“I’m sure,” said Josiah, his voice all muffled. “And you shouldn’t have any either.”
Jeremiah took another sip, capped the bottle, and slid it deep under his bed so Wilmington wouldn’t nudge it with a toe when he came in to wake them for the morning field work. He knew Josiah was upset he hadn’t stepped in and helped fight William Worst. He’d said he didn’t need Jeremiah fighting his fights, but deep down he didn’t really mean it.
Well, that would soon change. Unbeknownst to Josiah, Jeremiah had flipped the quarter coin when they got home. Heads, he’d go back tomorrow and show William Worst what was what. Tails, he’d let it go.
Jeremiah went to bed preparing for a fight, because that quarter had turned up heads and the sun had even gleamed off it.
He was nearly drunk by the time he fell asleep.
An hour later the nightmare came. Jeremiah woke up in a cold sweat, his heart racing, ending the horror with a sudden, heavy gasp of air. Like always. He looked over at his twin brother across the room. He could tell Josiah was awake under those covers.
Josiah no longer held his hand during the night. Maybe he thought they were too old. Or maybe it was something else.
Maybe someone had seen him locking lips with Ellen Maverick behind Daddy’s barn.
Sunlight turned the wheat fields gold the next morning.
Josiah was quiet while they stacked it.
The temperature was already close to ninety, and they were still an hour away from lunchtime. Jeremiah wiped sweat from his brow with his thumb and flung it aside. Across the way, William Worst had been working his family’s field for the past hour. When the big farm boy headed toward the grain silo, Jeremiah told Josiah he’d be right back.
“Where you going?”
“I gotta pee.”
Jeremiah made as if to go to the outhouse but took a turn at the last second, ducking instead behind a row of elm trees where they sometimes took breaks in the summer shade.
A minute later, after jogging through Dr. Craven’s wheat field to reach the silo, Jeremiah caught up to William, who held a pitchfork in two hands and was standing in front of a mound of wheat twice his height.
“What’re you looking at?”
“Big pile of nothin’.” Jeremiah stepped closer, staring at the tines on that pitchfork. “Why don’t you ever pick on me? Huh?”
William shrugged, spat brown chew to the buffalo grass he’d just tamped down with his big fat boots. “Not worth messing with.”
“Nah. It’s fear I see in those eyes, William. That’s how come you don’t pick on me. I can smell the stink on you now.” Jeremiah continued his approach, fearless even as sunlight glistened off the sharpness of that tool. “You’re gripping that handle tight, I see. Like you’re afraid you might have to use it against an unarmed man.”
“You ain’t a man yet.”
“Been a man since I was born, William. Seen things a boy should never see, so I figured I’d become one early as I could.”
“Stay back now.” William readied the pitchfork, pointing those tines like they were bull horns. He chuckled, but Jeremiah could tell from the way his eyes twitched that he was nervous.
Jeremiah struck like a snake would, quick and efficient, and William was down in a blink, rolling in the grass and clutching his throat where Jeremiah had punched him.
Jeremiah grabbed the dropped pitchfork and knelt over William. “Just touching you now makes me feel sick inside, William. I can see the meanness in you, and it gets blacker every day. You’ve raised a hand to your mother, William Worst. More than once.”
“How do you know that?”
“Just seen it when I blinked.”
William’s eyes grew big upon sight of the pitchfork inches from his jawline. “Don’t do it, Jeremiah. I won’t pick on your brother again. I promise.”
Jeremiah ran one of the points of the pitchfork down William’s right forearm until an inch-long cut formed and blood showed.
“What are you doing? Stop that, Jeremiah!”
“It’s for your own good, William. Lay still. Gotta let some of that meanness out.” A glimpse of his rekindled nightmare flashed through Jeremiah’s mind. He pinched his eyes closed to combat it, to block out all that darkness, and when he opened his eyes again it was gone. But that tension had been transferred into a violent two-handed grip on William’s neck. He didn’t recall grabbing and squeezing, but William Worst was dying under the strength of his grip. Jeremiah let go, and William gasped and spat in the grass. Jeremiah whispered that he was sorry, but he didn’t think William heard him.
Jeremiah wiped sweat from his face, sweat mixed with tears, and then he rolled William Worst onto his back like he was a log. That fear in William’s eyes had increased tenfold. Jeremiah had a notion to grab the pitchfork and just knew where that notion had come from—that evil from his nightmare rubbing off on him and turning him violent. But instead he reached into his pocket and pulled out the quarter he always kept there.
He’d never done such a thing before—the coin was usually saved for more mundane decisions. But just to put a scare into William, Jeremiah said, “If it’s heads I’ll finish you off with that pitchfork. If it’s tails, you walk away, and you never speak of this day.”
William said nothing either way, unless sweating profusely from a hairline that was already receding was a form of communicating. He stared at the coin like it was the only thing in existence, like he was hypnotized by it.
Jeremiah flipped the quarter high and watched it spin.
Instead of catching it he let it fall to the ground and he immediately covered it with his hand. “Heads or tails, William Worst?”
And then he moved his hand to reveal which it was.
FOURTEEN
Dust spun cyclic—a tornado of swirls that formed what looked like a man leaning against the dining room wall.
A man made of dust with a dust fedora tipped low over his dusty face.
His laugh had dust in it, choked like a clogged car tailpipe.
“You should’ve never flipped that coin on William Worst, Jeremiah.”
Puffs of dust emerged from the dust man when he spoke.
And then that laugh again.
And then he was gone.
Jeremiah nearly startled himself off the couch.
It wasn’t that deep gasp of air that used to lure him from the nightmare, but more of a panting and morning sweats like a fever just broke. A new nightmare, something manifested from the evil now spreading across town. The devil from his old nightmare manifested as dust.
You should’ve never flipped that coin on William Worst.
Was that when things had started to turn and the drinking had gotten out of hand?
No, he knew it had started even before that. And deep down he knew why too. William Worst was just the unfortunate one to take the brunt of the anger that stemmed from it.
Jeremiah sat up on the couch and planted his bare feet on a hardwood floor that was almost dust-free. He and Peter had spent hours cleaning, turning the dreariness of the Worst house into something new. Why am I even staying here instead of Orion’s hotel? Some kind of penance for what I did to William? If I did anything at all. In hindsight, given what continued to happen in the years thereafter, he knew he’d had more to do with what happened to William Worst than he’d allowed himself to believe back then.
Back when he’d learned to completely bury himself in the bottle.
He breathed into his hands and rubbed his face. Tiny dust motes floated through sunlight that entered the window. No matter how much they cleaned, the dust couldn’t be escaped entirely.
Peter was in the dining room, typing every so often, punching those keys in bursts and then going quiet.
That much he expected. The boy had been up early the day before, doing the same thing. But then Jeremiah heard a pen scratching, like someone was writing on a table. He got up to look. Peter wasn’t alone. That reporter who’d walked into the Bentley last night sa
t at the table across from Peter, writing something in sprawling cursive letters.
She looked up and smiled. Sunlight shimmered off that auburn hair. He’d never seen anything so clean. “Morning, Jeremiah.”
What was she even doing here, dressed like she’d just walked from a painting? Had the boy let her in?
He scratched his scalp and suddenly wished he’d had time to run a comb through his hair.
Rose Buchanan wore a red dress that was only a shade darker than what she’d put on her lips, the same type of face paint Ellen had used before all the dust started peeling up and making it pointless. She pushed a mug of steaming coffee toward a vacant seat beside Peter, and Jeremiah took it as the invitation it was. The black coffee felt good rolling down, so he took another gulp and rested his elbows on the table.
Why had his father hugged her last night? Hugged her like he’d never seen Wilmington hug anyone before, even Ellen.
“Peter let me in.” She sipped her coffee and left an arch of red lipstick on the rim of the mug.
Jeremiah suddenly felt the urge to hug her too. She was beautiful, but he didn’t think that’s what had prompted it. It was just something he felt like doing, but unlike his father he wouldn’t act on it. “Sorry about last night.”
“Sorry for what?”
“That was my father who hugged you.”
She waved it away. “Oh, that was nothing. It was darling.”
Didn’t look that way to me. More like he’ d collapsed on you and you had to hold him up.
“You know he has a bullet in his head?”
“I heard.”
“Who’d you hear it from?”
“Orion. The man who owns the hotel.” She put her pen down and folded her arms on the table as if to mirror Jeremiah’s pose. “He looks sad, that man.”
“Well, he got run through the wringer last night. The town has gone off the tracks since that duster, the one you called Black Sunday.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
“I think it makes him act strange sometimes—that bullet.” Jeremiah sipped his coffee. Peter typed something that could have been an imaginary sentence. They both glanced at the boy, but then focused back on one another. “Doctor told him if he got about too much the bullet might move. He’s been risking it of late. Part of me wonders if that’s not his goal. To go ahead and get it over with.”
“And the other part?”
Jeremiah shrugged. “Guess he got tired of sitting around.” He inhaled the steam and swallowed more coffee. “What’d he say to you when he hugged you? Thought I saw his lips move.”
“He didn’t say anything,” she said. “But truthfully I was so stunned by the gesture that perhaps I didn’t hear.”
Wilmington had clung to her for twenty seconds before Ellen pried them apart and walked Wilmington home. Jeremiah had stopped by there minutes later, after he’d helped Rose Buchanan with her luggage, but found the front door of his childhood home locked. His knocks went unanswered, so he and Peter had returned home to the Worst house.
Jeremiah finished his coffee and placed the cup down. “Where you from?”
“New York City.”
“I seen you at my trial. What brought you from New York City?”
“I’m a reporter,” she said. “I follow the news. There were reporters in attendance from nearly every city, if you remember.”
“Oh, I remember.”
Peter had begun typing again. Rose watched the boy as she spoke. “I heard about those four bodies found in the grain silo, and like most of the country I had to know more.”
“Were you horrified or fascinated?”
“Perhaps a bit of both.” She scribbled a few words and then looked up. “More intrigued than anything, though.”
“By what?”
“How a man could do such a thing. Admit to burying those bodies.”
“But I didn’t kill ’em.”
“I know that.”
“How are you so sure? You sit here before me without a hint of fear in those pretty brown eyes.”
“Instinct,” she said. “If I had something to fear, then perhaps I’d be shaking in my shoes, but I’m not. Why’d you even bring those bodies to the silo to begin with, Jeremiah Goodbye, and then bury them like a guilty man would?”
“No innocent man is completely free of guilt, Miss Buchanan.”
“Call me Rose.”
“Fine, Rose. Perhaps I didn’t kill those men, but I know I sent them to their deaths.”
She grinned. “I have files back in my room that I want to show you. I saw you in that courtroom, Jeremiah.”
“And what’d you see?”
“A troubled man. A man so deep in the bottle he’d like to drown. A man looking for release from the pressure he’d been under.”
“You see a lot.”
“I’m good at my job.”
Jeremiah pointed at her paper. “What’d you write a minute ago?”
“Notes.”
“On what?”
“On you.” She scribbled something else, something he couldn’t read upside down. Peter was watching from behind his typewriter, taking in their every word. She finished writing, smiled again. “Unlike the other reporters, I didn’t return back home after your trial.”
“I saw you from time to time at the prison. Why’d you stay?”
“Because although you may have been guilty of being troubled, you were innocent of those crimes leveled upon you.” She sipped her coffee, and Jeremiah watched her slender throat massage it down.
For the first time he wondered if he should be talking to her. What would Ellen think of her being in here with me now? Is she thinking anything at all?
“I saw the way the others looked at you inside that hotel lobby last night,” he said. Especially Ellen. “They’re leery of reporters. They think you’ll write something about all this dust—what’d you call it, the dust bowl? Put us all in a bad light and make us look dumb. They think you’re here for your own fame and recognition.”
“I’m here only for the truth.”
“And the truth shall set us all free?”
“No, Jeremiah, the truth shall set you free. For three years now, I’ve been investigating all four of those men and what happened to them.”
He folded his arms, leaned back in his chair, and chewed the inside of his cheek. He’d been thinking about those things too. Dust motes floated in the sunlight. He blew at them, and they scattered. “Why do I feel like we know each other, even though last night was the first time we’d spoken?”
“I don’t know.”
“What I can’t get past is why my father did what he did when he seen you.”
She wrote something on her paper. “Truthfully, I didn’t spend the past three years hovering around that prison. I returned home on a half-dozen different occasions, usually after the judge would dismiss my findings.”
“Tell you to go back home with your tail between your legs?”
“If I had a tail,” she said with some bite. “But my real problem was the other parts I was born with, the parts that make me a woman.” She pointed at him like he was at fault, but then he realized it was men in general she was pointing to. “The judge brushed me aside every time because I was not a man.”
“But then you’d come back?”
“When I’d get tired of my father chastising me about not being married, yes, I’d come back. He doesn’t approve of my profession. He and my mother want little grandchildren running through their gardens, like all of their high-society friends, when all I want is to write.”
“And chase stories.”
“And chase stories,” she said with a nod and a quick fist to the tabletop.
Then Peter smiled and said, “Chase stories.”
Jeremiah studied her. “There’s more to it—you returning time and time again to needle a judge who wouldn’t listen.”
“If there’s more to it, then I don’t know what it is.”
“Be
cause you just want the truth?”
“Yes, the truth.” She leaned forward with her elbows on the table again. “One of those bodies had a cut on the arm, as was stated in the trial. Did you cut one of them?” She’d glanced at his left arm as she’d said it, which made him wonder exactly how much she knew about him. He straightened the cuff at his wrist and made sure it was pulled down all the way.
She was relentless. “Jeremiah?”
He pursed his lips. “Those men were bad people.”
“How did you know?”
“Felt it when I got close. Then I saw it when I brushed by them. And now . . .”
“Now what?”
“Now it’s just the feeling, and even then it’s fuzzy.”
“What’s fuzzy?”
“When I approach somebody from the wrong side.”
“There it is,” she said, excited. “You referred to that when you took the stand, which I don’t think your lawyer should have let you do. The wrong side?”
“The bad people, Rose.”
“As in the wrong side of the coin?”
“I suppose.” He looked away and watched the boy, who was focused on typing again. “Ever since I took the electricity in that chair, my nightmares ended. And now I don’t see it anymore.”
“See what?”
“The ugliness, Rose. The bad stuff that the bad people do.”
“Like that man, Boo, you recently buried?”
“How do you know about him?”
“Orion.”
“Orion needs to close his hole.”
“Did you flip a coin that led you back to Nowhere?”
He sucked in a deep breath and held on to it for a moment. He let it out slowly. “I did.”
“And it led you to Peter?”
He nodded.
“And then what?”
“He followed me home.”
“You saved his life then.”
Jeremiah shrugged, drank from the coffee mug he’d already drained dry.
“What did you see when you brushed up against Boo?”
“Nothing.”
“But you sensed something bad?”
“I did. Old Sparky didn’t clean the slate, I guess.”
“And you flipped the coin?”
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