Antigone in the American West

    Annie ran her eyes over the length between her wrist and the ditch of her arm. The Panhandle’s feverish August had ended but her skin remained tawny where it burned. Barely the ghostly loop of a lost friendship bracelet remained pale. Even her new scar faded in.

    To Annie, only one mark on her mattered. At the base of her palm, faded by sun and time, was a stick-and-poke tattoo done by her eldest brother.

    Paul had asked what she wanted. Barely thirteen then, Annie couldn’t think of anything worth the pain or permanence. These kinds don’t last forever, he’d explained. They’re not meant

to.

    Finally, a hand-drawn star was chosen and slowly needled onto her skin. The points were uneven. Its shape squeezed toward the side. But it was perfect. Even better, Paul was wrong. It had lasted over a decade.

    Annie couldn’t look at it too long.

    She rolled her head back and let the police station fluorescents burn green rings into her vision. The building was quieter than she’d expected. There were rumbling printers, a clunky A/C system, the authoritative voices and footsteps of cops— but that was it. The station may as well have been any other office.

    “Sorry to keep you waiting, Annie.” Detective Creek hurried inside and tossed a paper bag into her lap as he pulled off his rain-slicked jacket. “You like sweet things?”

    She peeked into the bag. “Donuts?”

    “A classic is a classic. Come on, I’ll take you back.”

    She blew out a breath and trailed behind him. He left mud tracks like breadcrumbs on the dark carpet. As they entered his office, dried shoe prints awaited new ones.

    Detective Creek pulled a chair out and sat on the edge of his desk, motioning for Annie to

sit.

    “There’s a chocolate one and a glazed one.”

    “Hm?” Annie refocused on him, noticing the empty seat waiting for her. She handed him the bag and sat. “I’m not hungry.”

    “Well, I try to be a good host,” he laughed.

    Annie noticed the detective had perfect teeth. The night they’d first encountered one another— a night of whirring police lights that eventually faded into pre-dawn blue— hadn’t been bright enough to see him in detail. He was younger than she’d guessed, his eyes weren’t brown but green, and his 5 o’clock shadow had been shaved. Detective Creek almost looked like a movie star. He was too manicured to be real.

    He fished out the glazed donut, flecks of frosting falling onto his slacks. There was a hesitation then. His mouth crooked before he set it down and reached for a folder.

    “We got Eddie’s autopsy back from the medical examiner.”

    The room around Annie blurred.

    Loving her eldest brother was an ache that could remain safely secured in her heart. But his body would forevermore belong to a world she couldn’t control.

    “I’m sorry,” Detective Creek said in a rush. “I know I’m going about this the wrong way.” He brushed his slacks off and lowered his voice like he was a doctor explaining Annie’s new illness. “It’s exactly what we thought. Very straightforward, a clean toxicology report, nothing we didn’t expect. She determined his cause of death to be the stab wound.”

    “How does that help me?”

    He cocked his head as if he was confused by the question. “I thought you would want to know.”

    “Detective Creek—”

    “Please don’t call me that. I got enough last name treatment as a beat cop.” He smiled as he presented the nameplate on his desk. “Just Haemon is fine.”

    Annie dug her nails into the leather chair. “You said on the phone you had questions for me, Detective Creek. So ask them.”

    He inhaled sharply, jaw clenched in a tight smile. “My dad told me to be careful with you. Here I thought he meant because of your dad. But you’re just as difficult.”

    “Don’t talk about my father.”

    “My apologies, Annie. Although…” He pretended to adjust his watch. “You don’t think your brother’s death has anything to do with your old man? I’ve read the reports, I’ve heard my dad’s side of the story, and I do realize Ed, Sr. is long dead. But there isn’t an ounce of you that wonders if his old life came back around to end Eddie’s?”

    Annie’s breath hitched with the rising thump of her heart. It started at the base of her breastbone and rose until it nested firmly in her throat. A pulse was supposed to indicate life.

There, with Haemon Creek’s scalpel poised above her family tree, it suffocated her.

    “Stop talking about him.”

    “I guess you’re right. That does seem a little too far-fetched, huh? I mean, there are other schools of thought here. Other theories. Annie— can I ask— did you go to Sunday school growing up?”

    Her brow furrowed. “What?”

    “My favorite story was always Cain and Abel. Maybe that’s why I like detective work. I could never understand how brother could turn against brother.” Creek eased off his desk and crouched so they were eye-to-eye. He let the silence sit between them for too long. “Do you know where Paul is?”

    She leaned in until she could smell the remnants of burnt coffee and cigarettes coming off him. “No.”

    “You don’t seem surprised by my question. Do you think he had any reason to hurt

Eddie?”

    “No.”

    He rocked back on his heels and rubbed his eyes. It reminded her of the principal’s office.

    “Can I go?”

He groaned as he stood. “Will you call me if Paul contacts you? We both want the same thing here. Eddie deserves justice.”

    “Tap our phones for all I care.” Annie pushed herself up so they were even again, getting in his face with her frustration. “Just tell me how I get my brother’s body released to a funeral home.”

This, at least, made him ease off. He could no longer look at her. 

    “There’s a clerk up front who does the paperwork. I can walk with you—” Annie shouldered past him and followed the shoe prints back 

out.

###

    Under the dark clouds of a second storm, Annie rested in the dirt a ways out from their home. It had been their great-granddad’s farm. The only acre worth anything anymore was where the house sat.

    Tufts of bluestem and switchgrass freckled the neglected swath of land. Dewy blades swayed in and out of Annie’s view of the sky. She raised her arm to examine it again. From ditch to wrist. The bracelet tan line. The healed cut. The star.

    When she buried Paul here, she’d dug until she couldn’t. She’d pressed her palm— the star— against his chest and packed in dirt until it reached her elbow.

    The raised patch of disturbed earth would settle as the weather turned and his body decomposed. The grass would sprout up again. Paul could be part of the farm.

    Eddie’s plot was waiting for him in the private family cemetery two towns over. No one lived there after the oil dried up. All the shed blood of the Civil War and dynastic pride couldn’t make the money-hungry men stay.

    A fat raindrop hit Annie’s cheek. She closed her eyes and let the incoming rain wash her clean. Dark wet hair thinned into strands, threading in with roots. Water pooled in the dip of her collarbone and the corners of her mouth. If she disappeared into the earth, she could be part of the farm, too. She could be part of Paul.

    “Get up.”

    Annie blinked away the rain only to blur her vision more. But it didn’t matter; she knew the sound of her sister's voice like she knew her favorite song.

    Izzy shifted an umbrella to one hand and offered Annie the other. The younger sister planted her bare feet in the mud, standing on her own.

    “I’m going to take a wild guess,” Izzy said sharply, “and say you didn’t tell the detective anything. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”

    Annie wrung her hair out. “Neither would he.”

    Izzy’s gaze dropped to where her sister had been lying. Paul’s six-foot frame didn’t seem like it could fit such a small plot. The looming figure who’d kept her safe her whole life might as well have been a family dog in that grave. Her attention snapped back to Annie.

    “Go inside. Now.”

###

    Annie scrubbed the dirt from beneath her nails in the kitchen sink. The window above it faced the back of the property but there was nothing to see anymore. The storm had darkened with the dusk. Only lightning cut through the pitch black.

    Izzy appeared in the reflection behind her.

    “He’s D.A. Creek’s kid, you know,” Annie said as she dried her hands off. “The

detective.”

    “I didn’t know he had a son.”

    “Neither did I ’til he said something.”

    Izzy leaned against the counter beside her sister. “How did we not put that together?”

        Annie huffed out a laugh and for a long moment, they let the sound of rain on their rooftop fill the quiet. Izzy combed her fingers through Annie’s mud-crusted hair. Had these been different circumstances, and had they been younger, she would’ve offered to help wash it out.

    “We have to tell him, An.”

    “No.” Annie pulled away, stepping back until she hit the dining table. “We can’t do that to Paul.”

    Izzy’s voice broke. “To Paul? Annie, he killed Eddie.”

    “And Eddie killed him! I don’t care what happened, they can’t have Paul, too.”

    “This is not your decision.” Izzy’s chest rose and fell with her impatient breaths. “We don’t make the laws but we do have to abide by them.”

    “Right now, one of our brothers is dead and the other is missing. If we give up Paul, they both become murderers under those laws—”

    “And if we don’t, you become an accomplice!”

    Annie released the tension from her shoulders as she accepted the truth. “I already am.”

    Thunder crackled directly above them and, on instinct, Annie moved closer to her sister.

Izzy took her face in her hands.

    “Annie,” she said slowly, “I will not lose all three of you. Dad’s already done enough damage. In the morning, we are going to dig up Paul and take him to the far side of the property and tell the detective we found him there after the storm. Do you hear me?”

    “I can’t do that.”

    Izzy wiped her sister’s tears away before they fell. “You have to or I have no one.”

    “Stop. Izzy, stop!” Annie grabbed her wrists and pushed her back. “We don’t have to do anything unless you tell them where to look!”

    Izzy glared at the floor, silent.

    “Would you tell them?”

    Silent, still.

    “You said you can’t lose me, too,” Annie argued, “but you would turn me in?”

    “Dammit, Annie.”

    “What?”

    Izzy balled her fists. “You dragged me into this and I will drag myself out alone if I have to. I don’t want to. I want you with me. You don’t owe Paul or Eddie anything after what they’ve done. They are murderers. Both of them killed a brother.”

    Annie bit into her cheek so hard it bled. Neither dared to speak.

    As the smell of damp wood filled the kitchen, they both knew it meant the storm wasn’t letting up. The earth would come undone in the unflowered land and threaten flash flooding.

    Their family cemetery had eroded some before in storms like this. The headstones remained but all the kids had to help spread out new dirt. The newer graves and the century-old graves looked the same.

    Annie strengthened her posture. “Go in to see Detective Creek tomorrow.”

    “To tell him what exactly?”

    “The truth. Whatever version of the truth keeps you safe if that’s what you want. I can’t let you dig up Paul but I won’t stop you from saving yourself.”

    “And you’ll just wait here ’til the cops come to take you both?” Izzy scanned the room for a better answer to the mess their brothers had made. “All that and they still take Paul?”

    Annie took inventory of Izzy’s face. They shared dark hair and dark eyes. Both had Paul’s aquiline nose and Eddie’s soft jawline. The four siblings shared similarities down to the marrow.

    Maybe the stubbornness is what placed the knife in her eldest brother’s hand and the gun in Eddie’s, but that didn’t matter.

    The only thing that mattered then was how much she loved all of them.

    “This is how you save yourself,” Annie said. “This is the deal you have to make.”

    Izzy took a moment, then nodded. She rushed to pull Annie to her chest and shook her with sobs.

    Coward, raced through Annie’s head. Coward. Coward. Coward.

###

    The cedar box Annie’s great-uncle was buried in had lost integrity over the decades. He was Paul’s namesake and they’d both died young. In the gray early morning, Annie’s boots threatened to crack through the coffin as she bent over.

    She hooked her calloused hands through seams of soft, rotted wood and pulled until slats snapped off. Her great-uncle’s empty eye sockets greeted her. She continued to rip out as much as she could, tossing the pieces aside until his chest was exposed.

    Annie stuck her foot into the side of the burial plot and pulled herself up. Her brother’s body rested on the hand-me-down quilt they’d both had growing up. He looked peaceful there.

His skin was beginning to slough off in places and insects had claimed some of his gut, but Annie imagined him asleep instead.

    Izzy would be up soon.

    Annie grabbed the edge of the quilt and pulled as hard as she could. 

The mud made it easier. Too quickly, Paul fell into the disturbed grave with her. He landed in her lap.

    Is there enough time to take him somewhere else? she thought as she adjusted his button-up. Somewhere so secret and hidden I could stay with him?

    But there was no chance she could get him back out of a hole so deep. And no way to bury herself here without a trace.

    She’d chosen this plot for a reason. The headstone would bear his name and he would not be alone.

    Annie moved Paul from her lap to the coffin. He’d become heavier with her tiring arms.

    As she positioned him higher up, she did her best to fix him into the shape of a sleeping child.

    His head rested on the shoulder of their great-uncle and his hand laid across the chest.

    “Look after him,” Annie told the man who’d come before them. “Help him through this.”

###

    Annie had done a good job covering them. She’d patted the dirt down to look like the rest of the rain-soaked cemetery and smoothed out the path Paul’s body made from the entrance. Her muscles ached but she had done it.

    Paul was safe. He’d gotten a better burial, body unmarred by the law.

    Clouds thinned until the sun broke through in scattered rays. The fields 

on either side of the county road lit up emerald and gold. She rolled her truck’s window down, taking in the muggy air with relieved lungs.

    The CD Eddie gave her one Christmas blinked its track number in green digital letters, waiting to be played. Annie leaned over and skipped to the final track. It’d been their favorite.

    She sang along to it, voice loud and raspy with exhaustion until the album looped to the first song. She didn’t feel like singing anymore.

    A coyote darted into the road in a gray blur. Annie hit the brakes hard and the truck lurched. The mangy thing couldn’t have cared less about its brush with death. It scampered off, disappearing into the overgrowth.

    Annie wished she could reach out and find her brother beside her. He’d always reached for her when he slammed his brakes. All three of them had, when she thought about it.

    Drive safe, her siblings told each other when the roads were bad. Drive like Annie’s in the passenger seat.

        She continued on down the road.

    As Annie drove by her home, she slowed. A handful of vehicles were there— cops, two vans, a useless ambulance backing out of the lot.

    She couldn’t spot Izzy but she couldn’t stop. She had to keep going.

    The far side of their property backed up to a smaller road hidden from the house by a ridge. Izzy called the rocky spine The Gates when they played princess games as kids. It kept their kingdom safe.

    Inside this kingdom, Annie drove until she knew her truck would become beached. She walked further to a spot where the sun shone down. It wasn’t much warmer but she was no longer cold, even lying on the wet grass.

    The wind picked up and rolled over the ridge. Annie strained her ears, hoping Izzy’s voice all those acres away might have traveled with it.

    Nothing.

    She thumbed away the dirt on her palm until Paul’s star was visible and held it to her

chest.

    Annie closed her eyes. She pictured her family waiting for her. She’d done right by all of them. She had. She knew she had.

    Does a family make a constellation in the end?

    It must.

    It has to.