by Joe Hill
Martina emerged in a pair of jeans so tight I’m surprised she could get into them without lubricant. She stood beside me, pushed her crazed hair back from her face.
“You do me favor?” she asked.
“I think I just did.”
“Don’t call police man for a while,” she said. She gave me a haunted, harried look. “I haff my own legal problem.”
“Yeah. All right,” I said, but I found I couldn’t look at her, and my voice curdled with distaste.
I was sorry for her and glad she was safe, but it didn’t mean I had to like her. She’d had her fun, teasing Andropov about how she was going to jump into bed with the dykes upstairs, using us as a cudgel to batter his masculinity. She’d been doing it the day the hard rain fell. That was why Andropov had come home in such a hurry—not to beat the storm but to beat his girlfriend. In her own way, she wasn’t much better than Gumby, who loathed Yolanda for being a queer. We had never been people to Martina. We were just a blot on the local environment, something she could rub her ignorant boyfriend’s face in when she needed a cheap thrill.
Maybe she registered some of the contempt in my tone. She softened, took a step toward me on her delicate feet. “I am sorry for Yo-lin-dah. She was very special. I see her die from the window.” Her cornflower-blue eyes took on a guilty, shamed aspect, and she added, “I am sorry about things I say to Rudy. About how you both make me lesbeen. I am shit, you know?” She shrugged, then smiled and blinked at tears in her long lashes. “You a real badass beetch, you know? You safe my worthless ass today. You are like if Miss Maple haff baby with Rambo Balboa.”
She turned and put her hands in the pockets of a tight leather coat she’d found somewhere and went down the steps, crystal nails crunching under her heels.
“Where are you going?”
The air was heavy, so heavy it required an act of will to draw a full breath. In the ten minutes I’d been inside, that ghostly impression of a distant thunderhead had darkened and filled in to become a looming mass, pretty as a facial tumor.
Martina turned back, answered with a shrug. “Maybe down to university. I haff friends there.” She laughed bitterly. “No. This is lie. I haff people I can sell drugs to there.”
“So they’ll think of you fondly then. Go on. Just don’t take any detours. The weather is about to turn ugly.”
She looked up from under her carefully tweezed eyebrows, then nodded and turned away. I sat on the top step and watched her go, walking at first—then breaking into a half jog.
Martina had only just disappeared around the corner when the door crashed open behind me and Andropov stumbled out. Blood and snot had dried over his upper lip, and his eyes were bloodshot as if he’d been up for twenty-four hours with only a bottle of vodka for company.
“Martina!” he screamed. “Martina, come back! Come back, I am sorry!”
“Forget it, brother,” I said. “That plane flew already.”
He staggered to the edge of the porch and dropped down to sit beside me, clutching his head and crying helplessly.
“Now I haff no one! Everything fuck me in the ass! Everyone is dying, and I haff no friend and no woman.” He opened his mouth so wide I could see his back teeth, and he sobbed in a great, booming voice. “I haff no place to go where I am not alone!”
“There’s a place with us,” Elder Bent said softly. “There’s work for you to do and secrets to learn—a bed to sleep in and dreams to dream. Your voice belongs with ours, Rudolf Andropov. Singing the curtain down on the world.”
While I was lost in my thoughts and Andropov was lost in his sorrows, Bent had come to the bottom of the porch steps. He stood there with his hands folded at his waist, smiling placidly. In the weird gathering stormlight of the afternoon, the planets on his skull seemed alight with a sickly glow.
His daughters and a small delegation of worshippers were behind him in their gowns. The girls began to hum softly, a melody I recognized but couldn’t place, something sickly sweet and almost sad.
Andropov stared at them with wide, straining eyes and a dazed wonder on his face.
I kind of wished I’d held on to the wrench. I stood and backed off a few steps, putting the railing between me and the crazies.
“All that harmonizing together is going to be good practice for singing on a chain gang,” I said. “If you haven’t heard from the state police yet, count yourselves lucky. They’ve got the three who jumped me on the interstate, and they’ll be coming for you next.”
“The police have come and gone,” Elder Bent said, and he smiled apologetically. “Randy, Pat, and Sean acted without my knowledge. They were the ones who first saw Andropov’s note slipped under the door, and they decided to spring upon you without ever discussing their plan with me. I think they believed they were protecting me—as if I have any reason to fear the law! Yes, I knew that the storms were coming, but prophecy is not culpability. When I saw the note myself and my daughters told me what Sean and his friends were off to do, I immediately contacted local authorities to warn them what was afoot. I am so, so terribly sorry the police weren’t able to prevent them from attacking you, but of course law enforcement is badly stretched thin right now. You weren’t hurt, were you?”
Andropov and I spoke at almost the same time. The Russian said, “What note?”
I said, “Wait, Andropov left a note? Sean said they got a message from him, but I thought they meant a voice mail or something. How do you know this note was from Andropov? Did he sign it?”
One corner of Elder Bent’s mouth turned up in a wry smile. “He has a rather interesting phonetic spelling of your name. ’Onysuck! It’s quite unmistakable.”
“I leave note?” Andropov said, sounding genuinely baffled. “I must haff been so high! I don’t remember thees note.”
“Good,” Elder Bent said. “Let it all go. The note. Martina. Your sadness. The whole life you had until this moment. A new life begins right now, today, if you want it. You’re looking for community, for a place where you don’t need to be alone. And we’ve been looking for you, Rudy! If you’re ready to do work that means something and to be among people who will love you and ask you only to love them, then we’re here for you. We’re ready to say hello.”
And on cue the girls behind him broke into Lionel Richie’s “Hello,” asking Andropov if it was them he’d been looking for. If I hadn’t been so confused and stunned, I would’ve gagged.
Andropov, though, stared at them like one inspired, his tears drying on his cheeks. Elder Bent held out one hand, and Andropov took it. The bald, gangly monk of madness pulled the Russian to his feet and led him down the steps. One of the comet cultists zoomed in and hung an astrolabe around his neck and kissed his cheek. Andropov stared down at it in wonder, fingered it in fascination.
“A map to the stars,” Elder Bent said. “Keep it with you. We’ll be going there soon. We wouldn’t want you to get lost.”
They moved away across the lawn, gathered around Andropov and singing in their sweet, harmless, senseless voices. As they slipped one by one into the house next door, their music faded and another sound took its place—a loud, steely clack, like someone cocking a gun. Only it wasn’t a gun. It came again and again. It was a manual typewriter.
I turned and looked at the open bay door to Ursula’s garage. From where I stood, I could see only darkness within.
I crossed the street, worn down from the heat and the walk and fighting evil. Except that wasn’t it. What had tired me out the most was thinking about all the hours I’d spent in that garage, seeing everything and observing nothing.
Templeton stood at his daddy’s workbench, feet planted on a big white plastic tub of rock salt so he could reach the keys of the antique typewriter.
“Hey there, Templeton,” I said.
“Hello, Honeysuckle,” he said without looking up.
“Where’s your mom, kiddo?”
“Inside. Lying down. Or maybe on her computer. She spends a lot of time on h
er computer watching the weather.”
I settled in behind him, ruffled his hair. “Hey, Temp? Remember when you told me you go flying every night to look for your daddy in the clouds? Is that something you do in your dreams?”
“No,” he said. “I go with Mommy. In the crop duster. I pretend I’m a bat.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. My gaze drifted to the framed Ph.D. hung above the workbench. I’d never wondered what Templeton’s father had a Ph.D. in but wasn’t surprised to see that his field of study had been applied chemical engineering. I wondered if the company that had fired him still had offices somewhere in the United States or if they’d completely relocated to Georgia. Yolanda had told me that Mr. Blake’s company had moved down south—a natural mix-up. When you heard that someone was moving to Georgia, you didn’t think they meant Russia.
“Can I see something, Templeton?” I said. “Jump down for a moment, will you?”
He obediently hopped down off the white plastic tub of rock salt. I pried off the lid and looked in at glittering silver dust. At a glance a person might’ve imagined it was salt, but when I stuck a finger in, it pricked my finger like a pile of broken glass. I wiped my hand on my hip and stood up.
Templeton had backed a few steps away, ceding his place at the typewriter. I cranked the silver carriage-release lever to start a new line and began to type. Little steel hammers fell, bang, bang, bang . . . all except for the h and e, which wouldn’t fire. I wrote “onysuck” and quit. I thought about the letter in the paper, “Alla” with no h, the word “bodies” spelled “bodys” to avoid the e.
“What’chu writing, Hemingway?” someone said from behind me, a male voice.
I spun, my heart banging like the keys of Templeton’s typewriter.
Marc DeSpot had crept to the entrance of the garage and stood peering in at me, tall, rangy, muscular son of a bitch in a white straw cowboy hat, blue denim shirt buttoned only at the collar so it flapped open to show the ornate X on his chest.
“Marc!” I cried. “Why are you here?” Not that I cared. I’d never been so happy to see a friendly face.
He wandered into the dim garage. It was increasingly looking like twilight outside. “Why you think I’m here? I’m looking for you.”
“Here? How’d you know to find me here?”
“You told me, Sherlock. ’Member? You said if you weren’t in the big white house across the street to look in the butter-colored ranch. You got anything to drink? I’ve walked half the day to bring this back to you, and I’ve worked up a considerable thirst in the process.” He pulled a rectangle of slick black glass out of his back pocket.
“My phone! How is it you have my phone?”
He thumbed his hat back on his brow. “Well, I caught up to the lady that took it from you and asked nice. The trick is to use the magic word, which is ‘please.’ It works ’specially well if you’re holdin’ ’em upside down by the ankles at the time.”
“Let me have it.”
“Catch,” he said.
He gave it a soft underhanded lob, and it rapped me in the chest and fell into my hands, and I had it for an instant and it slipped through my butter fingers and struck the concrete with a crack. As a finishing touch, I kicked it and heard it skid under the worktable.
“Oh, crickets!” I shouted. “Give me your phone.”
“It died six hours ago. Where’s the fire?”
I got down on all fours and scrambled into the dark beneath the worktable, a space that stank of mice, dust, and rust.
“I’ve got to talk to people. FBI maybe,” I said. “See that typewriter? There’s no e on it. And no h either!”
“And you want the FBI to investigate? I don’t think crimes against the alphabet fall under their jurisdiction.”
I put my face through a cobweb and snatched it off my nose. I set my palm down on the blade of a rusty screwdriver and hissed. “I can’t see a damn thing.”
“I can help you look,” Templeton said, getting down on all fours and scrambling in under the worktable with me.
“Here,” Ursula said. “I’ve got a flashlight. Maybe this will help.”
“Thanks, Ursula,” I said automatically, for a half an instant forgetting who I was calling the FBI about.
Then my insides throbbed with a kind of cold ache, and I went still. She’d heard us talking and slipped into the garage just as I was scrambling under the table. I turned in a circle and peered out at her and Marc.
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Marc DeSpot, taking the flashlight from her, pointing it under the worktable, and switching it on. I opened my mouth to scream but couldn’t get any air. My lungs wouldn’t fill. Marc hadn’t seen what was in her other hand. He bent over and looked under the table at me. “But listen, girl, if you’ve got someone to call, you aren’t going to be able to do it with that phone either. That’s out of charge, too. It’s like a law of nature. The more you need something, the more likely it is the damn thing is just going to drop dead on you.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” Ursula said, and hit him in the back with the machete.
It sounded like someone swatting a carpet with a broom. His legs wobbled, and his knees knocked. She yanked back with both hands and all her strength to free the blade. Marc dropped the flashlight, and it rolled a little to the right, pointing its beam out the garage door and leaving Temp and me in shadows. As the machete came out from between his shoulder blades, he toppled backward, pulled off his feet. He fell to the floor with a weak cry.
I scuttled all the way back under the table.
“Templeton,” Ursula said, leaning forward, her face as serene and calm as if she hadn’t just nearly cut someone in half. “Come on out, Templeton. Come to Mama.” She held out her left hand for him, gripping the machete in her right.
Templeton didn’t move, paralyzed with shock. I put my arm around his neck and stuck the blade of that rusty screwdriver under his eye.
“Back away, Ursula.”
Until that instant her voice and expression had been perfectly placid. Now, though, her face darkened to a shade of tomato and a tendon stood out in her neck.
“Don’t you TOUCH HIM!” she shouted. “HE’S A CHILD!”
“Streets are full of ’em,” I said. “All stuck through with nails. One more dead kid won’t matter to anyone. Except you.”
Templeton shivered in my arms. My scalp burned, and my own legs trembled, squatting there under the worktable. My voice had so much nasty in it that I almost believed myself.
“You wouldn’t,” she said.
“Wouldn’t I? I don’t doubt you love him more than anything in the world. I understand how that feels. I felt just exactly the same about Yolanda.”
Ursula took a step back. Her breath echoed in the concrete-and-aluminum cavern of the garage. Thunder detonated outside, shook the floor.
I began to crab-walk forward, edging Templeton along with me.
“He’s innocent in this, Honeysuckle,” she said, trying to regain her calm but unable to keep the tremor out of her speech. “Please. He’s all I have. His father was already stolen from me. You can’t take him, too.”
“Don’t talk to me about what you’ve lost,” I said. “Colorado is full of folks who’ve lost loved ones, all because you couldn’t mourn in a reasonable fashion. Couldn’t you just plant a tree in his memory like a normal person?”
“This state, this nation, took my husband’s life away from him. My good man. A bunch of Georgian oligarchs stole Charlie’s life’s work—all his ideas, all his research—and this state said he wasn’t entitled to a dime. They stole his future from him, and he couldn’t bear it. So now I’m taking away their future. The president authorized a tactical nuclear strike. The entire nation of Georgia has been radioactive ash for three hours. And as for Colorado—and the rest of this hideous, money-worshipping country—they didn’t recognize my husband’s rights. They didn’t appreciate the power of his ideas. Well. They’re learning to appreciate their power now, aren�
�t they?”
I clubbed my head on the edge of the worktable as I came out from under it, and my eyes just about crossed. Temp could’ve lunged away, but I think he was too terrified in that moment to bolt for it. I kept the tip of the screwdriver a quarter inch beneath his right eyeball.
“I don’t understand why you sent Elder Bent’s people after me,” I said.
“Templeton told me you knew we went flying every night. He said you were going to tell the FAA about our trips in the crop duster. I wasn’t even sure I believed him, but then isn’t that how people always get caught? Someone robs a bank, then gets pulled over ’cause of a broken taillight. I didn’t think I could afford to take any chances. I hope you know I don’t have anything against you personally, Honeysuckle.”
I kept the boy between Ursula and myself, turning, putting my back to the driveway. I saw Marc lift one hand weakly, fingers curled, and heard him groan faintly. I thought if we got help soon enough, he might live. I began to retreat toward the road.
“No!” Ursula shouted. “You can’t! He can’t go outside!”
“My fanny. That’s just another lie. He isn’t taking any medicine that makes him allergic to sunlight. That was just a story you told to be sure he’d never get caught out in the rain if you weren’t around to watch him. Keep moving, Temp.”
“NO! It’s about to pour!” Ursula screamed.
“Come on,” I said. “Come on, Templeton. We’ll make a dash for it.”
We turned, and I shoved him ahead of me, down the driveway, and at that moment the world turned into a negative image of itself in a stroke of lightning followed by a shattering blast of thunder. We ran. I clutched one of his shoulders with my left hand, held the screwdriver with the other. As we crossed the road, I felt something stab me in the arm. I looked and saw a diamond-bright nail sticking out of my biceps.
I heard a mounting, rattling roar, less like a downpour, more like an avalanche, building in strength as it approached. I saw the far end of the street disappear in an advancing wall of whiteness, a flashing, brilliant curtain of falling crystals. The Flatirons danced, disappeared, and reemerged, like an image glimpsed through a kaleidoscope.