The sliding door opened, and the stranger charged inside. He knocked against the table and then righted himself and continued out of sight. A moment later his parents hushed. There was the mutter of conversation. And then a thud and a cry as his father fell to the floor.
Though Hawkin did not comprehend what he heard next—over the next five minutes or so—he understood his father was in pain. He understood the stranger was asking him questions, and because his father wasn’t answering them satisfactorily, he was being kicked repeatedly.
The last thing he heard his father say was “We can work something out, right?,” his voice somewhere between a whimper and a shriek. “This doesn’t have to be an argument. It can be a negotiation. A simple business negotiation between two —”
A shotgun blast strobed the windows and made the house sound as though it had been split by a great hammer. There was screaming—his father’s—and then there was no more screaming.
Hawkin felt the sand grow warm beneath him and realized he had wet himself and worried he would get in trouble for it. His mother appeared in the kitchen window then. She was backing away with her hands held up.
“Didn’t mean to shoot him,” the stranger said, his voice carrying through the open door. “Was an accident. Finger fucking slipped or something.” His words garbled in a slurry jumble. “If the idiot had just—I just needed him to tell me where it was.” He muttered something unintelligible and then seemed to find his focus. “What about you? You know where it was? Is, I mean?”
“I don’t.” His mother shook her head—no, no, no. “I don’t know anything. I swear.”
The stranger sounded tired, like someone trying to get out a few thoughts before falling asleep: “This is—you better not be —” But before he could finish the sentence, another shotgun blast sounded.
His mother was shoved suddenly from view. The fridge sparked. One of the cabinets shattered and swung from a single hinge before coming loose and falling out of sight.
There was a long silence. And then the stranger spat a series of curses that gave way to a primal yell. Not of victory, but frustration. This was followed by heavy breathing. And then he moaned more than said, “What’s wrong with you?” Who this was directed at, Hawkin wasn’t sure.
The stranger then moved from room to room, switching on every light and taking their home apart. Pictures were torn from walls and smashed, drawers ripped out, pillows and box springs and couch cushions split open. Cereal boxes were shaken empty. The carpet was peeled back, the toilet tank checked. The stranger was searching for something. For the better part of an hour.
The bats continued to swirl around Hawkin, maybe a dozen of them, nipping at the mosquitoes, and he still had a lump of sand in his fist. He had been squeezing it so tightly his knuckles hurt. The bats made a chirping, buzzing sound like the electric fence that bordered their neighbor’s property to the north.
Sometimes Hawkin liked to reach his hand for that fence—an inch away, then closer and closer still—not touching it, but almost, so that he could feel the hum of electricity. It made his skin tighten and his hairs rise. He felt a similar sense of prickling danger when the stranger came out onto the deck and heaved a sigh and ejected a shotgun shell. He tried to walk down the steps but missed his footing and fell.
He landed heavily only a few feet from Hawkin, who knew he should run but didn’t; instead, he remained still and tried to will himself invisible. The stranger lay in the grass for a long time—long enough that Hawkin hoped he might have fallen asleep—but then he stirred with a grumble and hoisted himself up onto an elbow and said, “Oh. There you are.” He clumsily rose into a squat. “Was wondering where you were. Hawkin, right? That’s your name?”
Hawkin could see the pantyhose had gone gray with moisture at the eyes and the nose and the mouth, and it made the stranger look like he was rotting. A jack-o’-lantern that needed to be tossed into the compost. “Saw your name spelled out on the wall of your room. What kind of a name is Hawkin, I don’t fucking know. But I like your room, Hawkin. I like the color of the paint.” His voice wandered dreamily. “Is your favorite color blue? That’s a good color. It always reminds me of Lake Superior or . . .” Here his voice fell off a cliff. “Did you hear what happened in there? Because I’m sorry how things turned out. Hawkin?”
Hawkin couldn’t respond, not even when the stranger cocked his head and waited for him to.
“This is so fucked,” the stranger said and laid the shotgun across his thighs and pinched the bridge of his nose. His balance wavered and he rocked back on his heels and popped up into a standing position. “Okay. Okay, okay, okay.” The smoke coming off the gun burned Hawkin’s nose. “So I have some questions for you, Hawkin. Some very important questions. Like a test. You take tests at school? This is like one of those. Except it’s real.”
A bat chittered then, and Hawkin remembered the sand. He hurled the clump of it, and it unfurled into a veil that glittered in the air between them. And harmlessly frosted the stranger along the head and shoulders. He did not flinch but seemed ready to say something when the bats struck his face. One, two, three of them. The first couple dived in and out, but the last caught its claws in the pantyhose and beat its wings furiously over his eyes.
The stranger dropped the shotgun and screamed and punched at the bat, punching himself. To Hawkin, the pantyhose looked like stretched skin when the stranger struggled to yank the mask off, to free himself, his forehead growing long and his eyes widely hollowed.
Hawkin lurched up and made it a few wobbling steps before tripping. His legs were cramped from sitting still so long.
He wasn’t sure if he was crying or if the dew in the grass was wetting his face as he crawled forward. He didn’t know where he would go. Maybe the shed. He could get a rake there or some garden shears. Something sharp to protect himself with. Or maybe hide behind some pots or in a watering can, like Peter Rabbit in Mr. McGregor’s garden.
It was then he noticed, as he wormed away from the house, that instead of growing darker, the night was growing lighter. A blue-green glow hued his vision, everything flickering and warping, like the bottom of a pond when he put on goggles and ducked his head below the surface.
He looked up. And there it was. Just like Mrs. B. said. It was the beginning of the meteor shower. It would be a night busy with falling stars. A sky full of wishes. Too many to count. But he tried to gather them all up in his gaze and collect them into one powerful wish. “Make me strong enough to fight him,” Hawkin said.
And then the world shook and everything brightened to a blinding silver.
2
* * *
Five years later . . .
Montana and South Dakota and then western Minnesota flash by as John Frontier studies the landscape rolling past the window, looking the same as it did a hundred, maybe even a thousand years ago. Below, a sea-green prairie splashed with red and gold and white flowers. Above, an achingly blue sky peaked with mountainous clouds. No sign of man except for the fences squaring up property lines, the occasional milk carton of a farmhouse surrounded by a huddle of rotten outbuildings.
The train is called the Bullet. John isn’t sure how fast it’s going. Almost as fast as a plane, they say. Three hundred miles per hour, maybe more. In the distance, the world seems to scroll by easily, but his eyes can’t grab the bunch grass or scrub oak growing near the tracks; everything’s a green blur.
John is twenty-five years old with an arrowhead face and closely trimmed black hair. He’s muscular, but lean and ropy, so his uniform—first lieutenant, army—makes him look more broad-shouldered than he is. He’s not tall and not short, not the kind of person you would look at twice, especially since he’s so still. Barely moving. As if concentrating deeply on keeping himself contained. “The longer I look at you,” a girlfriend once said, “the better-looking you are.” His one striking feature is a port-wine stain that splashes down his forehead, over his eye, along his cheek. It’s shaped like a country that
hasn’t yet been discovered.
Over the past five years, since he left home, he has learned to carry himself in a way—looking everyone unwaveringly in the eye, speaking in a low, steady voice, constantly aware of himself—that demands respect. He has beaten himself, like a piece of forged metal, into someone new.
The viewing car is domed with glass. Here he sits. Every seat is taken and the aisle and the bar are crowded with bodies. Their conversation is the only sound other than a faint whispering as the Bullet glides forward. There is no engine noise and no wheel clatter, because there is no engine, no wheels. The monorail is powered by the very track it slides upon. A track made from the ninth metal. Omnimetal.
That’s the reason they’re all rushing to the Arrowhead, to northeastern Minnesota. The miners, the mechanics, the truckers, the construction workers, the real estate developers, the jewelers, the bartenders, the scientists and techies, the priests and pastors and prophets, the deliverymen, the retail clerks, the janitors, the prostitutes and drug dealers, the policemen and security guards. Metal.
He shares his booth with two men and a woman. They pass back and forth a pitcher of beer, drinking directly from it, while playing cards and talking about the best outfit to work for and how they’re going to make some cash money. In the booth beside theirs, four businessmen sip white wine, speaking in hurried whispers and making notes and pointing to graphs in a thick black binder. Standing in the aisle, two thick-armed, deeply tanned men in tank tops and cargo shorts down tequila shots and let out a whoop. Sitting at the bar, a woman with a butterfly neck tattoo and a leopard-print top and jean shorts chews gum and stares at her phone. White, black, Hispanic, Asian. Mostly men. Everyone from everywhere ready for anything.
All because of the ninth metal. John’s home, once the middle of nowhere, has become the center of everything.
He can’t see the track they glide on, but he knows it gives off a soft blue glow. Some people call it the greatest energy source in the world. Others call it a defiance of everything scientists have come to understand about physics and biochemistry. And a few call it God. There were eight noble metals before, called such for their rarity and their resistance to corrosion and their metallurgical and technological and ornamental uses. Now, because of the comet, because of the debris that showered the earth, there are nine. And omnimetal, as it has come to be known, is the very peak of the galvanic series.
In southwestern Minnesota, the prairie gives way to cornfields that reach off into the distance—thick green leaves and tall stalks tasseled out in the July heat. Trees appear only occasionally, a cluster of oaks and maples islanding a town, a windbreak of cottonwoods standing guard beside a farm.
And then, just like that, the cornfields vanish and the Bullet enters a thick, shadowy forest that John knows will continue more or less the rest of the way home. The ground swells into hills and the train flashes past lakes and rock ridges. Red and white pines cluster more thickly among the maples and ash the farther into the evergreen north they travel.
The train is so new it still smells of glue and paint. The booth’s table is a smart tablet, its screen presently green like a card table at a Vegas casino. The man seated opposite John swipes his finger across it, controlling the game of Texas hold’em. His hair is a wiry gray and his smile has holes in it from a few missing teeth. “Knew things were crazy up north,” he says, looking at John, “but didn’t think it was so bad they was sending the military.”
“I’m headed home for a wedding,” John says.
“You from Northfall, then?”
“I am.”
The woman—denim long-sleeved top, dirty-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail—taps the table to fold her hand of cards and says, “Hey, we hear housing’s a little iffy. Every motel full for a hundred miles. People sleeping in trucks. You recommend a place?”
“Afraid I can’t. Haven’t been home since the boom.”
That’s what they call it: the boom. For the explosion in money and population—and for the sound the meteors made when they struck the ground.
“Damn, son,” the man says and taps the table twice, snapping out a new card deal for everyone to riffle through. “You’re not going to recognize your own backyard.”
“So I hear.”
“A millionaire a day,” the man says. “That’s the slogan.”
The woman scores a full house and lets out a cackle. “That’s ’cause ‘a murder a day’ don’t sound as good to the tourism bureau.”
John looks to the flash, flash, flash of images streaming past the window. Already he can see the smoke dirtying the air, the red-lighted towers blinking in the distance, the sections of woods cut away and parked with heavy machinery. “I’ll hardly have time to notice. I don’t plan on staying long.”
* * *
The sign at the edge of town reads Northfall, Minnesota: Population 5,000. An X of spray paint covers the number and beside it someone has graffitied Who the hell knows.
The old town remains. The Farm and Fleet and the Shopko. The Pamida grocery. The lumber mill. The implement dealer. The tree farm and the Walleye Tavern and the Severson Supper Club. The gun stores. The bait shops. The canoe outfitters.
But all around this, another town is growing, the new layered over and sprawling out of the old. A half-finished housing development. A massive Walmart built beside a massive Home Depot, both their parking lots crammed with trucks. A liquor depot. An endless trailer park called Christmas Village. A new motel next to a new motel next to a new motel, all with signs that read No Vacancy. Car and RV and ATV dealerships glow with stadium lights.
The Bullet slides past all of this and into the newly built train station. The track gives off an eerie light and vibrates with energy. The doors breathe open and hundreds of passengers spill out, among them John. He carries a duffel bag that weighs him down on one side. He readjusts it, swinging it up so that it hangs from his shoulder like a pack.
Everyone tromps along the platform and funnels into the station, a high-ceilinged building with the look of a Northwoods lodge. It smells like wet varnish and cut lumber. Voices clamor and footsteps clop on the concrete floor. Vending machines glow. Lines stretch from the ticket counters. Handlers push luggage carts.
Up ahead, John spots a small crowd of people waiting with a homemade sign. The glittery letters read Welcome Home Soldier and We’re Proud of You Son. They smile and cheer and clap their hands.
John walks past them as a young Marine, still in his desert cammies, sprints forward and throws down his rucksack and opens up his arms for a hug. His family embraces him, laughing and weeping.
John watches them a moment before edging through the swarm of people and out the front entrance. The cool air of the station is replaced by a clinging humidity. Sunlight makes him squint. Sweat springs from his skin. He is assaulted by cigarette smoke and shouting.
There is the long-bearded man who stands atop a milk crate and preaches about greed and fornication and damnation, but his voice is drowned out by all of the recruiters. They guard tables full of swag and flyers, and they hold up signs for trucking, construction, and mining companies. John has heard the rumors—that you can step off the train in Northfall and land a job no matter your education, work, or criminal history—and by all appearances, this is true.
A man wearing a baseball cap that reads Black Dog Energy hands out bumper stickers with the same words. He pushes one toward John, who waves it away. “Military welcome!” the man says. “Military welcome!”
A woman approaches him with a lipsticked smile. Her T-shirt has Frontier Metals across the chest and she’s tied it up at the bottom to reveal her tanned belly. She holds a clipboard and says, “Hey, handsome. How’d you like a starting salary of seventy grand a year?”
“Thank you. I’m good.”
John continues to shoulder his way forward, unable to go more than a few paces without getting stalled. “Excuse me,” he says. “Excuse me.”
Finally he is moving tow
ard the parking lot. Cars honk. A hotel shuttle unloads its passengers. Two rust-bottomed taxis idle. The four businessmen from the train approach a limo service and shake the driver’s hand before he takes their luggage.
John looks for his father and checks his phone for messages. Nothing, but he does spot a familiar man moving stiffly toward him. His spine warps him into a left-leaning stance and he has a hitch with every step. He’s dressed in his standard outfit, a corduroy jacket, check-patterned collared shirt, khakis ironed to a stiff crease. This is Sam Yesno. He has a small chin, and his black hair recedes from a long forehead. He’s six inches shorter and fifteen years older than John. These days, he works as the Frontiers’ legal counsel, but the two of them grew up together. Not brothers—not even cousins—but family. Yesno is Ojibwa and his grandmother served as a housekeeper to the Frontiers. Sam’s parents were in and out of jail, and when his grandmother passed, John’s father took the boy in and raised him as his own.
“It’s good to see you, Johnny,” Sam says, his voice lilting and gentle, almost British in its intonation. People used to tease him for it, but as he’s aged, his speech has grown to match his appearance. “You look formidable in that uniform.”
John runs a hand along the brass buttons. “Don’t let it trick you into treating me with any respect.”
“Oh, I’d never make that mistake.”
John looks around without really expecting to see anyone. “No Pops, huh?”
“Busy.”
“As always.”
“Business, of course. But the wedding, too —”
John holds up a hand. “It’s okay. You don’t need to make any excuses for my father.”
Yesno smiles apologetically—his teeth uneven from the bridge he wears—and John surprises them both by pulling him into a brief hug. Yesno has never liked being touched. And he goes rigid now, as if in pain, until John releases him.
The Ninth Metal Page 2