by Libba Bray
“Ling?” Jericho prompted. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes.” Ling stared out the window at the night coming toward them like a flock of angry birds. “We got the idea from him. From the King of Crows.”
THE ENGINE OF THE NATION
The Timmonses’ shantyboat had made it on the Mississippi as far as the Arkansas-Tennessee border. From there, the family was heading north and east, toward St. Louis first and possibly on to Chicago. Memphis, Henry, and Bill needed to head west, to Nebraska and Bountiful. Moses and Tobias threw their arms around Memphis and Henry for tearful good-byes and gave Bill’s hand a solid shake.
Memphis crouched down to look the boys in the eyes. “You remember what I told you about telling your stories, won’t you?”
They nodded.
“All right, then.”
“Will we see you again?” Moses asked.
“I surely hope so,” Memphis said.
The three men hopped a freight train headed to Oklahoma. Through the spaces between the slats, they watched the country run past like a picture show. There was so much country, and it was all so different. You could practically feel the young nation searching for itself, Memphis thought: In the small towns. The steel bridges spanning the rivers. The railroads stretching out and laying claim to more and more land. The cowboys riding high in the saddle. The reservations pushed to the edges. The triangular oil derricks looming over the distance, great wooden giants announcing themselves with a breath of fire and smoke. The train ticked across a stretch of track slowly enough for Memphis to watch as two men worked to break a horse. They held fast to ropes looped around the wild thing’s neck. It bucked and struggled and kicked, keeping up the fight. Memphis wrote it all down.
They hopped off the train and slept for a night near tribal lands. Henry’s dream walks were filled with the land’s memories. Bullets passed through the air, spinning circles into the ghostly forms of murdered Osage, then pierced the ground, which bled oil from its wounds. When Henry woke, just before dawn, he could swear he saw the faint figure of a man cradling a handful of earth like a newborn and telling it the history so it would never forget. The sun pierced him through with holes till he was filled with light and absorbed into the day.
The Diviners walked under sun, through rain, a diaspora of dust carried upon their soles. They made it to the thriving boomtown of Borger, Texas. Its unpaved streets were congested with cars coated in panhandle mud and parked every which way. Bill didn’t know how anybody could travel on streets so crowded with cars. The clang-and-wheeze of the pumps hung in the air, and for a moment, Henry thought of the Eye’s incessant whine. Everywhere were men burning with the fuel of dreams and get-rich-quick schemes.
“Oil, folks! That’s what runs the engines of the nation—oil!” a prospector called from a soapbox. “Three months ago, this town had four hundred people and some tumbleweeds. Now? Why, there’s thirty thousand here, all of ’em looking to get rich quick. Black gold!”
Though he’d protested mightily, Bessie Timmons had pressed five dollars into Memphis’s hand back in Arkansas—“We got to look out for each other, and that’s that.” They used it now to buy coffee and chicken from a stall, listening to the gossip in line:
“Heard about these Diviners they’re searching for?”
“Yessir. Worth about five thousand clams apiece, they say.”
“Gotta catch ’em alive, though.”
“Aw, now, where’s the sport in that?”
“I heard they can find oil by smell.”
“And take out telephone lines and radio signals if’n they’ve a mind to.”
“That ain’t nothing. I heard they can kill ya just by looking at ya!”
This was how information spread, person to person, rumor to rumor, picking up embellishment, fear, and justification along the way, carrying a little something from each of its tellers until it had a life of its own. Until it became either sickness or legend.
“Hell, I say let ’em alone. If they snaked one over on the gum’ment boys, then they’re proper outlaws, like Frank and Jesse James!”
“You hear that? We’re outlaws,” Henry whispered as they walked away, heads kept low.
“Don’t wanna be an outlaw,” Memphis said. He’d thought a lot about the thin line between villains and heroes, the way the needle moved back and forth, sewing between those two things till they were forever linked. He only wanted to be free to be himself, whatever that was, and to love Theta. He wanted to be reunited with his brother. And he wanted to take down the King of Crows.
There was other gossip in town.
“You hear about that funny business out in New Mexico?”
“How’s that?”
“Oh, some kinda lightning storm, real odd-like. Was a fella passing through said he saw it. Said it done tore up the whole sky near where the oil comp’nies been drilling. Said it was like the sky had caught fire, like it might rip in two. And there was ghosts streaming toward it.”
“Ghosts?”
“Yes, sir. Ghosts. Just drawn to it like bees to honey.”
“Aw, hell. That fool was prob’ly drunk. Don’t pay it no mind.”
“Well. That’s what he said, anyway.”
Bill swiped a newspaper from a bench, and they pored over its pages. The manhunt was still on. And there were rumors that Jake Marlowe was putting the finishing touches on a machine that would change everything. ANOTHER AMERICAN REVOLUTION! the headline promised.
“We’ve got to get to Bountiful,” Henry said.
“How?” Memphis asked.
Henry looked out at the sea of automobiles. “I’ve got an idea.”
In the lobby of a small hotel, Henry found a telephone booth. He placed a collect call to David. He felt lousy about it, but it was the only way.
“Whom shall I say is calling, sir?” the operator asked.
“Mr. Henry.”
The operator placed the call. In a moment, David’s voice came over the line, all the way from New York, and Henry hadn’t realized how desperately he’d needed to hear it until now. It was as if he’d been carrying a heavy load for miles and had only just put it down.
“Mister Henry?”
Henry wanted to rush in. To say everything. To profess his love in a hundred ways. But anybody could be listening. The operator, the folks just outside the booth. Privacy was a myth. And there was a bounty, if not on his head, then on the heads of his friends.
“Is this Mr. David Cohn? I have a message to relay to him from a Miss Vanessi,” Henry said, using their private code name, an old joke.
“Ah, yes. I was very worried about Miss Vanessi. I hoped she hadn’t fallen into the shadows, or something worse.”
“Not yet. Though she has had her share of frightening adventures during her travels. It seems that Miss Vanessi is in need of a small transfer of funds. In particular, the money marked ‘piano fund.’ She wondered if you might be able to send it to her Western Union? The office is in Borger, Texas.” Henry gave the information.
“My. Miss Vanessi sure does get around,” David said, writing down Henry’s instructions.
“She’s a real swell, that girl. Loves the grit of the land beneath her nails.”
“Does she?”
“No. Not one bit. But here she is.”
“I’ll see to that wire immediately,” David promised.
“She thanks you, sir. And she hopes that you’re keeping your wits about you.”
“I am keeping alert, yes.”
“Good. Good. Miss Vanessi would be bereft if harm were to come to you. As a matter of fact, she wanted me to express to you how very much she misses you, and to let you know that the thought of seeing you once more keeps her from giving up when all seems lost.”
David’s voice was full of emotion. “Well. Please do let Miss Vanessi know that I think of her and only her night and day.”
“I’m sure she knows and feels likewise, though she might not be able to tell you so very
often given the difficulty of her present circumstances. Speaking of, what is the news in New York these days?”
“Oh, you know, this and that. I did read that this nosy reporter, Mr. Wood-something-or-other, has been printing the most inflammatory articles about Fitter Families tents being fronts for some devious eugenics program responsible for the mysterious disappearance of several Diviners. He’s also been publishing poems from some outfit named the Voice of Tomorrow. Oh, and there’s been quite a lot of rain.”
“Ah, rain in New York. Unavoidable. I do thank you for the weather report.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Henry gripped the receiver to his ear, loath to let go. “Well. This must be costing you a small fortune, sir.”
“I’ll rob a bank.”
“No need. Miss Vanessi refuses to marry a pauper.”
“Tell Miss Vanessi ‘I do.’”
“I will tell her, sir. I most certainly will tell her.”
By the next afternoon, Henry had the money he’d asked for, along with fifty dollars more that David had thrown in from his own pocket. Henry held the bills to his chest as if they were David himself.
“We have enough to buy a car now,” Henry announced.
They found someone eager to sell a 1925 Model T Roadster Pickup, and Henry arranged to meet the seller—a heavyset, balding man whose nose was peeling from a terrible sunburn—in front of Western Union.
“She’s a real beaut,” the man said in a thick drawl.
Henry kicked the tires and frowned slightly. “I’d be willing to take this one off your hands for fifty dollars.”
“Now, see here! This cost me nearly two-hun’erd eighty-five new!”
“Oh, come now. That’s nothing now that you’re rolling in oil money. Besides, an important fella like you can’t be seen driving this old heap,” Henry said.
The man removed his fedora to scratch his head. “I’ll let her go for one-fifty.”
“Eighty-five.”
“Ninety-five!”
“Sold!”
“I would’ve gone as high as a hundred twenty,” Henry told Memphis and Bill after the sale was final. “But now we’ve got twenty-five dollars left over. That should see us to Nebraska, with a motel room to boot.”
The ground gave a deep rumble. Whoops and hollers erupted in the fields.
“What is it?” Memphis asked.
“The future,” a man answered.
A derrick had hit its payload. The earth belched up its hidden riches a hundred feet into the air, blocking the blue sky. New crude showered down like rain on the rejoicing roughnecks who bathed in it, smearing one another’s faces with its promise.
Memphis’s pen hovered above the page in his notebook. And then he wrote.
America, America, God shed his grace on thee.
A hundred feet high and climbing, a geysering
A misering of liberty
Deep in the soil,
the oil of us
lies
blood of the nation, black as
night
over the winter prairies and small towns
black as silt
along the riverbanks
Wade in the water
Wade in the water, people, black
As me.
Oh, my brothers,
And where is this crown for the good
of our brotherhood
For what is brotherhood
From sea to shining, when will you see?
Which America will it be?
Memphis mailed the poem to Woody.
Then he wrote out three more copies and left them around town for anyone who had a mind to listen.
WHERE WE WILL MEET
Dreams are gateways to the other worlds.
Worlds we perceive just out of sight, in a bar of music or a stranger’s face.
Dreams are where daring is born. “However did you get the courage to do that?” “Why, it came to me in a dream.…”
Dreams are the shadow self let loose. You could murder in a dream, just pick up an ax and split anyone you like right through the skull, then rise the next day, safe in your bed, with nothing more than a vague feeling of slight unease that’s gone—poof!—the minute you walk out your door. Dreams take the unconscious desires you let loose inside their houses off to the cleaners so you don’t have to see the mess.
Dreams are where we will meet again. In love. In yearning. In fear.
Dreams, like countries, are ideas; all reality gestates first inside a dream.
Dreams are information for those who will read their tea leaves come morning. They are tiny little maps of the soul. Of every secret we push aside while we are awake. Of each tiny red-balloon hope whose dangling string we might reach for. Dreams connect us to every living thing, from the tiniest pea shoot to the rocks hurtling through space.
Dreams are miracles.
Dreams are portents.
Dreams know you better than you know yourself. They know everything.
Pay attention.
Henry DuBois IV walked through this dream’s mirrored rooms, passing every one of his selves but not really seeing, and when he opened the door at the end of that long glass hallway, there was a giant map in front of him. The map took up the whole of the sky. Where there might be constellations there were road lines and tiny black dots of towns, squiggly red river markers and embossed mountain ranges. A globe come to life all around him. But what seemed static at first was not; every bit of the map moved just slightly as Henry looked at it, till it seemed he was seeing the echoes of the land it was before and possibly the direction it would take in the future. Dreams are not static. Neither are maps. Listen, this map seemed to whisper. All of time and space exists at once. Dimensions fold upon themselves. Borders are arbitrary. Empires rise and fall. Towns come, towns go. The river is never the same from second to second. Ephemeral—great word, look it up.
“Where’s Ling?” Henry said, ignoring the voice.
“Henry!” Just like that, it was Ling Chan calling his name. They’d found each other. Dreams let that happen sometimes.
“Ling! Ling!” Henry waved his arms wildly.
She ran to him, and he wrapped her in a big hug until she broke away, embarrassed, saying, “That’s enough.”
Henry grinned. Ling was still Ling. “How are you? Where are you?” He was overjoyed to see her again.
“I’m still with Alma and Jericho. We’ve been everywhere, Henry—Philadelphia, Baltimore, and about twenty little towns in between. And Henry, I saw Chicago! Al Capone came to the show. Have you ever been to Chicago?”
“No.”
“Well, their pizza is just awful. Too thick—like a sandwich. Now we’re in Missouri. There’s nothing good to eat. So much mayonnaise.” Ling curled her lip in distaste. “I miss the soup dumplings at the Tea House.”
Henry laughed. God, he was glad to see her.
“How are you?” she asked.
Henry sobered quickly. “We’ve seen some things, too, Ling. Some terrible things.”
“Ghosts?”
“Not just ghosts,” Henry said, leaving it at that for now. Ling was here. He was so grateful. He tipped his head back to look at the map. “Whose dream do you suppose brought us here?”
“Pins. Just like the one Sam and I found.” Evie was in the dream now. It was a big dream, big enough for everybody. She was staring at the map, at a thumbtack that had appeared right in the center.
“Evie,” Henry said. “Hey, darlin’.” He knew she was sleeping and wasn’t aware of him, but oh, how he’d missed her. Isaiah arrived and stood next to Evie. His eyes were glazed. One by one, the Diviners appeared, like the dream was birthing them. And still, there was room.
“Why are we here?” Evie asked.
Ling pointed to the center of the map. “What is that?”
There was a pinprick red dot. A town. But the dot was growing larger. Larger still. Its borders elongated until Mabel Rose stood against the
unfurled map. She wore the yellow dress she’d been buried in, the one Evie had bought for her. The map moved across Mabel’s face like a picture show. Her face was electric with tiny lines, as if she were a destination herself.
Even in sleep, the sight of Mabel tugged at everyone. Henry could see Evie breathing faster. Henry felt it, too. He missed her. But was she just a figment created from their collective yearning? Or was she something more?
“Ling, is she… real?” Henry asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t tell.”
Mabel held something tightly in her hand. A glow seeped out between her clenched fingers. She opened them and the glow flew up and pinned itself to the map. There was a name printed there.
“‘Gideon, Kansas,’” Ling read aloud.
“That is where you will understand,” Mabel said. “That is where we will meet.”
Vines grew up from the ground and wound around Mabel’s legs and arms, crisscrossing rapidly until she was consumed by them, eaten up by the map of the earth.
Gideon, Kansas. The letters grew larger. The glow surrounding them was so bright that Henry had to put up a hand to block it. Its brightness was an assault.
“Stop!” Henry shouted.
He was pulled from the dream state with a sudden violence that left his body hurting and shaking with chills. Once again, he hadn’t been able to say good-bye to Ling.
In the neighboring bed at their cheap motel in Texas, Memphis woke, trembling. “I dreamed about Mabel,” he said.
“M-me, t-too,” Henry said, fighting the effects. Memphis reached over and lay a hand on Henry’s arm, and in a moment, he was better. “I was dream walking. Ling was there. Memphis, we were all there. We were all together in that dream.”
“That has to mean something, doesn’t it?” Memphis asked.
Dreams are miracles. Dreams are portents. Where had Henry heard that?
“Yeah. Yeah,” Henry said, thinking of that bright glow. “I think it means we’re going to Kansas.”
In her bed on board the rolling circus train, Theta woke with a start. Dawn showed at the window. They’d reach their next destination soon. Beside her, Evie tossed and turned, moaning: “Don’t go, Mabesie.…”