Dust girl

19

“I am gonna skin that boy alive!” Shimmy’s anger tumbled over me like wind in a dust storm.

“It’s not that bad,” I whispered. But it was. My knees were shaking so much I had to sit down on the edge of my bed. Jack was gone. I wanted to run back outside hollering for him, like he might just be hiding in one of the other cabins, or on his way to the showers. But I knew he wasn’t there. He’d lit out and left me, and taken the car with him. I’d thought he was my friend. I’d thought… I’d thought all kinds of things, and now they were all gone too.

“The motel owner’s got a truck. I saw it,” I said, trying to sound like it was the missing car that was important, not the fact that Jack took it. Not that Jack left me. Us. “We can ask him to give us a lift to town…”

“And tell him what?” Shimmy demanded. “We spun him a story about you two being in my mammy-ass charge. How’s that gonna fit with that boy running off and stealing the car? Do you know how much glamour it’ll take to get him to believe something else? We’ll have the whole Shining Court on us like flies on sugar!”

I swallowed and clenched my shaking hands over my shaking knees. “I don’t understand. You weren’t worried yesterday…”

“Yesterday we were in a car. Haven’t you noticed by now? Iron and steel raise Cain with magic. I just had to concentrate on keeping us going in the right direction, and all that bright metal kept us safe and hid. Just one more car in the dust. Now they’re gonna have a clear line of sight…” Shimmy’s anger wavered, and for a minute, I saw her fear. I wanted the anger back right away.

“What about Shake?” I asked desperately. “Couldn’t you call him, or send him a telegram or something? He’d help, wouldn’t he…?”

She just looked at me like she couldn’t believe I’d say something so dumb. “Shake’s not anywhere a phone call’s gonna find him. He’s… he’s gone on ahead.” Shimmy slumped down on the bed and smoothed her hair back. “Go get your breakfast. I gotta think.”

I nodded and left her there, closing the door softly behind me.

The dining hall was a single-story building, painted white to match the cabins. It had one long table down the middle, covered by a faded red-and-white-checked cloth. A pair of traveling men sat at the near end, and an old couple at the far. There was no mirror. I couldn’t see what I looked like to them. I sat right in the middle and tried to make myself as small as possible.

A stout woman with stringy gray hair straggling down around her ears brought out big bowls of Cream of Wheat and a platter of ham slices. There was a jug of molasses and another of milk. I tried to eat, but I could only choke down a few spoonfuls of the hot cereal. Shimmy’s anger still crawled across my skin, and that wasn’t as bad as the big hole inside me from where Jack had pulled up stakes.

Maybe he isn’t really gone. I used the fork to pick my ham slice into little pink bits. Maybe he just ran into town to check out where we were headed, or hock his suitcase to buy me and him those railroad tickets. Maybe he’s on his way back right now. I’ll walk out of here and he’ll be driving up, and he’ll get out of the car and I’ll feel bad for having not trusted him again…

Of course, when I walked out, the parking spot under the dead live oaks was empty of everything but tire tracks. But as I stood there trying to stop my chin from trembling, I heard the rumble of a car motor coming up behind me.

Jack!

Shimmy’s big silver Packard turned into the motor court, and sure enough, there was Jack behind the wheel. He braked and I ran up to the passenger side to yank the door open.

“Where in the world…?”

My question died an early death, because Bull Morgan was sitting up in the backseat. His revolver was out of its holster and aimed right at the base of Jack’s neck. His swollen thumb held the hammer cocked back.

“Call that gal you made off with.” Morgan’s toothpick bobbled with each word. A smell rose up when he spoke, like old meat left out for the dogs. His cheeks sagged. The skin on his fat hands sagged. Runnels of damp trickled down his face like he was sweating hard, and his lips still had that blue tint, like he was freezing cold. “Get her out here now, or I’ll shoot this one dead.”

Jack didn’t look around. He sat there, breathing hard from the fear, staring straight ahead. His hands gripped the steering wheel, and he tried to lean forward, away from Morgan’s gun.

The worst part was there was nothing I could do except what I was told.

“Shimmy!” I shouted. “Shimmy! Come out here!”

Look out the window first, I prayed. Please, look out first to see what’s happening. But no such luck. The cabin door squeaked open right away.

“What on earth are you hollerin’ about…?” I didn’t need to look behind me to know she’d stopped dead in her tracks.

“Get in, both of ya,” Morgan growled. “Right up front next to your boy here, where I can keep an eye on all of ya.”

I looked to Shimmy. Her eyes burned bright with anger, but she dropped no hint that I should do anything but follow Morgan’s orders. So I slid into the car beside Jack, and Shimmy climbed in beside me. She sat up poker-straight, both her hands clasped around her white beaded bag. I hadn’t seen it in her hand when she came out of the cabin. Hope slid in under the fear. Shimmy still had her magic and, unlike me, she knew how to use it.

“Drive,” Morgan snapped.

Jack shifted the car into reverse and swung it around, carrying us all back toward the highway. I thought that when the motel man found our empty cabins, he’d congratulate himself for making guests pay in advance. I wondered if he’d find the suitcases, or if they’d turn into something else without Shimmy there, like how the Hoppers’ fifty-dollar bill had become a dried leaf.

Morgan ordered Jack to head west. Jack did as he was told. He glanced at me, and his mouth moved. I thought he was saying Sorry.

“What happened?” I whispered.

Jack made a strangled noise, and Bull Morgan chuckled. “Oh, you go on and tell her, boy.” He prodded the revolver’s barrel into Jack’s shoulder, but before Jack had a chance to draw a breath, Morgan just kept on talking. “The local sheriff’s a good man. A righteous man. When I explained to him we had a car thief on the road, he helped me set up the roadblock, easy as that. This one thought he could run it through, but he plowed into the drift instead.”

While Morgan talked, Shimmy started to hum, low and quiet, a tiny trickle of sound. Morgan swung his arm over to press the revolver barrel right against her scalp. “You keep quiet, gal, or I’ll blow your brains out all over this nice upholstery. You understand me?”

“Oh, yes, sir.” Shimmy’s words cut like broken glass. “Yes, I surely do understand that.”

I knotted my fists over my thighs. There had to be something I could do. We couldn’t be just sitting here, letting Morgan take us to… to… them. I thought about the Trixies and the Hoppers. I didn’t want to know what else waited out there.

Maybe I could get Jack and Shimmy out. If we split up, whoever chased us would come after me. Probably. Maybe then I could work up a plan.

“What do you want with them?” I said out loud. “I’m the one folks are after.”

“That is true.” Morgan chomped a few extra times on his toothpick. “But you might not behave so nice if you ain’t got your mammy here to make you mind. Or your little boyfriend.” He brought the gun back around so it rested under Jack’s right ear. Jack winced, and the car wobbled.

“Careful there, Jew boy,” Morgan snarled. “You keep it on the road, or my hand might just slip.”

Jack’s jaw clenched, and I felt the anger flash through him. He wanted to do something, wanted me to do something. He was wishing for it, wishing hard. But I glanced at Shimmy, and she shook her head.

“That’s better.” Morgan grinned. Blood speckled his blue lips.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Oh, there’s plans for you, girlie. You’re gonna be took care of good and proper, you are.”

My heart turned upside down and tried to burrow itself behind my stomach, which was already working up a good sick from the fear and the stink.

“Why are you doing this?” Jack asked suddenly. “Why not just shoot us?”

I knew what he was trying to do. He was trying to get Morgan talking so maybe he’d let slip something we could use. But still, that was not the kind of thing you wanted to hear from your only friend, especially after he’d run out on you and gotten himself kidnapped by a dead man.

“Now, there’s a thought,” sneered Morgan, and the revolver swung toward me. “What do you say, girlie? Should I just shoot you?”

A gun is a terrible thing. It’s a dark hole pointed at you, and that hole swallows up everything else in the world, your friends, your nerve, until there’s nothing but you and what’s waiting in that little round space of dark.

“I asked you a question, girlie,” wheezed Morgan. “Should I shoot you?”

“No, sir,” I whispered.

“No, sir.” Morgan grinned. His teeth were black with blood and dirt. “Didn’t think so, somehow. You just keep your fine ideas to yourself, boy, and keep drivin’.”

Jack kept driving.

“Pull over here,” Morgan ordered.

We’d been on the road about an hour. Morgan had made Jack turn off the main highway a while back, sending us bumping slowly over dirt roads between dunes and what was left of old farm shacks. Where he ordered Jack to stop was the edge of what had been a cornfield. Rows of broken brown stalks still rattled in the wind, their bases all tangled up with the remains of grass stems and tumbleweeds. No one had cut down last year’s plants, let alone tried to plow the ground to hold the blow dirt, or attempted to sow a crop for this year. To the north I could just see a hogback ridge curving above those chattering, whispering cornstalks. An old gray house stood sentinel on the ridgetop, the light glittering on its broken windows. Just another abandoned farm in the middle of the Dust Bowl, and we were in the middle of it with a dead railroad bull.

Morgan marched us straight into that tall, dead corn until I lost sight of the ridge and the house and the road. The only thing that told me we were still headed south was the sun over our shoulders. I thought maybe now I could cut and run. I told myself that Morgan wouldn’t really shoot Jack or Shimmy. I was the one he wanted. He’d follow me, and I was smaller and faster than him. The other two could run away on their own.

Except he might just shoot them before he came looking for me. Or he might shoot me in the back while I was running. I saw the black hole of the barrel pointing at my face again, and a wave of weakness ran down my spine.

We broke through into a little clearing in the corn, and Morgan ordered us to stop. There was no sound except the rattle of the dead and broken stalks. I tried to remember how to pray. Jack flexed his hands, like he was gauging whether he could knock Morgan down before the bull got a shot off.

Shimmy, though, Shimmy had her nose up in the air, like she was trying to catch a whiff of something on the wind.

“What’s out there?” she murmured. “What is that?”

Morgan just grinned and held the gun steady in his saggy gray hand.

I twisted my head around, trying to figure out what Shimmy was talking about. To the north, where that ridge had curved up, I saw smoke rising. No, not smoke. I squinted. It was dust. But not like a dust storm. It was a long, puffy gray cloud lifting up from the ground, like something was moving closer. Something big.

With the dust cloud, a jangling, clanging noise came drifting down over the corn’s endless chatter, the sound of dozens of pieces of metal being slammed together.

The corn in front of us rustled and bent. A rabbit raced by so fast it was nothing but a streak of brown and white. It was quickly followed by another, and a third. All of them tore through the corn in the mad dash that means the critter is afraid for its life.

The banging got louder. The corn shifted and swayed, and more rabbits-six, eight, a dozen-sped past us. One bounded right over my shoe tops, like it didn’t even notice a human was standing there. It was just trying to get away from whatever was coming up, making all that noise.

Then I knew. “It’s a rabbit drive.”

Shimmy’s eyes went wide. “Have mercy.”

“What?” croaked Jack. “What’s a rabbit drive?”

Morgan grinned his rotting grin and gestured with the revolver barrel, telling me to go ahead.

“Since the dust came, there’s no grass for the rabbits to eat, so they eat the crops, when there are crops,” I told Jack. My voice had gone hoarse, and I couldn’t even find the breath to clear my throat. “So in some places folks round up all the rabbits and kill ’em. They get in a long line and they walk in the same direction, making a big noise with pots and pans, and that scares the rabbits and they run… but there’s a big pen set up in front of them and the drovers herd ’em in and the people waiting… they shoot ’em or club ’em to death…” My voice faltered. The banging was getting louder. That’d be the drovers, banging on their pans as they marched through the old, dead corn. The rabbits would run from the noise and the line of people. The people would keep moving forward, herding the rabbits toward the pen. Others would be waiting behind that pen with shotguns and clubs. The first rabbits would run into the pen and be trapped. But the other rabbits would keep running in until they all piled up, clawing each other to try to get over the edge of that big pen, and they’d just be clubbed back down…

“They shoot some on the way in, if they’s too slow.” Morgan straightened his arm to level the revolver at us.

Shimmy grabbed my wrist, backing away and pulling me with her.

“No,” whispered Jack. “The people won’t hurt us. Not if they’re just after the rabbits…”

“There’s magic happening here,” snapped Shimmy. “You think we’re gonna look like people to whoever’s coming?”

“If I was you, I’d run.” Morgan cocked the revolver’s hammer back another notch.

We ran.