Read Campbell for Free Online Page A

or striking good looks. There was something about him that seemed to draw people in, but she couldn’t see it. Not after his tantrum earlier.  
    She heard the door to the trailer slam shut in the distance. Tal Bauman didn’t approach her but took a seat in the grass about fifty feet to her north. A moment later, he vanished into the dark as he lay down. They both lay there for a time, invisible to each other in the long grass.
    She didn’t appreciate the distraction.  
    “Did you really kill him?” he finally asked, after a half hour or so. “I heard you did, but I don’t know how anyone would be able to do that, and you would have been just a kid at the time—of what? Ten or eleven?”
    Lucy took a deep breath. She didn’t like remembering it, let alone answering pointless questions about that day. “I think you and your friends should leave in the morning.”
    “It was just a question.”
    “One I’m sure you already know the answer to. I’m sure you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think I was capable. You’d just send some piecemeal, underpaid army from Mexico up to try and wipe my little spot of earth off the map.” She sat up and looked at him, squinting in the dark as she tried to stop her emotions from getting the best of her. “How did you think this was going to go? I assume you’re the brains behind his operation, and not that jackass pocket dictator. Did you think I was going to throw my hands up and back away? Please, take back everything I negotiated. I didn’t want it anyway. Fuck morals, values, and ideals. Fuck what I’ve spent most of my life working for. Please, go back to taking advantage of kids that don’t know any better, and like I said, I’ll see you in ten years.”
    Tal sat up as well and peered in Lucy’s general direction. “I didn’t want to come here. I told him it was a stupid idea.”
    It was a stupid idea, but his answer surprised her. It wasn’t the kind of bravado she’d heard about West, or the kind he’d demonstrated in front of his boys, with his obnoxious posturing in their little boys’ club.  
    “I’m not forcing anyone to side with me. It’s been easy.”
    “Well when you offer people with nothing something new, of course it is.” Tal stretched his legs out in front of him. “I guess we’ll just have to come up with a better offer.”
    That was exactly what they needed to do, Lucy thought. But they wouldn’t. Couldn’t. It was too hard to change.  
    “I guess that’s exactly what you’ll have to do. I wouldn’t be gaining so much ground if you had a better plan.” She stood, and brushed the dirt from her knees. “There’s no negotiation. You’ll leave tomorrow.”
    “How are you going to keep it all, once you get it? Do you really think it’s just that easy?” Tal followed her lead and headed toward the old farmhouse. “Did you do it here? Is this always where you lived? Where you killed him?”
    Lucy stopped abruptly and turned around, her stomach a knot of anger and disgust at both his insinuation and his attempt to play with her emotions. “It’s just you and me out here. Who’s to say I won’t kill you?”
    “That would start a war. We’re guests in your house. You invited us, eventually. ” Tal stood his ground as she approached him. “It was just a simple question.”
    It wasn’t a simple question at all. It was a series of complicated questions, and the answers were hers. She clutched them tightly at the back of her mind, happy to let people make assumptions. Their assumptions had gone a long way in establishing her.  
    “You haven’t earned the right to ask me that.” She crossed her arms. “How are you going to hold your world? What have you done to earn it?”
    Tal looked at her, and in that moment, he knew that things were changing, and that he didn’t have answers to her questions. Not good ones.
    “We gave them boundaries and laws when they needed them. We made jobs. We entertained them. We protected