Chapter 9: What Tova Signed

Haskell drove away at dark with my mother in the back of his truck.

He did not shoot, and he did not take the arm.

He left the Charter folded in Tova's hand.

"Think about the price," he said, over his shoulder. "I'm a patient man."

We drove back to the Narrows with nobody speaking.

By the time we reached the orchard, forty people had gathered in the barn beside the silo.

The old man with the white beard sat on a stack of feed sacks with his shotgun across his knees.

Tova climbed onto an overturned crate.

She unfolded the Charter and held it up where everyone could see.

"This is mine," she said. "My name is Tova Kingsborough, and I was a deputy in San Bernardino County before the Fall."

A murmur went around the barn.

"Last spring I walked into Haskell's Yard half starved. He gave me a bed, a badge, and an armband.

"For four months I walked the lines for him."

"You were Tax?" the old man said.

"I was."

"You took our grain?"

"I took grain from the camp at Daggett. I took it from families who couldn't pay.

"I wrote their names in the ledger and I stood there when they were put out in the desert."

The barn went dead silent.

"Then he ordered me to put a woman and two children out for a debt of one bucket," she said.

"I said no. That night I took a rifle and went over the wall."

Her voice did not shake.

It was the steadiest I had ever heard it.

"That's the whole of it. I can't give you back the grain or the families.

"I'm telling you because I won't stand here wearing a lie."

Somebody spat.

A woman near the back stood up with her baby on her hip.

"Get her out," she said.

"Wait," said the man beside her.

"My brother's in that desert because of her!"

"She said she walked."

"Four months too late!"

The shouting started.

I jumped up on the crate beside Tova.

My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in the blue light.

"Quiet," I said.

They did not get quiet, so I put my hand out and made the barn lamps flare, once, bright as noon.

The shouting died.

"She could have lied," I said. "She had that paper in her hand and nobody here would have known.

"She told you the worst thing about herself in front of sixty people who hate Haskell."

"She worked for him," the woman said.

"So did half the Yard. So did I, every time I paid that tax."

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