Cyber Circus

by Kim Lakin-Smith

  “Them calipers giving you gyp? Come on.” Ben stuck out a hand the size of a rib steak. “Let’s be havin’ you.”

  “I’m fine, I tell ya.”

  Reg tossed out a fistful of dirt; luckily for Ben, no wind meant it sifted back down to the ground rather than flick up into his eyes. Not that the kid noticed.

  But he wouldn’t, mused Reg. Nice boy like that would’ve been raised with Preacher Richards’ good grace. Yet sometimes manners got in the way. He wished to hell the kid’d kept on walking and not had to go and play Samaritan.

  “Move it along, kiddo. Got a cramp in this knee’s all.” Sidewaysing onto his ass, Reg rapped one of the steel side bars of his left leg brace.

  The Preacher’s son offered him a big dumb smile. But there was a wary glint to the eye.

  “Alright then, Mister Wilhoit. I’ll just be at the store getting’ Momma her sewing notions. Hollerin’ distance if you need me.” Ben pointed to the far end of Main. Reg squinted over at the rubble shack of the General Store, one of a handful of buildings to survive fire or abandonment and keep on serving what was left of the community. Same way it always had.

  The old man said nothing, just stayed still as a tombstone, ass in the dirt.

  “Alright then,” repeated the lad. He tipped his cap and set off, letting the sunlight back in like a holy blaze.

  Reg watched him go. Then he bent forward and dug his fingers into the dry dirt again.

  * * *

  Virgil drove his knife through the pork. Eying the mashed potatoes, gravy, black-eyed peas, and collard greens, he pressed a little of everything onto his fork.

  “Fine pork shoulder, Julie,” he announced as the maid re-entered the room carrying a jug of iced water. “You get it from Bobby Buford’s farm?”

  Julie flashed her generous smile. “Bobby Buford’s, Mister Roberts. Quality hogs he’s got penned. Decent price he charges too, ‘cept we always exchange goods of course. Mister Bulford, he’s all gone on my cornbread and fresh picked tomatoes. It’s so warm, see. I got to planting unseasonably early.”

  “Sure is a helluva dry spell. Not that visitors to Boar House would notice with a garden this lush.” Virgil leant in on his elbows, knife and fork laid over one another like a silver cross. “How’d you do it, Julie? How’d you grow vegetables and herbs like you do when the field opposite is shredding its epidermis quicker than a rattlesnake?”

  “’Cause I designed the best irrigation system in the state. And ‘cause Julie gets a big ole milk churn and hauls ass to the well night and day to keep the system’s water butts topped up.” Jos jammed her own elbows onto the table. “Sissy boy like you’d struggle to lift that churn five yards.”

  “Better a sissy boy than a bad-tempered gasbag,” shot Virgil from the opposite end of the table.

  Jos got a sour twist to her mouth. “Better a bad-tempered gasbag than an incompetent navigator.”

  “Oh, come on now!” Virgil was peppered on the inside. His skin got some colour to it. “Much as I’d love to look into a crystal ball and know what’s gonna hit before we get there, you know as well as me we can hit waterlogged sand or a boulder anytime underground. Because of water pockets, we got the soot mix, and as backup, the tar tap. Because of boulders, we got a Tungsten Carbide drill bit.” He raised an eyebrow. “Maybe you need an early night, Jos? All this hard work and staying up late is bound to make an old crone cranky.”

  Jos stabbed at her greens. She ladled in a mouthful and chewed it up into one cheek. “It’s your job to survey the route. Establish the orientation of bedding planes and steer us clear of joints in the rock,” she insisted, adding aside, “Julie, you go get your supper now.” Her gaze cut back to Virgil. She swallowed the mouthful. “We hit that last stretch of gravel hard and we hit it clumsy. Now we gotta pray there ain’t a hairline fracture in the bit.”

  Virgil dug in fingers at his hairline. “And if there is, it’ll blow itself and us to kingdom come.” He dragged his hands back over his scalp. “I got my nose into every inch of the Burrower this afternoon. Like the one who built her, she’s a tough old bird.”

  He allowed himself a smile. Sure, he was smarting that Jos felt the need to pin the blame on him – and maybe if he’d surveyed the field’s surface for the thousandth time, he’d have guessed at that curl of gravel a few hundred yards below. But, no... Virgil kept his smile in place. Deep down, he knew there was no magic way to see exactly what lay in the Burrower’s path, only estimations based on months’ worth of surveys of the rock formations up top. He also knew that while Jos’d take a bullet before she’d admit it, they were both dog tired – which was why their usual banter had a caustic edge.

  Luckily, there was Carrie-Anne to agitate the atmosphere.

  “You know, Aunt Josephine, there hasn’t been a scrap of wind these past four days you and Virgil have been down under. Not a scrap. Still the dust creeps in under the doors and windows. I was up before cockcrow this morning. When I saw a fresh layer over this place, my first thought was how come there’s any ground left for the Burrower to dig through?” Carrie-Anne threw out her hands to indicate the panelled dining room, and, presumably, the whole house. “Julie and I spend our days sweeping it up.”

  Glancing at Virgil, she rubbed one side of her nose with her knuckles as if to rub away a soot smear. He recognised the gesture as slight embarrassment and he understood. Carrie-Anne wasn’t really one for words. Not that she couldn’t hold a conversation if she wanted. Just she was a girl who spoke with her eyes, or a wisp of laughter, or the sorcery of her tongue at his navel.

  Jos was talking now. Thanks to Carrie-Anne, the old gal had been lulled into a softer frame of mind. Conducting a symphony of science with her cutlery, she appeared intent on using her niece as a sounding board for the plethora of geological theories Virgil had helped her construct.

  “...over-intensive arable farming methods. I told Bobby Buford so two years ago when he still had land worth ploughing and hadn’t pigs shitting over every inch of it. Drain the land of mineral, strip it of ground cover, and you’re gonna get a wind tunnel. All’s needed was a turn up in temperature and lack of rain, and, hell, I told them!” Jos screwed up her face, itself parched of moisture.

  “But as I said, Aunt Josephine, there’s been no wind. Just this thick baking in.”

  Carrie-Anne’s gaze shifted towards him as she spoke. Virgil felt the same mix of emotion he’d felt when he’d stood on the porch a couple of hours earlier and soaked her in. Everything had misted into the background except Carrie-Anne. The only thing worth seeing. After so many hours spent in twilight underground, he’d fed on the colours offa her. Then Wesley had stepped out onto the porch, and the mist and colours evaporated like a broken spell. Only Carrie-Anne’s tangibility had remained. He’d longed to mould her with his hands like wet sand.

  “The wind will come,” he said softly. He carved at the lump of roast pig on his plate again.

  “And when it does, we’ll all be blown away like stupid shitting pigs in straw houses,” cut in Jos. She scraped back her chair. “Now I’ve a mind to get Julie to cut me a slice of that pie I smelt baking earlier.”

  Passing Virgil, she put a hand to his shoulder. “You want?”

  It was as close to an apology as he’d get from Josephine Splitz.

  Virgil glanced sideways, his mouth softened. “No. No thank you, Jos.”

  He dared believe she might disappear into the kitchen and stay there, stuffing her face with pie, while he and Carrie-Anne got to sit together and talk some. But then Jos paused in the doorway.

  “Go to the workshop and get all maps sketched in the last two months, Virgil. We musta missed that seam of gravel somewhere. And no...” She raised a hand to block his objection. “Tomorrow won’t do. We ain’t seeing the warmth of our beds ‘til I’m satisfied we’re not gonna drill a goddamn minefield in two days time.”

  “Two days? But that’s a Sunday?”

  Virgil could see Carrie-Anne turning her m
ind inside out in search of arguments against.

  “I promised we’d all be at chapel Palm Sunday. Our attendance – or lack of it – has been noted, and not just by Preacher Richards. Folk talk, Aunt Josephine, and talk leads to trouble.”

  “That it does, Carrie-Anne, and it’s gonna lead you into a great deal of it right now if you don’t stop gassing and get yourself to bed.” Jos’s eyes shone out like coal chips.

  Virgil watched Carrie-Anne intently. His gal would never show that dry old coot what she felt on the inside. Oh no, she’d keep it stitched into the flesh lining over her heart and ribs.

  He, on the other hand, knew no such restraint. But just as he would’ve happily strangled Jos on the spot, the old woman let her shoulders stoop. She looked incredibly tired all of a sudden.

  “Please, Carrie-Anne. We’re out to save lives here. And that includes protecting our own.”

  Saturday April 13, 1935

  Saturday. Town Day. Once upon a time, Main Street would’ve thrummed with the footfall of folk who’d journeyed to Bromide to trade, swap and stockpile. The Ice Man would have busied his pick. The Blacksmith would have chipped at his anvil. The pharmacist would have returned a whisper across the counter and deposited some bottle or canister of powder into a bag which he’d carefully fold over. The girl at the Dry Goods store would have dragged the fabric bundle off the shelf and measured, snipped and ripped. In every store and business premises, proprietors and staff would have busied themselves to satisfy Saturday’s rush. Meanwhile, townsfolk and families from surroundings farmsteads would have gathered to speculate, commiserate, and nose into one another’s business. Once upon a time.

  But Bromide had gone from riches to rags. All that remained of Town Day were a series of ‘How’d you do’s, ‘See you around’s, and all the idle talk in-between. Womenfolk ooed and arred in the shade of the porch belonging to the solitary general store. Children chased each other like hot-footed hens or formed puddles of lilting conversation. The menfolk, meanwhile, kicked up dust out on the road, swigged Coca-Cola or root beer, and smoked and talked in the hazy, drawn-out way men are prone to.

  “Johnson said his cattle went on and ate the grass despite the dust. Lost half the herd to mud balls in their stomachs,” said George West, a pharmacist who’d stayed on after the drug store closed to farm his own patch of land before the drought hit.

  Ben nodded. “Franklin Herby had the same, ‘cept he bailed a month ago. Packed Rita and the boys up in that old cart that was his daddy’s, hitched a nag to it, and moseyed on out. Rumour is he got a great aunt owns a fruit farm in California. So I’m guessin’ he’s all made up now.”

  “Don’t you be so sure, Ben. I’m inclined to believe the news on the radio and as far as folk makin’ their fortunes out west, yeah, they get work on the fruit farms but they don’t make enough offa it to keep a bag-a-bones donkey in feed.” Quarry worker, Samuel O’Ryan, eyed the preacher’s son. It hadda be nice to still have the shine of youth on you, he thought to himself. All that belief life’s gonna come good in the end. All that gullibility.

  “Yeah, I guess.” Ben bowed his head. But something must have itched at him and he added, “Ask me, folk should have more faith.”

  “Easy for you to say when your daddy’s the preacher. Come judgement day, you and your daddy’ll be sitting pretty on the right hand of the lord. Rest of us, well, we’ll starve to death and find ourselves looking up at ya from the pit of Hell,” hollered Dixon Goodwin, tinker and sometime yard’s man, who had the devil’s gift for saying exactly what would stir a man.

  “Pit of Hell? Ain’t we there already?” Samuel beat his hands. His laughter had a sour note, but was echoed by the harrumphs of the others.

  Drawing on his cigarette, eyes pinched against the smoke, Dixon kept on staring at the preacher’s son.

  “Can’t but wonder though, Ben. While the rest of us are working the scrap of land we got left, or raising swine on soap weed, or fixin’ to leave the only home we’ve ever known, how’d you and your daddy manage to keep your shoes so nicely shined and sweet potatoes on the table? No, no, now...” Dixon raised his hands against an undercurrent of complaint. “I ain’t criticising Preacher Richards. He’s a man of the lord. I’m just interested to know if the preacher’s boy thinks he suffers like the rest of us.”

  Ben eased back ox shoulders. “Me and my daddy seen suffering aplenty, Dixon. We take relief supplies to farmsteads as far out as the abandoned Indian academy. We’re the ones that dig a hole for them that have died of the dust pneumonia, who say a prayer o’er them. As for our shoes being shined, I was raised to mind what my neighbour thinks of me. As for sweet potato...”

  “Why’re you picking on Ben here? Flea biting your ass?” shot Samuel, who apparently saw no good reason why Ben should explain what food ended up on his father’s table. The quarry man added, “You know darn well if there’s any fresh vegetables to be had around here, they’re from Miss Splitz’s homestead.”

  George and a couple of others nodded.

  Dixon hacked and spat into the dust. “Just ‘cause I got a spot as the new yard man out at old woman’s Splitz’s place, you think I’m in the know?”

  “Aren’t ya?” shot one of six quarry lads sat in the road.

  “Aren’t I what?”

  “Aren’t you the one to fill us in on the place?”

  “Whadaya wanna know?” Dixon kept a smile behind his teeth. No harm in splashing out a little gold dust about Boar House and its residents. He plumped out his chest. “The old gal’s machines? They’re helluva big, I tell ya. Steam-breathing hogs the lot. She’s got ‘em holed up in a workshop out back. As I heard it from their last yardman, place is lined with tools plus a whole host of thingamajigs Miss Splitz engineered alongside the hired help – guy called Virgil Roberts?” Dixon weighted his voice just right. Outsiders were the worst sort of intrusion when folk were down on their luck.

  “This... Virgil. He a relation?” piped up another quarry lad.

  Dixon ground his smoke under a boot heel. He breathed in slow and took his time. Wasn’t often folk listened without him having to shove his opinion up under their noses.

  “No relation,” he confided.

  The men hushed. Dixon could hear the womenfolk over at the store, their soft laughter alongside the chirruping of children.

  “Josephine Splitz hired him in from some big college outta state,” he said to the men surrounding him. “Place called Stanford.”

  The quarry boys kept on chewing their tobacco like calves on the cud. Only Ben got a knowing look. Dixon paid him no mind.

  “Anyways. Pair of ‘em have butchered the field in front of Boar House good and proper with a great big drilling machine. The Burrower they call it. This Virgil and Miss Splitz, they climb inside and drive it underground for days, leaving Miss Nightingale to keep house.”

  One mention of Miss Nightingale and he’d really got their attention now, these men with unsatisfied needs and empty pockets.

  Not everyone was seduced though. Dixon dragged the back of his hand across his nose and got a whiff of disproval off Ben, Samuel and George.

  Samuel beat his big hands again. This time the gesture was threatening. “I ain’t interested. Folks’ business is their own.”

  “Unless it has a bearin’ on others!”

  Reg Wilhoit made his way into the group with that stiff-legged, foot-scrapping motion of his. He halted, one hip at an awkward angle. “Jos should be forced to stop with the crazy machines. Liable to get someone killed.”

  The quarry boys had sense enough to hunch their shoulders and look away. Samuel swallowed the last of his soda, eyes scrunched shut against the sun’s glare, then peered on over at the newcomer.

  “It ain’t up to us to tell grown folk what to do in their own time on their own land, Reg,” he said quietly. “Just as no one had the right to warn you off working them machines before they decided to take a piece of you?”

  “Thought I was helping Jos
mine for new branches off Bromide Spring,” Reg embarked, deaf or bloody-minded. “Ten years ago, folk thought we could breathe new life into this town’s dry and weary bones and tempt the visitors back. Least that’s the way I saw it. ‘Course it wasn’t me that got to go underground in a giant metal worm.”

  “That the problem, Reg?” Samuel’s tone stayed gentle. His words were more caustic. “You jealous some outta towner gotta ride in the big machines?”

  “And lose my life, not just a pair of useful legs? No thanks, Sammy. I got crushed enough under that iron hoisting crane ten years ago. Just as well too. I’ve learnt to stand back and see Jos Splitz for what she really is.”

  Dixon wore a sly look. “Miss Splitz, hey? Well, what’d ya know. Seems even old folk gotta get their kicks.” He let his mouth hang open.

  “Mind outa the gutter, Dixon Goodwin. I’ll tell ya what Jos Splitz is. She’s a conjuress! A leech!” A fleck of spit escaped Reg’s sunken mouth. Shifting his balance awkwardly, he cast wild eyes about the group. “Not one of ya’s got the first clue what that dame’s doing over at Boar House.”

  “I know plenty,” cut in Dixon with a grimace that suggested it was his time to talk and weren’t no cripple gonna shake him off his perch. “I know Miss Splitz is spitting mad at Virgil ‘cause he might’ve broke something on her burrowing machine. Heard her riding him for it when I went to the kitchen last night to get a glass of lemonade offa their house negro. I know Miss Spitz calls us farming folk a bunch of shitting pigs, blames us for killing off the land and leaving ourselves with nothing but dust.”

  Dixon wove his words well. There wasn’t a man present who didn’t tuck a frown into their face or sheesh through their teeth or curse a dry old coot who’d got no right to judge.

  Reg rounded on the group, dragged feet drawing snake-coils in the dirt. “There was nothing natural about the way that big old crane unpinned from its earth footings to come crashing down on me...”