Dead Man’s Hand

by John Joseph Adams

  “Don’t have a wagon. Don’t even have a horse.”

  His jaw almost hit his chest. “How’d you get here?”

  “Walked.”

  He shook his head. “Lost it in the desert, huh? Lucky to be here at all. I’m surprised you stopped with just one drink—I’d be powerful thirsty if I’d just got in out of the sun like that.”

  I didn’t bother to tell him I’d never had a horse in the first place. I’ve learned over my previous visits that if you don’t absolutely, positively have to explain something, it’s easier just to keep your mouth shut.

  My silence made him restless. “Sheriff says you’ve been here before.”

  “Yes, but it’s been years. Before you were born.”

  He stared at me, surprised. “You don’t look that old.”

  “Yes, I’ve been told that.”

  The main street of Medicine Dance, Arizona was pretty much what you’d expect: a row of commercial buildings with tall, painted fronts masking the much less impressive structures behind them—the hotel, the feed store, the post office, the bank. A couple of horses were tied to the rail in front of the bank, but other than that the town might have been deserted, about to smother in the growing shadow of the mesa. Day before Midsummer was usually like that in Medicine Dance: even the people who didn’t know anything about it could sense something and tended to stay close to home.

  Just past the post office, we left the main drag, heading southeast across town. The houses were simple structures for the most part, though a few were a bit more substantial. We were headed toward one of the biggest of them. When the Denslow house was first built, it had stood by itself, but now the town had grown out to surround it. It was more impressive than most of the others—two stories, gabled roofs, and painted trim. It even had a bit of a garden, and the window boxes were full of flowers. Somebody had to have a pretty green thumb to get that much color out of an Arizona June.

  “By the way, my name is Edward Billinger,” the slender young man said as we approached the house. He stuck out his hand. I gave it a brief shake.

  “Custos,” I told him.

  He frowned and nodded, an odd effect. “Huh. That some kind of Spanish name?”

  I shrugged. “It’s Latin.”

  “Uh-huh, uh-huh. Didn’t study that the way I should have in school. Might be more than a railroad clerk if I had.” He was looking around and licking his lips now, as if there was something in the house that made him nervous. He led me to the porch, took a deep breath, then knocked on the front door. “Mrs. Denslow?” he called. “Catherine? Anybody home?”

  Something growled underneath the porch.

  “Shut it, Gally, it’s me,” Billinger told the unseen dog. “What are you doing under there, anyway?”

  A white-haired woman opened the door. She was at least seventy, but stood ramrod straight, with fine, high cheekbones that suggested she might have some American Indian in her ancestry. Her eyes lit on me first, narrowed a little, then shifted to my companion. “Oh, good day, Neddie. What brings you by?”

  I felt Billinger tense beside me: he truly didn’t like being called that. “Sorry to bother you, Mrs. Denslow, but this is Mr. Custos. The gentleman needs a place to stay for the night and Sheriff suggested I bring him over here.”

  She invited us both in, but Billinger begged off. He lifted his hat to the woman, asked to be remembered to Catherine, then sauntered away, thin as the gnomon of a sundial. Mrs. Denslow watched him go. “Always was a bit shy of new things, that one,” she said. “Should have left, gone off to make a life in Tucson or somewhere.” She turned to me. “Now, what are we going to do with you?” There was more in the question than just the matter of a spare bed.

  She offered me some tea, which I took, although I wasn’t thirsty. It gave me a chance to look around while she went to fix it. She kept the place nicely, all the surfaces and the glass spotlessly clean, which wasn’t easy to do in the middle of windy, dusty grassland. Other than the flowers in vases all around the parlor, the house didn’t look a whole lot different than the last time I’d seen it.

  She gave me my tea, then took hers to her rocker; once seated, she looked me up and down as if I were something she was planning to bid on. “Now it’s your turn,” she said.

  “You want me to make you some tea?” It wasn’t meant to be a joke. Sometimes I’m a little slow to understand what people mean.

  Mrs. Denslow gave me a look I had no trouble interpreting. “No, it’s time for you to tell me why you’re back after all this time.”

  “You know why I’m here, Mrs. Denslow. You know how long it’s been. What tomorrow is.”

  “Why is it you can remember what tomorrow is after all these years, but you can’t remember my name? What’s all this ‘Mrs.’ nonsense?”

  “I remember your name, Marie.”

  She was silent for a moment. “That’s something, I guess. Land, you make me ashamed to have got so old. Where have you been all this time, Custos?”

  Before I could answer, the front door swung open and a girl—a young woman, really, but just barely—bounced into the room in a whirl of skirts and smelling of lavender soap. “Oh, Grammy!” she said, “I was so worried I wouldn’t get back before dark…” She broke off when she saw me. She was very nice to look at, golden-haired and pretty, but with a politely determined jaw that reminded me of someone else. “I beg your pardon,” she said, coloring ever so slightly. “I didn’t know…”

  “This is Mr. Custos,” the old lady said. “He’s in need of a bed, so he’s going to stay the night in the spare room.” There was a distinct suggestion of so let’s just keep our mouths shut, shall we? in her tone, and that suggestion was aimed at me. “Mr. Custos, this is my granddaughter, Catherine Denslow.”

  I rose and extended my hand. “Please to meet you, miss.” Her skin was soft—softer than mine, anyway.

  She shook politely, but she was clearly puzzled by me. “Goodness, I’ve got to put these things away,” she said, heading for the kitchen. “Mrs. Pritchard sent some butter and eggs, Grammy. Little Oscar seems a lot better, though. What a time to have Doc Babbit out of town…!”

  The old lady watched her go, then turned back to me. “She’s a lovely girl.”

  “She is indeed,” I replied.

  “Listen, Custos, I’m happy to have you stay here, for… for old time’s sake. But I’m sure you understand me when I say that I’m not going to let anything—anything—happen to that sweet child. She’s only seventeen.”

  I nodded. “I feel the exact same way about her, believe me. Protective. Like a family member.”

  The look Marie Denslow gave me then was the strangest yet, but her reply was surprisingly soft. “Her real father’s been dead fifteen years. She scarcely knew him at all.”

  “She has my sympathy. It’s tough to be separated from the ones you love.” I finished my tea, then carefully set the cup back down on the plate. “If you don’t mind, I’ll go to my room now. I had a long walk to get here and I’m a mite tired.”

  * * *

  An hour later, we sat down to a very respectable chicken and dumpling supper, good enough for a Sunday meal, though it was only a Wednesday. I didn’t eat much.

  Young Catherine seemed as excited as if there was a weekend dance on down at the local grange hall (although I doubted Medicine Dance was big enough to have anything like a grange, even now). The girl could hardly sit still. She was up and down a dozen times during the meal, and twice that many afterward, clearing up and making coffee. She even produced a fruitcake that had been hidden away in a cupboard since Christmas. (“We got it all the way from Abilene!” she said proudly.) It was clear that her grandmother didn’t particularly approve of the girl’s almost feverish excitement, and she kept looking at me as if she wanted to make sure I understood that.

  After dinner, I went back to my room, lay down, and thought.

  Sometime not long before midnight, I heard a noise downstairs. I hadn’t been asleep,
so I went down to investigate.

  “Mr. Custos!” said Catherine, surprised. She was standing at the window, looking out over the moonswept town, such as it was. (Nobody would ever suggest Medicine Dance was anything more than tiny.)

  “Just ‘Custos,’ Miss Catherine,” I told her.

  “Well, I don’t think I’m allowed to call you by your first name, not on such a short acquaintance. Gram… my grandmother wouldn’t approve, I’m pretty sure.”

  “I’m pretty sure you’re right.” I smiled. I didn’t remember how to do it very well. “But you’ll have to trust me when I tell you it’s just Custos.”

  “All right, but I’m sure I won’t be able to say it.” She turned back to the window. “It’s a beautiful night.” Several silent moments passed before she said, “Why are you here?”

  “Here in this town, you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. This town, tonight. You know what tomorrow is, don’t you?”

  “The longest day of the year—the Summer Solstice, they call it. June the twenty-first, 1899.”

  “That isn’t all, and we both know it. Why would you be here, elsewise? And why would my grandmother be so worked up about it? She’s frightened, that’s what. I know that dear old lady better than I know my own self, and she’s frightened. Not of you, but of… tonight. What’s going to happen.” I could see the girl peering at me from the corner of her eye as we both looked out at the neighbors’ houses, the broad sky and all the stars. It was like we were standing on a table, looking out over the world like God Almighty Himself. At least, that’s what a man other than me would have thought.

  All I said was, “Yes, I know what night this is. And I also know that the finest calculations of the Royal Observatory over in Greenwich, England say that there’s just a little less than an hour left before midnight.” And tomorrow was going to be a big one, I felt pretty certain—something truly strange. Midsummer’s Day in Medicine Dance was always a bit odd, but this was going to be the kind that only happened every thirty-nine years. I don’t really understand the reason for the thirty-nine year cycle myself, but I once knew a man who did. “So maybe you should get back to your room,” I told Catherine, “and lock the door while we wait to see how bad it’s going to be.”

  “Shows what you know,” she said, scowling. “I don’t even have a lock on my door. And you still haven’t answered my question, so don’t try to send me off to bed like some silly kid.”

  I didn’t have two smiles in me that night, but it was close. “My apologies, Miss Denslow. You’re right—I didn’t answer the question. I’m here because of a promise I made somebody. That’s the best way I can put it. I don’t mean you or your grandmother any harm.”

  “I never thought you did,” she said, then climbed back up the stairs, but she showed me by the way she did it that she was acting under protest.

  I waited a few minutes, then leaned close to the open window and inhaled the warm June air. It tasted like what nearly every such night had probably tasted like since the last Ice Age. But that would change.

  I went upstairs at last, only because I knew it would be easier for the women to fall asleep if they knew I was back in my room. But I also knew I’d be too restless to stay there long.

  * * *

  Mrs. Denslow herself came down a bit after four in the morning. I was back at the window, watching the stars wheel slowly across the sky.

  “Where have you been since last time, Custos?”

  I didn’t answer her directly. “What do you remember about that?”

  “Snow everywhere. That was the first time I realized how strange this place really was. We’d always been lucky on Midsummer before, I guess. Just some differences in climate. You know, suddenly more humid because the river was a lot wider. Things like that. Used to see some pretty strange looking birds, too, a few unusual animals. But then that last time you were here, what was it, 1860 it must have been, and we had the snow, and that was… Well, you remember.”

  “I remember lots of things. What do you remember?”

  “It was like being on the moon.” She laughed. “Heavens, not that I’ve ever been there! But it felt like that, it was so different. I woke up that morning and my youngest son was crying—cold, poor little tyke. Everything was so strange. White as far as you could see, and the mesa was lower than it ordinarily is. The whole valley was snowed in. I saw an elephant!”

  “A mammoth. If it was as snowy as that, it was a mammoth.”

  “You didn’t see one yourself?”

  “I was busy.”

  “Well, who wasn’t? But I remember you. Papa and Mama didn’t have a spare room, so you slept over at the Dahlers’ place in their barn, but in the morning you helped Papa shovel the snow and ice off our roof so it didn’t collapse. You helped a lot of other folks, too.” She turned toward me. She’d lost her slightly brittle air. “But how can you be here again? And looking just the same, almost?”

  “You should get some sleep, Mrs. Denslow.” I caught her look. “Marie, I mean. Tomorrow may be a long day.”

  “Do you think we’ll get the snow and the elephants again?” She sounded almost hopeful. “That was something. But there were wolf tracks, too, big as dinner plates! I hope we don’t see those.”

  Dire wolves. No, we definitely didn’t want to see any of those, or cave bears, or sabertooth tigers, or any of the other giant predators of that era, creatures that made cougars look like kittens. But maybe we’d get lucky. Maybe we’d get nothing worse than twenty-four hours of Devonian ocean at Medicine Dance’s doorstep, nothing but interesting fish and insects, then a sunset we’d never see the likes of again, a wide sky empty of birds. But it was equally possible we’d get the dire wolves again or worse.

  Which was why I’d brought so many guns.

  * * *

  It wasn’t snow this time, and there weren’t any mammoths or dire wolves, but that’s about where Medicine Dance’s luck ended.

  I was oiling my guns as the first rays of light snuck in between the closed curtains. Mrs. Denslow had finally gone back to bed an hour or so earlier, and Catherine was still asleep. I had been about to go out and look around before they woke up, thinking I might save everyone some difficulty that way, but instead I heard a loud knocking on the front door.

  I couldn’t quite imagine a dire wolf doing that, so I only took my pistol as I headed down to see who it was. Marie Denslow appeared at the top of the stairs behind me with a lantern in her hand and a shawl around her shoulders.

  It was Edward Billinger, looking quite shocked. The young man wasn’t wearing a shirt collar, and it was pretty obvious he’d dressed in a bit of a hurry. “We’re drowned!” he declared.

  “What are you up to, Ned?” called Mrs. Denslow. “Don’t exaggerate, now. No one’s drowned—not here, anyway.”

  “May God strike me dead if I’m exaggerating!” Billinger was wound tight as a spool of sewing thread. “Come look! Come on! You’ve never seen the like!”

  I followed him outside, Mrs. Denslow a few cautious yards behind me.

  The view had certainly changed since the day before, but it took me a moment to figure out why. At first I thought the distant eastern hills had risen, then I realized that they were gone altogether, that the heights I could see beyond the town were new mountains, taller and farther away. I turned and looked west. Lost Angel Mesa, the background of the town since the first cabin was built, had simply vanished. Strangest of all, though, was what had happened to the rest of Brujado Valley, twenty miles or so of grassland stretching south from the town to the usual mountains. It appeared now to have become an ocean.

  It truly was a bit startling, even to my unusual sensibilities.

  “Where did all this come from?” asked Billinger, waving his hands like a drunkard. To be fair, I don’t think he was a jot less than utterly sober; seeing one of the thirty-nine year cycles in action for the first time can do that to a man. Human beings aren’t meant to see big things change that fa
st.

  “It’s not so much where it came from as when,” I explained. “And it’s not so much when it came as when did we come to it. Because we are the ones who are out of place, Mr. Billinger.”

  “Call me Edward—or even Ned,” he told me. He was terrified, but doing his best to be courteous. “Because if we’re all going mad together, then we likely don’t need to be too formal.”

  I found myself liking the young man, but knew that might mean adding another responsibility. I wasn’t at all certain I could afford to do that.

  “Can you explain it to him, Mr. Custos?” Mrs. Denslow had come up behind us. Even though dawn was spreading light all across the wide water and the distant mountains, she still held up her lamp like Diogenes on the hunt. “Because I can’t—and this is my second time.”

  “I can’t really understand everything myself, but I’ll do my best to tell it the way I heard a smart man do it.” I turned to Mrs. Denslow. “Maybe we should wake up Catherine and get it explained to everyone all at once now, while things are peaceful. Might be a bit busy for it later on.”

  Mrs. Denslow agreed and strode back to the house, still following her lantern like a worried miner.

  “What do you mean, ‘a bit busy later on’?” Edward Billinger was still staring in utter astonishment at the scene before us. “Is there something I ought to know?”

  I imagined that when one had looked at a huge mesa all one’s life, and were now suddenly without that mesa and staring out at an ocean that hadn’t been there the day before, one might find it a bit disconcerting. Didn’t Billinger have any family? Hadn’t anyone warned him what might be coming?

  “I’ll get to that when I get to that.” I didn’t want him running off again until I could figure out whether I’d need him here. “Maybe you should come inside, Mr. Billinger. You had any breakfast?”

  He looked at me as though I had just asked him if he’d ever seen a pig fly. “Breakfast? I woke up and there was an ocean outside my window.”