Gravedigger

7

From here on out, it’s the whole truth and nothing but, so help me God. Dollars to donuts, after hearing my deep truth you’ll wind up wishing I really was that mooncalf landscaper waiting for her other half to bail her out of a tight spot.

Well, like Little Mom used to say, when it’s time to eat crow, heap on the salt. So here goes nothing—with me holding my right hand up in the air like I was back on the witness stand, only this time my left’s covering Jordy’s tatt over my heart.

8

My real name’s Pearl Fields, but from that first November of the Meltdown till I fired up my Viv number going on three months ago everybody called me by my river name—Sunny.

Now, that ought to make that old prosecutor smile for a change seeing as he wanted me to confess that so bad this morning he looked for all the world like a little kid about to piss himself right then and there.

I tried not to laugh every time he called me Sunny the Gunrunner ’cause nobody else ever did. And with my lawyer calling me Mrs. Wheeler the whole time, I thought I might bust out some split personalities like Gonzo Willy did at the drop of a hat.

Anyhow, I spent the better part of the past four years traveling upriver and down in a drift boat bartering for most any goods my customers wanted. But no matter what those two lying potlickers said in a bid to get themselves off the hook, I never once trafficked in drugs, sex, kill pills, or long pig.

I traded in food, fish, supplies of every kind, weapons, and ammo—and that’s a fact.

Did more than my fair share of good, I’m not ashamed to say even if it sounds like I’m sugarcoating my stake in it all. Couldn’t count the DPs I helped slip into Waldport past those scuzzbag fenders calling themselves the Ketch.

Like you know, they were the ones snagging kids and women from the haven and elsewhere and smuggling ’em upriver for their sex slave operation.

I messed with that horseshit every opening I saw, paying ransom and getting word to the Guard anytime it worked out.

Tell you what, when those Army Rangers swooped in a year ago this past June and rescued all the prisoners down around Digger Mountain and dusted every last Ketch asshole there to a man—may all their souls rot in hell—I couldn’t have been happier unless I’d pulled the trigger myself.

And I lent a hand to all the Zamas I crossed paths with and helped ’em hide out. Hell, I even set up a secret trade route so a few with nerve enough could risk the trip from Keller Creek to the Alsea. Not many others can lay claim to doing much of anything for those poor souls since most everybody else stayed as far away from the virus as they could for fear of getting bit by it or punished by Dirge-fenders.

Then there’s all the medic duty I fell into. Had to deal with everything from food poisoning to scurvy to bullet holes to stab wounds to machete hacks. Even worked on unluckies with their hands and legs blown off before hauling ’em on downriver and sneaking those surviving my shoddy tourniquets into the haven.

Bear in mind being a self-taught EMT out there during the Meltdown was a tough row to hoe, especially when supplies ran thin. That’s why I studied up on med plants like old man’s beard and Oregon grape and ginger root and weed and what have you. Breathed a sigh of relief whenever the Red Cross or DWB set up a field hospital even though none of ’em lasted long for one reason or another.

Had to play midwife more times than I wish too, doing my level best to help welcome those precious things into that batshit crazy world.

And I drug more bodies out of the river and bushes and tents than you could shake a stick at and tried giving ’em proper burial after they got offed and dumped like trash or did themselves in or died of disease or starvation—may all their souls be at God’s right hand.

Bet my eyeteeth you never dug a grave in rocky soil with a camp shovel and muscled down in a shit-covered, bloated corpse crawling with maggots and spewing rank gas and foul blood out of every hole possible.

Well, I sure have—about enough to fill a mass grave in some Nipah hotspot, thank you very much. Guess you can get a ballpark figure from all the camera work me and Jordy did and the potter’s fields and Zama massacres I marked on those maps, huh?

In fact, instead of Sunny the Gunrunner that old prosecutor ought to call me Sunny the Gravedigger. But that wouldn’t fit in with his hang ’em high message, now would it?

There, damn it all to hell anyhow, I admitted who I really am for all the world to know.

If Little Mom was alive today, she’d treat me like anybody else she thought had what was coming to ’em ’cause she was always primed to pass judgment faster than ninety to the dozen. She’d shake her head, roll her eyes, tsk-tsk like a warm cricket, and grumble, “Just deserts.”

Can’t tell you how many times I heard her go off on somebody with her usual rant about karma and ramble right on into that English teacher wannabe lecture of hers how just deserts is spelled like the bone-dry places you die in without water, not the dry-ass Bundt cakes your grandma brings to potlucks.

So do me a favor if you give me the thumbs-down, will you? Swap out the gallows for a firing squad.

I mean, Mr. Barebones kept harping on about how chances are some of the hardware I sold upriver folks wound up in the hands of bad guys fighting each other and those stuck in-between, right? Part of what he said does make sense—there’s no way of knowing if any of the guns and ammo I traded right alongside your garden-variety goods ever got turned on innocent people.

Course he wouldn’t believe in a month of Sundays I never pulled the trigger on anybody except for self-defense and . . .