Cloudmaker

by Malcolm Brooks

  “Okay,” she told him. “That’s an okay deal.”

  “Pinkie swear?”

  She laughed but felt him shift, saw the dark lift of his hand in the air above her. She reached up and their fingers fumbled around a bit together before she found his own frailest digit. They hooked and held, and to her surprise, a pang came to her eyes. She blinked in the dark, felt him relax. She didn’t want to let him go.

  “I’m worried about Yak,” she said. “I didn’t mean to leave him holding the bag while I ran off and hid like an ostrich.”

  “He doesn’t think that, but he ain’t himself, either. I know he’s scraping his brain trying to figure what you would do if you were there.”

  “Oh, Lord, no. I don’t have the foggiest. What do you think drove me out here to begin with?”

  “People tend to figure you have the answers, though. It’s easy to think of you that way.”

  “You aren’t the first to tell me that,” she admitted. “It’s an act, honey. More or less.” The way a person appeared, against the way she actually felt. Calm and confident to the world, panicking on a high-wire in her head.

  He got that low, soft tone to his voice, and it went right through her the way it always did. “Like you said about my ma earlier. Wearing a mask.”

  She thought again of McKee, how heavy a cross he lugged beneath that jocular, flippant exterior. If she hadn’t stroked and seduced and whispered her way in, if she hadn’t jimmied the doorway to his fractured past, even she wouldn’t have a clue.

  She considered herself in light of McKee. She had a reputation for a hard shell and a sharp stinger, it was true. But as Yak himself would no doubt attest, and maybe Houston, too, she also had a hell of a lot of love.

  She reached over and took his whole hand this time. “We all put on masks, I guess. And sometimes they fall off. There’s a lot of that going around, these days.”

  They went quiet in the glittering chill, holding hands and hoping for a meteor. None other appeared. “Think you’ll head back?”

  She didn’t have a clear answer. Flashes of uncertainty or not, she hadn’t been to McKee’s place in weeks, and she was as conscious of it in the moment as though the low drone of a fan had suddenly vanished. Awareness by absence. She had an ache for the flow of Highlander at her lips, across her hungry tongue.

  Other things, too, of course. She knew her mind had ricocheted into the dire ether, and now the warmth of her cousin’s hand felt like a reach back for earth. A couple of her fingers had threaded through his, almost of their own volition.

  She said, “I know I need to. I’m . . . worried about your mother, though. Sort of pulled in two directions. Give me another day or two to work this out. Get my mask tied on again.”

  “I’m glad you live here, Annie,” he told her, a little later. “I know it ain’t a big fast place like Los Angeles, but still. I’m not going to like it when you leave.”

  “Hush,” she whispered. “Just hold my hand for one more meteor. I’m almost too cold to stay out here now.”

  They lay there until their meteor appeared and kept where they were a while longer. With the moon like a dim bulb over the black rim of the plains and not a single electric light anywhere, the wide band of the Milky Way tapered like some great cosmic roadway, traveling who knew where.

  The world was cold around her here, but unimaginably so out there. As she stared into all that vastness, with its twinkling pinpricks and wide, solid band, she felt the actual physical terror of spiraling out of control the way she had in her dream, only upward, into that great unknown, a free fall into some mystery eternity, and the thing holding her down now wasn’t gravity but the tight comfort of his grip. Maybe, she thought, it really was better never to leave what you already knew to begin with. Easier, anyway.

  “What do you think’s out there? Past all those crazy lights?”

  “More of the same,” he said. “For a long, long way. Beyond that? Who knows?”

  Venturi

  Now I’m a practical man. I don’t know mathematics much—enough to figure out the major loadings, wing areas, and so on, but as far as saying “hocus pocus” to a Reynolds number and having a wing coefficient pop out at me, I’ll have to excuse myself.

  —B. H. Pietenpol, 1932 Flying and Glider Manual

  They were in the fabrication bay, the discarded Hoover vacuum torn down and a two-year-old edition of Automobile Trade Journal splayed open to a long article on the supercharged Auburn Speedster.

  “A hundred and sixty horses,” said Huck. “Stock. One hundo an hour, right from the factory. Guaranteed.”

  “It’s an amazing age, Colonel. I mean, think of it.” McKee made a wide sweep at what was strewn across the bench. “You’re about to possess the world’s first flying vacuum cleaner.”

  “You think this’ll work, though?”

  “I don’t see why not.” He tapped the open journal. One full page bore the heading explaining the auburn super-charger. A helpful diagram illustrated the car’s whiz-bang induction system. “Just a lucky thing they were so generous with the company secrets.”

  If the goons had phoned again, Huck wasn’t aware of it. McKee remained tight-lipped, other than to say he’d done what he could and for Huck to keep his fingers crossed they’d seen the last of them. He did seem more of his old self again, or at least what Annelise might describe as cautiously optimistic, if she’d ever commit to coming back home. Two more nights had passed and she was still out there, which was maybe another reason McKee seemed open to distraction.

  They went up Coal Camp Road, pulled the front cowling from around the motor. With a couple of worked-up brackets, the blower housing could install beneath the engine and still fit inside the existing compartment.

  “What do you figure you’ll need for impeller speed?”

  He had to admit he hadn’t gotten that far.

  McKee was on his haunches with a zigzag rule, measuring from the water pump pulley. “Okay, but it’s critical. Not only to get the thing up to pressure, but we also need to know how to size the pulleys. You usually cruise this thing at what, sixteen hundred?”

  Huck was already thinking. “Yeah, that’s what Mr. Pietenpol arrived at. Shoot. I don’t even know how fast the impeller turns when it’s just running a vacuum cleaner. Maybe it ain’t even strong enough to adapt.”

  When he’d encountered that offhand line about a supercharger in William Faulkner’s whacky barnstorming book, a dim bulb in his brain pulsed instantly brighter. He already knew about the Venturi effect, had witnessed the phenomenon firsthand. He’d followed deer tracks up the funnel of a steep draw one day last hunting season and was amazed at the way the lowland breeze siphoned into an all-out scream when he reached the top. Wasn’t something along that line what they were trying to mimic now?

  Maybe progress simply boiled down to harnessing what God or nature or both had put into play, as the permanent dictates of the way the world worked. The keystone in the radius of a Roman bridge, say—wasn’t that gravity, manipulated to defeat gravity? Watermills, windmills. Seizing the power of running water or the force of funneling air. But dreaming up the idea was the easy part.

  He hated to say it, but he knew it was the truth. “Guess I should’ve figured there’d be some trial and error here.”

  “Patience is a blah blah blah, and if at first you don’t succeed, blah blah again.” McKee clamped one eye shut and looked at him with the other. “Get used to it, Huckleberry.”

  McKee had a friend in Butte with an actual college engineering degree. An hour on the telephone that evening got him some of what they needed, including the number for an honest-to-God professor of mechanical science at the state school in Bozeman. He put a call through first thing in the morning, left the shop number with a secretary and got a ring back that afternoon while Huck was out on a service call with Pop.

  Mc
Kee thrust a page of tidy but clearly furious notes at him when they came in, all numbers and figures and formulas.

  “Voilà.” He had his welding goggles shoved up on his forehead. “The good professor came through. He’s put a couple of manuals in the mail, but I think we can pretty well figure it from what I’ve got here.”

  Huck tried to make sense of McKee’s notes. “Whoa. Where’s my Tom Swift secret decoder. Can you actually understand that?”

  Pop fished out his eyeglasses and took a look. “Nope. I did graduate from the third grade, though.”

  “I have a general idea, but it hardly matters. The good doc basically worked up the specs while I had him on the phone.” He went sidelong to Huck. “I think he’s hoping to recruit you to the college engineering department. He was pretty impressed that a high school freshman could build an airplane in the first place, let alone think to hop it up with a vacuum cleaner.”

  Huck felt himself redden. “He really say that?”

  “More or less. He also said your idea stands a pretty good chance of doing what you want it to. But you’ve got to get the impeller turning at about thirteen grand.”

  Huck felt his eyes widen.

  “Yes, you heard that correctly. So we will be mounting it on ball bearings. In the meantime, what do you know about sand casting?”

  Huck shrugged. “I’ve read some articles, know what it is.”

  “I’ve done it. Been a few years,” said Pop. He took his specs back off, fished his white hanky from his shirt pocket and wiped a lens. “There’s a pretty good clay bank out at the ranch.”

  They band-sawed the patterns out of plyboard and built up a series of wooden flask boxes to hold the molds. Huck was amazed yet again at how quickly and cleanly McKee could work, which he guessed was the reason Pop had hired him in the first place. The three of them worked through the long northern light of evening. By full dark they had the wooden models for three pulleys cut out and glued up and ready for sand.

  In the morning Pop rousted him early. Huck had reclaimed the bedroom only a couple of nights earlier, with Annelise lingering on at the ranch. He found himself sleeping so deeply in an actual bed, he could hardly get his eyes open at full daylight.

  “Hey there, fifteen,” said Pop. “Always thought that was a good number. Has a ring to it.”

  Huck mumbled through the fog. “Guess it does. I was wondering if anybody’d remember.”

  Pop handed him a cup of coffee. “You think I’d forget? Or Mama, either? We need to get out to the place, she’s got breakfast planned for you.”

  Later with the hash and eggs cleared they drove down and shoveled a load of bentonite from a deposit by the county road, not far from the ambush site a mere six weeks back. Time flew and crawled at the same time. Same old water under the same old bridge. He’d tried to cajole Annelise into coming along, but once again she’d pleaded out, although this time for a reason he could hardly contest.It seemed she and Mother had a birthday cake planned as well.

  Pop had sold a good bit of the clay off as tank lining the past few years and they cut deeper now with their shovels, into the straight, clean scars from the last front-end loader to come through.

  “That Yak is sure a dern wiz, ain’t he?”

  “Oh, he’s all that.” Pop leaned his shovel, pushed his hat back on his head. “He ain’t the only one, though. Know why I hired him?”

  “Why’s that?”

  “So you could learn from him.”

  Huck’s foot slipped right off the spade, and the shovel handle caught him in the chest. “Shit,” he said. “Shoot, I mean.” He felt the heat come out of his chest into his face, straightened the shovel and sunk it hard this time.

  “You all right?”

  “Yessir.”

  “You can say shit, kid. It’s what guys say when they’re working.”

  They both shoveled again, dumping the sunbaked bentonite into a galvanized washtub. “I have learned a lot from him.”

  “You and me both. Like I said, though.” Pop leaned his shovel again, swiped at his forehead beneath the hat. “He ain’t the only dern wiz.”

  Now Huck leaned his, too. “I guess you mean I’m no slouch myself?”

  “True enough.”

  “Well. Shit, then.”

  Pop’s gold tooth grinned. “Not every shaver gets it in his head to put his own airplane together. And actually pull it off, which you would have eventually, even without McKee. Look, you have a gift. I had it too, somewhat, but you’re coming up in a whole different time.”

  “You really hired him just so I could learn?”

  “More or less. I did need the help, but it was big in my mind to get the right guy for your purposes. ’Course at the time, I didn’t quite figure your cousin into the mix.”

  They looked at each other and started laughing. “How long have you known about that?” Huck asked.

  “Oh, probably about since it started up. Old Mr. Neuman ain’t as deaf as he lets on.” He shook his head. “That girl is a handful. God love her.”

  They finished shoveling, hoisted the tub into the back of the REO, and went around to the cab. Way up the draw they could see the edge of the wheat table, beyond the tapering shelf of the buffalo jump. Any day now Pop would take the tractor up and plow the pigweed under, ahead of the next planting. Then he’d cross his fingers and hope for the best.

  “How much we owe on this place, exactly?”

  “Oh, you know.” Pop reached across and opened the glove box, fished out his Luckies. “More’n some, nowhere near as much as others. Couple good solid crops like the old days, we’ll get ahead of it. Imagine we’ll get some rain again, one of these years.”

  He hesitated, seemed to turn unusually serious. “Something else I been needing to talk to you about.”

  Huck had a flare of panic, and also guilt. If McKee really had turned everything over to the police, Cy had almost certainly gone straight to Pop, and Pop would no doubt be feeling pretty duped. Hell, even now, he had no idea why they were supercharging the motor, because Huck hadn’t dared tell him about that incident with Katie, either. He braced himself to take his deserts.

  “I want you to quit cutting school.”

  Huck blinked.

  “I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s the only thing makes a lick of sense. Your days as a truant are officially over, at least on my account.”

  “Oh. Shit.”

  “You’re hearing me, though.”

  He could only nod.

  “And you heard what Yak said, about that professor in Bozeman. You can have opportunities. But we’ve both got to start taking it seriously. You’ve got a gift, Houston.”

  He had to admit, he never much thought of his own life as especially spectacular. He knew he was maybe pushing ahead a bit, first with the glider and now with the airplane, but in all truth he barely ever stepped outside the nuts-and-bolts effort of whatever task he’d set himself to long enough to consider the way things might appear otherwise. The way he saw it, Pop’s long ride from Texas clear to the Yellowstone to avoid an orphanage seemed a whole lot more eye-popping than merely following somebody else’s manual to piece an airplane together.

  “So no more hooky. Not even to help out at the shop?”

  Pop ground on the REO’s starter. The truck shuddered wearily back to life. “I wouldn’t, if I was you. Fifteen, already. Turn over a new leaf.”

  Huck felt the tug of a grin. “Sort of like a New Year’s resolution. Guess we ain’t gonna hear any argument out of Cy, anyway.”

  Pop leaned out the window and backed the truck around, nosed it for the county road. “Hey, Houston? Don’t say shit around your mother.” He caught Huck’s eye. “And I wouldn’t let on about this professor, either.”

  Gloria

  II

  On the other hand, there are girls wh
o have really cast off conventions­—­who feel no spiritual or moral connection with their sex conduct. How do they come out? Usually they are deserted.

  —Margaret Culkin Banning,

  “The Case for Chastity,” 1937

  That girl was a panther the way her own mother had once been, and Victoria was a fool to think Annelise could ever be totally controlled. But that was my sister, always having to be in command of something while never ceding to an inch of such herself. Two sides of a coin. I cannot lay blame exactly, for I always envied so much about Victoria. But envy—a different sort of coin, with its own opposing side.

  I took one look at my niece that first night, and even bedraggled from days on the train and whatever flogging or browbeating Victoria had already inflicted, she had a composure I had to acknowledge. A cunning, really, like a creature too smart even to be seen, unless she’d chanced into a trap.

  She was a woman already, and in every sense of the word. I could have guessed that, too, even if I hadn’t already known why she’d been banished from the castle in the first place. I myself was barely any older when I married Gilroy, and many girls her age even now are betrothed and tending children, at least in backwater Montana. But Annelise had experience of a more worldly variety, the sort of thing that had taken hold in the big fast cities. Neither shame nor contrition seemed likely.

  The times had indeed changed, faster than anyone could sort. I knew full well Victoria had let her don breeches and take up horseback riding, and that was years ago. To tell the secret truth, I envied Annelise a bit, too.

  Once the traveling revivalists moved on to their next destination, a few of us who’d felt the strong fire of the Lord that week continued to meet, for the better part of two years. We subscribed to periodicals put out by missions in Chicago and Portland and modeled our gatherings on the Apostolic conviction that any member could be equally inspired by the power of the Spirit. Before long, even Mama could not ignore the call.