It was something worse.
THIRTEEN
HOW FAR THEY GOT
Baz knew right away, right from when they pulled out onto the old highway west instead of heading for the interstate, that Lutie wasn’t going to be ordered out of town. If Sol had been thinking straight, he’d have known it too because it didn’t take a goddamn genius.
They continued along the two-lane highway for a few miles before Baz spotted a watertower that said ‘Brule’ and Baz didn’t know if that was a company or a place. In French, he knew it meant ‘burnt’, and that didn’t sound inviting no matter which way you looked at it.
A highway sign told them the speed limit was changing, and she slowed. “Sol said he’d hit a dead end with the Brule historical society,” she finally explained.
Bingo, Baz thought. Reason enough, T-Lu. Go right ahead and see if you can beat Sol at his own game. “So, what are we here for?”
She dropped below the speed limit on the empty road, her narrowed eyes sweeping to the left of the cracked asphalt, pulled in suddenly to a set of tall silos, seeing something that Baz hadn’t: a parked railcar decorated with a collection of signs. The Coffee Caboose Museum & Platte River Historical Society. She swung the car to the left and tucked in behind a large truck. She didn’t answer him, it was almost as though he hadn’t spoken, and that felt familiar as a paper cut.
He watched her mount the steps to the caboose as he got out the car, rubbed his chin, knew he should have shaved, but had drawn the line after Sol had commandeered his razor yesterday. He knew what he looked like, with his silly haircut and provocations of piercings. Maybe I should stay out here, but it would be warm inside. More than that, he wanted to see what she’d do, how his sister did things differently from his brother. He caught the door before it slammed, ducked in out of the bright day. An older guy with a newspaper sat at the counter, turned as they came in.
“If you’re looking for something hot to drink, your waiter Bart’s trying his hand with the sump pump out back. Froze up, the boy said. Tricky pump, he said.” The old-timer’s mouth twitched, amused. “Sump pumps. They’re some tricky.” He lifted his coffee cup. “I got the last of it, sorry.”
Lutie hesitated, but didn’t look to Baz for any guidance. Instead she turned and they went back outside and around the corner of the caboose, headed towards the track. A tall young man was fiddling with the door of the pump house, and he looked up as they approached, pushed back the brim of his green and white ball cap. It advertised a feed company in Paxton.
“Hey,” Lutie said, hands in her pockets, smiling broad enough to draw dimples. “You’re working hard.”
The young man grinned, face pink, speckled with small blemishes.
“You must be Bart,” she continued, and Baz knew what was coming. She was twenty years old, and blonde, and new to town. “The guy inside said.”
“I am. You must be looking for coffee.” He gestured to the pump house. “It’s seized up, old piece of junk. Might be awhile before I can make another pot.”
“Sump pumps. They’re some tricky,” Baz said, and Bart gave him a sharp stare.
Lutie stepped in front and away from Baz. “That’s okay. We’re not really here for coffee anyway. I’m actually a history major. From Canada? I always stop by any museum I see.” She smiled wide. “My name’s Lutie. This is my brother Baz Sarrazin.”
“History? That’s my major, too. In Lincoln.” He removed his work gloves and stuck them in his belt, smiling at her the whole time. “Bart Andersen.” He cocked his head, glanced at Baz. “You any relation to that writer who was by last week, asking about the fire? He was a Sarrazin too.”
Lutie answered, a quick nod. “Yeah. Sol said we should stop by.”
“So what did he tell you?” Bart asked, half smile still playing at the corner of his lips. Hard to tell if he was suspicious or not.
Okay. Baz shrugged. “Not much,” and that was the truth.
Lutie cleared her throat. “He said there’d been a murder down here, a railroad bull named Lewis, a long time ago.”
Bart’s gaze flicked away before returning to Lutie. She blushed a little. A fetching little creature, playing it, playing this boy like a violin.
“History, eh? Well, you look pretty much at home here.”
Bart laughed. “It’s the hat, right? Yeah, I’m from here.” He shook his head. “But that don’t mean I’m sticking around.”
Lutie glanced at Baz, trying to include him maybe. He raised his eyebrows a little, but didn’t say anything.
Bart leaned back against the pump house, hands reddened from the work and the cold. “Reporters aren’t usually all that interested in the kind of history that comes from this part of the country. Your brother was more interested in the murder, for sure, but it happened before I was born. So, after he was here asking about it, I made a few phone calls. No one really wanted to talk about the fire. Most of the old guys I asked said the drifters that came through here were okay. The fire, they were just trying to scare Lewis.”
“What else did they say?” Lutie asked.
Bart laughed, stretched his hands out. “One guy’s story was different from his buddy’s and the buddy’s story was different from the next guy’s.” He grinned, ducked his head, back up to Lutie’s pretty face. “Plurality of oral narrative.” Now he was just trying to impress her, Baz thought, wondering on what planet this would be considered impressive. Bart flicked a glance at Baz, eyes narrowed. “What do you study?”
Baz smiled wide. “Music.”
Shaking his head, Bart looked away. “Well, in history, you know that the truth is never, ever, out there.” He straightened, gestured to the ground beneath his feet, then back up to Lutie. “The story is there, in the ground, waiting to be dug up. And here, waiting to be told.” Pointed to his own chest, then looked away, embarrassed maybe.
They were performing some kind of mating dance and Baz didn’t recognize the steps. But Lutie did, evidently. She shifted her weight so that she faced him fully, one hand in her pocket, the other playing with a strand of blonde hair. “Material culture and oral history? You must be a grad student.”
Bart shrugged, but didn’t look at Lutie anymore, pink all over. Christ, it must be boring here if these were pick-up lines. “I like a good story. And that fire is a good story, turns out. Your brother was right.”
Bart paused, gathering his words, but finally just kicked a hard divot of displaced sod, at a loss. Thirty years was a long time to pass around the truth, hand-me-down information worn and creased and missing bits, even Baz knew that. It was the same with music, it changed each time it was passed along, that was the nature of the thing.
“What did they say, the seniors you talked with?”
Trying to bring down the big game Sol couldn’t, Baz realized, even as he admired her style.
Bart looked away again. He sighed. “As far as I can tell, the fire was started by a group of homeless guys that had been harassed by Lewis over the years. Lewis sounds like he was a mean bastard. The hobos probably meant to just warn him, maybe give him a taste of his own medicine, but it got out of hand. The cops tried to find them, of course, especially as Lewis was police just like them, but the murderers must have all shipped out right away. Came down hard on all those drifters that were still around, but no one I talked to thought that the cops caught any of the guys that actually did it.”
“So, has there been anything since? At the murder site? Did Lewis have a widow, or does anyone, I don’t know, lay flowers or anything?”
Bart shook his head. “Nah, he lived alone in a trailer, apparently, across from the old fairgrounds. Right down by the river. Died in springtime, so the river would have been running high. This whole place changes,” and he ran his hand across the field, flat like he was tamping down what might grow and swell. “Can you imagine that, staring out your window at water when you burned alive in your own tin can? One of the old timers said that the police hauled the trailer away, af
terwards. Nothing left out at Megeath now, nothing but a broken down barn. Rickety old thing, two more winters and it’ll be gone.” He seemed suddenly self-conscious, saying all this, but he then grinned at her. “Me too.” He glanced at the caboose and maybe he had to say it because he wouldn’t believe it otherwise. “I’m starting doctoral studies out in California,” like that was a come-on and maybe it was, but not in Baz’s world.
Lutie changed her pose again, seemed at once both older and younger. “Yeah, I have to get back to school too. Promised my dad.” Baz knew she’d wring every last bit of information out of this kid, and it was definitely more than Sol had been able to get.
A few minutes later, they stood on either side of her Toyota and Lutie flattened the piece of paper Bart had given her across its cold top. The paper was worn, folded, perhaps worried, fetched from the depths of Bart’s pocket, blue ballpoint pen, series of numbers just needing dots for her to connect so she could see the full picture, numbers leading her to Bart’s cell phone if she wanted it. Wanted him. She already saw the picture made whole. She’d said she hadn’t had a pen, but a good student always had one, even when he was fixing a sump pump. Sure, he might have had a pen, but he didn’t have a clue. She sighed, balled the note, but couldn’t throw it away. She put it in her pocket, took some bit of him with her, out of this place.
Baz leaned his elbows on the roof of her car, staring at her. His eyes gave him away, even as he said, “What was that about?”
His eyes were the same shade as the seas around some tropical island with shallow waters. Lutie’s fingers drummed the roof as she watched him wind up for some jabs. “Bad student habit. Just doing the research. Who knows, might come in useful.”
“You gonna call him?” Baz asked, couldn’t seem to keep a smile from his face.
“What?” Baz was laughing at her, not with her. “That guy? Not my type. Besides, he won’t be here next week and neither will I.”
Which made Baz grin harder, his bright eyes almost disappearing, scruffy and wind-battered, like a dog-mauled chew toy. Waiting for her to get whatever joke he was making. She felt the gotcha before she understood it, as was often the case.
Right. She shrugged like it didn’t matter, like her foster family hadn’t learned early that she wasn’t the kind of girl you teased. “Oh. Fine. You don’t mean Bart.” She had no snappy come-back, only the matter at hand. “You really think Sol’s going to pick up if I call him?”
That laugh again, starting high and dropping, climbing. Sheer delight. “Chère, I don’t think he knows where the ‘on’ button is with his phone.” His eyes weren’t on her, though, they were following something on the horizon behind her. She almost turned, but his attention snapped back to her, intent and resigned. “We’re going back to Ogallala us, hé?”
The wind, and his laugh. A devil, and ghosts. It was all so weird. “Yeah, we’re going back. Sol should know about the Megeath crossing. Might be some help.”
Baz was staring off behind her again, and so Lutie turned to look.
She swallowed, following his long stare. They called this weather a chinook, she remembered from when they’d lived in Calgary, the warm wind off the mountains. It blew steadily, mixing with the colder morning air. To the west, near the tracks across several fields, the sky was green, the color someone went before they threw up. Lower to the ground, the cloud front was black. Lutie stared at it, then back at Baz. “A storm, maybe? It’s nowhere near us.” She opened the door. “Get in.”
The bank of clouds was moving to the south, the edge dark like eggs left too long on the griddle. She eased into the car. Mild still, but it would still be snow, not rain, if it fell now. The clouds moved strangely, were too low to the ground, near the river to the west. Their motion was slow-quick-quick-slow, elegant as ballroom dancers crossing the boards, but unnatural in weather.
Unnatural.
“Though, gotta say, T-Lu, I think Bart liked you.” Baz was going to laugh then, Lutie could hear it burbling up, so she accelerated out the lot, skidding wide and she sawed the steering wheel to the right, chirped rubber off tires, and floored it. Like one of those G-force tests that astronauts endured, the acceleration slammed Baz back into the carseat and the Toyota shot down the side road.
She looked out across the flat prairie grass, past fence posts flying by in a gray blur, was staring down the storm front.
“What the hell, Lutie?” Baz demanded, one hand grabbing the door handle.
The car picked up speed, going west, following the storm. She had no plan, only a burn to get to the root of this, because there were ghosts, and she knew about ghosts. She knew what was unnatural.
The bulk of the cloud scudded close to the ground, brushed up against prairie some distance away, closer to the river. She pulled down a side road, veered right into the haze and had to stop immediately. She couldn’t see five feet in front of the car. She might drive right onto the tracks, over them, into the river for all she could see. Specks of dirt collided with the windshield.
Stones pinged against the car, hard, a brief tattoo, and then something else entered the conversation: Laughter. It came from outside the car, was so low it was almost one with the wind. It had that big encompassing sound that some ghosts had when they were up, when they had the run of a place, when they weren’t scared of anything.
“Stay here,” she shouted to Baz.
Lutie wrenched up the door handle. She’d only heard the one boom of laughter, cold like the wind, dark and deep, but nothing more. On the other side of the car, Baz was getting out, had either not heard her, or had decided that he was going to ignore her. He ducked low, only a gray moving shadow against pitiful light. Lutie slid on a moment of breathless panic that Baz was going to become lost in this dusty day-for-night, that he’d fade out of sight and wouldn’t come back. That she’d lose him.
Thinking that, she lurched forward, came around the front of the Toyota, hand stretched out to Baz’s shoulder, but the wind suddenly shifted and a howl of ash curled up, suffocating her. Eyes streaming, she tried to lift her head, tried to find her feet. She couldn’t see anything now, all a watery gray tinged with black flecks.
She heard laughter again, farther away and the wind receded. Now the air smelled sweet like a candy factory was in nearby operation. Could be the scent of corn mash, what they fed the cattle, but Lutie knew it wasn’t that. It was the scent of flesh in decay, and every hair on the back of her neck stood up.
The shifting cloud hung in the sky in a wide curtain, reducing the sun to a dull lamp in the heavens. Wordlessly, Lutie stood, drawing Baz with her. Though she could not see it, she sensed that the prairie was still there beyond the ash, as endless and timeless as always, gray and bereft, underfoot, and the wind—the wind that never stopped—blew from the north, had traveled thousands of miles without encountering anything more significant than a jackrabbit. They were inside it now, whatever this ash cloud was.
Her brother walked a few feet, eyes squinting, trying to see beyond the ash. “Baz,” Lutie called, afraid.
Baz grimaced, halted, hands wide: What?
“Don’t sing,” she advised, the only thing she could think to say. It was better than what was really on her mind, which was I’m scared. She gestured Baz back and Baz came. “And stay close,” she warned.
With those words, the smile left his excitable face.
“What the hell is this?” He turned in place. He can see it, she thought. He can see the ash. Does that make it more or less real? This wasn’t a place designed to support human life. Sounds were sharp, the air so dry it was tinder, ignitable, like gas was in the air.
He coughed, the ash getting to both of them. He bent over, hacking, then straightened. “Hey, Lutie,” he called. Lutie sidled close to Baz’s shoulder, could feel the warmth from him in this cold place, the two of them the only colors in a bleak landscape. Baz cocked his head to one side, eyes set at a hundred miles. Shhh, he mimed. Listen.
Something was coming.
Sol had seen more than his fair share of strange things in his life, but this took the cake.
He hadn’t made it as far as the Wagoneer, had been between the tracks and his vehicle when the cloud had come to him, had rolled over him as a wave might, fast and unavoidable. Now, he could see nothing but filtered gray light and dirt and drifting ash. A screaming wind robbed breath from lungs, robbed the will to keep breathing.
Then, from far away, a crash, and the wind calmed and the ash swirled to mere drift. The sudden cessation of wind-noise was followed by a murmur of voices and Sol froze, had no weapon, nothing with which to protect himself. Unprepared in the extreme.
Just then a barking cough echoed through the haze, words on the wind, a snatched conversation. He recognized the voice and held very still. Bon Dieu, non, he thought, fought down surprise only to find anger. Not here, what are they doing here? But denial had never done him much good, so he took a deep breath and moved. Two steps, three and then he was out of the ash and into the cloud’s hollow center. He saw them before they noticed him, which suited Sol just fine.
“You’re coughing to wake the dead, Baz,” he said.
Sol concentrated on his sister, leveled a stare at her, because he was certain coming out here, going to Brule instead of Denver, hadn’t been Baz’s idea. “Did you get lost?” he asked her, and knew she didn’t take teasing well, took pride in being right, reacted badly to surprises, couldn’t muster an apology to save her life. He knew all that, had known all that from the word go. In some ways she hadn’t changed from when she was little.
“We’re not lost,” she said, chin coming up.
“Okay,” Sol agreed slowly, not smiling, fighting a smile. It wouldn’t have been a pretty one. “So, where are we, then?” Softly, recognizing his own need to be right.
“Guys?” Baz lifted his hand to touch Lutie’s shoulder, and Sol didn’t know if he was keeping close for Lutie’s sake or his own. His one word was a warning: the crashing again. Crackling of flames, very far away. The ash around them began to glow.
Deadroads Page 24