Black Sunday

15

HARRY LOGAN DROVE HIS BATTERED pickup along the perimeter of United Coal Company’s heavy equipment compound on his hourly watchman’s round, looking down the rows of bulldozers and dirt buggies. He was supposed to watch for thieves and conservation-minded saboteurs, but none ever came. Nobody was within miles of the place. All was well, he could slip away.

He turned onto a dirt track that followed the giant scar the strip mine had gouged in the Pennsylvania hills, red dust rising behind the pickup. The scar was eight miles long and two miles wide, and it was growing longer as the great earthmov ing machines chewed down the hills. Twenty-four hours a day, six days a week, two of the largest earthmovers in the world slammed their maws against the hillsides like hyenas opening a belly. They stopped for nothing except the sabbath, the president of United Coal being a very religious man.

This was Sunday, when nothing but dustdevils moved on the raw wasteland. It was the day when Harry Logan made a little extra money. He was a scavenger and he worked in the condemned area that would shortly be uprooted by the mining. Each Sunday Logan left his post at the equipment compound and drove to the small abandoned village on a hill in the path of the earthmovers.

The peeling houses stood empty, smelling of urine left by the vandals who smashed the windows. The householders had taken everything they thought was valuable when they moved out, but their eye for salable scrap was not so keen as Logan’s. He was a natural scavenger. There was good lead to be found in the old-fashioned gutters and plumbing. Electrical switches could be pried from the walls and there were showerheads and copper wire. He sold these things to his son-in-law’s junkyard. Logan was anxious to make a good haul on this Sunday because only an eighth of a mile of woods remained between the village and the strip mine. In two weeks the village would be devoured.

He backed his truck into the garage beside a house. It was very quiet when he turned off the motor. There was only the wind, whistling through the scattered, windowless houses. Logan was loading a stack of Sheetrock into his truck when he heard the airplane.

The red four-seater Cessna made two low passes over the village. Looking downhill through the trees, Logan saw it settle toward the dirt road in the strip mine. If Logan had appreciated such things, he would have enjoyed watching a superb cross-wind landing; a sideslip, a flare-out, and the little plane rolling smoothly with dust blowing off to one side.

He scratched his head and his behind. Now what could they want? Company inspectors maybe. He could say he was checking the village. The plane had rolled out of sight behind a thick grove. Logan worked his way cautiously down through the trees. When he could see the airplane again it was empty, and the wheels were chocked. He heard voices through the trees to his left and walked quietly in that direction. A big empty barn was over there with a three-acre feedlot beside it. Logan knew very well that it contained nothing worth stealing. Watching from the edge of the woods, he could see two men and a woman in the feedlot, ankle deep in bright green winter wheat.

One of the men was tall and wore sunglasses and a ski jacket. The other was darker and had a mark on his face. The men unrolled a long piece of cord and measured a distance from the side of the barn out into the feedlot. The woman set up a surveyor’s transit and the tall man sighted through it while the dark one made marks on the barn wall with paint. The three gathered around a clipboard, gesturing with their arms.

Logan stepped out of the woods. The swarthy one saw him first and said something Logan couldn’t hear.

“What are you folks doing out here?”

“Hello,” the woman said, smiling.

“Have you got any company identification?”

“We’re not with the company,” the taller man said.

“This is private property. You’re not allowed out here. That’s what I’m out here for, to keep people off.”

“We just wanted to take a few pictures,” the tall man said.

“There ain’t nothing to take pictures of out here,” Logan said suspiciously.

“Oh, yes, there is,” the woman said. “Me.” She licked her lips.

“We’re shooting a cover for what you might call a private kind of magazine—you know, a daring sort of magazine?”

“You talking about a nudie book?”

“We prefer to call it a naturist publication,” the tall man said. “You can’t do this sort of thing just anywhere.”

“I might get arrested,” the woman said, laughing. She was a looker all right.

“It’s too cold for that stuff,” Logan said.

“We’re going to call the picture ‘Goose Bumps.’ ”

Meanwhile, the swarthy one was unrolling a spool of wire from the tripod to the trees.

“Don’t you fool with me now. I don’t know anything about this. The office never said anything to me about letting anybody in here. You’d better go on back where you came from.”

“Do you want to make fifty dollars helping us? It will only take a half hour and we’ll be gone,” the tall man said.

Logan considered a moment. “Well, I won’t take off my clothes.”

“You won’t have to. Is there anyone else around here?”

“No. Nobody for miles.”

“We’ll manage just fine then.” The man was holding out fifty dollars. “Does my hand offend you?”

“No, no.”

“Why are you staring at it then?” The woman shifted uncomfortably beside the tall man.

“I didn’t mean to,” Logan said. He could see his reflection in the man’s sunglasses.

“You two get the big camera from the plane, and this gentleman and I will get things ready.” The swarthy man and the woman disappeared into the woods.

“What’s your name?”

“Logan.”

“All right, Mr. Logan, if you’ll get a couple of boards and put them down in the grass right here at the center of the barn wall for the lady to stand on.”

“Do what?”

“Put some boards there, right in the middle. The ground is cold and we want her feet up out of the grass where they will show. Some people like feet.”

While Logan found the boards, the tall man removed the transit and fastened a peculiar-looking curved object to the tripod. He turned and called to Logan. “No, no. One board on top of the other.” He made a frame with his hands and squinted through it. “Now stand on it and let me see if it’s right. Hold it right there. Don’t move. Here they come with the viewfinder.” The tall man disappeared into the trees.

Logan reached up to scratch his head. For an instant his brain registered the blinding flash, but he never heard the roar. Twenty darts shredded him and the blast slammed him back against the barn wall.

Lander, Fasil, and Dahlia came running through the smoke.

“Ground meat,” Fasil said. They turned the slack body over and examined the back. Rapidly, they took pictures of the barn wall. It was bowed in and looked like a giant colander. Lander went inside the barn. Hundreds of small holes in the wall admitted points of light that freckled him as his camera clicked and clicked again.

“Very successful,” Fasil said.

They dragged the body into the barn, sloshed gasoline over it and over the dry wood around it, and poured a trail of gasoline out the door for twenty yards. The fire flashed inside and lit the pools of gas with a whump they felt on their faces.

Black smoke rose from the barn as the Cessna climbed out of sight.

“How did you find that place?” Fasil asked, leaning forward from the rear seat to be heard over the engine noise.

“I was hunting dynamite last summer,” Lander said.

“Do you think the authorities will come soon?”

“I doubt it. They blast there all the time.”