The man harrumphed at that and circled him, as though Alphonse was a workhorse for sale. “All right,” he said. “I’m Reuben de Reu.” He gestured at the other two. “That’s Fred and Manuela. She goes by Manny.”
Fred, the surly one, was bald with a heavy mustache. His shoulders were thick and muscled, reminding Alphonse of some of the line workers Eduardo managed. Manuela seemed young despite her height—maybe younger than Alphonse—with dark hair and complexion similar to Alphonse’s own. She smiled like an old friend might.
Lines of determination surrounded Reuben’s mouth and eyes. “I claim land to the top o’ that hill yonder. You see them dyin’ trees? That’s drought. Those gotta come out on account of the fire risk. That the sorta job you want?”
“It sounds like good work.”
“All right. Trial basis. Two weeks. If it don’t work, you’ll be on your way. Understood? Hands sleep in the bunkhouse. Paid five reblas per ton o’ board, meals included.”
It was less money than Alphonse expected, but there’d be no taxes on it, and he wasn’t here for the money anyway.
“You can start by stackin’ those boards.”
After supper that night, Alphonse, Fred, and Manny walked back to the bunkhouse, which looked a bit like the utility shed behind his family home. It was small and cramped. A three-room cube. Reuben had said it was the original quarters his father had used, back when he claimed the land. It was left for the hands after the larger house was finished.
There was a cot in the front room, a table and lantern next to it, and a small wash basin. The floor was bare.
“G’night,” Fred said, taking one of the back rooms and closing the door.
Manny laughed. “He’s not a talker.” That much had been obvious at supper. Reuben’s wife, Georgie, had gone on at such length, though, that Alphonse had wondered if Fred’s silence was simple politeness.
But Manuela, she was a city girl, a breath of familiarity. Alphonse said, “Do you hire out every year?”
“No. No way. This is my first season. I want to get into construction.”
“You don’t need to work out here for that.”
“Maybe. But I want to build something new. I figured I’d start by learning the basics. Lumber’s a basic.” Manny took off her work boots, set them next to her cot, and went to the basin to wash up. “Narona’s crowded. You know? We need to build out.”
“I’ve never been.”
“It stinks. Like a sewer. When you breathe that all day, you’re sick all night.”
Narona was known for its stench, due in part to the annual storm flooding. Most of the stink traced to petroleum seeps. The oil reserves throughout Renivia Province were the richest on the continent.
“I carried packages for a few years. Every time I carried out of Narona, the air was better. Just a few miles out the air’s better. I delivered up to Beschel and down to Granvil, and there’s lots of room. There’s good air too.” She sat on her cot and took off her socks. A ring of sawdust marked her ankles, and she rubbed it off and slapped her socks against the cot frame. “I figure Reuben’s a connection. If I do a good job, maybe I’ll get a break on lumber and order the cuts I need. So, I’m here for the money but the contact too.”
Manny had a route. She had a foot planted in a solid toehold and had started her climb.
“What about electricity? You can’t just build anywhere you want. There’s no generators.”
“Renico’s laying cable between the cities.”
Alphonse shook his head. “The ground’s too rocky. Exposed wire, sometimes it’s damaged at conjunction, and the ground’s too hard to bury anything.”
The young woman was shaking her head, laughing as Alphonse spoke. “No, I’m telling you they figured it out, how to bust rock. Burying the lines is going to be easy.” She drew out the last word like a kiss.
“I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true. Cities won’t need central generators anymore. We can spread out.”
Alphonse saw it, new cities on the coast, no oil extractors, no refineries, no generators. No city-level power at all, just lines from the existing generators.
“So, you want to build that?”
“You’d better believe it.”
* * *
That night, Alphonse lay in his cot in the third room and stared up into the darkness. Almost daily he’d remembered more councilors that his mother had helped onto their seats or into new cities. She seemed to be thinking past a provincial scale. She seemed to be thinking at a continental scale.
He ran through the numbers. Councilors congregated at the provincial level into assemblies, and each provincial assembly elected ten senior councilors to serve on Nasoir’s Continental Congress in the capital city of Vastol. This body of thirty, the Congress, elected the prime chancellor of Nasoir, who ordered the agenda during session. The chancellor also commanded the marshalry, which kept order during natural disasters and other emergencies and conducted the annual census at Caravan. And the marshals kept law in the foothills, but as Ephraim had said, crime wasn’t much of a problem.
The chancellor had two powers—ordering the congressional agenda and commanding the marshals. But the chancellor also relinquished any voting rights, leaving the congressional block at twenty-nine. There was no obvious reason for Ivette to try and influence the chancellery itself, given its limited power, so it must be simply the Congress, but that didn’t make sense either. Congress voted on continental tax law and managed some aspects of trade between the belt and the provinces. It settled disputes and provided oversight of the belt. But most laws, including city tax law, were handled locally.
Alphonse lit the small lantern next to his cot and pulled out his notebook. He opened it to his growing list of names and drew a faint line through each probationary and junior councilor. They’d not be eligible to serve on the Continental Congress. He counted the remainder.
Five senior councilors in Sangal. Two in Beschel. At least three in Renivia Province, between Narona and Masotin.
Those were the councilors she’d had a hand in helping, who might possibly serve in Congress. He didn’t know if she had dealings in Garrolin Province or not, but between Delsina and Renivia Provinces she potentially held sway over ten congressional votes. And if he’d been seated, di Les or di Gof could have transferred to Beschel and increased her tally there without diminishing her influence in Sangal.
As he stared at the numbers, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they mapped directly toward a single destination.
Why does she care about Congress? Is it the chancellery?
* * *
The next morning, Alphonse and the others hitched horses to a logging cart. The animals pulled the cart up to the forest, and with Fred and Manny, Alphonse felled his first ailing tree. They sawed the branches and cut the trunk to lengths. The horses dragged the logs down one by one, and Alphonse’s shirt was soaked within the hour.
At midday, Reuben said, “Never said it was easy, but it sells. Every board, it all sells. Best lumber in the belt. You up to it?”
It meant good sleep. “Yes.”
The following week they switched to milling. Reuben said, “Moisture’ll be uneven if the logs set too long. Boards’d be warped. Fred knows. Been here six seasons.”
After milling, they sorted planks by species and cut, and stacked them with crossing slats.
Toward the end of the second week, Reuben said, “All right, boy. You held up. This the sort o’ work you want?”
What he wanted was to sort through his mother’s actions. This was a good place to do it.
“Yes.” The singlemindedness of the work, he relished it. The peace of the forest.
The only awkwardness occurred at meals, when Reuben’s wife talked endlessly, stringing together sentences with no relationship to one another. In addition to her ve
rbal disarray, two children ran about the property from suns-up to suns-down. They’d dash into the mill shed or up the logging trail unsupervised, perhaps because of Georgie’s morning sickness. Breakfasts were the barest simplicities while she stayed in the back of the house with a bucket.
“Would’ja rather hear that or her gabbing?” Fred asked one morning in a rare commentary.
One morning, as they milled in the barn, a pair of horses trotted up pulling a carriage. Reuben walked over. “Terrence. Nathan. Good to see you.”
“Reuben,” the older man said. The three men exchanged a few words and then strode to an irrigation system on Reuben’s property line. Reuben spoke to the men while pointing out different parts of the system.
The two children ran over, and Reuben shooed them away, but they went back a few minutes later. Alphonse walked over to retrieve them.
Reuben and the older man were talking. Reuben wore a grin, like he’d won some sort of bet. “Disappointed, Terrence?”
“Disappointed we’ve another drought. Disappointed somethin’ has to give.”
“Irrigation would fix it,” the younger man said.
“Nathan, we agreed t’ see how it holds up.” Terrence looked at Reuben, a question in his eyes.
“It takes gettin’ used to,” Reuben said. “It’s sensible, once you get the hang of it. You’d see pretty quick, Terrence. Your crops’d turn around real quick.”
Terrence scowled, as though he’d hoped for a different answer. “Can’t afford it. ’Sides, pullin’ water from the ground could make problems we hain’t thought through. And, y’know, Celeste still ain’t for it. She’s got her reasons.”
Chapter Nineteen
Myrta asked Odile to go on a walk after breakfast, like she had every day since Celeste left, because Odile had known the truth about being switched and the reasoning behind it for years. Odile said no, again, and Myrta finally lashed out. “We don’t need to spend any time together. I don’t care.”
“It’s pointless. Are we supposed to be best friends now?”
Myrta gritted her teeth, thinking if she’d grown up as Odile had, without farm chores, with no threat hanging over her, and interesting people coming through all the time, she’d be content. There were places to shop in Collimais and she might even travel to Beamais. Ephraim went often enough. If she’d grown up at the inn, she wouldn’t be self-absorbed like Odile. She’d be happy.
But Odile was angry, especially since the handyman had left. Now she crossed her arms and glared at Myrta.
“What? Stop acting like I’m the annoying one.”
Odile’s gaze intensified. “You know what? Yes. Let’s go on your stupid walk.”
They started through the orchard. Here and there missed plums had fallen, brown and limp on the ground, pits poking through the bruises. Warm air pressed against Myrta, pulsing out of the ground like an accusation.
Summertime. Heavy and slow.
“Why didn’t Celeste ever tell me?”
Odile snapped a branch off a tree with a loud crack. She broke the stick in two. “You were too little.”
Myrta suppressed her annoyance. “I’m older than you, but you knew about it.”
“You’re older than me? Less than a month.” Odile whacked at a healthy tree limb, ripping its leaves. “I asked. It made sense, so I made them tell me.”
Myrta stopped. “Why didn’t you ever say anything? You could have told me. When was this?”
“I don’t know. We were seven or eight. They told me to keep quiet.”
All the instructions, as far back as Myrta could remember, to keep her dizzy spells secret. They’d taught Odile to lie too. It sickened her.
Odile tossed one of the sticks back down the path. “Ardelle thought I’d say something, so you stopped coming. And since you never came back, I knew Celeste and Terrence didn’t actually want me.”
This was the reason the visits ended? Because Odile had figured it out?
“Odile. Terrence never knew. And of course Celeste wanted you. How could she not? And trust me, Terrence would have taken you over me any day. Besides,” Myrta added, “you knew the truth. I never did.”
“So what? You grew up without hearing about Renico every day of your life.”
But everything would have been in the open, and that would have been better. It would have kept this anger from taking root. “You could have told me. You could’ve, I don’t know, sent a note with Nathan after Caravan. You could have come to the stead, insisted he bring you. You could’ve made things better for both of us.”
Odile gave her a bitter look. “I had to keep you safe.”
“That’s scat and you know it. I didn’t know any of this. You knew what was going on, you hated it—and you didn’t do a thing!”
The way Odile was standing, her angry eyes and crossed arms, tapping the other stick on her elbow, it looked like Celeste facing down an unruly horse and more afraid than she let on.
“Oh, I get it,” Myrta said. “You were scared.”
“You were too dumb not to see it.”
“You knew! And you didn’t do anything for what? Ten years? You know what kind of person doesn’t fix something when it’s wrong like that? A coward. You’re a coward.”
Seething, Odile said, “Don’t call me that.”
“You are. You could have fixed this. Refused to be part of it. Nathan would have.”
“Stop it.”
“Coward!”
Odile threw her stick down and pushed Myrta at the shoulders. Myrta stumbled into the copperwood stump, tripped over her feet, and fell to the ground. “You were afraid.” She stood and shoved Odile back.
“You!” Odile said. “Why should I help you?”
“Because what they did was wrong.”
Myrta was on the ground again, with Odile on top. Rocks and thorns pushed and scraped into Myrta’s arms, and she kicked back, scratched at her cousin’s face, screaming.
Odile shoved Myrta’s head sideways in the dirt. “I hate you,” she cried.
“I never hurt you,” Myrta yelled back, pushing at Odile and wrestling with her legs to trip her off. “We were friends!”
“I know that!”
And Odile stopped, as suddenly as she had started. She just stopped. After a still moment, she rolled off with tears in her eyes.
Myrta’s rage evaporated. This was her cousin, her favorite, the other girl.
Myrta said, “I hate this trait. I hate that I can’t control it. Ephraim says my muscles are wasted. I’m so angry at him. I’m so angry at all of them. Switching us. The whole thing.”
Odile stood and brushed herself off. “You should be.” She tipped her head to indicate the trail, and Myrta nodded and stood, and they started up.
“Still,” Odile muttered, “at least you had brothers.”
Brothers. Running off with Jack. Hiding from Nate. Years of memories with brothers.
Dirt puffed from Myrta’s footfalls, the world sneezing dust, too hot. “Did the discerners ever come for you?”
“No. Ephraim saw to it. He took me to see Melville. Said he’d ship me off if I had it, but he knew I didn’t.” Then she smiled a little bit. “I used to make him tell me the story.”
Myrta imagined growing up with a fright story like that to curl into a papa’s lap with. A real papa, who would hold her and tell her a story. “Why would they take children?”
“Simple. The younger you are, the easier you are.”
She turned Odile’s words over. “I’m not sure I understand that.”
Odile looked at Myrta with her mouth half open.
“It doesn’t make me stupid.”
“The auts, Myrta. The exhaust. A child can’t see it yet, so they don’t know when someone might be coming.”
Oh.
They reached the
overlook. It was so dry. So hot. Myrta pulled her hair together at the nape of her neck and tucked it into her collar.
“Anyway, Ephraim cleared my name. Your name, I guess.”
Her name, Odile’s. Myrta turned that over too. She should have been a Vonard. Odile should have been a de Terr. Aunt, Uncle. Mama, Papa. “I don’t know what to call anyone.”
Odile was staring off into the distance, her face hard. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters. I can barely use this thing. I can’t because of what they did. All of it matters.”
The more she said it, the more certain she felt. As far back as she could remember she’d done farm chores with Celeste. Never Terrence, in the fields. How much of her life had nothing to do with tradition—and everything to do with her trait? How much of a papa had she lost? “Everything should have been out in the open, including our names. We grew up with one another’s parents. Our whole lives—relationships—it matters.”
“It only matters because you want it to.” Odile’s face looked like Nathan’s, the lines crowding her mouth, the hard glare forward. “Well? This is the view. Anything like the stead?”
Nothing like the stead, no. The stead didn’t have mountains for one thing, and there weren’t nearly so many people there. With a chill, Myrta realized Odile had no idea what that was like.
She’s not self-absorbed. She’s hurt. Myrta’s heart broke at the realization. “Oh, Odile . . . it’s beautiful here. The homes, and carriages and fresh bread everywhere. It’s perfect. It’s a perfect place to grow up.”
Odile squinted out over the view.
The pain in that gaze, Myrta couldn’t bear it. She began sharing memories. She told Odile about the trees, the goats and chickens, growing up surrounded by the hush of summer wheat and the quiet of winter snow. Family stories, bedtime stories, steader stories. The cave no one knew about but her and Jack.
Odile’s face relaxed. Myrta told her about milking and cheese making, about bringing her favorite hens into the house when it was cold. Finding stray eggs days later. Odile smiled, like the storm had passed.
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