“You gonna say I told you so?”
He winked. “I told you so.”
Wilmington was the same height as his twin sons—three inches over six feet, four depending on the boots. If not for the crow’s-feet around his eyes and the hair color, the three of them could have been triplets. He resumed shoveling, attacking that dust drift like there would be no tomorrow. It was only April, but the temperature was already in the eighties.
“Why are you shoveling, Wilmington?”
“She’s in there, Ellen.” He tossed shoveled dust off to the side and went in for more. “Reckon I just don’t like all this stuff on top of her.”
Ellen swallowed the lump in her throat. The she he referred to was his late wife, Amanda, one of the first citizens to be buried in Nowhere, the town Wilmington and Orion Bentley had named after discovering there was no Majestic.
Ellen had heard the story too many times to count. Atop Amanda’s grave, in the days after her burial when the soil was still freshly turned, Wilmington started a rose garden. He tended it even more meticulously than his role as a single parent—and he was a good father. Every day he was out there watering or pruning, refusing to wear gloves against the prickly thorns, and often he’d come in sucking blood from a nicked finger. Orion said he couldn’t keep those roses alive during the intense summer heat, but Wilmington somehow managed to do it. He built a portable wall out of wood planks that he’d use to shield the rose bed whenever the sun got too bad.
“She’s in there, Ellen.”
She walked toward the house, grabbed a second shovel from the lean-to, and dug along with him. They exchanged a glance but then worked in silence as the sun beat against their necks, he in his overalls and she still in her teaching dress. He’s in there too, she wanted to say, referring to the boy she and Jeremiah had conceived, the one she’d lost five months early to a miscarriage. She’d carried small during the winter, and it had been easy to hide under the layers of clothing, so no one had even known.
Ellen bit her lip as she dug, the memory fueling her efforts.
“What’s Josiah doing?” Ellen carved the shovel blade into the shrinking drift. “He should be out here helping.”
“He’s cleaning the rifles.”
She paused. “What for?”
He breathed heavily against the shovel. “You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“I guess you wouldn’t, since you were locked in the schoolhouse,” he said. “The newspaper come yesterday, two days late as usual.”
“What did it say?”
She surveyed the town. Not only were the residents of Nowhere digging out, but many of them now stood on their porches and stoops, armed with pistols and rifles. Sheriff McKinney paced in front of the jailhouse. “Wilmington, what’s going on?”
“That twister that hit a few days ago. Run east across the state.”
“Yes?”
“Well, it clipped the back of the prison.” He went back to shoveling, probably to hide his emotion. “Jeremiah escaped.”
Ellen’s hands trembled. She covered her mouth as if to keep her heart from jumping from it. He must have sensed her confusion. “According to the papers, he was only a few seconds into his execution. Lived through it. Now nobody knows where he is.”
“And you think he’s coming back home?”
He gestured out across the expanse of Nowhere’s town center. “Ain’t the only one.”
Sure enough, more armed citizens had appeared. It was as if the entire town expected Jeremiah.
Even that new man, Moses Yearling, who was staying in one of the top-floor rooms of the Bentley Hotel, was now out on the porch with Orion, watching and waiting, standing next to the hotelier with one of those TNT rockets in his arms. He’d come into town two days ago claiming to be a rainmaker. A cloud-buster. “Successful now in the last three towns,” he’d bragged, smoothing his orange mustache as the town folk dropped the last of their savings into his white Stetson. He’d been shooting those loud rockets up into the clouds for two days now. Crowds would form to watch, optimistic. Still no rain. “Be patient,” he’d tell them. “Last town took five days, but rain it did.” Ellen didn’t trust those fidgety pale eyes of his.
The door to their house creaked open.
Josiah stepped outside with two rifles in hand and a brown shade hat tilted against the sun. Her husband was slender and athletic, just like Jeremiah, but Josiah had brown hair and hazel eyes while his twin’s hair was coal black and his eyes cobalt blue.
“Ellen,” said her husband without much enthusiasm.
“Josiah,” she said, giving it right back.
Part of her craved Jeremiah’s return. The other part wished Old Sparky had taken him. Things would have been easier then. But as Wilmington often said, “Easy breeds contentment. And contentment don’t get things done.”
If Jeremiah returned, there would be bloodshed.
Josiah dry-swallowed when he got nervous, and she could hear him from where she stood. Jeremiah would want revenge. His own twin had been the one to call in the law, alerting them to the bodies he’d seen his twin bury in the abandoned grain silo, where Jeremiah had started sleeping months before his capture.
Built himself a private home in there equipped with a kitchen and stove.
“You don’t understand, Ellen. It’s not what you think.”
Those were the last words Jeremiah had spoken to her as the badges wrestled him away. And in the deep nodding of his head, he’d relayed to her without words that she was to marry Josiah and forget about him.
“Josiah is a good man, and I am not.”
If he’d said it once, he’d said it a dozen times.
Josiah walked down the porch steps and kissed Ellen’s cheek, a gesture that seemed obligatory. “The boy is asleep. Breathing peacefully as of now.”
Ellen smiled, then patted her husband’s arm.
Dozens of rifles cocked, echoing off buildings.
The three of them faced the road.
Josiah said, “Speak of the devil.”
“Don’t say that,” Ellen said under her breath.
Two figures had blown in with the breeze, one tall and the other half the size. Ellen knew it was Jeremiah by the way he walked, those long, slender legs slightly pigeon-toed.
Josiah held a rifle out toward Wilmington.
Wilmington refused it. “Ain’t shootin’ my own boy.”
Josiah then handed the second rifle to Ellen. After a stern glance she took it, but didn’t ready it as her husband had. She wasn’t going to shoot Jeremiah either.
Jeremiah grew taller as he walked deeper into town under the watch of so many aimed gun barrels. He stopped. Next to him was a little boy dragging a rifle of his own.
“What’s that in his arms?” asked Wilmington.
Ellen squinted. “Looks like a typewriter.”
“Harmless enough,” said Wilmington.
The rifle shook slightly in Josiah’s hands, but he kept it aimed. “Still heavy enough to do damage.”
Ellen shook her head. “Who’s that boy?”
“And why’s he smiling?” asked Wilmington.
Jeremiah bent over to place the typewriter in the dust, and when he straightened back up he held his hands in the air. “I mean no harm.”
The boy beside him then said, “I mean no harm.”
“Just need a few words with my brother,” said Jeremiah.
A pause, and then the boy shouted, “Just need a few words with my brother.”
Josiah finally lowered his rifle, looked at Ellen. “Why’s that boy doing that? Why’s he keep smiling?”
“Only one way to find out.” She waved them over.
“I don’t like this,” said Josiah.
Wilmington ordered everyone to lower their weapons. He leaned on the standing mailbox for support as he paused to gather his balance on the way out to the road. The little yellow flag on the empty box quivered slightly from his weight. Then he stepped t
oward his wayward son, opened his arms wide, and they embraced in the middle of the dust.
Ellen bit her lip.
Josiah grunted, then spat on the ground.
FOUR
Jeremiah embraced his father, but over his shoulder he locked eyes with Ellen.
Three years of dust living had done little to dull her beauty— those green eyes and sandy curls that hugged her slender neck and accentuated those sharp cheekbones, but even more so the confident way she carried herself, chin upright no matter the bother. He’d always admired her spirit—tough when things needed doing, but soft when they didn’t.
Even so, she was the first to look away, right about the time a child started crying from the house. Hers and Josiah’s? Part of Jeremiah hoped so. The other part—well, he still had the bullet in his pocket. Must have had it soon after he’d been arrested. Ellen dropped the rifle she’d been holding and hurried into the house, where the crying turned into a coughing fit.
Wilmington patted his son’s back and stepped away with watery eyes and quivering jaw. “Good to see you again, son.”
“Not too sure I’ll be stayin’.” Jeremiah focused on his twin across the way. “Reckon me and Josiah got some business.”
Josiah walked out into the open and stopped twenty yards from his brother. Dust swirled. He cocked his rifle and stood straight backed, like he always did when he needed to summon strength. “You’re not wanted here, brother.” He called out, louder, toward Sheriff McKinney across the road, who approached like a snake would, slithery and not all that straight. “Get on the telephone lines, Sheriff. Call the authorities and tell ’em we caught us a fish.”
Sheriff McKinney hefted his belt into his belly. “Fish don’t live too long in the dust. Ain’t that right, Josiah? Big ol’ fish, though. Bigger than that gun-down of Bonnie and Clyde, I’d say.”
“Shut your face, McKinney,” Jeremiah said without looking at the sheriff, who stopped his approach. Jeremiah stepped away from the typewriter in the dust and said to Peter beside him. “Hand me the rifle, boy.”
“Hand me the rifle, boy,” said Peter, doing just that as he bounced the words back.
Jeremiah removed the lone bullet from his pocket and showed it to his twin. “No need to get the authorities involved, Josiah. What say we settle it like men? You ready to meet your maker?”
Josiah stepped forward. “Something tells me you’ve already taken a peek at yours. You like what you seen?”
Jeremiah shrugged, then placed the cigarette in his mouth. “You got a light?”
“In the house.”
“I’ll have Daddy show me to it, then, when we’re done.” The cigarette dangled from his lips. “Like the good old days.”
“Except these bullets are real,” said their father. “Now boys, let’s go inside and talk this out. No need for bloodshed. There’s been enough dying.”
Josiah said, “Daddy, go inside with Ellen. This don’t concern you. Go on now.”
Peter, now sitting in the dust, clacked the typewriter keys.
“Stop that, Peter,” said Jeremiah.
“Stop that, Peter.” The boy punched keys. They echoed like tiny gunshots. “Stop that, Peter. Peter, stop that,” he mumbled into his chest. “Stop that, Peter. Stop that, Peter . . .”
Jeremiah said to his father. “Take the boy inside with you. Peter, stop the mumbling. Go with Mr. Goodbye.”
Peter stood with the typewriter and did as he was told. But Wilmington, other than stepping to shield the boy he didn’t know from any danger, didn’t move.
Josiah said, “On the count of three.”
“Rifles on the ground?” asked Jeremiah.
Josiah nodded. “Rifles on the ground.”
They both knelt down, placed the rifles on the dust, and then stood facing each other again. When they were kids, they’d do the same, and on the count of three they’d reach for their rifles to shoot at a turkey buzzard or jackrabbit.
Jeremiah would win every time.
“Don’t do this,” pleaded Wilmington. “Josiah’s sorry. He shouldn’t have ratted you out. Let’s talk this through.”
“I ain’t sorry,” said Josiah. “He’s a murderer.”
“One,” said Jeremiah.
“Two,” said Josiah.
“Close your eyes, Peter,” Jeremiah whispered.
Peter closed his eyes, mumbled, “Close your eyes, Peter.”
“Three.” Jeremiah dropped down, grabbed the rifle, and aimed in one swift motion.
Josiah did the same.
But when Jeremiah put pressure on the trigger, instead of homing in on his brother’s chest, which was how he’d been imagining it for three years now, he saw Wilmington blocking the path.
“I’ll take the bullet for the both of you,” said Wilmington, his posture hunkered in anticipation of possibly taking a bullet from either son, or both. “Enough of this nonsense.”
Jeremiah lowered his rifle, but only slightly, enough to see daylight between his father’s legs. He fired.
Wilmington jumped.
Peter screamed, covered his ears.
Josiah fell to the ground, cursing and grabbing his boot. “He shot me!”
Wilmington and Jeremiah inched closer, as if approaching a cliff’s ledge.
Wilmington, with horror in his eyes, looked at Jeremiah. “You shot him.”
“Just in the toe.” He watched Josiah writhe in the dust, where blood meandered like the Cimarron River once had. “Get up, Josiah. Show me where that light is inside. I need to smoke this thing before it stales. Plus me and the boy are hungry.”
FIVE
He’s really out there. In the kitchen.”
Ellen had meant to keep the thought in her head, but it came out as a whisper in her toddler’s ear as she patted his back in the hallway, just around the corner from where Jeremiah sat with Wilmington and Josiah at the kitchen table. She’d finally gotten James to stop crying and coughing. She’d pounded his poor back until he hacked up enough black gunk to fill her palm. The coughing fit had lasted just long enough for her to miss the shoot-out.
From the bedroom she’d heard the one shot and then Josiah screaming. A minute later her husband was there on the foot of the bed wrapping his toe in a dusty towel and chugging from a bottle of Old Sam white dog, keeping her away with an extended hand and gibbering about him being fine, with all kinds of embarrassment etched across his red face. Then he’d hobbled ahead of her into the kitchen.
Ellen listened to their voices from the hallway. “It’s your uncle Jeremiah in there,” she whispered into James’s ear, unabashedly now. “Your daddy’s twin.”
“Daddy’s twin.” James repeated her words like that boy Jeremiah had brought into town with him, the one she’d only seen from a distance, but was still familiar somehow. James said, “I hungry.”
“Well, let’s get you something then.” Ellen rubbed his back and took a deep breath. Enough stalling. She rounded the corner. The three men looked her way. Wilmington had served up plates from a pot on the stove.
She glanced at Jeremiah but then looked away before much could be said between them. They used to claim they could talk with their eyes, and she sensed that might still be possible.
Jeremiah took a drag on his cigarette and then exhaled smoke toward the big hole in the kitchen ceiling.
She could feel him watching her. She balanced James on her hip, got milk from the ice box, and poured some into a cup. James took it with greed. Milk was as scarce as the cows nowadays, and most of what they had went to James to keep up his strength.
Wilmington, who’d taken off his hat and rested it on the table like she’d told him too many times not to do, said, “His appetite looks better.”
Ellen agreed. Somewhere deep down was the foundation of a smile, a response lost to the town years ago, sucked up into the same dark void that had stolen the rain.
Before she knew it, James finished his milk and rested his head on her shoulder while she looked aro
und for something more to feed him.
Josiah took another gulp of Old Sam and wiped his brow. He propped his injured foot on the chair beside him. He shot Ellen a glance and read her mind. “Toe ain’t blown off. Just nicked it.”
“On purpose.” Jeremiah, sitting across the table from his twin, spooned in a glob of beans and rabbit.
“You ain’t that good,” said Josiah.
Jeremiah shrugged, then stared at the ceiling as he chewed. “Want me to fix that hole?”
“I cut the hole,” said Josiah. “Put it there on purpose.”
Jeremiah asked Ellen with an arched eyebrow.
“Don’t do that,” said Josiah.
“Do what?”
“You know what.”
Ellen said, “The ceiling was sagging. There’s nowhere dust doesn’t go anymore. Every day Josiah gets up there and sweeps the dust down from the hole.”
“That way the ceiling won’t collapse,” said Wilmington, digging into his beans and rabbit.
“Hat off the table, please.”
Wilmington did what he was told, even though it was his house.
“Guess I’ll have to get up there now,” said Jeremiah, jerking a nod toward Josiah’s towel-wrapped foot.
“I can still climb a ladder,” said Josiah. “Been suffering through much worse since you been gone, protected by those thick prison walls with food daily. It’s us that’s been livin’ on the nut.”
Jeremiah smirked, stole a glance at Ellen that made her heart jump. “Why don’t you have a seat?”
“Why don’t you mind your own?” said Josiah.
Josiah didn’t want her in there with them—that much was obvious. But now that she’d been invited, Ellen at least stepped closer to the table. “I’m fine standing.”
Jeremiah looked at his twin across the table. “Looks like you.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“Just sayin’.” Jeremiah finished his cigarette and smooshed the butt into the tin plate. The room was silent for a moment, enough for them to hear Peter in the other room, clacking on the typewriter.
Wilmington leaned back in his chair and watched the boy in the other room, where Peter had taken his bowl of beans and rabbit. “Why’s he do that?”
What Blooms from Dust Page 4