Chapter 26: Cormac
The day Maxine died, Cormac had seen the truck pull up to the house but didn’t think much of it. Ranches might be out in the middle of nowhere but they were used to having all sorts of people arrive unexpectedly. There was always someone looking for work or looking to barter or wondering if a herd of cows had just trampled past and which way did they do. For years after, Cormac spent countless hours wondering what would have happened had he paid attention to the man in the truck when he got out and started walking towards the paddock. It didn’t seem possible that he couldn’t have stopped it, one way or another.
He had turned his back to the man to finish scraping the last bit of mottled hay and mud from a horse’s hoof when he saw a strange glaze come over Maxine’s face. “What is it?” he asked. “Smell somethin’?”
“It’s nothin’. Just felt weird for a sec.”
She draped one arm over the mare she was grooming as Cormac straightened up. Her focus was past him on the man who was making his way towards them. Not moving too quickly or too slowly. A perfectly normal and unconcerning gait.
It was when his right arm started to lift that Maxine began to wonder what exactly he was doing. Her eyes narrowed to see what the man was holding but it was too bright out. She raised a palm to shield her face from the light, and saw the clear shape of a gun pointed at them. Her mouth dropped open; Cormac froze when he saw her.
Then, from behind him, he heard the noise, the blast. It rattled his teeth like an explosion; it lit fire to the hair all over his body. In the long stretching second of a heart stopping moment, Cormac waited for the impact; waited to feel the bullet lodge itself in his body. What broke him from his expectant hypnosis was Maxine crumpled forward and collapsing to the dusty ground.
The man was gone by the time Cormac had even thought to look for him. He heard the sound of the truck engine starting and then saw the dust kicked up from the spinning back tires. Maxine had held his rapt attention for longer than he realized. All he had been able to do was hold her against him, his hand pressed to the warmth flooded exit wound by her spine.
“I gotta get you inside,” he said, lifting her up from the ground. He cradled her, moving as quickly as he could towards the cottage they shared together. “I gotta get you inside.”
Maxine wasn’t saying anything. Cormac figured she was in shock. Her breathing was pretty steady so he hoped there was still time. Maybe the bullet had missed the vital organs; maybe she wasn’t bleeding out as much as she seemed to be. He couldn’t bring himself to look behind him where a trail of rust colored blood led from the paddock to the cottage, beading in the loose surface of the sand right alongside his footprints.
“It’s alright,” Maxine said suddenly. Cormac had just kicked open the door to the little house and was rushing through the kitchen to put her down in the bed when she started talking. “You don’t have to be in such a rush.”
The placidity in her voice made him nervous. Maxine was level headed and not known to rage but she was hardly zen. She didn’t speak in long, low tones in the middle of an emergency. If there was ever anyone he had known who had the supreme survival instinct, it was Maxine. She wanted the present, the here and now, the life she was currently living. The questions of beyond and ‘who are we?’ and ‘what if?’ never escaped her mouth. Most certainly not at a time when most people would be panicking.
He hadn’t expected then when he was attempting to stem the blood that gurgled up from the gunshot wound that Maxine would have such an abrupt aboutface. The panic cleared, vestiges of mortal concern lifting out of her eyes.
“There’s nothin’ you can do, Cormac,” she said, a crimson stained finger tapping the line of his jaw. “Don’t spend any more time doing nothing.”
“Always something that can be done,” he grunted as he applied more pressure and focused harder and thought about what else he could do. “You’re the one who says stuff like that. Always some move to make.”
Maxine’s crimson finger touched his face again, higher up this time. Closer to his lips, her palm resting flush to the indent between his cheekbone and his chin. “Don’t look at that anymore,” she said, the color draining from her lips as her eyes glowed darkly. “Look at me now. Be with me now.”
Cormac already felt the cooling of the blood on his hand; her skin was cold to the touch. Unless a team of doctors burst through that door at that very moment, Maxine was right: there was nothing to be done.
“I can’t do nothin’ until I got no other choice,” Cormac said though Maxine’s eyes transfixed him, and he couldn’t look at anything but here.
“Ya got no other choice. I’m tellin’ ya, you got no other choice.”
Cormac’s body moved as if under a power that wasn’t his own. He rested alongside Maxine, their heads even until Cormac’s curled his against her neck. She was shivering now, and he gingerly cradled her, not wanting to hurt her, wanting desperately to keep her warm. They were a hotblooded species; any sign of heat was a sign of life. The longer she was warm, the longer she was still there with him.
“It’s gonna be ok, Cormac,” Maxine whispered, her breathing shaky as she spoke. “I know where we came from now. I know what we are.”
Cormac propped himself up to stare into her eyes again. She angled her head ever so slightly to look at him. Cormac wasn’t even sure if she moved. Her face was phantasmic, spectral. It was hard for him to tell that she was Maxine anymore even though he felt her beside him; felt the spirit and the energy that had shared his bed for years and years.
“Where are we from, Maxine?” he asked.
She was blinking briskly. Tears were gathering and streaming down the sides of her face but she was smiling, so easily and so purposefully. Cormac was certain he had never seen her wear that expression before. “We’re from the desert, Cormac,” she said, eyes flooding momentarily when she said his name. “We’re right where we’re supposed to be.”
Cormac crushed his face into her neck again. He wanted to be sick; he wanted to scream. Maxine’s body began to shake violently, and he held her to him, speaking to her the entire time. Speaking to her until those darkly glowing eyes rolled upward into her head, and he felt the spread of her warm urine leaking between them. Death had expelled the very last of her heat, kept incubated inside of her.
If Maxine knew how haunted he was by what she said moments before the electricity left her body, she would have never said anything at all. The words replayed in his head for months afterwards; he’d find himself repeating them when he was alone the way people would listen to records backwards to suss out hidden messages. Rearranging everything, shifting pieces around. We’re supposed to be in the desert, Cormac. We’re right where we’re from.
Had he not seen her eyes and the placid, uncanny expression on her face, the words might have been less important. Of all the things for her to say, it wasn’t about love or their time together. Her final moments were to tell him something he needed to hear. It was just a cruel joke that he didn’t know how to understand what she was saying.
After Maxine’s funeral, Joey had wanted to round up, as he said, a good old fashioned posse to find the motherfucker who did this. He mentioned it constantly, to ranch hands and shifters Cormac didn’t know all that well. Joey thought everyone needed to hear what injustice had been brought to their doorstep; what danger they were in if they weren’t on the offensive.
“Oh shut the ‘ell up, Joey,” Tara scolded him one night when she thought Cormac had gone back to the guest house where he and Maxine used to live. “You don’t give one ‘oot about injustice or nothin’ like that. You just want to cause trouble.”
In the room down the hall where Cormac decided he was going to sleep most likely for the rest of his life, Cormac smiled for the first time since he heard the gunshot go off behind him and thought the bullet speeding their direction was meant for him. He was grateful for Tara. Surprisingly, he was also grateful for Joey. He didn’t know what to be happy about or sad about or thankful for anymore so he decided to be satisfied with whatever was there at the present moment. That present moment had Tara spitting some sense at Joey and Joey riding the fiery backs of revenge and retribution and the cold blue of the desert at night and a distant mournful howl rising up from the depths of it.