Free Zion by Dayne Sherman

too, as well as his Simco roping saddle. Sara’s hospital bill was still formidable, but he worked out a payment plan, largely done through his own integrity and willingness to confront the debt. He visited the chief of the hospital, Dr. Beau Oxford, face-to-face, and they set up a monthly schedule of payments.
     
    But what tore at Tom day and night was how close he had come to killing an innocent man. He couldn’t understand how Sloan was not the man who’d assaulted his wife, but the lack of a dog bite told the tale. The crazy phone call from the woman about the pocket watch and the wound made him even more confused and confounded. He didn’t know what to make of it. It vexed him like a sore tooth that wouldn’t stop worrying his mouth. If not Sloan Parnell, then who else did it? Who or what did he have to defend against? Who might come again to attack Sara and his family? It was as if a spirit had come into their lives and left to return in the future.
    One morning he went out to feed Jubal and the other dogs some scraps from the kitchen, leftover bread and bones soaked in bacon grease. He stood in front of Jubal and rubbed his head and ears, the dog smiling a wide bulldog smile, more interested in the affection of his master than the pan of food. Tom spoke to him like a friend. “Jubal, who did it? What happened that day?”
    The dog answered with the same silence that he got from Sara, the same silence from the marshal, and the same silence coming from the dangerous act of trying to get the truth out of Sloan Parnell. Tom did not know who was out there lurking and stalking. No answer came, nothing but silence with its desperate finality.
     
    The whole landscape seemed to change. Sometimes Tom could hear saws and machinery working on the new interstate that was being built a few miles away from Zion, a section of the Eisenhower National Highway System. Day by day the open range conflict began to fade into the distant past. Truth be told, there were few young pines left to burn, and folks simply gave up the war in despair of challenging the new stock law or stopping the killing of the oaks. Fitz-Blackwell won, and the people lost.
     
    One evening during a late December chill, Tom sat at the kitchen table with his head in his palms. The gas heater burned in the corner of the room, a blue flame sharp and warm. He had never been a man given to melancholy, but there were times after Sloan’s death when he was overcome with disorientation and guilt, as if he faced a solid wall with no way to go around it or scale it. He wondered if Sloan had realized that he was being followed, and if he’d responded by burying his foot down on the accelerator. Tom remembered how Sloan looked over at James Luke before he left the bar, and Tom saw his face when he acknowledged James Luke’s presence. It was the look of petrifaction and instantaneous acknowledgement of his own mortality. Perhaps their presence in the bar might be reason enough for him to believe he was being followed, even if he never saw them trailing on the roadway.
    “Tommy,” Sara said, “it’s over.” He looked up at his wife who stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. Her shoulder was out of the sling, and a dental bridge was made to cover her missing teeth. Her hair had been a deep auburn, but it was becoming gray, turning silver, a physical reminder of the attack.
    “What’s over?” he asked.
    “My rape and Sloan Parnell’s death, and if you keep dwelling on it all, you’ll pine away and leave this world dying an early and needless death. You’re no good to me and Wesley like this.”
    Tom was dazed. Neither of them had ever said the word “rape” before in the company of the other, never once. His head shook in self-recrimination and bewilderment.
    She stepped closer. “It happened to me, not you, and I’ve got to go on with life and so do you.”
    He stood and embraced Sara, knowing that this hell needed to be put away,