“Oh,” Beckie said again. She didn’t have any particular reason not to believe him. She wasn’t sure she did, though. He brought it out too pat—maybe that was what bothered her. And she couldn’t imagine that kids in a place like Fredericksburg, a place that was Nowhere with a capital N, could come up with something so neat all by themselves. Maybe she wasn’t giving them enough credit. Maybe … but she didn’t think so.
“Do you know where the closest doctor lives, just in case?” Justin asked. “I don’t think there’s one here, and I don’t think there’s one in Palestine, either.”
“If I were a doctor, I wouldn’t live in a place like this,” Beckie said. Justin nodded, and this time she had no trouble believing he really agreed with her. She went on, “I bet I know where the nearest doctor is.” He raised an eyebrow. She told him: “Parkersburg.”
He winced. “I bet you’re right. If the disease shows up there, they’ll be busy enough so they won’t want to come out here, too.”
“I know,” Beckie said. “But look on the bright side. Even if they did come out, how much could they do?”
“Is that the bright side?” Justin asked. “If it is, what’s the dark side?”
We all die. Beckie wished that hadn’t gone through her head. She didn’t want to say it. Saying things made them seem realer. She knew that was foolish, which didn’t make it any less true. So she said, “Something worse,” and let it go at that.
She watched Justin as he nodded. Watching him, listening to him, made her want to scratch her head. She knew what she wanted to ask him: something like, Where are you really from? Everybody else she’d met in Virginia made her feel as if she’d stepped back in time here, as if California were years and years ahead of this place. Maybe that was right, maybe it was wrong, but it was how she felt.
With Justin, it was different. It was as if he thought she was the one who was out of it. He didn’t make a big deal out of that, but she felt it was true. And she wanted to know why.
Was it just that he was stuck up? With some people, she would have said yes right away. But he didn’t act like that. He went out of his way not to act like that, as a matter of fact. He wanted to fit in as well as he could. It was as if he couldn’t help thinking the way he thought, even if he didn’t mean to show it.
Since she didn’t want to ask him about himself and why he thought the way he did, she decided to ask about what he’d said instead. That seemed less likely to spook him. “I do like that thing about mushrooms,” she told him. “What else do they say at your school?”
He turned red. She might have thought she wouldn’t make him nervous, but she turned out to be wrong. “I don’t know,” he mumbled. “We talk, that’s all.”
“I can’t believe it,” Beckie said. “I bet that line will go all over the continent. Has it been on TV here?”
“I’ve never noticed it,” Justin answered.
“Only goes to show that TV writers don’t listen to people,” Beckie said. For some reason, that made Justin turn red all over again. She went on, “What are some of your favorite shows?”
“I don’t watch a whole lot,” he said. “News and sports, mostly.” He yawned. “Boring, right?”
He sounded as if he wanted to be boring, as if he hoped it would be boring. But Beckie said, “I like football, too. I like rounders, but I like football better.”
“Oh, yeah?” Justin said. Now Beckie knew exactly what he was thinking. Guys always had trouble believing it when they found a girl who was interested in sports.
“Yeah,” Beckie said. “Which kind of football do you like better, rugby or association?”
“Uh, rugby,” Justin answered, now sounding like somebody who was in over his head. But Beckie hadn’t expected anything else. They played games where you could throw the ball more in the eastern states than they did in California.
“We play association most of the time in California,” Beckie said. “Some of our sides go down to the Mexican states and take on their best clubs. We win a lot of the time, too.”
“That’s … impressive,” Justin said. “Uh, I think maybe I ought to go in now. See if the laundry’s dry.” He almost fled into the house.
The laundry wasn’t dry. Mr. Brooks and Mr. Snodgrass sat hunched over a chessboard. Mr. Brooks pushed a pawn. Mr. Snodgrass said, “You’ll pay for that.”
Justin looked at them in what seemed like real dismay. Beckie said, “Hey, I’ve got a rounders question for you, since you live on the East Coast. Was George Herman really as good as people say he was?”
“Uh …” Justin blinked. Beckie would have sworn he’d never heard of George Herman. But if you paid any attention to sports, that was impossible … wasn’t it?
Mr. Snodgrass looked up from his game. “He wasn’t as good as that, Rebecca—he was better,” he said. “He could hit a ball farther than any man who’s played the game since, even if he is a hundred and fifty years dead. That season he had stomach trouble, the Highlanders finished next to last. And he really did aim his club out toward the sign, like people say, and then smack the ball over it.”
“Oh, my. The called shot,” Mr. Brooks murmured. So he knew something about George Herman, too.
“I’ve heard that,” Beckie said. “Is it really true? Is there video to prove it? I’ve never seen any in California.”
“Well, I don’t reckon I have, either.” Mr. Snodgrass sounded as if he didn’t want to admit it. “But everybody says it’s so.”
Beckie started to laugh. Everybody else looked at her—everybody except Gran. That only made it funnier, as far as she was concerned. They say was an article of faith with her grandmother. They said this, that, and the other thing. Gran never quite knew who they were, but they said it, and she believed it, no matter how dumb it was.
“George Herman must have been one ruthless player, all right.” Now Justin sounded like somebody trying to make up for lost time.
Mr. Snodgrass nodded politely. As for Mr. Brooks … Mr. Brooks turned red and wheezed and choked, for all the world as if he was trying so hard not to laugh that he was hurting himself. Beckie wanted to scratch her head. Justin hadn’t made a joke—or not one she got, anyway.
In the laundry room, the drier beeped to show the clothes in it were finally done. Mr. Brooks went in and loaded them into a duffel bag. He said, “We can pick up the game tomorrow, Ted, if that’s all right with you.”
“I suppose,” Mr. Snodgrass said. “You just want to wait a spell before you see what I’m going to do to you, that’s all.”
“In your dreams,” Mr. Brooks said sweetly. They both laughed.
After Mr. Brooks and Justin left, Beckie said, “I’d swear Justin never heard of George Herman.”
“How could you not have?” Mr. Snodgrass said. “It’s like not hearing of Stephen Douglas or Franklin Delano Truman. You’d have to come from Mars not to.”
“Mars,” Beckie echoed. “A couple of things he said make me wonder if he’s from even farther away than that.”
Justin kicked at a pebble on the sidewalk as he and Mr. Brooks walked back to the motel with their clean laundry. “Well, I blew it again,” he said, angry at himself. “Who’d figure that a girl would like sports? I mean really like sports, so she knows more about ’em than most guys do.”
“Life is full of surprises,” Mr. Brooks said, which didn’t make Justin feel any better.
He kicked at another pebble. “She made me look like a jerk. She made me sound like a jerk,” he said. “People I never heard of—but I’m supposed to, if I’m a proper fan.”
“Ruthless,” Mr. Brooks muttered. “I ought to punt you for that, except it’s the wrong game.”
They turned the corner onto State Route 14, then both stopped in their tracks. Red lights flashing, an ambulance was parked in front of the diner across from the motel. Justin’s stomach did a slow lurch, the way it would have when an intercontinental shuttle went weightless.
He glanced over at Mr. Brooks. The old
er man licked his lips. Was he paler than he had been a moment before? Justin thought so. But then, he was probably paler than he had been himself. “That doesn’t look so great,” he said.
“No, it doesn’t.” Mr. Brooks tried not to sound worried. That only made him sound more so.
“Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with … stuff like that,” Justin said. “Maybe somebody got burned or something.”
“Maybe.” Mr. Brooks didn’t sound as if he believed it. Justin bit his lip. He didn’t believe it, either, no matter how much he wanted to.
The paramedics or whatever they called them here brought somebody out on a wheeled cart. Justin bit his lip harder. That was Irma, all right. And the men taking care of her wore gas masks and orange rubber gloves.
Mr. Brooks and Justin both took half a step back before they knew they’d done it. Justin laughed at himself, not that it was really funny. As if half a step could make any difference in whether they came down with whatever it was.
“She always seemed fine,” Mr. Brooks said. “I thought we were worrying over nothing.”
“I hoped we were worrying over nothing,” Justin said. Amazing how changing one word in a sentence could change the whole meaning.
Siren wailing, the ambulance zoomed away—back up Highway 14 toward Parkersburg. Justin and Mr. Brooks both watched and listened till the flashing lights vanished in the distance and the siren dopplered away into silence. Then the coin and stamp dealer kicked a pebble of his own. “Well, not much use pretending we haven’t been exposed,” he said. “Now we see what happens next.”
“Yeah.” Justin didn’t see what else he could say. He took his phone off his belt. “I’d better let Mom know what’s going on.”
“She won’t be happy,” Mr. Brooks said.
“I’m not real happy myself,” Justin said. “I’m especially not real happy ’cause we’re stuck here.” Any of the locals who overheard him would think he meant stuck in Elizabeth. And he did. But he also meant stuck in this whole alternate. And he and Mr. Brooks were stuck, because no transposition chamber would take them back to the home timeline, not with a genetically engineered disease loose here.
He punched in Mom’s number. The phone rang—once, twice. “Hello?” Mom said.
“Hi. It’s me.”
“Hi, you. What’s up?”
“An ambulance just took Irma the waitress away. She may have it.” There. Justin had said it. He waited for his mother to pitch a fit.
She just said, “Oh,” in a strange, flat voice. Then she said, “I was hoping you’d miss it in a little town where nothing ever happens. It’s here in Charleston, too.”
“It is?” Justin said in dismay. But he wasn’t only dismayed—he was angry, too. “They haven’t said anything about it on TV or anything.”
“They wouldn’t,” Mom answered. “They don’t want to make people jump up and down and worry or anything. But it’s here, all right.”
“That’s … too bad,” Justin said, which would do for an understatement till a bigger one came along. Mr. Brooks raised a questioning eyebrow. He pointed south, toward Charleston. Justin nodded. The older man clapped a hand to his forehead.
“Stay well, you hear me?” Mom said.
“I’ll try.” Justin didn’t want to tell her that someone who’d come down with it had been breathing into his face every morning for the past week. “You stay well, too,” he said. What kind of things was Mom not telling him? Did he really want to know? He didn’t think so.
“I’ll do my best. The doctors say they’re getting close to a cure.” Mom spoiled that by adding, “Of course, they’ve been saying the same thing since it broke out, and there’s no cure yet. Dummies.” Anyone who overheard her would think she was complaining that the local doctors weren’t as smart as they thought they were. And she was. But she was also complaining that they knew less than their counterparts in the home timeline. She was right about that, too.
Sometimes being right did you no good at all. This felt like one of those times. “Love you, Mom,” Justin said. Some things you didn’t want to leave unsaid, not when you might not get another chance to say them.
“Love you, too,” she answered. “Be careful.”
“Sure,” he said. “You do the same.”
They were both whistling in the dark. Justin knew it. No doubt his mother did, too. They both did it anyhow, to make each other feel better. Justin didn’t feel much better. He hoped Mom did.
“It’s really in Charleston?” Mr. Brooks asked as Justin put his phone away.
“Uh-huh.” Justin nodded. No, he didn’t feel very good about the way things were going, not even a little bit. He glanced over at Mr. Brooks, hoping the older man would do or say something to cheer him up.
Mr. Brooks was looking south, toward the city where he lived and worked. His face usually wore a smile, but now his mouth was set in a thin, hard, grim line. “A lot of nice people down there,” he said. “Oh, plenty who aren’t so nice, too, but I can’t think of anybody who deserves to come down with a mutated virus.”
Justin, by contrast, was looking around Elizabeth. By now, it was more familiar to him than Charleston ever got the chance to be. “I can’t think of anybody here who does, either,” he said. “Including you and me.”
Mr. Brooks managed a smile for that, but it was a halfhearted one, not one his face really meant. The corners of his mouth curled up and he showed his teeth, but his eyes … . Behind his glasses, his eyes didn’t brighten at all. “Well,” he said, “if you’re going to fuss about every little thing …”
“I don’t think you ought to let them in the house any more,” Gran said to Mrs. Snodgrass. “That woman has it, and they’ve been eating where she works.”
“You know the saying about locking the barn door after the horse is gone?” Mr. Snodgrass said. “Well, Myrtle, you’re trying to lock the horse out after he’s already got his nose in the barn.”
“Are you sure, Ted?” Mrs. Snodgrass said. “Maybe they weren’t catching yet, and now they are.”
“Maybe.” In Mr. Snodgrass’ mouth, it came out, Mebbe. “Don’t reckon it’s what you’d call likely, though.”
Beckie didn’t reckon it was, either. She laughed at herself for even including the word in her thoughts. She didn’t think she’d ever heard it in California, even if it seemed natural as could be here. She almost said what she thought, but at the last minute kept quiet. These people were four times her age. They wouldn’t pay any attention to her no matter what she said. The only people Gran ever paid attention to were her mysterious they.
“I don’t want to turn them away,” Mr. Snodgrass said firmly. “I just don’t. It wouldn’t be neighborly. How could I do business with Randolph Brooks again if I told him he wasn’t welcome inside my house? I’d be ashamed to, I would.”
That got through to his wife. “Well, you’re right,” she said. She didn’t sound happy about it, but she didn’t argue any more, either.
Neighborly, Beckie thought. That was another word you didn’t hear much in California—certainly not in enormous Los Angeles. In little towns in the mountains or the desert? She supposed so, but she wasn’t from one. She’d never stayed in one till now.
She’d never stayed anywhere with a tailored virus loose, either. She could have done without the honor. Only trouble was, it didn’t look as if she had a choice.
“How is the woman, anyway?” Gran asked. “Does anybody know?”
“The hospital in Parkersburg doesn’t want to say anything,” Mrs. Snodgrass said. “You know how hospitals are.”
“But we need to find out,” Gran said, as if that made all the difference.
“Good luck,” Mrs. Snodgrass said. You could tell she and Gran were cousins, all right—she was ready to argue about anything, too.
“Maybe somebody could call and say they’re a relative.” Gran actually had an idea. Beckie blinked. She couldn’t remember the last time that happened. It wasn’t even a bad idea.<
br />
Mrs. Snodgrass turned to her husband. “Take care of it, Ted,” she said in tones that brooked no argument. “Tell ’em you’re Irma’s husband.”
He didn’t look thrilled about getting drafted—or maybe about the idea of being Irma’s husband. “And what’ll I tell ’em when they ask how come I’m not there with her?” he asked.
Mrs. Snodgrass had all the answers. “Tell ’em you weren’t with her when she came down sick. Tell ’em you’re hoping you don’t catch it yourself. Heaven knows that’s true.”
“I don’t reckon they’ll talk to me,” Mr. Snodgrass said dolefully. But he looked up the number and called the hospital. The longer he talked, the less happy he looked. He clicked off the phone with more force than he really needed. “They said I’m the fifth different husband she’s had, by the phone numbers from incoming calls. She’s had two mothers, three sisters, and five daughters, too—oh, and two sons.”
“Okay, you tried,” his wife said, unabashed. “So they wouldn’t tell you anything, then?”
“Oh, I didn’t say that,” Mr. Snodgrass answered.
“Well?” Mrs. Snodgrass and Gran and even Beckie all said the same thing at the same time.
By the way Mr. Snodgrass shook his head, it wasn’t well or okay or anything like that. “She died last night, a little before midnight.”
The diner had a sign on the door: SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED. PLEASE COME BACK SOON. Justin and Mr. Brooks eyed it in identical dismay. “Is there any other place to eat in Elizabeth?” Justin asked.
“If there is, they’ve hidden it someplace where I haven’t found it,” the coin and stamp dealer answered. “And I don’t reckon this town is big enough to have any places like that.”
Justin didn’t think so, either. “What are we going to do?” he asked.
“We could go down to Palestine.” As soon as the words were out of Mr. Brooks’ mouth, he shook his head. “No, by now they’ll have heard Irma’s sick. Anybody from Elizabeth will be as welcome as ants at a picnic. I think we’ll have to go to the grocery store and pick up whatever we can find that we don’t have to cook much.”
The Disunited States of America Page 9