Dust girl

by Sarah Zettel

  He chuckled. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d know that song.”

  I shrugged. “Mama sings it all the time. One of her favorites. I never heard it on the radio or anything. I always thought… maybe it was something Papa taught her.”

  Jack shrugged. “Could be, I guess. I heard it on the road. A fella told me the prisoners in this big jail over in Texas, they said if the light from the midnight train touched you as it went past the jail, you’d be freed.”

  I let that sink in awhile. The idea of Mama spending her life trying to keep the Imperial from falling down and the whole time singing a song about getting out of jail was not one that sat well with what was already in my head.

  “Better get some sleep, Callie.” Jack stretched himself out right on the ground, using his cap as a pillow. “Nothing going to be leavin’ before mornin’.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t like this.” Something bothered me about all those people squatting in the dark, and I needed to dig it out before I could rest.

  Jack opened one eye and peered up at me. “What’s the problem?”

  I had it now, and I didn’t want it. “Bull Morgan. The man from the lunch counter. He said he didn’t allow hobos on his trains, or in his town.”

  I wanted a different answer than the uncertainty on Jack’s face. “Bull Morgan?” he repeated. “As in railroad bull?”

  I knew that one. A bull was a private detective hired by the railroad company to keep bums and thieves out of the yard. “He had a badge,” I said. And a club. And a gun…

  Jack thought about this. Then he got to his feet and walked slow and easy back over to the man with the hawk nose.

  “There been any trouble with the bulls?” Jack asked him.

  The man shrugged. “Naw. Some of us lent a hand with the digging out after the duster. Stationmaster said it was okay if we set here for a while; he’d warn Morgan off.”

  “That guy was not goin’ to give anybody a pass.” I remembered those cold gray eyes and I shivered. “And he said he didn’t allow hobos in his yard.”

  The man’s face went hard, just like Jack’s had when we got into Constantinople. I wondered which of those women and kids were his. He strolled over to a couple of the other men who were leaning against the stack of ties and said something soft to them. They nodded, straightened their hats, and closed in behind him. I knew what they were doing, and I was glad. They might have the stationmaster’s word, but they were going to check things out for themselves.

  Jack drew himself up to his full height and started after the men. I went to follow, but he put up his hand.

  “No, Callie. You stay here. You’ll just get lost.”

  I wanted to argue with him, but I already knew he was right, so I nodded and let him go. The men walked off, melting into the shadows, and in a minute it was like they’d never been there at all.

  I went back to our spot and sat down cross-legged. A baby started crying, high and thin and persistent in the darkness. A woman’s voice rose up soft: “Hush, little baby, don’t say a word…”

  But Papa wasn’t going to buy that baby anything at all, never mind a diamond ring. Hope and despair wound like the dusty wind through that song. I thought again about the barbeque dinner I’d made, and about all the heavy worry that held the people around me. Worry had worn itself deep into their minds and souls, but it was still finding new channels to dig. I wanted something to do, like Jack. I didn’t want to just sit and wait.

  “And if that diamond ring turns brass, Papa’s gonna buy you a looking glass…”

  I’d wished up a whole dinner at Shimmy’s. Why couldn’t I do it again? I knew how this time. I could hold the power together and shape the wish. It didn’t even have to be a barbeque; it could be something smaller… a kettle of stew or something.

  “And if that looking glass gets broke, Papa’s gonna buy you a billy goat…”

  I picked myself up and moved deeper into the shadows. Lamb stew. One big kettle. Enough for one meal. Just to let people get through the night, just to ease the worry a little. I cupped my hands, like I was catching water coming from a pump, but instead I caught the feeling of that lullaby, the worry and the tired, desperate wish to make it all better. It was a strong feeling, and it sank right into me, to the place where I could spin it into a wish.

  A wish for food. Everybody here wished that wish. I could feel the aching, gnawing hunger bound together with the worry. Hunger as plentiful as dust. I took that hunger, I took that song, and I wished for food. For lamb stew, with rich broth and new potatoes. A big kettle full of it. I could smell it, hot, meaty, savory. A whole kettle of stew to feed the people. I held my hands out. It was almost here. Almost.

  But something was holding on to it. Something heavy pushed that wish back while I tried to pull it forward. I leaned into it and wished harder. But the whatever-it-was pushed harder yet.

  She’s here. That’s her. I know it is!

  Quiet!

  My eyes snapped open, and the wish flew into a thousand pieces. Everything Shimmy had tried to tell me about how I’d feel the wishes around me, how they’d make me itchy, came rushing back. She’d been right. I was surrounded by worried wishes, and they had made me so itchy, I’d forgotten I still had people out looking for me. The Hoppers had been the beginning, not the end.

  I needed to find Jack and warn him. Trailing the fading scent of hot stew, I lit out into the shadows.

  14

  Get Away

  It probably took more than two minutes to get me completely turned around, but not much. Shadows, rail lines, and looming train cars knotted up my sense of direction. Then the fear carried it so far off, I couldn’t have told you which way was up if you’d pointed at the sky. The moon hung overhead, bloated and bloody red from the dust, with a white ring round it. A dog barked somewhere behind the train cars.

  I had to calm down and get my bearings. I made myself stop and turn in a slow circle, looking at the telegraph poles, the darkened signal lights, the sheds, anything that I might be able to use as a landmark.

  As I turned past the nearest shack, movement caught my eye. A thin man’s shape ducked farther into the shadows. I hurried toward it. Maybe it was Jack, or the hawk-nosed man. It didn’t matter as long as they knew where they were going…

  Hands yanked me backward. I started to scream, but a hat was stuffed into my mouth.

  “Shhhhhh!” ordered Jack.

  “What’s going on?” I demanded against his cap, which, I’ve got to say, tasted awful. Jack pointed into the shed.

  It wasn’t just one man moving in there. It was a whole crowd of them. I shook myself free from Jack and his hat and crept up to the shed door, crouching low. Jack was right at my shoulder.

  Bull Morgan stood in front of maybe two dozen men. Every last one of them carried some kind of weapon. Some had clubs made of shovel ends or ax handles. Many had shotguns.

  This wasn’t just a crowd. Bull Morgan had put together a vigilance committee.

  One man, the one I’d seen moving, slipped up to the front right next to Morgan and took the ax handle a neighbor passed him.

  “Are we in place?” growled Bull Morgan.

  “Just about, Mr. Morgan.” I heard the snappy salute in the smaller man’s voice.

  “And the bums?”

  “Some of them’s slipped out. Charlie’ll round ’em up.”

  Morgan grunted. “As long as they don’t get back to warn the others.”

  “Hadn’t we better move out now?” asked somebody from the middle of the crowd. “Them bums might be gettin’ antsy.”

  Morgan calmly pulled a toothpick out of his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. “They’ll stay put. After all, Mr. Stationmaster Reynolds told ’em they could stay. He’d just look the other way while they broke the law. Ain’t that right, Mr. Reynolds?” Morgan grinned toward the shadows deeper in the shed. I squinted through the shifting thicket of pant legs and work boots and saw a huddle of other men. These men wore dar
k coats and peaked caps, and all of them had rags stuffed in their mouths and their hands tied together in front of them. I’d’ve bet any money one of them was the stationmaster.

  Bull Morgan had told me he didn’t allow hobos on his trains. And he’d taken over the rail yard to keep his promise. These weren’t lawmen. They were going to go into that crowd of kids and families and… and…

  They were going to do whatever they felt like with those ax handles and those shotguns, and there wasn’t anybody within hollering distance to stop them. Except us.

  “So we’re just gonna stand here all night, then?” grumbled a man.

  “Shut yer gob, Grady.” Morgan chewed lazily on his toothpick and pulled out his club as a reminder that he was armed too. “I told you, we go when I say.”

  Some other man snickered. “In a hurry to get home, Grady? I hear that wife of yours isn’t the patient type.”

  “Come over here and say that, you…”

  Morgan smacked his club into his big, hard palm. “Save it for the bums, you two!”

  Jack and I didn’t have to say anything to each other. We were both thinking the same thing. We had to warn the others. The fastest way would be to make some noise. It would also be the surest way to get caught.

  Jack eased backward, and I went with him. There was a pyramid-shaped pile of oil drums against the side of the shed. He pointed to it, and we ran, as quiet as thought, around to the far side of the stack. Jack put his shoulder to one, and I saw his plan. I put my hands up beside him.

  From inside the shed, we heard Morgan say, “Time…”

  Jack shoved. I shoved. Those empty barrels came down like thunder in high summer.

  Inside the shed, the men sent up a holler. Dogs bayed and barked in answer. Jack and I whooped like wild Indians and took off running. I glanced back to see the vigilante men pouring out of the shed in time to collide with those rolling barrels. The men fell, yelling words their mothers never taught them, and the barrels bounced and banged all around them.

  A shotgun blast tore through the dark. Startled, I tripped over a rail and Jack yanked me to my feet. Holding on to each other, we ran. Actually, he ran. I got dragged along.

  Screams filled the yard, echoing off the sides of the train cars. Men, women, and kids shrieked, cursed, and cried. Another shot exploded, followed fast by an unsteady pounding-a sick, hollow kind of sound, like wood smacking against wood, except I knew it wasn’t. We hadn’t been fast enough. Morgan’s vigilantes had been ready, and that pounding was the ax handles and the clubs saying a bloody hello to people’s skulls.

  “Don’t let them get away!” called Bull Morgan from somewhere in the dark. “It’s time these bums got what was coming to ’em!”

  People streamed between the cars, a great, huge river of noise and panic. A shotgun flashed. The pounding wouldn’t stop. I could feel the pain. All of it. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t think. There was nothing but the pain and the fear and Jack wishing he could do something to stop it.

  A woman passed us, a little kid clinging to her skirt, a baby held sideways under her arm. There was something wrong with her other arm; it was dangling funny. I saw the gleam of the shotgun barrel rising up behind her. I saw the vigilante take aim.

  “NO!”

  My magic snatched up Jack’s wish and threw it hard at the man. The vigilante hollered and fell backward, and the shot went straight up to the bloody moon. The woman and her kids vanished between the boxcars.

  “Come on, Callie!” Jack tugged at me. “Let’s go!”

  “Why?” I hollered. “I can take ’em all on! I got the magic!” All these wishes, all this feeling, it was power for me. I could use it, turn it against Bull Morgan’s vigilantes. I knew I could.

  “Because they’ll see us standing here, you dope! And I ain’t bulletproof!”

  That hit me. I wheeled around to follow him and collided with his back. Because he’d run straight into Bull Morgan.

  “Gotcha!” Morgan’s meaty hands clamped down on our shoulders.

  I gritted my teeth. “Let us go!”

  “Well, well!” Morgan shook me away from Jack. “If it ain’t the little girlie bum. I thought I warned you off, girlie.”

  “I said, let us go!”

  “You ain’t goin’ anywhere except onto the chain gang,” Morgan crowed. “I’m sick of you whiny bums helpin’ yourselves to what ain’t yours. No respect…”

  I didn’t even think. I just reached out to that powerful feeling pouring around me to take it for a wish.

  It was like I’d stepped into a furnace. There was nothing but pain. Pain like stars, like flames filling the whole world. I was surrounded by the roar and burn of a thousand thoughts, a thousand feelings.

  … hurt, hurt, hate, no, no, gotta run, help me, please help me, where are they, where is he, where is she, hate you, hate you…

  I couldn’t move. The hate and the pain of the riot rushed into me, cutting me off from my body.

  … gonnakillyouallhateyouhateyouturnaroundandfightyouhelpmehateyouhelpmehateyouhelpme…

  My body fell, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I stared up at Morgan’s swollen face as the railroad bull bent over me. There was a flash of movement and a yell, and Jack kicked Bull Morgan in the kneecap. Morgan leapt back, but Jack kicked his other knee and Morgan toppled over. I felt his pain too, and his wish for the one who caused it to be dead, dead, dead.

  “Callie!” Jack had hold of my wrists and tried to pull me to my feet. “Callie! Come on, get up!”

  He wished I’d get up. My scattered thoughts grabbed hold of that wish, knotted around it like his hands were knotted around my wrists.

  And I could stand. I could see. I was all right. Except I was all right in time for Bull Morgan to rear up behind me.

  “Run!” shouted Jack. He bolted backward, and I bolted forward. Morgan was reaching for his club, but I got there first and yanked it right out of his holster. Morgan stumbled, and with all the fear and strength I had in me, I slammed that club against the side of his head. There was a sharp crack, and Morgan sprawled into the dirt. I was staring again, because there was blood spattered on his temple, and on my hands.

  Jack shoved me sideways, knocking me down, and dragged me under the nearest boxcar, pushing at me until we scrambled out the other side and took off running. All the while I felt how Bull Morgan wasn’t moving, wasn’t even breathing, and his blood mixed with the dirt on my hands.

  “He’s dead.” I panted. “Oh, my God, he’s dead. I killed him!”

  “Stop it!” Jack jerked hard on my hand. “Just run!”

  I closed my mouth and ran.

  There should have been plenty of places to hide in that dark yard. But at every turn there was somebody in front of us, somebody with a gun or an ax handle or in the thick of a fight. It went on forever, the flashes of light, the cracks and the screaming. I was crying and Jack was cussing, taking us this way and that. We climbed over the couplings between the trains; we dodged around sheds and coal piles. My lungs burned and my legs got heavier with each step, and the whole time my head was babbling, No way out, no way out, no way out…

  “There!” boomed Morgan’s voice. “There they are!”

  I looked. I couldn’t help it. Bull Morgan reared up in the floodlights like a monster, with a crowd of shadows at his side. He pointed at us with his club.

  “Get ’em!” he bellowed. “Bring ’em here!”

  Men surged forward, guns and ax handles ready.

  Jack swore and we ran. Ahead, I spotted the livestock pens.

  “Jack!” I pointed. He saw, and he dove forward.

  We were small, and we were running for our lives. We slid between the slats; we climbed over gates the blow dirt had drifted shut. We even ran on the top rail of the crisscrossing fences, a game every farm kid has played. The men swore and stumbled and got stuck and swore some more. But they kept coming.

  Bullets sound like hornets when they pass too close to your head. After a whi
le, the world closes down. You can’t hear much, you can’t see much, just the way ahead, the next slat, the next open gate. All you know is running; the only place that’s real is away.

  Finally, we hit the edge of the stockyard. Jack swerved toward the lights of Constantinople. I hesitated, but when a truck engine rumbled up from behind us, I tore after him. If we headed out to the prairie, they could drive us like rabbits. Back among Constantinople’s houses, we’d have a place to hide, and maybe the vigilantes wouldn’t be so ready to fire off their guns in the middle of town.

  Not that I was thinking that straight then. I just followed Jack as close as I could. Jack dodged into the streets, ducking around buildings, trying to get walls between us and the headlights and shouts.

  “Gotta get inside somewhere.” He panted. “Gotta…”

  “Movies!” I shouted, pointing at the lit-up Bijoux.

  Jack swallowed hard. This time, I took the lead, and after a split second, he followed.

  There was a small, plain door in the back of the theater. I grabbed the knob and yanked it open, and all but fell inside.

  Jack slammed the door, fumbled for the latch, and shot the bolt home. As it snapped shut, I felt the world twisting around us.

  15

  Looking for a Woman That’s Hard to Find

  “Jack?” I whispered. He was near me. I could feel him, but I couldn’t see much.

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re somewhere else.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I hesitated, trying to dig up words to explain. Now I could make out shelves stacked with boxes. We were in a storeroom, except, of course, it wasn’t just a storeroom. “I got this feeling when I walked into Shimmy’s juke joint, like the whole world had turned around. I just felt it again.”

  “Okay.” Jack swallowed. “Okay.”

  We both stood there, trying to catch our breath and not doing a very good job of it. We were both thinking about the riot, and the vigilantes in the streets, and Bull Morgan in front of all of them. Jack had his hand on the door, but slowly, he lifted it back. I understood. We couldn’t leave by that route. We didn’t know what was in here, but we for sure knew what was out there.