Fallow

by Jordan L. Hawk

  Then one of the men dropped into a crouch in front of me. Sun and weather had tanned his skin, and his bristling beard frightened me at first. But the smile he offered was kind. “What’s your name, son?”

  I’d gone home with him that day. Back to the farmhouse meant to provide shelter for the half a dozen children fate had ultimately failed to grant. His wife proved to be just as kindly, greeting me with a smile and a slice of fresh-baked apple pie.

  I’d never tasted anything half so good.

  They told me to call them Ma and Pa, and put me to bed amidst warm blankets, beneath a sound roof. I’d never slept alone before, and as I watched the shadows of a tree sway across the wall opposite the wide window, I felt a new touch of fear. Not of the dark, or anything in it. Rather, that this would all be taken away. That my new parents would change their minds and put me back on the next orphan train.

  That I’d be truly alone again.

  I swore then I’d do anything to please them. I’d be the son they wanted, and never give them an instant of regret for choosing me instead of some other lad.

  I managed to keep that oath for years. But in the end, I failed them after all. And just as I’d feared, they brought me to the depot and put me on a train—although this one had been bound for Chicago, and I’d been a young man, not a child, by then.

  The brightness of an arcane line flashed past, and I blinked. Whyborne stirred slightly and mumbled something in his sleep. We’d crossed over a few such lines since leaving Widdershins, naturally, but I hadn’t expected one so close to Fallow.

  “How is the paper coming?” I asked Christine, hoping for a distraction.

  “Bah!” She sat back in her seat, her scowl deepening. “I can’t help but wonder if it would be safe to return to the fane of Nyarlathotep. The daemon—the umbra, that is—is gone, after all. I might have lost the firman for the tomb site, but perhaps I could persuade them to let me dig far out in the desert.” A wicked smile curved her lips. “They’d assume there would be nothing to find, after all.”

  Iskander arched a brow. “Considering you were attacked by mummies and faceless statues, I doubt that the absence of the daemon renders the site much safer.”

  “I suppose.” She looked at Whyborne speculatively. He’d started to drool on his shoulder in his sleep. “But Whyborne is much better at pulling magic from arcane lines now. Maybe...”

  “We should probably wait until after we’re certain the masters aren’t about to return and destroy the world,” I said.

  “I suppose.” She didn’t look at all happy about the delay.

  The train began to slow. Whyborne blinked awake as the porter moved to gather our things. “Are we there?”

  I peered out the window and glimpsed the cluster of buildings forming the town proper. I wasn’t certain if there were more than the last time I’d left, after my rescue from the asylum. “Yes.”

  “Thank heavens,” Christine said, stretching in her seat. “I hope the hotel has decent whiskey.”

  I forced a grin onto my face, despite my melancholy thoughts. “I’m afraid the temperance movement reached Kansas before you, Christine. You’d best avail yourself of Niles’s private stock before we leave the train.”

  A look of horror crossed her face. “Good gad, man, you might have warned us! I’d have packed a few bottles in my trunk.”

  The porter returned with a bottle of rather expensive whiskey from the cabinet. “Perhaps ma’am would care to take this with her?”

  “You’ve saved my life.” She took it and stashed it in her valise.

  I was first onto the platform, while everyone else gathered their coats and hats. I took a deep breath, feeling as if some invisible hand reached into my chest and squeezed my heart tight. Beneath the smell of burning coal from the train, I recognized the scents of my childhood: dust and dry grass, livestock and fresh cut corn. Enormous grain elevators towered nearby, their sides painted orange by the light of the setting sun. Soon the corn harvest would be finished, and the grain loaded into train cars and shipped to the hungry cities of the east.

  Pa had taken pride in that. He wasn’t just feeding his own family—our yield nourished families we’d never meet.

  And if those families included men like myself, like Whyborne...would he have been so proud then? Or would he have preferred to keep the corn from their mouths?

  “Griffin?” Whyborne said softly from just behind me.

  I shook myself back to the present. “Just remembering,” I said, as lightly as I could. “Is everyone ready? Then let’s go into Fallow.”

  ~ * ~

  “Well,” said Iskander. “This is a problem.”

  We stood in the dusty street in front of the hotel. The very closed hotel, its windows shuttered and its door boarded.

  A great many of Fallow’s buildings were abandoned. The general store remained open, as did the post office, pharmacy, and barber shop. But in between the businesses still clinging to life, weathered signs and empty displays showed the demise of a book shop, jewelry store, photographer, and more. Including, of course, the hotel. Someone had plastered notices on the door and windows: a livestock sale, an upcoming community dance, a sun-faded political advertisement.

  Only a few people were about in the streets, and they stared at us curiously. We must indeed present an odd picture, all of us dressed like city folk, our baggage sitting in the road around us. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I assumed...”

  “Not your fault,” Iskander said. “We didn’t have time to send ahead and do a proper job of securing the necessities.”

  Christine heaved a sigh. “Back to the private car, then. At least it will give us a place to sleep.”

  A wagon rumbling down the street slowed as it approached us. “Griffin? Griffin Flaherty?”

  I turned, bracing myself to be attacked again, as I had been in Widdershins.

  It took a moment to recognize the red haired man driving the wagon. Sun and wind had burned his fair skin and added lines to his eyes, but his smile took me back to days spent sitting on a rough bench in the little schoolhouse. “Lawrence Reynolds?”

  Lawrence let out a happy laugh and climbed down. I reached out to shake his hand—and found myself hauled into a rough embrace.

  I hugged him back; he smelled of sweat and cows. I’d last seen him a few days before I was caught with Benjamin, but we’d been friends throughout our childhoods. I’d never thought he might miss me.

  “Well, look at you,” he said, stepping back, his hand still resting on my shoulder. “All dressed up fancy, like you never heard of work.”

  I laughed wryly. “True enough. I’m a detective in my ordinary line.”

  “So no work at all.” But he grinned as he said it. “I never expected to lay eyes on you again, that’s for sure. So what brings you back here?”

  I introduced my companions. Our story was an artifact from Fallow had been donated to the museum, and that we were here to see if any more might be found. “We meant to stay in the hotel, but...” I finished.

  “It closed down going on three months ago,” Lawrence said with a shake of his head. “What with the drought and all, there ain’t much cause for people to come to this part of Kansas, I reckon.” He hesitated for a moment, glancing at us and our baggage. I half-expected him to ask why we weren’t staying with Ma, but he instead he said, “Well, shoot. Why don’t you folks come stay with me and the family? Our house ain’t no fancy hotel, and a couple of you fellows might have to sleep in the hayloft, but it’s a place to lay your heads.”

  “The hayloft?” Whyborne asked with some trepidation.

  “We shouldn’t wish to inconvenience you,” Iskander said.

  “Ain’t no inconvenience.” Lawrence grinned. “Just wait till the missus finds out we’ve got the lady archaeologist and a railroad tycoon staying with us. Every other woman in Fallow will be dying of jealousy.”

  I shook Lawrence’s hand gratefully. “Of course we’ll help out with whatever chore
s we can. I still remember how to milk a cow.”

  Whyborne looked horrified. “Milk a cow?”

  I clapped him on the arm. “I’m sure there’s manure to shovel, too.”

  “That there is,” Lawrence agreed. Then he seemed to hesitate, his gaze going to Iskander, then back to me uncertainly. “Listen, one thing I ought to mention. My wife, Annie—she and her folks were exodusters, came here in ’79.”

  “She’s black,” I translated, since my companions only looked blankly at him.

  “Our marriage ain’t illegal here in Kansas,” Lawrence said defensively, “but if you’ve an objection, you might want to stay somewhere else.”

  By his tone, it was clear there were those in Fallow who very much objected. “Not at all,” Iskander said.

  Lawrence grinned in relief. “I didn’t figure you would, seeing as you ain’t white yourself, but folks can be funny about these kinds of things. Well, then let’s get your baggage in the wagon.” He glanced at the setting sun. “We’d best get home before sundown, else Annie will start worrying.”

  ~ * ~

  The Reynolds farm was to the west of town: a snug, single-story house accompanied by a barn and chicken coop. A great cloud of dust billowed out behind the wagon as we approached, the dry earth disturbed by the slightest movement and encompassing us all in the choking cloud of fine grit.

  Lawrence’s wife awaited us on the porch, a lantern in her hand. “I’ve brought some folks in need of hospitality, Annie,” he said.

  Annie was a tall woman, with burnt umber skin and a penetrating stare. She wore a cheerful red headscarf, and a flour-dusted apron covered her calico dress. “I’m sorry for the unexpectedness of our visit, Mrs. Reynolds,” I said after Lawrence made introductions.

  “It’s no trouble,” she said with a smile. That might not be strictly true—in fact, it probably wasn’t—but putting up travelers for a night or two without complaint was an old Kansas tradition, lingering from a time when isolated sod houses had been the only shelter for a hundred miles. “Put down your things and wash up, and I’ll have the boys lay some extra places at the table.”

  The farmhouse consisted of three rooms—a kitchen, a bedroom belonging to Lawrence and Annie, and the large front room that served all other functions. Three boys, long-legged and lean as colts, hastened to lay out more places at the table and bring in water for washing, under their father’s doting eye. Before long, we sat down to a meal of boiled ham, chow-chow, pickled beans, and bread slathered with butter.

  “So, Griffin, what have you been doing with yourself?” Lawrence asked. “You said you were a detective?”

  “I used to work with the Pinkertons,” I replied. “But I’ve come back to help Dr. Putnam-Barnett find her way around the community.”

  “Did you really dig up that old pharaoh?” asked Simon, the eldest of the Reynolds children. He had his father’s eyes and his mother’s mouth. “We read about it in school last year.”

  “I did,” Christine said. “Although of course Iskander helped.”

  “A bit,” Iskander said with a wink.

  Ordinarily, I would have spent the meal entertaining the gathering with stories of various exploits from my days in the Pinkertons. Chasing bank robbers and foiling train heists was always good for conversation, I’d found. Exciting, but without revealing anything personal about myself.

  But none of my tales could hope to compete with Christine’s stories of excavating in Egypt. Children and adults both sat enrapt at her anecdotes of charging hippos, blistering heat, and dangerous bandits.

  Once dinner was over, we lingered over cake sweetened with sorghum. “From the look of things in town, Fallow’s seen better days,” I remarked.

  Lawrence nodded. “That it has. The drought’s been going for, oh, two years now. We were lucky enough to get some wheat in earlier, but a lot of folk are talking about leaving, and I can’t say as I blame them. I don’t even remember the last time I saw rain.”

  I shook my head in sympathy. “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “Mr. Harper’s farm is doing good, though,” he added. “Or your ma’s it is legally, I guess.”

  “Mr. Harper?” Christine inquired.

  “My cousin.”

  “Ruth’s brother?” she asked. She and Ruth had gotten on well, the brief times they’d met.

  “No.” My fork scraped against my plate, cleaning off the last of the cake. “Ruth is from Pa’s side of the family. Vernon’s mother is Ma’s sister. I don’t know him well, though we did visit them once in Topeka, when Vernon and I were boys.”

  Mainly what I recalled of the visit was how Vernon flinched every time his mother raised her voice, even if her words weren’t directed at him. He’d been a silent, sullen child, and at the time I’d disliked him. Now I understood better, and when Ruth had written with the news he was taking over the farm after Pa’s death, I’d been glad for it.

  “They have about the only crop worth harvesting right now,” Lawrence went on. “Them and the poor farm.”

  I frowned. “The poor farm?” Odell had been there, for at least a little while. And it sat catty-corner to our—Ma’s—farm, on the other side of the fallow place.

  Where the Fideles had been drilling.

  On the other side of us had been the Walter farm. But I didn’t dare ask how it fared. Benjamin had made a life here since I’d left, and I didn’t wish to remind anyone of the old scandal.

  Would I see him again, this visit? I hadn’t when I returned from the asylum, of course. My last glimpse of him had been sun-washed freckles, his brown eyes frightened as the hired hands dragged him in one direction, and me in the other. Pa had shouted at them to take him straight home.

  Had he arrived home unscathed? Or had they hurt him, before leaving him on his parents’ doorstep? How had his father reacted?

  I didn’t know. Asking would have only caused more trouble for us both, raised suspicion that there might be something lingering between us. I left town, and he married Marian, and that was all I needed to know.

  “Folks are saying the poor farm has a bumper crop this year,” Mrs. Reynolds said as she and the boys collected our empty plates. Glad for a distraction, I moved to assist, but she waved me back down. “No, no, don’t stir yourself, Mr. Flaherty. I’m sure my Lawrence will have plenty for you to do in the morning.”

  How long had it been since I’d done this sort of labor? I’d tended horses and occasionally cattle while hunting outlaws in the west, but I’d not set my hand to farm work since leaving for Chicago. “I look forward to it,” I said.

  Lawrence rose to his feet with a grin. “You say that now. Come on—let’s get you fellows settled in the barn for the night. Tomorrow we’ll be up with the sun.”

  Chapter 10

  Whyborne

  “Here we are,” said Mr. Reynolds as he led us into the barn. Christine and Iskander had been offered one of the beds in the small farmhouse, displacing the children who normally slept there to crowd into a cot. Which left the threatened hayloft for Griffin and me. “I’m sorry we can’t offer better, Dr. Whyborne.”

  “That’s quite all right,” I assured him. “Over the last few years, I’ve become accustomed to sleeping rough, as they say.”

  Though I was grateful for the Reynolds’ hospitality, I couldn’t help but survey our surroundings with a touch of dismay. The two mules who had drawn the wagon stood in the stall nearest the barn doors. The lantern gleamed from the eyes of several cows in other stalls. The air was redolent of hay and manure, and I fought not to wrinkle my nose. What would my clothes smell like in the morning?

  “Thank you again, Lawrence,” Griffin said.

  Mr. Reynolds nodded. “Sleep well. And Griffin...you might want to make sure the doors are secure before you close your eyes. We ain’t had any trouble, but there have been rumors.”

  Griffin frowned. “Rumors?”

  “Strange sounds. Prowlers scratching at windows, then running off as soon as anyone call
s out. It might be nothing, but folks have taken to locking their doors at night.”

  “I see. Thank you for the warning.” Griffin watched him leave, then made certain of the doors.

  “I take it locking one’s door is unusual here?” I asked.

  “I can’t recall it ever happening before.” Griffin uneasily shifted the quilts heaped in his arms. “We’d best go up to the loft and make our beds.”

  I followed him to the rather rickety looking ladder. It creaked and swayed under our combined weight. The need to carry my bedding with me made the climb rather precarious, and I hoped I didn’t fall into one of the stalls and end up trampled by a cow.

  “I noticed neither of the Reynolds asked why we’re staying with them, instead of with your family,” I remarked.

  Griffin put down his blankets and helped me off the ladder and into the loft itself. “No,” he said, his voice carefully neutral. “They didn’t. I imagine they can guess well enough.”

  “Probably.” We made a sort of nest amidst the loose hay and spread our blankets within. Tomorrow morning, Griffin would see his mother for the first time since that fateful day in the park back in Widdershins. If not for my connection with the dweller in the deeps, that day might have ended very differently. His parents wouldn’t have discovered our relationship. His father wouldn’t have forced Griffin to choose between them and me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. “This entire situation is difficult for you. If there’s anything I can do...”

  “There isn’t.” He sank down on the blankets, the hay rustling beneath him. “Other than what you’re already doing.” He swallowed and looked up at me. “I’m so glad you’re here. I can’t imagine coming back to Fallow and not having you to rely on.”

  His words caught me off guard. I would have assumed it far easier to return without me. Surely my presence would only remind his mother of the very reason she’d cut off contact with him in the first place.