. You don't know me well if you think that."

Dawine threw up her hand. "You said so to me once, Persya."

The women sure could bicker. "Like in a tent?" Decker said, glancing around. "Growing plants?"

"I can do it outside here with some supplies," Dawine said.

"I'll pay for it, and the seeds." Bai said. "But when she told the other women, they started talking about something."

Decker waited, getting more wary. "Something" sounded like the kind of something they were reluctant to tell him about because he wasn't going to like it. "About what?"

Bai winced a little. "Real food."

"Real food," Decker echoed, blinking, feeling indignation rising in him. "Real food? You think we're rich here? What is wrong with you people?"

"Not all the time," Persya had said, his eyes shifting. "Just for a meal maybe once a week. It wouldn't be like buying it. If Dawine makes a garden, we can use whaite grain and grind it to make breads and desserts and such. We could freeze berries. If you would hunt a deer and bring it back, or some rabbits, we could have stews and steaks. Dawine would plant vegetables as well as herbs for flavoring. The fat from a deer would work for lard. You have salt?"

"Tag has salt," Decker said, staring at her. "He gives it to the cattle."

"We'd only need a little. Then the only thing we'd need to buy would be synth-milk and sweetener. We could have bread and cakes and desserts. I've run the numbers. It wouldn't be that expensive, Decker. I could show you how much."

Decker shook his head, at a loss. "Why would we do that, baby?"

Persya looked surprised. "Don't you like real food?"

"Like it? I had meat from my animals once because I was curious," he replied. "It was all right after I cooked it some. But I haven't had any of those other things you said."

"None of you have ever had real food?" Persya said, looking at Bai and then Kay.

"People out here don't pay good money for something they're going to shit out the next day," Decker said, sitting back. "You might as well throw dakas on the ground. I work for a living. Synth rations are fine for me. I'm not a rich Prime prick with luxuries." He looked at Bai. "Have you had those things?"

Bai shook his head, glancing at Dawine.

"I had something once after we did that job on Stackey and had some money," Kay said. "I wanted to see what it was like. It was bread. It was hard, but I'd never realized food could have a taste. It was different. I admit I enjoyed it."

Decker was squinting at him. This was stupid. Dawine was waiting, looking like she was holding her breath. They were all spoiled Prime women, was what it was. It was dakas, fuck's sake. They had expenses. This was a working ranch. Bai should know better than this. He looked at Dawine's face. There was the reason for Bai's enthusiasm, right there.

Fuck that. Dawine wasn't his girl.

His eyes shifted. But Persya was. Those eyes. She wanted it. His lips twisted. "I'll tell you what. I'm going to give you dakas to buy Prime supplies so you can make some fancy real food. One meal. We'll all try it." That way, he could show Persya he'd listened and made his judgment impartially and fairly when he said no.

Which was how he ended up walking into the house a week later to it smelling like something he'd never imagined. He didn't know what it was, but it created such a longing in him, like lust. He wasn't just hungry, eating like you pissed, because you had to. This was something else entirely. At first, he thought he could just breathe it in and be fine, but it sent such a hankering in him for something more. It made him feel different than just hungry. More than that, like something else entirely. And that was just smelling it.

Bai was sitting at the table.

Kay walked in, putting his hat on the wall. "What's that smell?" he said, frowning.

"Real food, I guess," Decker said, inhaling. Fuck, that smelled good.

"That smells good," Kay said.

"It does," Bai agreed.

Decker tried to be patient, sitting there salivating. Then it came from out of the kitchen, Dawine calling instructions and women passing everywhere, and it was things like Decker had never put in his mouth before. It was like discovering a sense he'd never known he had. He'd tasted all kinds of things, but none of it for eating. Persya was naming the different kinds of tastes for him. They had textures. His eyes were watering.

"I made it bland, since you haven't had it before," Dawine said, looking worried.

Bai made a sound, reaching for more. They all did. The women insisted on arranging all the different things on the plates to taste whichever ones they wanted, from one to the other. The only things he didn't try were the creamy ones, none of the three men touching them. Creamy wasn't a good thing on the frontier.

But there were so many tastes, each one new. None of them said anything, plowing their way through it. It was like sex it was such a series of unexpected and wonderful sensations.

Then at the last, because she'd saved it, Dawine pulled out the sweet, a cake, as they called it. Sweet was the best of all, in Decker's opinion. He could have eaten the whole thing by himself. He'd used the word sweet all his life and he hadn't even begun to know what he was talking about.

When it was gone, every last bit, Decker sat back, too full. He felt satisfied in his belly, he believed, for the first time in his life. It wasn't the amount. It was the goodness of it, the experience of it. If they hadn't run out, he wouldn't have stopped until he exploded himself.

Persya rose and set pills next to them. "They're for digestion. Grace ordered them with the food. Your bodies are going to be surprised at the variation. These will take care of that."

Decker ate the pill and looked at Persya. "How much?"

"Forty dakas a month if you get us meat, for all of us to have a real meal once a week. We couldn't make anything like this yet until the garden grows, but there are simple things we could cook with what we'll have. If we wanted, we could also get some supplies just to start until we replace them. If we did that, it would be a hundred more dakas besides what you've spent on this meal to stock what we need and sixty dakas a month for a time and then back down to forty." She waited.

That's wasn't as bad as he'd feared. "Let's do that."

#

After that, things began to settle into a comfortable rhythm. Decker had to admit that whatever restlessness had driven him all his life had eased in him. He found himself enjoying things he hadn't thought to before.

He liked to sit on the steps while the women sang in the house, listening to them go on, teasing each other and bickering. Chione and Persya fought the worst, which made sense, both of them spirited, but it never came to blows. It was all accusations and examining each other's behavior aloud and talking endlessly and sometimes tears, but they meant all of it and made up after. They were affectionate with each other. Women were peaceable creatures that way, almost no violence to them. Any man he'd ever gotten that mad at, Decker had killed.

He and Kay liked sitting at the table in the evenings while Lily read adventure stories aloud for the girls from access he got them for schooling. They just didn't care to move. Lily always pretended not to notice them and she read the stories well, putting life into them, making the characters talk. Decker laughed at the good parts and sometimes had to hush the girls because they wanted to talk during the reading. He looked up as Persya put a mug of synth-tea by his hand, and another by Kay's. Kay nodded and she smiled at Decker like she did.

He liked sitting on the porch with Persya curled up on his lap, her head on his shoulder and the smell of her and how soft she was, and watch the sun go down. He liked eating real food.

He'd liked learning that Persya was terribly ticklish. Fuck, that had been a sexual feast of its own, Decker finding himself with his hands full of a squirming, shrieking woman who fishtailed all over the place while he stuck his cock in her. It had been an entirely new torment he hadn't ever thought of before, and he had to admit he liked it. He'd got hold of her feet, and then her belly and under her arms until she was begging him to stop. Then he found her upper thighs where it met her bottom and that was so bad for her. She'd jutted and wiggled and screamed until he'd gagged her and tied her up. He wanted to do that again.

"We did wonder if you were being skinned alive in there," Dawine remarked the next morning to Persya, whose face got red.

Bai caught him alone in the barn, leaning in. Decker eyed him.

"You know something," Bai said.

Decker grunted.

"What the hell did you do to her to make her sound like that?"

"She's ticklish."

Which is how they ended up listening to Dawine scream her head off she was laughing so hard, Decker lying on his back with his hands folded on his chest and a smile on his face and Persya giggling beside him, making the bed shake.

Adya went everywhere Kay did and was content to do so, leaving Bryn on her own. Bryn had gotten bored and irritable and that moved to unpleasant and Decker had put her in the barn working on the tackle, coming up with a series of chores.

"Why do I have to?" Bryn said, for a moment looking so exactly like Persya when she didn't want to do something that Decker's mouth had twitched.

"Because I said so, girl," he answered. "It's a ranch. Everyone works here. Get it done by the time I get back. Don't make me come for you."

#

A shot rang out in front of the house, Decker exiting in a hurry, his gun drawn.

"Stop fucking shooting," someone cried from behind the rocks northeast.

"Stay where you are," Chione yelled, still pointing the pistol.

"Tag?" Decker called, holstering his.

"It's me, Deck," Tag yelled, not coming out. "You invited me for a drink, if you'll remember? I brought a bottle, but I think I must have drank it all on the way and fell and hit my head on a rock because there's a gorgeous woman who's not the other gorgeous woman firing a pistol at me. Fuck, I'm probably dying."

"Come on out," Decker said. "Don't shoot our neighbor, Chione."

Tag emerged, his hands up, his pistol on his hip. He went still, staring at Chione.

Persya came out the front door and down the stairs to stand next to Decker.

Decker made the introductions. "Tag, this is Persya, my girl. Persya, this is my neighbor, Tag."

"Where did you get her, Deck?" Tag said, seeming not to know where to stare next.

"Briken enclosure," Decker grunted. "That's Chione. This is Tag. Come on in and meet the others."

"There's more?" Tag said.

Yenna came from the barn, followed by Lily.

"Hi, Tag," Yenna called.

"There's more," Tag said, answering his own question. "That's...there's women here, Deck. Beautiful women."

"They are," Decker agreed, nodding and opening the door. Starting to step in, he reversed, backing out and stepping sharply to the side.

As he did, Grace walked through, a tablet book in front of her nose, going under the arm Decker raised. She didn't notice. They were all used to it by now.

Grace was constantly reading, oblivious to everything and everyone around her. Sometimes she wandered while she did it and she almost never looked where she was going. She'd make it down the stairs while you'd watch, holding your breath and waiting for her to go sprawling, but she never did. She'd be startled if you interrupted her, and then you'd have to deal with her shyness, which was something to avoid, if possible.

They all watched as Chione moved out of Grace's way, going left, turning her shoulder. Persya, who was looking at Tag, stepped away, not seeming to notice she'd done it, Grace passing to the right of her. But Tag wasn't as spry because he'd spotted Grace and had gone still, staring.