The shelling lasted only a few minutes. It sure seemed like forever while it was going on, though. When it finally stopped, Justin sat up—and banged his head on the underside of the kitchen table. The bombardment hadn’t touched him. Banging his head hurt a lot—but only for a little while.
“Wow,” he said in place of something stronger, “that was fun.”
“Now that you mention it,” Beckie said, “no.” She wiggled out from under the table without trying to fracture her skull on it. Then she looked at the hole in the kitchen wall and slowly shook her head. When she muttered, “Wow,” too, she seemed amazed. “If that hit one of us, or maybe both of us …”
“Yeah,” Justin said. “I know.”
That hole was about a meter—they would say three feet here—off the ground. Beckie looked at it some more. “Thanks for knocking me down,” she said. “I didn’t know what you were doing for a second, but—thanks. How did you know to do that?”
For that second, she likely thought he was attacking her. Well, he wasn’t, not like that. “My uncle’s a veteran,” he answered. “He says you’ve got to get flat if they start shelling. He says a hole in the ground is better, but we didn’t have one handy.”
“I was trying to dig a hole in the linoleum for a while there.” Beckie looked at her hands. So did Justin. She’d broken a couple of fingernails. She wasn’t kidding. Justin had wanted to dig a hole and pull it in after himself, too. “Thanks,” Beckie said again. She kissed him half on the cheek, half on the mouth.
“It’s okay.” Justin put a hand on her shoulder. “I mean, it’s not okay, but I was glad to do it. I mean—you know.”
“I think so.” Beckie laughed—shakily this time, not the wild laughter that had kept them both from screaming. “You’re all right, Justin. Better than all right.”
“Am I?” He was stuck in Elizabeth. He was stuck in this whole alternate. He was liable to get blasted to hamburger or murdered by a plague. All things considered … He patted Beckie. “Could be worse, I guess.”
Nine
Mr. Snodgrass stared at the hole in the wall. He’d been at the grocery when the Ohioans shelled Elizabeth. The store didn’t get a scratch. “You were in the kitchen, you say?” he asked Beckie.
“That’s right,” she said. “Justin was over. We were getting fizzes, and …” Once terror was past, it didn’t seem real. She’d been in a car crash once, when a drunk rearended her mother. This was like that, only more so.
He looked at the hole again. “You were lucky,” he said.
“Tell me about it!” she exclaimed. That startled a smile out of him. But fair was fair. She had to give Justin his due: “It wasn’t just luck. Justin kind of, uh, tackled me and got us both under the table.”
“That was smart of him,” Mr. Snodgrass said. Had he served in the army? Had he fought in one of Virginia’s little wars? Beckie realized she didn’t know. He nodded to himself. “That was right smart, matter of fact. Best he could’ve done with the two of you where you were, I reckon.”
“It scared me when he did it,” Beckie said. “Then things started blowing up, and I got scared worse.”
“Yeah.” Mr. Snodgrass’ voice was dry. “Almost needed a new diaper myself.” Beckie started to laugh, then cut it off when she realized he wasn’t kidding. And she’d been about that scared, too, when shells crashed down all around. For a little while, she’d had nothing to do with whether she lived or died. If that wasn’t enough to scare somebody, she couldn’t think what would be.
“What are we going to do?” she said, not so much because she thought Mr. Snodgrass had the answer as because she had to let it out or burst.
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing I aim to do pretty darn quick,” he said. Beckie made a questioning noise. He went on, “I’m going to get the spade out of the garage and dig me a good trench in the back yard. Maybe another one in the front yard. Cover over part of it with some corrugated sheet iron I’ve got and it’ll make a tolerable shelter. Better’n ducking under the kitchen table, that’s for sure.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” Beckie said, and then, “Can I help?”
He started to say no. She could tell. But she also watched him change his mind. “Well, maybe you can,” he said. “I’m not as spry as I used to be. You don’t mind getting dirty and sweaty, you don’t mind blisters on your hands, I expect you’ll do all right.”
Beckie looked down at her palms. They were soft and smooth. Why not? What had she ever done that would toughen them up? She hadn’t thought she would get stuck in the middle of—or even on the edges of—a war, though. “I don’t care,” she said firmly. “Better my hands than my neck.”
“Now that’s a sensible thing to say.” Mr. Snodgrass looked around to make sure Gran was out of earshot. He didn’t see her, but lowered his voice anyway: “You’ve come out with a good many sensible things lately, you have. Makes it hard for me to believe you’re really Myrtle’s granddaughter, no offense.”
“I’m not mad—I know what you mean,” Beckie said. They traded conspirator’s grins. She went on, “Maybe I got it from my dad’s side of the family—I don’t know. But I’ll tell you something: my mom doesn’t get along with Gran, either.”
“Can’t say I’m surprised.” Mr. Snodgrass looked around again. “Back when Myrtle lived here, nobody got along with her.”
“Some things don’t change, do they?” Beckie said.
“I reckon not,” he answered. “Come on, then. Let’s get to work.”
It was just as hard as he said it would be. Digging a long, deep slit in the ground was no fun at all, not when the temperature and the humidity were both in the nineties. That was how Mr. Snodgrass put it, anyway. To Beckie, who was used to Celsius instead of Fahrenheit, it seemed about thirty-five. It was hot and sticky either way. One of them would dig for a while, then stop and pass the shovel to the other. Beckie didn’t let Mr. Snodgrass be a hero—she didn’t want him keeling over.
And she didn’t feel much like a hero, either. Sweat made her clothes stick to her like glue. She figured she would have to wring out her blouse after she finally took it off. Antiperspirant or no antiperspirant, before long she could smell herself. She did get blisters. They stung. She could go on working in spite of them. She could, and she did.
Mr. Snodgrass got blisters, too. “Haven’t tried anything like this in a while,” he said while Beckie took a turn with the spade.
“It’s tearing your lawn to pieces,” she said.
“Well, I can set it to rights one of these days,” he answered. “That’ll give me something to do. And you notice we aren’t the only folks digging in.”
Beckie let fly with another shovelful of dirt. She had noticed. Several other people up and down Prunty Street were making shelters. One house had taken a direct hit. That made as good an argument for digging in as any she could think of.
Then Mr. Snodgrass said, “Don’t know what we’ll do if they start throwing poison gas at us. I couldn’t begin to tell you where the gas masks’re at. Have to dig ’em out, wherever they are.”
“Why do you have gas masks?” Beckie asked.
He paused to wipe sweat off his forehead before answering, “Well, you never can tell.” He seemed to think that was reason enough. In a place like this, not far from the border between two states that didn’t like each other, maybe it was.
Travel was supposed to broaden you. It sure was teaching Beckie things she’d never known before. The main thing it was teaching her was how lucky she was to live in Los Angeles, a city far from any border, and in California, a state too strong for any of its neighbors to bother much. Before she left for this trip with Gran, she took all that for granted. As she started to dig again, she knew she never would again.
Most of the time, Justin and Mr. Brooks had been the only guests in Elizabeth’s only motel. They weren’t any more. Virginian soldiers filled the other rooms. They played the TVs in the rooms loud. They played what sounded to Justin like
bluegrass music even louder. Being soldiers, they got up too early in the morning and made all kinds of ungodly noise right outside the window.
When Justin grumbled, Mr. Brooks gave him a crooked smile. “Go ahead,” he said. “Bang on the walls. Go to their captain and complain.”
Justin thought about that for a good microsecond, maybe even a microsecond and a half. “Yeah, right,” he said sweetly.
Mr. Brooks laughed. “When I was your age, we said, ‘And then you wake up.’ Same thing either way.”
“We say that, too, but it’s not quite the same,” Justin answered. The coin and stamp dealer raised an eyebrow. “We are waking up—that’s the problem,” Justin explained.
“Oh. Well, you’re not wrong. But I don’t know what we can do about it,” Mr. Brooks said. “Besides complain, I mean.”
The last four words took away what Justin was about to say. Instead of giving the automatic answer, he had to think about what came out next. “The real problem isn’t the soldiers,” he said after a few seconds. “The real problem is that we’re stuck in this miserable little place when we really need to be down in Charleston.”
“That’s a problem, all right,” Mr. Brooks agreed. “I don’t know what we can do about it right this minute, though. Sometimes you’ve got to sit tight and wait.”
“I’m sick of doing that!” Justin said. “It’s driving me up the wall.”
“Have you got any better ideas?” the older man asked pointedly.
“If I did, I’d be using them, believe me,” Justin said.
“Okay. That’s fair enough. Just don’t do anything dumb, that’s all,” Mr. Brooks said.
Big, growling trucks carried more soldiers west. Maybe the Negro revolt wasn’t going as well as the white Virginians feared it would at first. Or maybe the powers that be in Richmond remembered they had a war on their hands, too. Justin thought leaving the first garrison west of Elizabeth would have been smarter, but he wasn’t running things, which was bound to be just as well.
When he grumbled about how dumb the Virginian generals were—he was grumbling about everything these days—Mr. Brooks said, “You know what an oxymoron is, right?”
“Sure—two words you use together, but they don’t really go together. Like ‘jumbo shrimp’ or ‘recorded live.’”
“There you go.” The coin and stamp dealer nodded. “Those are both good. Well, I’ve got another one for you—military intelligence.’”
“Uh-huh.” Justin nodded. “That would be funnier if it didn’t make me feel like crying at the same time.”
“I’m sorry. Sometimes you’re just stuck, and it looks like we are now,” Mr. Brooks said.
Justin wished for some other word. “Stuck, as in permanently?” he asked.
“No, of course not,” Mr. Brooks said. “Stuck, as in we can’t do anything about it right this minute. Sooner or later, we’ll be able to go back down to Charleston again. These crummy little wars between states don’t usually last long—both sides get sick of them. And, sooner or later, we’ll get back to the home timeline, too. Somebody here or somebody back there will work out an antidote for this virus, and they’ll lift the quarantine.” He made a sour face. “My guess is, somebody in Ohio already has the vaccine or antiviral or whatever it is. You don’t put out what you can’t control, not if you’ve got any brains you don’t. Otherwise, you turn it loose on your own people, too. You lose friends doing that.”
“I guess!” Justin said. “So how long do you figure we’ll be cooped up in Elizabeth?”
“I don’t know. Weeks? Months, tops.” Mr. Brooks gave Justin a sidelong glance. “With all the soldiers in town, maybe you’ve got more competition for your girlfriend.”
“I don’t think so,” Justin said. “Beckie doesn’t like soldiers. Near as I can tell, she really doesn’t like Virginia soldiers. She thinks they’re a bunch of racist … well, you know. It’s not like she’s wrong, either.”
“No, it’s not,” Mr. Brooks agreed. “But when the other guy has an assault rifle and you don’t, telling him what you think of him isn’t the smartest thing you can do. Which is why you were smart to keep your voice down here. The walls in this place are as thin as they can get away with, or five centimeters thinner.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed.” Justin paused. “Do you really think we’ll be stuck here for months?” If Mr. Brooks had said they’d have to stay in Elizabeth for the next twenty years, it could hardly have seemed worse. Justin’s sense of what a long time was and the older man’s were two very different things.
“I don’t know for sure,” Mr. Brooks answered. “I don’t see how I can know for sure, or how anybody else can. I’m only guessing. But that’s the best guess I’ve got. When we do get back to the home timeline, we ought to pick up a hazardous-duty bonus. Your mom, too.”
“Oh, boy,” Justin said in hollow tones.
“Don’t knock it,” Mr. Brooks told him. “Hazardous-duty pay … Well, when you think about how long we may be here, that could add up to a pile of benjamins. Maybe not as good as a college scholarship for you, but it’ll sure pay a lot of bills once you’re enrolled and everything.”
“Oh, boy,” Justin said again. What with this mess, it looked as if he’d have to start college a year later than he’d thought he would. If he had to go through applying again … If I have to do that, I’ ll scream, he thought. Going through it once was like going to the dentist for something nasty. Going through it twice would be like the dentist forgetting something and making you come back. Justin didn’t even want to imagine that.
And what kind of hazards was his mother going through down in Charleston? The TV hadn’t talked much lately about the fighting there. Was it petering out? Or was it so bad, the authorities didn’t dare admit anything about it? He had no way to know. More than anything else, he wanted—he needed—to find out.
Beckie quickly decided that showing herself in Elizabeth wasn’t a good idea. None of the soldiers in town gave her a hard time, exactly, but she didn’t like the way the uniformed men followed her with their eyes. In California, men whistled at girls they thought were cute. They didn’t do that here. Beckie didn’t need long to figure out that a sharp, short cough meant the same thing. Those coughs were compliments she could have done without.
She was glad when Justin came over to visit. Gran and Mr. Snodgrass made dismal company. And she felt safer when Justin was around. She knew that made no sense. What could he do against somebody with a gun? What could he do against a bunch of somebodies with guns? Nothing, obviously, except maybe get shot. She was glad when he came anyway.
Even the back yard was ruined. The trench, and the sheet metal heaved over it, were a stark reminder of what could happen. She and Justin went out there with fizzes anyhow. It let her escape from Gran, and that felt more precious than rubies right now.
Something flashed on top of Jephany Knob. “What do you think that is?” Beckie asked. “Looked like … sun off glasses?”
“Where?” Justin hadn’t seen it. Beckie pointed. With my luck, she thought, it won’t happen again, and he’ll think I’ve gone nuts. But it did.
“I bet the Virginians have observers up there,” he said. “I bet they’re watching whatever’s going on farther west.”
“I bet you’re right,” she said. “That sure makes more sense than anything I thought of. What are we going to do, anyway?” The question didn’t exactly follow on what came before, but it didn’t exactly not follow, either.
“Try to stay alive till this mess blows over. What else can we do?” Justin answered. “I only wish I were back in Charleston, or in Fredericksburg.”
“I’m sorry,” Beckie said. “I wish I were back in L.A., too, believe you me I do. But I’m here, in Elizabeth, with my grandmother. Happy day.”
“And I’m here with my uncle. Happy day back atcha,” Justin said. “And we kind of hang on to each other so we don’t go quite as crazy together as we would by ourselves.”
�
��That’s about the size of it,” Beckie said. “But I think I would have liked you even if we’d met without all this … stuff going on.”
“Do you?” He smiled. “That’s good.”
“It really is,” Beckie said seriously as she nodded. “You’ll laugh or you’ll get mad—or maybe you’ll laugh and you’ll get mad, I don’t know—but I wasn’t sure I could like anybody from Virginia. You people do things a lot different from the way we do in California. We wouldn’t have some of our own people rising up against us because we don’t treat them as well as the rest … . Are you blushing?”
“I don’t know.” Justin got redder still. “Am I?”
“You bet you are.” Beckie thought about laughing, but she didn’t think coming out and doing it would be a good idea. “Why are you blushing? Because of the way your state treats Negroes?” Justin had said he didn’t like that, but she still wasn’t sure she believed him.
“Well … partly,” Justin said. “That’s not all of it, though.”
“Yeah?” Now Beckie was intrigued. “What’s the rest of it?”
He really blushed then—red as a sunset. “I can’t tell you,” he muttered.
She poked him in the ribs. He jumped. “You can’t say stuff like that,” she told him. “What is it? Why can’t you tell me? What are you, a spy from Ohio or something?”
That got rid of the blush. Justin turned pale instead. “No!” he said. “Good Lord, no!” He sounded furious. And he was, because he went on, “And don’t say anything like that out loud, for heaven’s sake! It’s not true, but it can get me shot anyway. There’s a war on, in case you didn’t notice.”
“Sorry,” she said. She was, too, but she could see how that might not do her much good—or Justin, either. “I am sorry,” she repeated. “That was dumb of me.”
The Disunited States of America Page 16