“It’s dead!” she sobbed, just as another bird plunged from the sky and into the center of the table closest to Daphne, breaking the oversize vase and spraying blood and water, glass and flowers across the tabletop.
Daphne stood glued to the spot, staring at the bird’s corpse as everyone around her scrambled back, screaming and cursing and knocking over chairs in their hurry to get away. The bird’s body was limp and cold, crisscrossed with lines of blood from the broken glass. A single onyx-colored eye stared back at her, unseeing, lifeless. Dread churned in her stomach, clashing noxiously with the champagne.
More screams rang out as another bird fell from the sky. And then another. They splattered onto the parquet dance floor, scattered the musicians, and plopped indiscriminately onto tables and chairs, each hollow thud more horrifying than the last.
“My chapeau!” Daphne heard old Eunice cry as a mass of pink feathers impaled itself on the spire of fake lilacs sprouting from her hat. Madge reached out a trembling hand to help, but a herd of children running full tilt and terrified away from the rainbow hailstorm of dying birds knocked the two ladies to the side. Snot and tears streamed from the children’s scrunched-up, scarlet faces, and their voices pierced the evening with a heart-rending wail.
It was as if the birds’ sudden deaths had broken the kaleidoscope, the colors running together and falling, breaking apart. The wedding guests rushed from one end of the property to the other, shouting and shoving, desperate to get away from the birds of paradise falling thick and fast from the sky, as if shot down by a malicious band of poachers with deadly aim. The dance floor became slick with blood, the air a riot of colored feathers, the scent of fear and destruction sharp and pervasive in the velvety night.
Daphne couldn’t make her legs work. Owen draped a protective arm over her shoulders as she stood dumbly, watching the birds fall in a rainbow blur before her eyes, watching her uncle Floyd whip off his fancy new suit jacket and cover Madge’s and Eunice’s heads, rushing them to the relative safety of the porta-potties. She watched Doug kick the dead birds away, swinging his fists like he was trying to punish them for dying on his wedding day, to punch them out of the sky. And she watched Janie crumble, sinking to the ground in a pile of tears and tulle, her opulent wedding dress streaked with a hideous tie-dye of scarlet blood and green frosting.
The sight snapped Daphne into action. She threw Owen’s arm from her shoulders and rushed to her cousin, her rubber-soled shoes mercifully sure on the slippery parquet. She felt her foot sink into something soft and gooey, one of the corpses, but she forced herself to ignore it and push on until she was at her cousin’s side, crouched next to her in a puddle of blood and feathers as the last of the birds hurtled to its final resting place in the curved, brass bell of the tuba abandoned on the bandstand.
Janie’s shoulders were trembling, her arms above her head in a bomb-shelter pose. Weak mewling sounds came from beneath her veil, like a kitten crying for milk.
“Janie.” Daphne wrapped both her arms around her cousin and felt the cold from her bare skin, the trembling residue of her fear. “It’s over now. It was just a freak accident. It’s going to be okay.”
Janie lifted her head. Her face was red and puffy from crying, her perfect, professional makeup job smeared across her face in thick, black streaks. “That was no freak accident.” Her voice was a guttural whisper, her eyes dark with terror. “That was a sign.”
IT went without saying that Doug was pretty hungover the day after his wedding. The whole thing had been god-awful, ever since his folks got that bee up their bungholes about him proposing, and then his mom wanted to plan the whole thing and his dad wouldn’t stop griping about the expense, being all “Why can’t Floyd put his money into his own daughter’s wedding instead of betting on this one-horse town?” And Janie was always bugging him about flowers or vows or whatever. Then there was the whole waste-of-time day itself, the parade of aunts who smelled like old carpet gurgling congratulations in his ear, the speeches about the responsibility of fatherhood (which, not that anyone asked, he was so not ready for), and then the icing on the cake—literally—those pain-in-the-ass birds dropping dead out of the sky.
Forget a honeymoon in Cancún, which was apparently not possible if your new wife was about to pop, or even getting a little wedding-night action. By the time they got to the presidential suite at the Holiday Inn, Janie was such a hot mess that all he could do was get her into the shower, trying to tell her it would all be okay and chugging Maker’s Mark from the bottle he’d cadged from the wedding’s bartender until she sobbed herself to sleep next to him on the bed.
Dropping her back at her parents’ place and coming home was a freakin’ relief. All he wanted to do was shut himself up in his dark room, nurse his hangover with grape Gatorade, and have a little peace and quiet to wonder where the hell his life was going.
But then that lawyer showed up, all gung ho about getting Floyd to sign that contract, insisting Doug come along to remind the Peytons they were all family now, and next thing he knew the three of them were piled into his dad’s new Buick that smelled like old people and horse farts, eating donuts from the Cruller Corner and driving down that dusty, potholed road to the Peytons’.
“If I may,” Elbert said as they approached the trailer. He folded his Cruller Corner napkin in half, then into quarters, then eighths, like some OCD freak. “Perhaps we can approach Mr. Peyton at the rig, instead of in his home. I’ve noticed those women surrounding him have a tendency to, er . . .”
“Meddle?” Vince finished for him. He’d been hitting the scotch at the wedding pretty hard, and he looked as rough as Doug felt. “Stick their noses where they don’t belong?”
“I suppose that’s an appropriate analogy.”
“Hell yeah,” Vince agreed. He laid his foot on the gas, and they sped by the trailer. “Good thinking, Elbert. This is why I pay you the big bucks.”
“Actually,” Elbert reminded him, “you haven’t paid me a cent yet.”
Vince pulled the car to a stop in front of the misshapen circle of trailers by the rig. The roar and chug of machinery pounded at Doug’s headache, and the thick scent of petroleum made his stomach lurch when he opened the car door.
A chain of roustabouts rushed by, shouldering lengths of heavy pipe. Doug spotted that nasty cocktease Daphne in filthy jeans and a black-splattered T-shirt, her face streaked with grime and oil. The frigid bitch probably thought she was so tough, working on the rig with the boys. He’d show her what tough really was—if he could ever get her alone again.
“And which trailer do you think we might find him in?” Elbert wrinkled his nose at the dirt and noise, gripping his briefcase like it was the last bastion of civilized society.
“This one, I suppose.” Vince approached a trailer with a small, hand-lettered sign that said Admin on the door. He rapped twice, and a tangle of male voices grunted something unintelligible within. Pushing it open, they found Floyd sitting with a couple of idiots in hard hats and chambray shirts.
“Vince!” Floyd looked unsettled. “And Doug. What a, uh, nice surprise.” There was something haggard in his face, the lines in it heavier, his eyes tired and dull. Even his eyebrows, which usually danced until it drove Doug crazy, drooped low.
“Hello, Floyd.” Vince nodded at the other men. “Got a minute?”
“We were wondering if we might have a word.” Elbert stepped in next to him, and Floyd’s face fell even further, his smile scrambling to stay upright like a rider about to take a spill off his bike.
“I suppose so,” Floyd said heavily. He turned to the other men. “Boys, can you give us a second?”
Floyd gestured for them to sit as the men brushed past them and out the door. The trailer wasn’t much to look at: fake wood paneling, a few dinged-up filing cabinets, indecipherable charts and diagrams taped to the walls. The air reeked of burned coffee.
; “What can I do you for?” Floyd tried for joviality but fell short. Even his voice sounded tired.
“Well, now that we’re all family,” Vince began. He looked proud of himself for pulling the family card, and Doug knew why. Family was practically all Floyd ever talked about, family and God. And now the old fart was his father-in-law, he reminded himself. As if being stuck with Janie for the rest of his life wasn’t bad enough, he had to get her cuckoo parents in the bargain.
But Floyd barely managed a smile. Vince cleared his throat and started again. “Now that we’re family—and we’re extending our home to the young couple and their child and all—I thought it might be time to make our business relationship official. Elbert here has all the paperwork. Nothing’s changed, and it’s still all boilerplate. All you’ve gotta do is sign.”
Elbert snapped open his briefcase and extracted the contract and a thin, silver pen with his initials monogrammed on the side, sliding both across the table to Floyd.
“I’m not sure if you’ve had a chance to look at it,” he said. “But if you read it over, I’m sure you’ll find it’s abundantly fair to both parties. No more or less than the verbal agreement Mr. Varley tells me the two of you entered into, so to speak.”
Floyd looked at the thick pile of paper without moving. The silver pen sat untouched, gleaming in the trailer’s fluorescent light. He looked up at Vince, his face sagging, as seconds ticked by on the lawyer’s expensive-looking wristwatch.
“Vince, I don’t know,” he said finally. His voice was a sigh.
Vince struggled for breath. “But Floyd—we’re family now!” he tried again.
“Exactly.” Color rose in Floyd’s cheeks, and a hint of life returned to his eyes. “We’re family now, and families trust each other. They take one another at their word.”
“Sir, if I may,” Elbert began.
“You may not!” Floyd thundered. Doug looked up, startled; in all the time he’d known him, he’d never once heard Floyd Peyton yell. “Vince, I made you a promise, and I fully intend to keep it. You know I’m a man of my word. But you and this lawyer of yours have been trying to push these papers on me since the second we shook hands, and I’m starting to think that the money is more important to you than trust or family or the good this oil can do for the community.”
Doug couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Floyd Peyton, pulling a bunch of holier-than-thou crap when he’d been out of work for months and struck oil only through pure, dumb luck? That was rich. A look of disgust crossed Vince’s face.
“Now, Floyd, I think you have the wrong idea,” he began.
“I know what I saw, and I know what I believe,” Floyd said softly. His eyes were steely with resolve. “Last night, I saw you throw the fanciest party this town’s ever seen. I don’t know how much it cost, and frankly I don’t want to know. All I know is that you thought of everything, and invited everyone—except God.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” The words were out of his mouth before Doug could stop himself. Of course Floyd would have to bring up God, when his dad was just trying to make a deal, fair and square. That’s what they got for dealing with someone who actually took Pastor Ted’s nutjob ideas seriously.
“That rig out there”—Floyd ignored him and pointed a finger at the trailer’s door, toward the roar of the derrick beyond—“is for putting good people to work and getting our town in the black again. It’s for keeping our schools open and giving good old-fashioned American entrepreneurs a place to build a business and thrive—not for throwing frivolous parties and building ridiculous palaces. It’s a gift from God, a blessing. And the more I think about it, the more I think God is testing us with this gift, to see if we’re worthy of the real gift he has in store for us.”
“And what might that be?” Elbert drew his fingertips into a peak under his chin.
“Why, the Second Coming, of course.” Floyd’s eyes widened as he looked from Elbert to Vince to Doug and back again. “He didn’t tell you?”
Doug shook his head, embarrassed to even be there. He knew Floyd was a few cards short of a full deck, but did he really have to go spouting Pastor Ted’s bullcrap?
“I can’t say he has,” Elbert said in a voice choked with stifled laugher.
“There’s a prophet coming to Carbon County,” Floyd explained. “Our pastor believes it’ll be our grandchild, and I tend to agree with him. But now that we have this extra responsibility, I’m frightened for Carbon County—and I fear for our children, and our grandchild. If we learned anything yesterday, it’s that God can take away just as quickly as He gives. He gave us this oil as a gift, a blessing. It wasn’t meant to blind us with riches, or eat away at our trust so a man can’t even be taken at his word.”
He shook his head slowly. The fatigue had returned to his eyes, and the lines in his face ran as deep as rivers. Elbert’s mouth was a tiny pink Froot Loop of surprise.
“Vince, I’ll be honest,” Floyd continued. “It’s become pretty clear to me that you’d rather spend this money on yourself than your community. I was troubled by what I saw yesterday. Those birds dying in the middle of our celebration: I saw it as a sign from God Himself. He thinks we’re getting too big for our britches, and He sent those poor birds to their death to warn us. Didn’t you wonder that the first one fell in the middle of that cake—a ridiculous, overpriced tribute you had built to a ridiculous, overpriced mansion? I didn’t, Vince. And I think if you dig deep in your heart, you’ll agree with me. But in the meantime, I won’t sign your papers.”
He pushed the contract back across the table. The pen wobbled and rolled off, clattering across the surface with a thwack-thwack-thwack and falling from the edge to land in Elbert’s outstretched palm.
Floyd’s gaze stayed steady on Vince, steely and unwavering in a face that looked ravaged with time. “I’m a man of my word, and I meant it when I said we’d split this oil money,” he said. “But my word won’t go further than a handshake, Vince. You’ll just have to trust me on that.
“After all,” he finished bitterly, “we’re family now.”
• • •
BACK at the Varleys’ house, Deirdre poured coffee from the high-end machine she’d ordered online, and served doily-shaped cookies.
“Those Peytons,” she sniffed when her husband filled her in on their conversation with Floyd. Disgust flared in her eyes. “You’d think owning an oil rig would make them act like civilized people, but no. Once trash, always trash, I suppose.”
Vince turned to Elbert. “So what do we do?” he asked.
“An excellent question.” Elbert placed his half-eaten cookie precisely in the middle of his cocktail napkin, getting all OCD again. “As I see it, we gave Mr. Peyton a more than ample chance to sign the contract, and he ignored it. Now I think it’s best we proceed with the lawsuit.”
Deirdre and Vince sat forward, and even Doug found himself leaning over the coffee table. He’d never been part of a lawsuit before. It sounded kind of cool.
“I’ve been looking into their claim to the land, and, unfortunately, it truly is airtight,” Elbert continued. “Thus, I think our clearest path is to claim that Floyd and his family are unfit to control the oil—and that you, as next of kin thanks to Doug and Janie’s marriage, are next in line.”
“I like it!” Deirdre squealed.
“If I were on the jury, today’s little conversation would be all the evidence I’d need,” Elbert added. “The man believes that his unborn grandson is a prophet. Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous?”
“Well.” Deirdre looked troubled. “Pastor Ted did say so. And the whole town seems to agree.”
Across the coffee table, Elbert choked on his cookie.
“Are you all right?” Deirdre rushed to his side with a glass of water.
“Quite,” Elbert assured her, coughing his crumbs discreetly into a napkin. “Regardle
ss, I think it will be easy to prove that the family is mentally unfit to control the oil. In addition to Mr. Peyton’s religious beliefs, I took the liberty of having a private investigator check up on the family’s history.”
“And?” Deirdre hovered at his side like a dragonfly.
“I’m afraid that beyond some rather significant credit card debt, I couldn’t find much on Floyd’s immediate family,” Elbert said. “But the extended family—that’s another story. He has a niece, I believe . . .”
“Yeah, Daphne.” Doug shook his head.
“That girl in the trailer that day, who wouldn’t let him sign the contract,” Vince added.
“I see.” Elbert smiled thinly. “So she’s living with them, then? That’s even better.”
Deirdre sniffed. “Nobody really knows what happened to her parents. Kind of fishy, if you ask me.”
“I’ll say.” The lawyer looked pleased. “So they’ve been lying to you—to everyone, I suppose. Because I have something on Daphne, something good. She killed a man—and from my interpretation of the court records, she isn’t sorry in the least.”
“That bitch killed a guy?” Doug asked gleefully.
His parents scolded him for his language (still—even though he was a real man now, married and all), but he ignored them. It all made sense. No wonder Daphne was such a frigid bitch. She was a man-killer, literally. It would explain why she’d kneed him in the nuts that night he tried to get to know her, which was too bad because he’d been really sure she was into him from the way she averted her eyes whenever he looked her way.
He’d like to see her try blowing him off again, with the dirt he had on her now. Next time they found themselves alone in the dark, she’d have no choice but to give in—not unless she wanted everyone in Carbon County knowing her secret.
Elbert started yammering again, going on and on in his nasal legalese until Doug was practically drowning in his own boredom. Finally he just got up and went upstairs, his parents so into whatever the prissy-ass lawyer was saying that they didn’t even notice.
End Times Page 19