Dust (14 page)

Robert's dad shrugged. "Mother Nature can be funny sometimes. Rewards those who work hard. Who believe. You still think it's a snake-oil trick?"

"Doesn't seem to matter what I believe," he replied softly. "I'll be broke if I don't get a crop. Samuelson ain't exactly in the charity business."

"Then maybe you should sign up for a work detail. Couldn't hurt your chances, could it?"

No, Robert thought. Don't.

"I might have to," Uncle Alden said, his voice bleak. He shuffled over to the bar and returned with a bottle of beer. It wasn't long before he was up to get another.

The dance became more raucous, the music louder. Men and women twirled together wildly, sometimes hitting tables or walls. No one got hurt.

Robert noticed a square-jawed man sitting near the wall, not smiling. He looked familiar. Then Robert recognized Sergeant Ramsden in civilian clothing.

He's undercover, Robert thought. He kept waiting for the Mountie to get up, nab Abram, and drag him away, but the sergeant didn't move. Occasionally he'd talk to whomever was near him.

Abram left before midnight, his truck rumbling like thunder. The dance ended shortly afterwards and everyone went home happy.

The sun came out Sunday, then disappeared behind the clouds Monday. Sun. Rain. Sun. Rain. The grass grew green, even in the Steelgate farmyard where it hadn't been green in Robert's lifetime.

A shipment of umbrellas arrived by train and sold out within an hour. A second shipment was ordered.

Sun. Rain. Sun. Rain.

That became the pattern of everyone's life.

On a Saturday in late May, Robert came down the stairs dressed in his work clothes. His mother was in the kitchen, the scent of baking bread loaves filled the house, made him salivate. It would be so good to sit at the table and cut a slice from that steaming, hot bread just out of the oven. He would spread butter and honey across it, then slowly chew on it savoring every taste. Maybe there were buns, too.

He almost went into the kitchen, but stopped in the living room, gathering his will. He didn't need the bread. He'd had breakfast already. The bread was a distraction and he refused to be distracted today. He had a task.

He stared at the picture of Uncle Edmund on the mantle, hoping that his uncle would wink or move or wave. I'm ready, Robert thought. Send me a signal. A sign.

He waited. Nothing happened. It was only a photograph. Robert touched the frame, found it warm. That's odd, he thought, then he realized the sun had been shining through the piano window, heating the metal. He tapped the picture once for luck then wandered outside.

It was sunny, so he rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. His mother thought he was on his way to do chores, but he walked past the barn and along the fence line. The grass was green and slippery. The dull grumbling of a tractor reverberated through the air—somewhere over a low hill, his father was seeding.

It was a special day. Robert had circled it on the calendar in his room because he had promised himself he would go for a long walk on this date.

Matthew's birthday.

Neither parent had spoken of Matthew that morning. They hadn't mentioned him since autumn. It was as if Matthew existed only in Robert's head. He's real, Robert told himself. He used to walk here. Before the rain and the grass.

Robert cut across a field planted with wheat. His father had used the tractor to drag the seeder through the soil. Last year he'd talked about going back to hiring Clydesdale horses for the work, but this year, with the loan payments deferred, he'd not once complained about the price of gas. A few green stalks had already popped through the soil. There were no weeds.

He was far enough from the house that his mother wouldn't see him, so he turned toward the grid road and crawled over a barbed wire fence plugged with green Russian thistles. They had lost their hardness and wormed tentative roots into the ground.

Tumbleweeds that didn't tumble. Robert thought about that. It was unnatural.

He crossed a ditch choked with grass and headed onto the gravel road. The scent of wolf willow followed him; the shrub had sprung up along the fence line, its ghostly silver leaves glistening with dew, while bright yellow flowers caught the sun.

His skin was soft. He didn't think he'd ever get used to that feeling. His skin had always itched or peeled in the hot sun; now it was soft and brand new. Everything felt brand new. All about him the world was green and colorful. Purple crocuses were clumped together in an unseeded corner of the field. Dandelions glowed yellow on the edge of the road. The Cypress Hills were emerald green in the distance, a haze of fog slipping around their haunches.

He had decided to trace Matthew's last walk into town. Robert was forgetting bits and pieces of his brother. The more it rained, the more time passed, the older he got. Soon memories of Matthew would be gone, and there would be no marker to say he'd ever been there. Not even a gravestone.

Grasshoppers slowly crawled across the road, trying to dry their wings. They looked smaller than last year, as though the rain had shrunk them.

The distant buzz of a motor made Robert turn. A vehicle was coming down the road, with not even the slightest trace of dust behind it. The sunlight glinted off its windshield. He thought briefly about stepping into the ditch, but instead he moved to the side and kept walking. He stared ahead as the sound of the motor grew closer. The car stopped right beside him and he saw the Royal Canadian Mounted Police crest on the passenger door.

Sergeant Ramsden got out and strode over to Robert. Over the winter a gray patch had appeared in his short hair. "You need a ride?" he asked.

Robert wondered what the right answer was. Did he? Or was it better to walk?

The sergeant smiled. "Cat got your tongue?"

"Sure. Sure I need a ride," Robert said.

The sergeant opened the passenger door and Robert climbed in. The interior smelled of oil and smoke, as though a gun had gone off. Sergeant Ramsden slammed the door, but it refused to stay closed, so he pushed it into place until the bolt clicked. Then got in on his side and started down the road.

"You out walking for any special reason?" he asked.

"Just wanted to."

"Do your parents know you're here?"

Robert briefly considered telling a lie. All he had to do was say,
Yes, they do.
But today he was looking for the truth.

"No," he said. "I wanted to be alone."

Ramsden was silent for a few seconds. "Do they ever talk about your brother?"

"No." Again the truth. "They ... they've forgotten him, I think."

Ramsden let out his breath. "There's something awfully weird about this town. No one can recall much of anything. Do you remember your classmates who disappeared?"

"Yes." Robert paused. "Mike Tuppence and Susan Vaganski," he said. It had been very hard to find those names in his head.

"No one else does. Even their parents pretend they were never here. Some other kids are gone, too. One in Montana. Another in Alberta. Makes me wonder what this world is coming to." He shook his head. "And the land around here is all weird. Go six miles east or west and the grass stops growing and the fields are all sand, but here it's spring. Like it was when I was a kid. It's not natural." The sergeant's big hands were tight on the wheel. "That Abram guy ever come back to your school?"

"No."

"Your parents friends with him?"

"Dad worked on the rainmill."

Ramsden nodded. "Most everyone has." He didn't say anything for a time, driving down the road, scanning the green fields. Horshoe's elevators loomed in the sky. "Where do you want to go?" he asked.

"The store."

He turned down Main Street and stopped the car in front of the grocer's. Robert shouldered the door. It squeaked as it opened. Once out, he looked up at the sergeant.

"You stay away from that Abram, you hear?" Ramsden warned. "He's ... he's not who he says he is. He told me he's from the States, but he's not. I found that out."

"I will."

Robert pushed the door closed. Sergeant Ramsden set the car in motion and continued down the street.

Once the police car was gone, Horshoe remained silent. No one else was on the sidewalk, though a car and a truck were parked in front of the hotel. Not a soul could be heard or seen anywhere.

Robert walked past the laundry. The door was closed, no sign of the Chinese. He peered through the window of Lee Yuen's restaurant, where he and Matthew had often sipped vanilla milkwhips. I'd love a milkwhip now, Robert thought. With chocolate shavings floating in the creamy foam. He licked his lips.

No one was at the tables or behind the counter. He kept walking, furtively glancing at the Royal Theatre. The stone lion glowered at him. The eerie sound of a piano slipped out from under the door. Robert quickened his pace. He didn't want to know what talkie was playing—Abram had set it up whatever it was. It would be a trick. He'd open the door and be gone forever.

He ambled up to the school, then over to the church. It had been months since he'd been inside God's house; it already looked unkempt. A new reverend had never arrived and no one seemed to have noticed.

Robert continued walking, veering away from the tiny brick powerhouse, afraid of the electricity that gathered there and sparked out across the town on spiderweb lines, lighting Main Street and all the houses.

On his second time through downtown he passed by the hotel. Someone was sleeping on one of the benches, clothes dirty and ragged. Robert circled away, figuring it was old man Spooky, who tended to babble in his drunken stupor and was likely to reach out and grab you, calling his dead wife's name.

Spooky had grown up here, Robert remembered, had made money on the stock market, built the theatre, lost everything in the crash. Then his wife had died, and now his only friend was the bottle. It was very sad. But it was also a good story. Like out of a book.

"Robert," Spooky whispered.

Robert started. The old man lifted his arm, raised his head. Robert stopped, swallowed.

It was Uncle Alden.

He looked feverish, his face marked by stubble, his eyes unfocused. His boots were caked with dried mud.

"Is that you, Robert?" he asked again, voice cracking.

"Yes." He walked over to the bench as his uncle slowly sat up. He ran a hand through his hair, and pieces of dirt fell out of it. He rubbed at his eyes with the back of his wrist. "I've been rained on," he said. "Man, I've been rained on hard." He gestured for Robert to sit.

Robert did so, first knocking some of the mud off the bench. "Are you sick? Do you want me to get the doctor?"

Uncle Alden grinned crazily. Even his teeth were dirty. The smile frightened Robert; it was as though his uncle had been trying to eat dirt. Even kids know not to do that, he thought.

"Sick?" His uncle echoed. "Yeah, in my head. Been walking into town every day for the last week. Coming to sign the volunteer sheet. It's worn me out."

"Did you sign?" Robert asked quietly.

Uncle Alden rubbed his nose. "Every morning I'd have this dream with butterflies, very odd and beautiful. Then I'd start tramping to town, not even stopping to eat, thinking I really should sign up. I'd get to the bank, see the list on the wall, grab the pen, and set it to the paper. Then one thought would pop into my head: What in Sam Hades am I doing here? I'd drop the pen and walk all the way back to the farm. Do the same thing the next day. And the next. I was going to sign today. I felt it in my heart. I just couldn't fight anymore. But when I got to the bank, I caught my reflection in the window." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "But it wasn't me. It was Edmund looking back through the window. He shook his head at me like he was ashamed. It was a dream. An apparition."

"It was real," Robert said. "You know it was."

Uncle Alden stared at Robert. "MaybeÉ Maybe."

"Why didn't you go home?"

"I was exhausted. I lay down here like a dog and slept, just for a few hours." He squinted around. "Or was that yesterday? What day is it?"

"It's Matthew's birthday," Robert said.

His uncle nodded. "It felt like one of those kind of days. No one's playing pool, you know. I went into the hall. Parson was asleep at the till. All the players were snoring on the floor." He rubbed his eyes again. Robert wanted to tell him to wash his hands before doing that. "I wish I could be a kid again, Robert. Everything was so much easier then. And better. As you get older, things get harder."

Harder? But things seemed hard now, Robert thought.

The mournful whistle of a train echoed through the town. It spoke of other lands, where lotus flowers unfurled the scent of sleep. Where the sun was warm and gentle and time moved slow as sap.

His uncle's eyelids had drooped. "So tired. I'll give you a ride home." He paused, wiped spittle from his lips. "Oh, right, I don't have my truck. Don't have any gas. I walked. Just gonna close my eyes. Don't go away, Robert. You have to tell me about
20,000 Leagues Under ..."
Then he was asleep.

The train whistled again, the dreamy bass undertone rippling through the air. Robert forced his eyes to stay open. From the bench he had a clear view of the train station.

The engine was a dusky monster coming in from the east, the cowcatcher a metal smile. The train slowed to a stop, hissing steam, wheels sliding against the steel tracks. There were only three cars. No engineer. No one waited for the train's arrival.

Steam rolled out in vast clouds; the hissing grew quiet. Then there was a new hum that grew louder. Abram's truck rattled down the approach to the railway station and backed onto the loading platform.

Robert nudged his uncle and was rewarded with a soft snore. He elbowed him again, and his head slipped heavily to the side. His Uncle had stood for what was right. It had taken all his energy, but he hadn't signed his name.

Abram strode up to the engine, and three swarthy men lumbered out. They slid aside a door on the middle car and began loading Abram's truck. Robert couldn't see exactly what they were moving; it looked like metal wheels or gears. They seemed to be incredibly heavy.