Dust City

by Robert Paul Weston

  6

  STICK OF GOLD

  THE OFFICIAL TERM FOR LOCKUP IS “REHABILITATIVE SECLUSION.” IT’S located in a building at the far corner of the grounds. It’s a new one, thoroughly modern, no cobbled walls or ivy. It’s merely a honeycombed strongbox of soundproof cells. Roy spends every other week in this place, but for me, thanks to Jack’s escape, this is my maiden voyage.

  I’ve been here all week, in an empty six-foot tomb with walls like sponges, padded and soft and perfumed with the staleness of age. It certainly gives you time to think. In my case, I’ve been thinking about my parents.

  My mother’s name was Emily. She died before I was old enough to remember her. All I have are the fabricated memories you make up from old photographs, which goes a long way to explaining why, inside my head, she’s always smiling.

  Growing up, it was just Dad and me. All that time, he had me convinced he was a carpenter, doing odd jobs around the neighborhood. The phone would ring, and after speaking to somebody in hushed tones, he’d announce that he was going out on a job. Then he’d vanish, sometimes until late in the night. I always stayed up to wait for him, even though he forbade it. He always came back looking exhausted.

  I didn’t find out what my father really did for a living until the day of the murders, the day the sirens came shrieking to the house to haul Dad away for good. I’ve also been thinking about Doc, about his files and the letters—my letters—that he’d been keeping from me (letters that Jack has now run off with, the little thief).

  The first thing they make you do when they let you out of lockup is go see Doc. He has to make sure you haven’t lost your marbles in here. When I see him again, I’m going to walk into his office with a whole lot of questions. How long has Dad been writing to me? How come you kept the letters to yourself? What gave you the right? And so on.

  I’m cataloguing the questions in my mind when the door swings open. It’s Gunther, yawning at me, his thick tongue wriggling between stalagmitic teeth.

  “All right, Whelp,” he mutters. “Let’s go.”

  It’s raining outside, hard and fast. I had no idea. In lockup, you can’t hear a thing from the outside world. There’s a pit of broken earth where Jack’s plant burst up a week ago. Gunther doesn’t look at it as we pass, jogging through the rain. We’re both soaked by the time we arrive at the old rectory.

  Inside, the corridor’s a tomb—dim, silent, and empty. Outside, the daytime clouds are even darker than dusk. Rain mauls the windows. You can hardly see Doc’s paintings on the walls. The shapes in the frames are indistinct. I’m about to knock when I see the office door’s already open an inch or two, which is odd. He never leaves it open.

  “Doc?”

  No answer. The light in his study’s even dimmer than out in the hall. A cold drop of rain rolls down my neck, icy as it weaves through my hair.

  “Doc? It’s Henry.” Nothing. “I think—” Where is he? “I think we have some stuff to talk about.” It’s so dark in here I can hardly see.

  “Doc?”

  My eyes are adjusting now. I see something, something I can’t explain. The air in front of me swims like shadows over glass. There’s something floating in the middle of the room. Floating—dead center, in the middle of the musty air. It looks like—

  “Dad?”

  I blink. Something’s wrong with me. My father is floating there, hovering in the air. I stare at him, hoping the vision will disappear. Hoping I’ll wake up. But there he is—the hazy shape of a ghostly wolf. Then I realize: It’s not a vision at all. And it’s definitely not my father.

  It’s Doc.

  My eyes are finally adjusting to the darkness. I can see more now. I can see it all: The rope around his neck. The cord rising into intricate knots strung over the rafters and pulled taut. Doc’s jaw slack, his tongue flopping down like a thinly sliced steak.

  He’s dead. And it’s fresh. He’s still swaying.

  “Doc?!”

  My vision goes black again and my knees buckle forward, propping me against the desk. One foot slips into the gap below the paneling and something loose clicks against my toe. It feels like Doc’s fancy pen, so I tease it into the open, rolling it out with the ball of my foot. It’s not his pen, though. It’s something else, something gleaming, something that catches all the light in the room.

  A stick of gold.

  I crouch down, one hand on the edge of the desk to steady myself. For whatever reason, I pick the thing up and slip it into the pocket of my uniform. I want to keep it.

  I turn back toward the door. “Gunther?” He can’t hear me, I know, but I say it anyway. I call out as loud as I can but it’s no better than a rasp. “You need to come in here. Something awful has happened.”

  7

  FRESH SCABS

  AFTER THEY TOOK DAD AWAY, I WAS ON MY OWN. IN AND OUT OF FOSTER homes for years. Whenever I could, I’d go for long, meandering lopes around the city. Every time, I ended up on the crest of the Willow Street Bridge, right above the spot where it happened.

  Along the bridge there are low barriers that look like they’re made of cement, but that’s only partly true. The cement was diluted with cheap limestone to cut costs, so over time, the limestone crumbles. If you run your hand along the top, you always come upon one or two loose bricks.

  Last winter, I was standing up there on the Willow Street Bridge and sure enough, I dislodged a big chunk of rock. There was a transport truck swimming through traffic below me, just about to head under the bridge. I could see the Nimbus logo on the cab.

  I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I wanted to frighten the driver. Maybe I figured it would just bounce off. But when I dropped the hunk of stone, it didn’t glance off the windshield like I’d hoped. Instead, it smashed clean through. It hit the driver on the back of his head. An inch to the left, they told me later, and it would’ve killed him.

  That was the window I broke—the windshield of a Nimbus truck. That’s how I ended up at the Home. It’s also how I first met Detective Inspector White. She’s the same one who arrested my father.

  “You really did it this time, didn’t you?”

  I look up at Gunther. It’s just me and him in the St. Remus staff room, a drab space haunted by ghost-scents of reheated food. Right now, however, it’s an interrogation suite.

  “What do you mean?” My voice croaks like a frog’s. “I didn’t do anything. He was just hanging there.”

  Gunther shakes his head.

  There’ve been quite a few suicides here over the years, but rarely on the part of the staff. It’s never before been the visiting psychiatrist who offs himself. And this is Doctor Rufus Grey, renowned animalian psychologist. That means they’re taking it seriously. No messing around. They’re sending in the real deal. They’re sending Detective White.

  Right on cue, I tune in the tick-tick-ticking of high heels. Gunther pushes himself out of his wall-slouch and wipes the scowl off his face. He grins at me. “Now you’re gonna get it.”

  But when the door opens, it’s not White. It’s Cindy, the Chief Administrator at St. Remus. She clinks into the staff room on glassy, towering heels. They look as cozy as a pair of icicles. Apparently, those stilettos are her one holdover from a previous life. (Once upon a time, Cindy was a low-class hominid, but one who married well. For years she lived up in Eden, chumming around with the aristocrats of the so-called inDustrial Revolution. At some point, however, she got bored with it all. She realized she was more comfortable down here with her own people, so to speak—the animalia and the working poor.)

  “Hello, Henry,” she says. “There’s someone here who’d like a word with you.”

  Detective White’s scent gives her away. She’s got one of the oddest bouquets I’ve ever whiffed. Apple cider and old coal. Cindy steps aside and the famous detective enters the room.

  “We meet again,” she says.

  I nod.

  At first glance, Detective White doesn’t appear all that tough. She’s an
ordinary woman, shorter than Cindy by half a head, although that’s probably on account of Cindy’s heels. White’s legs, on the other hand, are buried up to the knee in a battered pair of trench boots. She comes over and leans on the table. “Must’ve been quite a shock, huh?”

  “It was,” I tell her. Up close, I recall how well she lives up to her name. Her face is pale as a bowl of milk, floating with stark features that match her scent: apple-red lips and eyes like blackened embers.

  “Why don’t you tell her what you found?”

  I describe the scene as I remember it, though I’m careful to leave out the stick of gold. It doesn’t seem related and besides, I want to keep it for myself.

  White listens intently, her face calm. When I’m finished, she says, “You two were close, weren’t you? You and the Doc?”

  “I guess,” I tell her. “It’s hard not to be when they make you see him every week.”

  She turns her head in a broad circle and her back cracks up and down, a spineful of arthritic knuckles. “Losing friends left and right these days, that’s what I hear.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your friend Jack disappeared, too.”

  “So?”

  White pulls out a chair and straddles it backward, folding her arms over the backrest. “Guess you’re having a bad week.” Her hands hang from her wrists like the branches of a dead tree, hard and rough, her fingers encrusted with fresh scabs. When she notices how I’m staring, she holds up a fist. “Admiring my manicure?” She picks off a scab and lets it flake to the floor. “That’s what you get for spending half the day interrogating muscle for the mob.” She points a thumb over her shoulder, over at Gunther. “You think he’s big, you oughta see the guys Skinner’s got working for him.”

  Gunther frowns. “You?” he says to White. “They had you interrogating one of Skinner’s guys?”

  “Two of them, actually.”

  Skinner. I know that name. I remember it from my father’s trial.

  “No way,” says Gunther.

  White smiles mischievously. “You wanna bet?”

  Cindy wrings her hands. “Gunther, please.”

  White tightens a loose screw on the chair’s headrest. “Not everybody knows this about me,” she says, “but I never had a family. Not a real one anyway. I was raised by miners. Seven of them. When a girl grows up in a situation like that—well, let’s just say she learns how to take care of herself.”

  Gunther laughs, but the volume’s turned low. “So what? Doesn’t mean you can take on a glob. And never one of Skinner’s guys.”

  “You wanna bet?”

  “What do I get if I win?”

  White looks up at him and smiles. “Respect.”

  “You got a deal.” Gunther stretches out his meaty hand. “But how you gonna prove it?”

  “Like this.” She grabs his thumb and jerks it back toward his wrist. Gunther’s face flashes with shock and his knees buckle. White yanks on the pinioned digit, and the arm it’s connected to noodles up behind the goblin’s back. In a flash of leverage, she’s got him curled on the floor, whimpering like a cub with a fatty jowl glued to the linoleum.

  She clears her throat. “Convinced?”

  Gunther yawps in anger, but it’s about all he can do.

  White tweaks the thumb a little harder. “I asked you a question.”

  “Okay, okay, you win! I’m convinced! You’re gonna break my arm!”

  “So pay up already.”

  Gunther’s eyes go knuckle-white with fear. “But we didn’t even bet anything!”

  “Sure we did. All you gotta do is say it.”

  “Okayokayokay! I respect you! I do, I really do!”

  Fast as before, White releases Gunther and returns to the chair. She straddles it again and shrugs. “It’s all math, really. Physics. Put the fulcrum in the right place and you can move the world. Or at least some big, dumb glob.” She squints at me. “You study math?”

  I shake my head. “Words are more my thing.”

  “You oughta do some math.”

  Cindy gives Gunther a look of concern. “Maybe you ought to wait outside.”

  “You sure, Ms. Rella?”

  She nods and Gunther backs into the corridor, glowering at White the whole way. He’s got his one sore arm cradled in the other like a newborn.

  “Now then,” says White. “Where were we? Ah, yes—Doctor Grey. He once gave a talk at the academy, all about rehabilitating the usual suspects. Harmony between the species and all that. Made it sound convincing. I nearly believed it could happen. Then I actually started doing the job. Hoofing the beat in Darkforest, or down in Dockside.” She pauses. “Now, when I say ‘hoofing,’ please understand it’s just an expression. No offense.”

  I squint at her. “I’m a wolf. Hooves are for mules and goats.”

  “Sure.” She rises from the chair, rubbing her mouth. “I think I’ve heard enough. They only sent me out here to cool off. Think it worked, too.” She glances at the door. “Apart from chicken-winging your head of security, that is.”

  “Gunther can handle it,” Cindy tells her.

  White turns back to me. “I know you didn’t have anything to do with this, Henry. Any fool can see you’re nothing like your father.” She places her hands on the back of the chair, gripping it with her bloody knuckles. “Your shrink killed himself. End of story. It’s not that uncommon. You’d be surprised by those guys. Not as stable as they make out to be, if you know what I mean.” White turns for the door. “I’d say I’ll see you around, kid, but it’s probably best you stay outta my way.”

  She ambles for the door and throws a backhanded salute over her shoulder. Cindy and I listen to the echo of her boots fading down the corridor, heavy-soled footfalls that thump out a slow, unstoppable beat.

  8

  BLOOD MEMORY OF THE SPECIES

  EARTHWOOD CEMETERY IS AN OASIS OF GREEN AT THE HEART OF THE CITY. It may be mashed in on all sides by asphalt and brick, but once you’re inside, the grounds are lush with hedges and trees and tightly cropped grass. The cemetery lies under the base of the Empyrean Skyway, spiraling above us, all the way up to Eden.

  Our buses rumble past the two gigantic guardhouses that cut the Skyway off from First Avenue. It’s impossible to tell whether the guards standing inside notice us. They’re like statues, towering and expressionless, which is typical of giants. To them, we must seem like insects. The guardhouses slide past the windows as we turn away, rolling in through the cemetery gates.

  Near the entrance, there’s a hominid funeral already underway. The mourners frown. Our old buses are too rusty, too loud, too brightly emblazoned with the St. Remus logo to belong in a noble and austere place like this. Nevertheless, here we are.

  Then, in only a moment, we’re gone. Maples and oaks and great shaggy willows swallow us up as we move through to the far side of the grounds. We park in a distant lot.

  When the guards usher us out, we see the grave is right up front, a shadowy rectangle carved from the earth with perfect precision. The coffin lies beside it, on top of what looks to be a deep red picnic blanket. Without too much ado, we take our seats.

  The priest is a slender raven. He sails above the treetops like a storm cloud. With one dignified flap, he alights between the coffin and the grave. His cassock grips tight to his body. The fabric is seamless against his tar-black feathers; you can’t see where the vestment ends and the priest begins. The two are separated only at the throat, by the stark white square of his collar. His murky eyes scan across us all, hushing us one by one.

  “Let us begin.”

  His voice crackles like an old record. “There are those who believe that when we take our own life, we do not deserve the respect of a proper burial. There are those who would stoop so low as to claim that any wolf who leaves us in this manner is performing a civic duty. But no, the death of Doctor Rufus Grey is a great loss for this city. Few citizens, no matter what their stripe, can claim to have contributed
so selflessly to combating the City’s urban unrest.”

  Cindy sits down in front. She’s swaying minutely, but I can only see the barest profile of her face. She might be crying, but I can’t tell. Mrs. Lupovitz, on the other hand, down at the end of my row, is shuddering like a train off its tracks, tears streaming down her face.

  The priest recounts how thoughtful, kind, well-educated, generous, insightful Doc was. I can’t help searching for a scrap of dubiousness in his avian eye; not too many folks would deem insightfulness and generosity wolfish traits. But there’s no irony in the priest’s voice. He’s a bit monotonous, maybe, but he’s nothing if not sincere. Once he’s done, he turns to the forest that overshadows the grave.

  “David?” he says.

  Suddenly, the trees ripple like a mirage. They shake as if blown in a wind, but the air is perfectly still. Something shines through the branches. It’s an ember, gleaming and orange. It floats high off the ground, lighthouse-height and half lost in the thickest leaves. Then come the hands. They reach out toward us, enormous and stiff and deeply tanned, parting the poplars like a garden hedgerow.

  A giant.

  He steps into the open as gently as he can, but the ground still trembles. He’s dressed in soiled overalls and a canvas cap. He must be the gravedigger. The ember is the enormous stub of a cigarette, clinging to his pillow-sized lip.

  The priest frowns. “David,” he says sternly.

  The giant plucks the cinder from his mouth and lets it drop. It falls, big as a meteor, and when he stamps it out the ground shakes.

  The priest spreads a wing toward the grave. “Go ahead, David.”

  Stooping forward, the giant gathers up the seat belt–like straps lying under the coffin, lifting it with hardly any effort at all. The polished box floats up and then down into the darkness of the earth. With the flat of his foot, David sweeps the nearby pile of soil into the hole, burying Doc forever. Finally, just as he did with the cigarette, the giant’s enormous boot tamps everything down.