“I dunno,” said Jeremiah. “I suppose clacking those keys makes him feel calm—he does it when he’s fidgety. Boy ain’t all there.”
“He could have eaten in here at the table,” said Ellen.
“I offered,” said Wilmington. “Boy just smiled and went in the other room. Came back a minute later to get that typewriter.”
Jeremiah folded his arms. “Must just like to eat alone.”
“Where’d he come from anyway?” asked Wilmington.
“Yeah,” said Josiah. “We never seen you as the fatherly type.”
Jeremiah ignored him. “From one of those dugouts a few miles from town. His mother was selling him.”
“You bought a kid?” asked Ellen, eager to meet the boy face-to-face.
“Wasn’t my intent. I gave the woman my last quarter, and ten minutes later he’s latched on like a tick.”
Wilmington scratched his head. “Bought a kid for a quarter?”
Josiah took another drink of Old Sam. “You can’t stay here. You know that, don’t you?”
“Figured.”
Ellen said, “That’s enough of that whiskey, Josiah.”
Josiah took one more drink and then slid the bottle away. Wilmington poured himself a few fingers and offered the bottle to Jeremiah.
Jeremiah watched the bottle for a few beats. Finally he poured himself a finger and found all of them watching as he swirled it. In the past it would have been downed by now. He put his nose to it, dry-swallowed, and then raised the glass to his parted lips. He tilted it, but then paused. He placed the glass back down on the table, untouched.
He took in their curious eyes. “What?”
“What was that about?” asked Josiah.
Jeremiah shrugged, pushed the glass away. “Don’t drink anymore.”
“Since when?”
“Since the last time I had a drink. I’m a changed man now.”
“No longer murderin’?”
“Josiah, that’s enough.” Wilmington said it just before Ellen, which was probably a good thing due to the already increasing tension in the room.
“That jolt I took in Old Sparky.” Jeremiah leaned forward, elbows on the table. He had ropy arms corded with muscle that Ellen knew all too well, and he still kept them covered, the cuffs buttoned tight at both wrists. “That electric chair jostled some things.”
“Like what?” asked Josiah. He reached for the bottle again, but Ellen moved it away.
“Would it make sense if I said that blurry is the new clear?”
“You’ve never made sense,” said Josiah. “And you can’t stay here. I’ll give you till sundown.”
“Boys, let’s talk this through,” said Wilmington.
Josiah winced as he lowered his foot from the neighboring chair and leaned forward to meet his brother’s gaze. “I saw you bury those bodies in the grain silo. You didn’t know it, but I watched. You killed ’em, didn’t you?”
“’Course I didn’t.”
“Then why’d you bring ’em here and bury ’em under the cloak of night.”
“Little birdies need a good nudge from the nest, don’t they? And dead bodies need to be buried proper.”
“You see? The day he starts making sense is the day this drought’ll be over.” Josiah pointed at his brother, then looked at Ellen. “I was right in what I did and you know it.”
“If that allows you to sleep at night.”
Josiah scoffed, flicked a breadcrumb from the tabletop.
James looked up from Ellen’s shoulder, and she shushed him back down. She shot Josiah a stern warning.
Jeremiah said, “Don’t think you heard what I said, brother.”
“Heard ‘fuzzy.’ That’s all I needed to hear.”
“I didn’t kill ’em with my own hands, if that’s what you’re asking. Which is what I claimed all along.”
“So why’d you bury ’em? Buried ’em right where you were living, like trophies.”
For that, Jeremiah didn’t have an answer. He might claim to see things more clearly now, but Ellen still sensed confusion in those blue eyes of his, confusion mixed with something akin to guilt. Or maybe it was remorse she saw.
“You can’t stay here,” said Josiah. “Ain’t that right, Ellen?”
There he went, putting her on the spot like she’d hoped he wouldn’t. Should have never even entered the kitchen. She looked to the floor and mumbled, “You can’t stay here, Jeremiah.”
Jeremiah smirked. “You don’t mean that.”
Josiah slapped the table again. This time James didn’t stir. He was asleep now and breathing warmth onto Ellen’s neck. “I know why you came back,” said Josiah. “You ain’t fooling anybody.”
“Came back to shoot you, plain and simple.”
“And that you did,” said Wilmington, massaging his temples like he had a headache. “And there will be no more of it.”
Ellen said to Wilmington. “You need to go lie down.”
“Bullet ain’t gonna move, Ellen. Stop your worrying.”
Josiah reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin, a nickel.
He pushed it across the table toward his twin. “Go on. I know what you do. Coin-Flip Killer?”
“It ain’t like that.”
“Then show me how it is. Go on. Flip it.”
“Don’t think you want me to do that.” Although now, after Old Sparky had done away with his urge to drink, would the coin flip still hold that same power?
“If luck may have it, you can put a bullet in my head and put me out of this misery we live in daily.”
Ellen choked on a sob. “Josiah, it’s the booze talking. Don’t say that.”
“Dust is gonna kill us all anyway,” he said. “Do it. Flip the coin. Let me see how it works.”
Jeremiah slid the coin off the table, into his palm, and glanced at Ellen.
Warmth enveloped her heart. She shook her head no, but he flipped the coin anyway. She closed her eyes. Heard the coin rattle to stillness atop the table and his strong hand muffle the sound as it closed down upon it.
“Heads and you’ll lose yours,” said Jeremiah. “Tails you don’t.”
Ellen opened her eyes as tears welled. She’d had dreams of Josiah dying and Jeremiah coming home to her. The realness of the moment made her nauseous. I do love you, Josiah. The father of her child. A good man. “Stop it, Jeremiah. Don’t you dare reveal that coin.”
Jeremiah kept his hand over the coin and gazed, jaw clenched, at Josiah, but there was a tiny crack in that hardened exterior, and Ellen sensed some doubt in those eyes. Jeremiah always flipped the coin with certainty, but now he looked anything but. Still, he said, “I came back on a coin flip, if you really want to know.”
Wilmington looked up. He’d been the one to teach the coin-flip games to the boys when they were little. He’d started it all, and guilt weighed on his shoulders as he watched things unfold between his two sons.
Josiah broke the silence with a nervous chuckle. “He’s still off his tracks.”
“Ever since I took that jolt in the chair, my nightmares have left me.”
Josiah shook his head. “Not the nightmares again. They’re excuses. Always have been. Attention seekers is all they are.” He pointed at Jeremiah. “You’ve no idea what I’ve had to do while you were gone. Things I ain’t proud of. Decisions I’ve made to keep us alive. Those nightmares are real, brother.”
Ellen’s grip on James grew tighter, more protective. Jeremiah’s nightmares were all too real—or nightmare, rather, as every one of them was the same in content and duration. How many times had she held him as he told her about them? Describing every detail until she’d had a few of them herself. It’d been that way since they were teenagers.
Jeremiah looked up as if a notion had just popped. “I told you back when. About the land.”
Josiah shook his head. “Not again. You was just piggybacking what some of those ranchers and cowboys said. You always did play the cowboy.”
&
nbsp; “Well?”
“Well what?”
“They weren’t wrong, were they? The land is coming back and taking vengeance on account of what we did to it.”
Wilmington looked down at the table. Ellen stepped over, rubbed his back, and whispered that it was okay.
Typewriter keys clacked from the other room.
Jeremiah’s hand still covered the coin he’d flipped moments ago.
Josiah stared at it, forced toughness. “Go on. Get it over with.”
But Jeremiah didn’t reveal the coin beneath his palm.
Everything had gone quiet, even Peter’s typing. Tiny footsteps approached the kitchen. Ellen’s heart fluttered, anticipating the strange boy’s arrival.
Peter stepped around the corner with an empty tin plate smeared brown with bean and rabbit juice. He stopped abruptly before Ellen and met her eyes.
Peter smiled, broad and crooked, exposing those missing teeth.
Those dimples. And the eyes . . .
Ellen’s thoughts slipped out again. She looked at Jeremiah. “It’s him.”
Her vision wavered. James was heavy in her weightless arms.
She saw black, and then she collapsed.
SIX
Soft piano music carried from the Bentley Hotel.
From the Goodbyes’ front porch, Jeremiah and his father watched Peter pace in the dust near the road. The boy mumbled to himself and looked up every time billiard balls collided inside the Bentley across the street, where Orion watched from an upstairs window.
“You think Orion knows we can see him?” asked Jeremiah.
“Doubt it,” said Wilmington. “He’s not as good at hiding as he thinks he is.”
Leaning against a porch column, Jeremiah took in the desert-like expanse of Nowhere. “Like a ghost town.”
“About half the town has gone.” Wilmington chewed his lip. “Exodusters. Call ’em what you want. I call ’em cowards.”
“Even if dying is the only other option?”
“Ah, ain’t nobody dying.”
“Not what I heard.”
Wilmington grunted. He watched the boy pace, kicking up little dust tornadoes as his feet shuffled. “He doesn’t say much.”
“He’s an observer,” said Jeremiah. “Says plenty in his head, I bet.”
Jeremiah’s mind was on Ellen. On how she’d felt in his arms when he’d caught her moments ago in the kitchen—her and the little boy. Somehow he’d managed to gather both before they hit the floor. He’d caught a whiff of her hair and the lavender-scented lotion she’d rub on her neck.
She was inside on the bed now, groggy. Last he’d seen, Josiah was folding a wet rag on her forehead. He’d told Jeremiah to get out and leave them be.
What was it she’d said before she’d blacked out? It’s him. At first he’d been confused as to what she meant—or who she meant—but now it dawned on him. It was probably the reason he’d felt drawn to Peter the day before, or at least aware of the boy’s likeness to somebody. If he got another chance to talk with her he’d confirm it, but until then he returned his focus on his father and that noticeable scar above his ear.
“Can you feel it in there?”
“Feel what?”
“The bullet in your head?”
“Sometimes.” Wilmington leaned on the railing, watching the boy. “What’s he mumbling?”
“I don’t know. But at least he took a break from the typing.”
Wilmington touched the side of his head, where no hair had regrown after the bullet entered. “It’s like a weather vane. I can tell when a duster’s coming. The pressure around the bullet intensifies.”
“I thought the dusters couldn’t be predicted.”
“I just told you different. Head’s been humming for twelve straight days now. A duster has come on every one of them. I could use a break from it.” Wilmington glanced at his son and then returned his eyes toward the boy, or maybe it was the buried road. A cluster of tumbleweeds had gotten snagged on a windmill behind the hotel. Peter had stopped to watch a tarantula skitter across loose dust. “Josiah killed ten tarantulas in one day,” said Wilmington. “Just last week. Bodies the size of an apple. Legs half a foot long. Get ’em good with a shovel a couple times and they’re goners. Faster than you think, though.”
“I’m sorry about the bullet. It wasn’t meant for you.”
“Of course it wasn’t. That was a strange afternoon, and you weren’t the only one firing.” Wilmington coughed three times, hacked up black gunk, and spat into the dust like it was nothing out of the ordinary. “I heard that bullet ping off a lamppost and then thunk. Ping and a thunk, that’s how it sounded. Buried deep in a brain that probably needed a jostle. Miracle, I guess. Or the opposite of a miracle. Miracle would have had it thunking into the wall I was standing in front of. Maybe the miracle is that I’m still here.”
“Even so.”
The front door opened, and little James toddled out with Josiah limping behind him. “She asked for you.”
Jeremiah turned. “And you’re okay with it?”
“’Course I’m not okay with it, but it doesn’t seem time to argue, now does it?”
Jeremiah patted his father’s shoulder and brushed past his brother into the house.
“Where’s the shovel?” he heard Josiah ask his father as the screen door slapped closed.
A second later, out in the front yard of dust, Peter was screaming.
Jeremiah stopped to look out the window. His brother was out there crunching the tarantula with a shovel, and the action seemed to unnerve the boy. At least Josiah had enough sense to stop when the screaming got too loud and town folk began to gather on their stoops. He then quickly shoveled dirt over the spot. Little James stood by his grandfather, watching the scene in the yard with fascination.
Peter stopped screaming and resumed his pacing.
Jeremiah headed to the bedroom, which used to have two beds belonging to him and Josiah but now had one larger one for Josiah and Ellen. Ellen was lying on her side when he entered, her eyes wide open but not all there. Dust motes floated in the sunray that streaked across the bed. A thin layer of dust coated the floor, the baseboards, the windowsill, and the outline of Ellen’s head on the pillow. Jeremiah reached down and brushed some of it off, but it just made her cough, a loose rattle in the chest like Wilmington had sounded a minute ago.
The dust was slowly killing them all.
He sat bedside on the same wooden chair his brother had just vacated. He started to brush the strand of sandy hair that had fallen across her left eye but resisted, not trusting that an innocent touch wouldn’t leave him wanting more.
“It’s him,” she said, stone-faced. Finally she blinked, then blew the strand of hair away from her eye. Dust scattered from the pillow. “You just get used to it after a while. All this dust. The town is trying to cope, Jeremiah. Trying to stay optimistic. But it gets harder every day. Orion across the street, he still has his gatherings each night, with the music and all, but the numbers dwindle.” She sat up in bed, rested her head against the wall. “Maybe you can come tonight. We play billiards and cards and sometimes bingo. Those that have the energy sing and dance.”
“I don’t think anybody here is gonna want me in that hotel carrying on, Ellen.” He scooted up in the chair and gripped her left hand, at the moment not caring if Josiah came back and saw. “I think Josiah is right. I shouldn’t have come back. Nobody wants me here.”
“I want you here.”
“Don’t say that.” He squeezed her hand and looked deep into her eyes, where half the life seemed to be missing. “Now tell me what caused that fainting spell in the kitchen.”
“It’s him.”
“Who’s him?”
“That boy you picked up. Peter. The same boy I’ve always seen in my dreams.”
“What dreams?”
She looked at him, and for a blink her gaze was daggers. “The dreams, Jeremiah. You haven’t been gone that long.”
“It was a boy?” she’d asked, finally calming, her fists unclenching as she settled into his warm embrace inside the barn that was now collapsed under dust. He’d rubbed her back until the tears dried up. “It was a boy, Ellen. With eyes bluer than summer sky.”
But the never seeing hadn’t sat right in her head, and within days she’d gotten to wondering. Her mind had conjured up what she imagined the boy would have looked like as a baby and also when he’d begun to grow into a boy. She saw him in her dreams. And those images, as she’d tell Jeremiah after each one of them, never wavered.
“That boy out there,” Ellen said now, lower lip quivering. “It’s him. Same person I imagined up in my mind, the one in my dreams. He’s got those dimples and the same eyes. The exact same tousled brown hair. That smile . . .”
Jeremiah exhaled both cheeks. “Just a coincidence, Ellen.” Although he was more in agreement than he wanted to admit.
“No. I don’t believe that.” She leaned forward on the bed and pointed. “There’s a reason you stumbled past that dugout when that boy was for sale.”
“I flipped a coin, Ellen. Just as easily could’ve taken that other road.”
“But you didn’t. And look what come of it.” She leaned back again and folded her arms across a chest he tried not to notice. She’d lost weight. They all had. “Just before I fainted in there, my heart swelled. Literally grew warm, Jeremiah, and that was before he turned that corner and stepped in front of me. A part of me knew.”
What Blooms from Dust Page 5