[Oxrun Station] Dialing The Wind

by Charles L. Grant

  She stared at them until they froze, baking silhouettes against the sun.

  She blinked at them until they shrank, became narrow, became distant, became cracks in a newly plastered ceiling the contractor claimed was only settling, not to worry.

  Cracks that blurred until she wiped the tears away with the backs of her hands.

  The king-size bed was damp, sheets clammy, two lace-edged pillows bunched near the footboard. But she didn't move to get up. Her legs ached, her stomach was hollow. Twitch one finger, and she knew she'd fall apart.

  She knew she had had the dream; she remembered nothing but a vague notion there was dying to be done.

  The tears were supposed to have stopped months ago. Years. Control she should have had, and couldn't find, and it was wrong.

  "Jackass," she muttered crossly, and sat up with a groan, hitching herself back until her spine rested against the carved headboard and she was able to stare across the mattress to the vanity's gold-framed oval mirror. "Oh god." Against all nature's laws her reflection looked a lot worse than she felt-hair atangle and matted wetly to her brow and ears, vague shadows beneath her puffy eyes, the skin from her breasts to the folds of her waist pale as paste. "Oh . . . god."

  She squinted at the clock radio on the nightstand to her left, rolled her eyes at the hour, and shifted her feet to the cool bare floor. Wriggled her toes. Stretched and heard sockets pop, scrubbed her scalp vigorously, and pushed herself standing while she scratched at her thighs.

  "Exercise," she commanded as she parted the curtains to look out at the backyard. The sky was low with an even grey overcast, the trees faintly blurred, as if hiding behind fog. The sill was damp and sticky. Beads of dew were caught in the screen. The smell of rain. And a quiet that in sunlight would have been serene.

  Without the sun, it was just quiet.

  Get going, she ordered.

  "Screw you," she answered. "It's Saturday. I'll live."

  She turned on the radio, scowled at the static, glaring while she chased green digital numbers up and down their range until she found a station that worked-the tail end of the news, and a commercial, and the first notes of a hymn.

  "Oh, great," she said, the right side of her face pulling back in a mirthless smile. "Swell. I'm about to be saved."

  And beside the radio, a white telephone rang.

  "Caroline! Thank heavens, you're still home." A breathy voice, hoarse without being unpleasant. "I was afraid you'd be away for the weekend."

  Caroline groaned without making a sound and slumped back onto the bed, bare feet crossed at the ankles. "Good morning, Adelle." Flat. A perfunctory greeting intended to produce, among other things, guilt.

  "My dear, you sound funny. Partying to all hours again?"

  "I don't party, Adelle. You know that."

  She didn't dare. She might-

  "More's the pity. Then you'd have an excuse." The laugh was oddly high. "But to the point."

  "No."

  "What?"

  "No, Adelle. I am not coming in today. I am not coming in tomorrow. I am tired. It is my day off. I have not, in case you don't remember, had a full day off since god knows when. June, I think. Maybe even last year."

  "But Caroline, I don't-"

  "I'm on strike."

  "Caroline, please."

  Beyond her window, beyond the backyard, the slope rose sharply. More evergreen than oak, spotted with an occasional cage of white birch and pocked with large and small boulders jutting out of the hillside where the underbrush didn't grow. She watched a blue jay glide out of the woods and settle on the ground to eye the new grass as if it were a judge in a lawn contest.

  The radio hymn ended, and a voice that startled her by its hoarseness began a gentle preaching. She stared at the station numbers for a moment, trying to recall if she'd ever heard the man before.

  "Caroline, are you listening? Are you there?"

  She turned down the volume, looked back to the window. "Honest to god, Adelle, what's the matter with Marion or Stacey? Why the hell are you always picking on me?"

  The ensuing pause was deliberate, and she ignored it as she had ignored all the others she had suffered since the job had begun. Adelle Vanders was no doubt fluffing and puffing herself; she could see it clearly- lifting that matron's white-smocked substantial bosom, one hand patting that matron's substantial bulge at the stomach, one foot stuffed into a supposedly stylish shoe tapping the floor impatiently while she lit her ninety-second cigarette of the day and blew the smoke at her knees.

  The jay hopped closer to the house.

  "... healing power," the preacher said quietly.

  "Marion," the woman said stiffly, "is visiting her mother in Hartford. A very sick mother, I might add. And Stacey, as you know full well, is on vacation."

  "And I am on my day off. Good-bye, Adelle."

  "Caroline!"

  She looked down at her right hand and saw the telephone cord twisted cruelly around her fingers. The knuckles were fading to white. A dark vein rose at her wrist. She wondered what would happen if she stuck a pin in it-would the blood seep out in bubbles, flow out, gush out? Would she die, or just make a mess in the bedroom no one would clean up but her?

  "Last week," she said, "Marion was in Boston, visiting her very sick aunt. The week before that she was in Stamford, visiting her very sick brother. The week before that was probably Christmas and she was up at the North Pole, visiting Mrs. Claus!"

  The cord tightened.

  The jay jabbed at something she couldn't see.

  "Caroline-"

  "And Stacey, by Christ, hasn't been on vacation the whole year, you know; just since last week. Knowing her, she probably hasn't even left town because she doesn't want to leave her precious boyfriend. Probably fighting again. I think she must like it."

  Suddenly the jay shrieked and flew off, and she frowned, wondering if one of the neighborhood cats had come prowling, come hunting.

  ". . . laying on of hands," the preacher said; "just lay..."

  "I think," she continued when Adelle didn't answer, "that Stacey caught it-the fighting disease, I mean-from that dingbat friend of hers. What's her name-Jilly? God knows, they cry enough in the shop to keep the whole stock alive for a century."

  She waited.

  Adelle said nothing.

  "For god's sake, Adelle, I'm only kidding, okay?"

  Adelle's voice changed then-softened, almost whining. "Caroline. Darling. You know I hate to ask these things of you, but I just can't do it all myself. I need you. Please? Just for the afternoon? A few arrangements, that's all. Heaven knows you're the only one who knows how to do them so they don't look like plastic."

  "Flattery will get you nowhere," she grumbled as she rose, shaking the cord free and moving closer to the window.

  "A few hours, that's all I ask. Darling, I'm begging. I'm on my knees in the middle of four dozen white goddman carnations, and I'm goddamned begging, all right?"

  She smiled. Four dozen carnations of any color wouldn't begin to reach to Adelle's wrinkled knees.

  "And I swear on Corbin's grave that I'll never ask you to do this again."

  "Your husband isn't dead."

  "You're being obstinate."

  She leaned to her right and squinted through the screen. A spear of sudden sunlight blinded her, and vanished, and just as suddenly the radio hissed loudly and died, the preacher gone, the room oddly empty.

  "Shit!" she muttered, breathless from surprise, falling back against the wall, one startled hand flung up against her naked chest. There was no smoke from either the clock radio or the plug, but she thought she smelled something burning.

  "Caroline?"

  "Okay, okay," she said, sidling to the table. Eyeing the radio warily, she reached around the table and held her breath as she yanked the cord from its socket. When nothing happened, she closed her eyes briefly and nodded. "Of course," she said.

  Of course. Why should she be able to do what she wanted? It was only he
r first full day off in three weeks. Nothing special about that, right? What the hell. Call Caroline, she's a sweet kid, she'll help out, no problem. Aren't widows always glad for something to do?

  A wet breeze swept through the woods and died on the lawn. A handful of tiny brown leaves fluttered over the fence and settled on the ground. A small flock of sparrows began foraging in the grass, fussing loudly among themselves, taking swift flight and returning, completely ignoring a lone crow who decided to forage with them.

  "Then you'll be here?" Adelle asked hopefully,

  Caroline started; she'd forgotten she still had the receiver in her hand. "Yes, already. Just give me time to dress and eat, all right?"

  "You're a doll."

  "Double time."

  A pause. "That's-"

  "Blackmail," she said. "Right."

  "Okay." Adelle's turn to try to induce guilt.

  It didn't work. Caroline laughed, winked at the birds in the yard, and rang off. What the hell, she thought; she wasn't doing anything today anyway. She might as well make a few extra dollars to pad the bank account. Or get herself a new radio, or find someone who knew how to fix it.

  She snapped the plastic casing with her fingers. "Heal yourself, preach," she said with a giggle, and dressed hurriedly in a dark skirt and white blouse, chose not to wear jewelry, grabbed flats from her closet and hopped into them as she made her way along the hall to the staircase. Though she grumbled, and cursed when she barked her shin against the top post, it wasn't all that bad, getting out into the village on a Saturday afternoon. Not all that bad at all.

  After all, this wasn't the city. This was Oxrun Station, the country, just like in the movies. People asked her name when they came into the shop; people greeted her with smiles; people didn't look at her as she passed and whispered behind hands that hid disdaining lips.

  People didn't ask her about the people in her dreams.

  People didn't ask her why she chose to live alone.

  After turning on her other clock radio, sitting within reach on the counter beside the refrigerator, Caroline made herself toast and coffee and dropped into a tubular chair at the small round table, her back to the hallway, her legs stretched out and crossed. She looked through the screen door at the yard, pleased that the timer on the sprinkler had worked for a change and the lawn wasn't flooded. The sparrows were still there, but the intruding crow had left.

  A chuckle when one of the birds tripped over himself; smiling to herself as she sipped a cup of coffee, nibbled a piece of dry toast, listened to a weatherman make a liar of his script. She stuck her tongue out at his voice when he explained about the sun glowing warmly in Harley; she told him to get stuffed when he suggested a picnic or a drive.

  "C'mon, play the damned music," she said without feeling. And glanced to her left, toward Nabb's house. If she could find music like that to listen to every day, she'd have a radio-no, two radios in every room of the house.

  One finger lifted.

  Correction: her house.

  She grinned, amazed as she was nearly every morning that this house, that yard, that pitiful excuse for green grass, was actually hers. Not a large place by any means, though it could easily suit a few more, but spacious enough to let her roam when the mood took her, each room as bright as she could make it, the only dark the wood trim, and the wainscoting in the hall and foyer.

  It was supposed to be cheerful. That was the idea. And the idea behind leaving home after Harry had died. That house had become a mausoleum before she'd known it had happened; that life had become a monument to her dead instead of a getting-on.

  A tightness in her chest she cleared by clearing her throat.

  It'll pass, she was told; it'll never stop hurting, but it will pass, that's what they tell me.

  Right, she thought, and wished to hell she could believe it.

  A phone-in show began, people griping about state politics, the Red Sox, New Yorkers. She leaned over and changed the station, found nothing, and tapped a foot impatiently as she slid along through the band until she reached a place where there was no sound at all but a faint windlike humming.

  She smiled.

  "Still have the touch," she told herself, and took her hand away.

  The only human being I know, Harry had said once, who can look for a rock station and get the wind instead.

  Oh Christ, Harry, she thought, remembering. Oh Christ.

  A bite of toast; the coffee was too hot.

  Then the wind faded, and the preacher was there. ". .. put your hands on," he said, voice still hoarse, still gentle. "The saving power of. . ."

  She groaned loudly and shook her head in disgust, leaned over and turned the volume down. Grotesque, but at least he wasn't one of those empty-hearted reporters who shoved microphones into people's faces five minutes past a tragedy. Like the guy who'd relentlessly interviewed the grieving family of a girl found dead in her bedroom over in Harley two weeks ago. The reporter had made her so furious, she'd almost driven right over there, to shove that mike where his brains were hiding.

  "Let yourself feel" the preacher whispered. "Let the power make you-"

  "Give up," she said absently, and glanced around the room, still reasonably bright in spite of the greylight.

  The kitchen was what she called housewife tacky- the counters and sink were brilliantly white, the appliances copper, the cabinets yellow. It was godawful, and she loved it, and it never failed to make her grin before she left to go to work.

  The radio sputtered as the preacher whispered, "Lay on," again, and was gone to silence.

  "Damnit, if you die on me, too," she threatened.

  Static.

  She glared at the counter where it sat.

  A squirrel with tail raised sat among the sparrows.

  The static cleared, replaced by a soft humming.

  "Oh ... hell," she grumbled, shoved herself to her feet and grabbed her car keys from the top of the refrigerator. Then she reached for the top of the small radio, and yelped when a spark snapped into her palm.

  "Jesus!" she said, blowing on her hand. It tingled. She shook it, puzzled because there was no pain at all; in fact, the tingling was almost pleasant. Veins on the back of her wrist bulged until she massaged them. Then she turned her hand over, expecting to see some sort of burn, some discoloration. There was nothing, and as she rubbed a thumb into her palm the wind sound returned.

  Faintly.

  And she listened for a moment when she thought she heard Harry.

  Someone called her name as she locked the front door, and when she turned, she saw Bruce Kanfield waving to her from across the street. He was stripped to the waist, raking the lawn, and she grinned as she waved back and started for her car, parked at the curb. He was a pleasant, unthreatening neighbor, involved in something like investments or banking, forever bragging about his children, seldom mentioning his wife. Several times in the past six months he'd helped her around the house with wiring and a bit of carpentry, ridiculously simple things that simply eluded her.

  He hadn't patronized; he just showed her and assumed she'd not need him again.

  "Hey," he said, leaning on the rake, "you going to work?"

  "Yep."

  "You driving?"

  She stared pointedly at the car. "No, ski."

  "Oh. Well, don't forget all that construction. You'll end up parking back here again.

  Her hand stopped shy of slipping the key into the lock when she realized he was right. She might as well walk; it wouldn't take any longer.

  "Hey, do me a favor?" he called as she started up the street.

  She nodded as she turned, walking backward, smiling.

  "Fix me up something for Cora? A bouquet? I'll pick it up later, or send one of the kids around."

  She grinned a yes and faced front, and nearly stumbled when she spun around again, thinking Bruce had changed, that he'd grown taller, huskier, more like . . .

  Jesus, she thought; Jesus, what's with you? She almost r
an to Centre Street. But she refused to think of Harry.

  The Florist was a narrow recessed shop jammed between Anderson Footwear on the right, and Pickett's, a men's clothing store that sold only tailored English suits and handmade shirts. Caroline had been in each of them only once, to satisfy her curiosity that Oxrun was, indeed, a village of means. Were she a man, on her salary, she didn't think she'd even be able to afford Anderson's laces.

  On the other hand, the Centre Street range of shops was such that she seldom had to leave town and drive east to Harley, the nearest community to the Station. And the people she met more than made up for the occasional feeling that she was out of her depth here.

  When she arrived, grumbling to herself about all the construction on the street-a major renovation to replace the tarmac with brick and create a pedestrian mall-Adelle was in the back room, fussing helplessly over carnations, roses, a few giant yellow mums, and sprays of baby's breath that kept poking her in the eye.

  "I am helpless!" the stout, white-haired woman declared when Caroline strode in, knocking aside the strings of wooden beads that served as a curtain for the doorway. "I am absolutely helpless!" The woman pointed a pudgy finger at a pile of green paper. "How the hell do you get the damned things to lie down on that?"

  Caroline shrugged. "I don't know. Ask them nicely?"

  Adelle frowned, her rouged cheeks sucking in, puffing out. "That isn't funny, Miss Edlin."

  "It's your shop, Mrs. Vanders."

  "Only because my husband thinks I need something to do." She lit a filterless cigarette and gladly gave way when Caroline dropped her purse on a cluttered desk and moved to the worktable. "The only thing I need to do is go home and get drunk." Then she dropped into a wooden chair that squealed when she pushed her and it against the wall with her feet. "My darling, I am exhausted."