Page 2 of Mace

***

It took us days of waiting around for the perfect moment to cross the border into the US. It was in the middle of the night. There were about twenty in our group. Since my father wasn’t the kind of man to leave anything to chance, we weren’t stopped.I had a feeling that he had bribed one of the border guards to turn a blind eye. After making it onto American soil, we hiked for a few miles until we reached a panel van with a plumber’s name on the side. The door slid open as we approached and we all climbed in, my father first, then me, and then Alejandro. After we found seats, the rest of his men clambered in and found places to sit.

I had always dreamed of visiting America, only under better circumstances. I was born there and moved to Mexico when I was two. Without any real memories of my own, I read everything I could about the United States. I knew my mother’s homeland was the land of opportunity, and I daydreamed about attending college, and maybe becoming a nurse so I could earn a decent living and help out the people in our small town. To my way of thinking, it was a realistic dream since I was born there to a US citizen, and that made me American.

The harsh reality was, since my father didn’t believe in college, it would probably never happen. I wasn’t naive enough to think he was surprising me by making my dreams of college come true, but I couldn’t conceive of why he would drag me illegally across the border. Knowing my father, it wasn’t for any good reason.

I was born in Texas. I think my parents met when he was in some kind of training program. When he was finished, he took me and my mom back to his hometown in Mexico when I was two years old. Though I was too young to remember anything of my former life, my mom used to tell me stories about my father, how he was a good man. But my earliest memories were of my parents fighting and my mom being scared. Luckily, his work took him away regularly, and he would return only for sporadic visits, always accompanied by his men. When he came, I avoidedhim as much as possible, which as it turned out was easy because he wasn’t interested in spending time with me anyway.

But my mom homeschooled me, and in doing so she not only taught me English but everything about her homeland. We had computers and cell phones because my father wasn’t poor. I’d even planned to take some online college classes at some point as it was something I could do without his knowledge. However, despite the outward trappings of a good life I knew I was trapped. My mom was trapped too. We had no papers to say we were US citizens, and as my father had taken us to Mexico illegally, we had no proof of citizenship there either. My mom had been scared to go to the authorities because she might get deported, leaving me under the care of my father. That’s if he didn’t kill us first.

Now, I had my chance to put my mom’s plan into action.

I stayed quiet in the back of the van, every so often I would glance out the windshield, but under the cover of darkness there was nothing to see other than the glow of the headlights on the road. At some point we passed a sign that said, ‘Welcome to California’. Eventually, after a few more hours on the road the scenery changed from desert and canyons to verdant green I realized we were heading towards the suburbs of some town or city. We passed a gigantic sign along the side of the road that had a name on it. Griffinsford. I peered out the side windows at the buildings we passed, impressed with what I saw. After stopping for gas my father bought me a large, iced coffee, it was sad that such a small gesture felt so big coming from him. We hit the road again and seemed to being going out of town.

If I’d thought we were heading to a house like we had in Mexico, I’d have been very much mistaken. When our vehicle finally pulled in, it was in front of a broken down, abandoned cabin deep in the woods around forty-five minutes from the town we’d passed through.

I knew the cabin would be for my father and myself only, because his men immediately started setting up tents. I headed in and started cleaning, with my father it was easier if you did things before being told, I had learned that lesson the hard way. Alejandro got on to fixing the rusty hand pump that was mounted on the kitchen sink. By the time I’d scrubbed the cabin to within an inch of its life it was starting to look livable, even if it was on the rough side. I knew better than to ask my father questions, such as what we were doing here, or how long we would be staying.

Luckily, my father hadn’t expected me to cook, even he thought that manual labor after such a long journey was too much, and he’d picked up burgers and fries from the service station. They were cold and greasy, but it was food that I didn’t have to prepare and for that I was thankful. I fell into bed exhausted and texted my mother before I fell into a deep sleep, grateful that I had reception out here. She told me to be careful, but we didn’t talk about where I was or anything to do with my father. She already knew what my plans were.

Chapter 2

Mace

Ihad a week to myself, and our club had a cabin in the wilderness that I’d been given leave to use. I was only a prospect, but Storm, my club president, had been happy with my work for the club and thought I deserved a reward. I was also here on important personal business and my club brothers understood how close to my heart it was.

The cabin was attached to a national forest of several thousand acres. I woke up early. The minute I moved, my wolfdog rolled off the bed and padded away to deal with the necessities. I raised him from a pup and know his habits well. He’d squeeze his oversized form through the dog flap on the back door that was designed for a regular sized large breed dog instead of my gargantuan beast. Nine was what they call a wolamute, a cross between a wolf and a malamute. My friend’s first order of business was always to do his take care of his morning needs then hassle me for breakfast.

Needless to say, I normally followed his good example and today was no different. I headed to the bathroom, leaned forward with one hand on the wall and took a piss. Then stumbled into the shower and let the warm water and minty soap wake me up. My long, black hair flowed down over my shoulders in an inky mass, sticking to my skin. I was too eager to get started with my day to worry about conditioner, so I gave it quick shampoo, rinsed it off and jumped out of the shower. I dried myself as I walked back out to the bedroom. It only took me a moment to comb and fix my hair into one long tight braid that hung down to the middle of my back.

Eager to get a jump on my day, I pulled out some clean clothing and got dressed. After I was geared up in my favorite faded jeans, t-shirt, and my prospect’s vest, I shoved everything I normally carried on a day into my pockets and went downstairs. Pulling on my well-worn black lace up boots, I felt the excitement build up in my chest, because today I was planning to look for an ancient Native burial site that belonged to my people.

If I found it, I would make sure the graves were still intact and document what I found there, before leaving the site to the archeologists my chief had hired. Our small tribe has had a petition before the Bureau of Indian Affairs for official recognition for many years. Finding this site would go a long way in establishing our Native lineage in this area. My mom’s people have always been here, but my father was Scottish American. I grew up proud of both sides of my heritage, though as my father died when I was a kid, I’d been mostly raised by my mom’s people. Having official recognition was important to my elders and I wanted to be able to do this while my grandmother was still living. I quickly made sure I had everything I needed in my backpack and crammed in my handgun as well. I’m pretty adapt at avoiding non-human predators in this isolated area, but it’s the human ones that I needed that extra layer of protection against.

I locked up the cabin before I left and locked the dog flap, then set the alarm. It might seem overkill to have an alarm in such a remote setting, but you never know. Besides, with MC property we always liked an extra layer of security.

Glancing over my shoulder, I whistled and shouted out, “Come on Nine, we have important work to do today.” Nine jumped off the porch and kept pace with me as I raced offthrough the undergrowth in the direction I’d been told the burial site was located. If I could find this site it would be like the holy grail for my tribe. Most of the members were getting on a bit, so traipsing through the forest might be too much, which is why I volunteered. They had stories about where our old lands used to be, and after weeks of looking at the maps I thought that I was close. Our chief, Jonas, had been in touch with the local college and there were some archaeologists willing to come out and look, but first I had to find some proof.

***

By the time the sun was high in the sky, I needed to eat. I’d been so eager to get on with the search that I’d only had time to grab a coffee.

I dropped down on a boulder beside the river and pulled out my bag of beef jerky and some flatbread. The Native flatbread my family made was the size of my head and deep fried until it was crunchy like a cracker, thinner than the usual frybread, it was what the men used to take with them when they went out on hunting expeditions. I broke mine up and kept it in a plastic container and ate the pieces like potato chips. I sat there eating my food and drinking from my water bottle listening to the sounds of nature that surrounded me. I could hear birds chirping and the scratch of little forest creatures as they scurried about. Fish were making small ripples in the river as they swam against the current. There were bears in the forest, I’d seen some of their tracks and scat when I’d been walking here, but I knew that as long as I kept my wits about me then we would coexist in the forest without any problems. Taking Nine with me was an extra layer of protection as his doggy senses would pick up any large predators, way before my piss-poor human ones would.

I sensed Nine before I saw him and tossed some meat in his direction. He sniffed it and only reluctantly began to chew on it. I could see blood around his muzzle, so I suspected he’d already eaten some small rodent this morning.

Among the usual sounds of nature, I heard a noise I didn’t recognize. It broke through the quiet sounds of the forest, shrill and long. I slowly came to my feet and listened carefully. Nine was already in motion, his ears pricked up as he ran towards the sound. That told me that whatever was making the noise, Nine didn’t think it was a danger to us. It almost sounded like a woman screaming, or maybe an eagle or owl screeching. I threw on my backpack and ran after my companion.

He splashed through the river, managing to bound across using the large rocks in the middle where the river narrowed and forked in two. I followed, though not having my companion’s agility I had to wade through the water, and I realized it came almost up to my thighs as I rushed through it.

He slowed and lowered his head, like animals sometimes do when they sense danger. I came up beside him and pulled my binoculars out of my backpack. Carefully, I scanned the area from side to side until I saw a group of people. My grip tightened on my binoculars as I watched the scene unfold. There was a young woman with long dark hair. An older man was yelling at her. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could tell by the look on his face and how his mouth was moving that he was angry. I crept closer to try to hear their words.

The closer I got the more shocked I became. I didn’t know who these people were, but they had a whole encampment set up around a dilapidated cabin that I remembered as being extremely unsafe.

The older man was yelling in heavily accented English, “You never look where you’re going. This is a forest. You have to expect there to be snakes. Running around screaming your head off won’t scare off the snake but will draw attention to us. Alicia, I thought you were smarter than this.”

“Clearly, I’m not. You should send me back home. Mom is worried sick about me being out in the middle of nowhere. Tia Elena says she won’t eat and can’t sleep.”

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