Borderlands (28 page)

BOOK: Borderlands

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One eye comes clear and she sees the gun lying a few feet away. She crawls to it, clutches it. She swallows blood, and it occurs to her that the taste is much like the dirty-penny taste of the loneliness.

She’s upright now, leaning her shoulder against the wall, her hair sopping, the floor slippery under her bare feet. She’s having a devil of a time trying to work her finger into the trigger guard and onto the trigger. The pistol seems to weigh forty pounds and feels like some alien tool she’s never handled before.

The idea, of course, is to shoot herself again. Do it right this time. No more of this half-ass stuff.

You’d think she was an old lady with bad arthritis to see all the trouble she’s having getting her finger on the trigger again. Blood in her eyes doesn’t help much. Or the dizziness.

The room abruptly tilts way over and she staggers forward and crashes into the screen door and falls out on the porch, scraping her chin on the rough wood planking and losing her grip on the gun, which goes spinning over the edge of the porch and out of sight.

Damn.

She wants to go down and get the gun but she can’t move. She’s lying on her face, cheek pressed into the edge of the porch, looking down at the top step six inches down.

Voices distant and close. Screams. Faraway and practically in her ear.

She regards the step, sees with absolute clarity the pattern of its texture, the dark knotholes, the sharp splinters, the grooved grain.

Blood is dripping onto the step and flowing slowly in thin red ribbons along the sinuous grooves of the plank toward its outer edge, where it begins bunching into tremulous drops.

And watching those winding ribbons of blood, she feels herself floating along with them,
in
them, simply floating … for the first time in a long time … floating gently down the stream.

Acknowledgements

On initial publication, most of these works appeared in slightly different form.

“The Outsider: An Introductory Memoir” copyright © 1998 by James Carlos Blake appeared previously in
The Los Angeles Times Book Review
.

“Runaway Horses” copyright © 1994 by James Carlos Blake appeared previously in
Saguaro
.

“Three Tales of the Revolution” copyright © 1993 by James Carlos Blake appeared previously in
The Sun
. Portions also appeared in
Quarterly West
as part of the novella, “I, Fierro.”

“Under the Sierra” copyright © 1994 by James Carlos Blake appeared previously in
Fine Print
.

“Aliens in the Garden” copyright © 1987 by James Carlos Blake appeared previously in
The Sun
.

“The House of Esperanza” copyright © 1988 by James Carlos Blake appeared previously in
The Sun
.

“La Vida Loca” copyright © 1998 by James Carlos Blake appeared previously in
Gulf Stream Magazine
with the title “Small Times.”

“Referee” copyright © 1998 by James Carlos Blake appeared previously in
Smoke
.

“Texas Woman Blues” copyright © 1991 by James Carlos Blake appeared previously in part (Perdition Road) in
A Long Story
.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

This edition published in 2011 by
MysteriousPress.com
/Open Road Integrated Media

180 Varick Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com