In the Mood - [Millennium Quartet 02]

by Charles L. Grant

  Vallor was not, even to its most fervent boosters, a particularly unique community. It had begun as a crossroads for wagons and stages west, and a place where area farmers could buy their feed and food. Large enough now to be found on most maps, not so large that it couldn’t handle itself. The early-nineteenth-century founders had laid the streets out in a simple grid, the north-south streets all numbered, the east-west streets all, for reasons unknown, named after the presidents. Two high schools that were able, barely, to manage the student population. A downtown that thrived because there were no cities or shopping malls close enough to siphon off the customers. A railhead for produce and a few cattle to be sent northeast to Chicago, northwest to St. Louis. The original farms long since consolidated into a handful, those that were still in business after the floods, and now the drought. A dozen churches and a synagogue.

  And dust.

  Grit.

  It rode on the breeze and sifted into everything, covered everything, made everyone who went outdoors want to brush their teeth four times a day.

  When the breeze strengthened, there were thin clouds of it, rising from the farmland like a sickly fog. Not very high, and they didn’t travel very far, but it was clear to those who bothered to pay attention to such things that a windstorm would be all it would take to carry the topsoil away. Like Oklahoma. Like Texas. Like half the Midwest over the past half decade.

  The difference here, some tried to point out, was the not-quite-flat land. Knobs and knolls rather than hills, trees and still-flowing creeks would all keep disaster to a minimum because the dust and grit wouldn’t go very far before landing on something. Unlike Oklahoma. Unlike Texas. It would have to be, they claimed, the Windstorm from Hell to do anything more than wipe out a few farms and make a few cars extra dirty.

  A few preachers pointed out that Hell was already here; all they needed was the wind.

  * * * *

  2

  1

  S

  haron Gillespie stood in front of her open locker, ignoring the bedlam around her, the jostling, the cracks, the plans being made for after school. She pulled on her quilted jacket, rolled her shoulders to settle it, then grabbed her notebook, history and English texts, and her purse. She answered no questions, acknowledged no calls, gave no one a smile as she made her way down the crowded hall and out the side door. It was lunchtime, but she wasn’t hungry; she had modern civ next, but she had no intention of going back. She walked to the corner and turned right, heading west on Jackson. Taking her time. Books hugged snugly to her chest. Staring hard at the sidewalk, using the cracked and dusty concrete to keep the images at bay, using the sound of her shoes to keep the narrator’s voice from filling her head, using every trick she knew to keep the tears where they belonged.

  And failing.

  Failing badly.

  “Hey, Sharon!”

  No need to look back; only Mag Baer had a voice like that. Husky, with the occasional unexpected crack to a pitch as high as an excited child’s.

  “Hey!”

  She walked on, not turning her head until Mag hustled up beside her, puffing, frowning, finally bumping her with her shoulder.

  “What’s going on?”

  There was no need to answer.

  It was supposed to have been a simple exercise in Communications that day—watch the noon headline stories and come up with ten questions per story the news anchor or reporter didn’t answer, and how they might be answered in a newspaper or newsmagazine. They did it at least three times a month; most of the time she could do it without even watching.

  First there was a heavily wooded West Virginia hillside, then a narrow road that ran along a shallow creek more stones than water. Houses—shacks and shanties, really— clustered back in the trees; pickups and rusted cars; a tire swing; a refrigerator on its side, the door gone, porcelain chipped; several gardens with nothing in them but weeds. The camera was the reporter’s eye, moving up a worn path toward one of the houses, veering away from the porch to go around the side to the back. The reporter’s voice was hushed, almost whispering, as she described what everyone could already see—there no was no one here, no dogs, no chickens, no birds, not a thing.

  When she finally stopped talking, they could hear the crunch of footsteps and the rattle of a breeze through the bare branches. Nothing more.

  The backyard was empty. A clothesline strung between two canted poles held a child’s dress, a man’s shirt, a set of long underwear that made some of the boys laugh until Mr. Willyard shut them up. A stake in the ground off to the right had a chain leash attached to it, but there was no sign of a dog, or whatever had been kept there. To the left, near the house, was a lean-to that protected a meager stack of chopped wood.

  The camera panned across the yard, stopping when it discovered an outhouse back near the treeline.

  That’s when Kyle Dovinsky said, “Hey, Gillespie, looks like they got your place by mistake.”

  The laughter was equal parts cruel and embarrassed, and Sharon could only stare blindly at the screen while fire burned through her cheeks. Even Mr. Willyard grinned a little, and she hated him for that.

  Then the reporter said, “Oh my God,” and the class shut up.

  At first it didn’t look like much—a basic outhouse, un-painted and narrow, with its door slightly open, something like a piece of wood caught at the corner. Nothing to get excited about until the camera zoomed in, and the piece of wood blurred for a moment, the lens focused, and they could see it.

  The bare foot.

  A child’s emaciated bare foot.

  Sharon had shut her eyes then, and several others weren’t able to stifle a gasp, a half sob, a startled curse.

  She didn’t dare look again until she heard the anchor’s voice: “... which brings the unofficial total to just over nine hundred. Authorities both here and in other states speculate it could easily reach twice that before the Appalachian sweep is over.”

  And Kyle Dovinsky, astonishing everyone with his outrage, said, “How the goddamn hell can a thousand people starve to death in this country? What the hell’s going on?”

  Mr. Willyard didn’t even give him detention for his language.

  He didn’t have an answer, either.

  “Shar, come on,” Mag said, bumping her again.

  “No. I’m not going back.” She looked down at her friend. “I can’t. Not after ... I can’t.”

  “Okay.” A shrug. “Whatever. But Willyard’s gonna be pissed, you know.”

  “Like I care.”

  Mag giggled. “You will when the grades come out.”

  “Sure. Right.”

  Of all the things she had to worry about, grades were pretty much down near the bottom of the list. She wasn’t valedictorian material or anything, but it would take practically World War Three to keep her from graduating with anything lower than a 3.5. After that, she was out of Vallor, out of Illinois. For good. Forever. Applications had already gone out, not a single college closer than six hundred miles. If she didn’t get in, she’d leave anyway. The only regret, and it wasn’t much of one, was that she hadn’t stuck with basketball. As tall as she already was, and as popular as women’s basketball had grown across the country, an athletic scholarship would have nailed her escape. As it was, she had to work like a mutt to keep those grades.

  As it was—

  A sharp tug on her ponytail made her blink.

  “Hello?” Mag said. “You still in there?”

  Her answer was a jab with an elbow, provoking an outburst of outrageous indignation that carried them for the next two blocks. By the time the insults and mock threats had run out, they had also just about run out of town.

  Two blocks to the tracks.

  Here, there were ordinary houses on ordinary lawns under ordinary trees that seemed as old as the town itself; here, there were shrubs and small flower gardens and signs of children scattered over the grass; here, there was Vallor West High School, faded brick and white trim and too
small for its student population, even with Vallor East, a place twice as big, siphoning the extra.

  There, on the other hand, was...there.

  “I’m gone,” Mag announced, heading north on Second Street. “One thing I don’t need now is Poppa Bear catching my ass on the street instead of in class.”

  “Call you later,’’ Sharon called as her friend hurried off. The answer was a waggling finger over Mag’s shoulder just before she broke into a hasty trot. For a deliciously evil second, Sharon was tempted to imitate a police car siren, just to see how fast the girl could run. But that would be too mean. It was hard enough lugging a policeman around as a father, without her adding to it. Still...

  She grinned and walked on, in no hurry at all. That morning had been cold, a touch of frost on the ground, but the afternoon sun had sucked up most of the chill, and her jacket, even unzipped, had grown too warm. By the time she reached the house, she’d be lucky not to be drenched in sweat.

  And a voice said, perspiration, dear, perspiration. Men sweat, women perspire.

  The grin flashed again. For all that her mother had grown up during the sixties, hippies and communes and equal rights and like that, she was way too much like Grandma, anymore. Demanding she be ladylike at all times, despite her half inch shy of six feet, despite the undeniable fact that the only time she ever felt like a lady was when she was in the shower and could see that she was. Which wasn’t exactly what Mom and Grandma meant, but it was all Sharon was willing to give them.

  Maybe if she had a father, things would be different.

  But she didn’t, and they weren’t.

  Not, however, as bad as butthead Dovinsky made out.

  She sighed loudly, considered taking off her jacket before she roasted, and trudged on, daring someone to stop her, to demand to know why she wasn’t in school, so she could take her anger out on someone, anyone, it didn’t matter who; so she could let them know what she had just seen and heard and demand answers she already knew weren’t there.

  She wished Mr. Bannock were here.

  He wasn’t a teacher or anything, but he was a pretty cool neighbor who liked to help out once in a while, especially when her mother pretended she could do everything herself. Most of the time it worked out pretty good; sometimes, though, she needed more help than her daughter could give her, and Mr. Bannock was pretty reliable, most of the time, when he didn’t have to work.

  “Yo! Gillespie!”

  She looked up quickly, as if whoever it was had been reading her mind, which made her blush, and that made her angry. She hated blushing, a condition that happened far too easily, far too often.

  A blush is becoming, her Grandma said; it adds a lovely color to your face.

  Which, as always, only made it worse.

  “Gillespie, you still on this planet or what?”

  “Very funny, Kyle,” she said. “And why aren’t you back in class?”

  She stood on the last corner. To her right was an old warehouse, windows and doors boarded up, sparkles of broken glass amid the gravel at the foundation. Across Jackson, on the other corner, was Hummaker’s Feed and Grain, its two large display windows tinted and blind, a pair of pickups and a dump truck around the side nearest the tracks.

  The tracks here, as they were all along their route past town, were higher than street level by a good five feet for no reason anyone could think of; the land along the route didn’t climb naturally, it was a man-made rise. Dovinsky, in jeans and flannel shirt, worn western boots, a denim jacket draped over one shoulder, leaned against the near striped gate, arms folded across his chest, a disgusting smirk on his, if she were to be honest about it, not too disgusting face.

  He didn’t answer. Instead, finally pushing a hand back over his brushcut, he jerked his head—come on, I’ll walk you.

  She almost balked. If Mag had stuck around, she would’ve made some excuse about studying at her house, and they would have turned around and walked away.

  It would be kind of obvious she was lying if she made the excuse now.

  “Come on, Sharon,” he said, gesturing for her to get a move on.

  She pointed at him, frowning. “No funny stuff.”

  He laughed. “Yeah. Right.” But to her surprise, he sounded a little disappointed.

  Stuck on you, Grandma said.

  And Sharon whispered, “Grandma, I love you but you’re dead, go away.”

  * * * *

  2

  The main part of Vallor stopped at the tracks. Beyond, along Jackson and the three other streets that crossed over the rails, were a handful of farms, isolated stands of what was left of the original woodland, and Les Burgoyne’s spread, up near Oakbend Creek—seven hundred acres of paddocks and pasture for the three dozen horses he and his wife raised or boarded. It had originally been a dairy farm, but competition and weather had finally been too much, and the family made the decision to change over almost fifteen years ago.

  It had worked.

  Les wasn’t wealthy, Fran didn’t wear fancy clothes or drive a fancy car, but there was enough in the bank and enough coming in to tide them over these hard times. That the horses weren’t skin and bone was due mainly to an irrigation system he had installed himself, the water drawn from three wells he had sunk with equipment rented from Horst Hummaker. Still, it hadn’t been entirely successful. The grass still died, and during the worst of the drought he had had to ration his own supply; the water table had dropped and he had no ready cash to drive deeper wells.

  What bothered him most today were the horses.

  They wouldn’t keep still.

  Those few he kept in the barn for various reasons-injuries and minor aches—were uneasy in their stalls; those in the field, nine of them today, were in constant motion from one fence to another. Walking sometimes, trotting most of the time. Like a herd that knew a bad storm was on the way.

  The problem was, the forecast was as it had been for a week, and there was nothing in the sky to call the weatherman a liar.

  And so they moved.

  Back and forth.

  Without making a sound.

  * * * *

  3

  Jackson west of the tracks was shaded, when there was shade, by massive oaks whose branches more often than not interlaced over the worn blacktop road. Here and there behind them were houses built on large plots purchased from farmers who needed extra cash. Sharon’s out-of-town relatives thought the rich had to live here, the houses were so big, the land so lovely, and she had given up trying to explain that the rich had chosen the east side of Vallor, primarily to stay away from the pungent odors of the farms and the Burgoyne ranch.

  “You know,” Kyle said, shaking his head at the ground, “that stuff in class.”

  “Please, okay? I don’t want to talk about it.”

  They were half a mile past the tracks, not bothering to hurry, walking on the edge of the blacktop, since sidewalks out here had never been laid down, and no one had ever asked for them. The houses were farther apart now, older, not quite as large or quite as well kept.

  “I didn’t mean it, you know. Really. What I said. In class, I mean. I mean—”

  She couldn’t take it anymore. “What do you want, Kyle?”

  He stumbled in his surprise and looked at her as if she were from another galaxy or something. She had a feeling she had just made a major mistake, but she wasn’t sure which one it was. Nor did she know how to apologize again—for the hurt look on his face still touched with tan, for the way his hands kept trying to stay in his pockets, for the way he’d look at her and try to speak, shake his head and try again.

  It didn’t occur to her until he picked up a birch switch and began to whip everything in his path that he was embarrassed.

  Shy.

  Kyle Dovinsky was, right there in front of her, actually and unbelievably shy.

  She blinked so rapidly she feared she’d make herself dizzy.

  My God, could this mean he—

  “Listen,” h
e said, one shoulder up, tossing the switch away. “The Kentucky thing this weekend.”

  Which was what half the school had been in an uproar over since the fall session had begun. Vallor West had arranged to play a home-and-home football series with some school in Kentucky, some forty miles or so south as the crow flies, just across the Ohio. Although, as her mother once said, no crow would bother to take the trouble. None of her friends knew why such a deal had been made, since it was obviously going to cost a bundle to send kids, band, and the team down. But it definitely gave the grown-ups something to talk about all day. According to the newspaper, other communities were watching closely, mainly to see if Vallor made any money off the visitors once all the bills were in.