Dust (2 page)

Then towering grain elevators appeared on the horizon. The rail yard and a collection of houses became visible as the truck cleared an incline.

"What is this town called?" the man asked. Time snapped back to normal speed.

"Horshoe," Matthew answered, scratching at his arm. The man nodded.

They drove past the access road and the stranger studied the town as they went by. Matthew stared too, his heart speeding up. He peeked through the back window as the elevators were eclipsed by a hill.

"Why don't we stop?" Matthew asked.

The man smiled. "Because you're a child. And you know what it's like to be young." He paused. "I was never young. I was never, ever young."

He was supposed to read the Bible. The Good Book. The only one allowed in their household, except for a hymnal from the Anglican Church and his father's copy of
The Farmer's Almanac.
The Bible was what his mom said he should read.

Instead, Robert was away on Barsoom—not here, in the brown dust of Saskatchewan, but there, in the red dust of the fourth planet from the sun, battling green, man-like, four-armed Tharks. Leading armies into vast citadels with walls of thick purple stone. Fighting with valor, ferocity, and prowess.

I am John Carter, Robert thought. I am the warlord.

The book was
The Warlord of Mars
. He liked it more than
Tarzan of the Apes
or
Treasure Island.
His Uncle Alden had slipped it to him on the sly on the last day of school, and Robert had read it several times since then. His uncle had hundred of books, each one with a magical world inside it.

"Your brother's going to walk to town," his mom yelled up the stairwell.

He snapped the book closed and jammed it beneath the pillow, then he opened the Bible and listened for creaking on the steps. "Did you hear me? Your brother's walking to town. By himself."

Robert thought for a second. She wanted him to go with Matthew, but she wasn't insisting. It wasn't a job, like separating the cream. He had a choice.

He always had to spend time with Matthew. They shared a room, the same toys, even some of the same clothes.

I'm not moving, Robert decided, I want to be alone. He had come up to this hot, stuffy room to get away from them all. To travel to another world. He wished he could be John Carter, who had, with his feet on an Arizona mountainside, fixed the planet Mars in his gaze, closed his eyes, reached out his hand, and was there. Just like that.

"Well?" His mother sounded impatient. Soon she would tell him to go. But Matthew was seven. When I was seven, Robert thought, I walked to town on my own.

"I'm gonna stay here," he announced.

There was a loud, dramatic sigh. Exasperated, that was the word he would use to describe that sound. Exasperated. He enjoyed all five syllables. Mom was exasperated.

He heard her walk back to the kitchen. Her footsteps didn't clump the way they did when she was mad. At those times her weight seemed to double. Or did her feet turn into big stones?

He read the opening page of the Holy Bible: ". . . Translated out of the original tongues: and with the former translations diligently compared and revised, by his majesty's special command."

He liked the sound of that. It meant the king of Great Britain had ordered his smartest scholars to diligently translate this Bible. He had issued a
special
command. Had maybe even touched this very book with a royal scepter.

It was too soon after hearing his mother's voice to return to
The Warlord of Mars,
so he flipped ahead in the Old Testament. It listed tribes of the desert with long, strange names. They were always adding and subtracting in the Bible: measuring to build the ark, tallying the names of the wicked people. It was like the math he studied in school. God must enjoy counting, he decided.

The numbers reminded Robert of his brother. He
was
seven, wasn't he? Seven was old enough to do things on your own. Being eleven, Robert had more responsibilities: more chores, more weeding, more pails of water to be lugged to the barn. And when he was seven, he had walked to town alone.

Or had he been eight?

It didn't matter. He needed to read. He retrieved the book from under his pillow. It was a good story, so full of action. It was Barsoom-hot in his room, and he felt the way the warlord in the Martian desert must have, hot with battle lust, sword burning for blood. He read for a long while, on this other world, this place called Barsoom, far, far away in space and time.

After a while, Robert heard a low drone out on the road. He briefly considered checking which neighbor was going to Horshoe, but he decided to keep reading. Nevertheless, part of his mind was drawn by the sound. He pictured a truck; he didn't know why. The noise faded. He read until his mother's voice ascended the stairwell.

"Your father and I are going to town now," she said. He stuffed the book under his pillow. "Don't forget to feed the chickens."

"I won't," he answered. His words sounded hollow, echoing in his room. The house already seemed empty. He strained to catch the opening and closing squeak of the front door. Nothing.

Curious, he got off the bed and looked out the window into the front yard. The wagon was at the end of the entranceway, led by Smokie and Apache, their horses. His parents sat like statues, his dad holding the reins. The wagon disappeared down the road, a small cloud of dust behind it. But Robert couldn't hear them; it was like watching a silent movie. He was alone.

He had waited for this all afternoon. So why did he feel so ... so ill at ease? So anxious? Apprehensive. He looked at the distant, rolling lines of the Cypress Hills. He wished he could see toward Horshoe.

Maybe he'd feel better if he went outside. Sometimes being in the open helped shift his mind into that special dreaming place. He would imagine the people who had walked this land many years ago, the Indians and the explorers and the North West Mounted Police in their crimson uniforms, gun barrels glinting, all in a line on their steeds, hooves leaving deep impressions as they galloped across the hills.

He stashed
The Warlord of Mars
under his bed and set the Bible on the desk. Then he crept down the stairs, holding the banister. Each step creaked and cracked.

Everyone was gone, but Robert sensed a presence. At the landing he peered around the corner, saw nothing but the kitchen table, the tall, red vase by the window, and a cloth flour bag on the counter. The De Laval cream separator, with all its bowls and pipes, loomed on the cupboard like a Martian instrument of torture.

He walked toward the front door. Why did he still feel apprehensive? This was his free time. No parents. No Matthew. Just worlds magically unfolding out of his imagination.

He stopped to look at the oval, framed photograph on the mantle of his Uncle Edmund in uniform. Uncle Edmund looked like Robert's mother, his face thin, eyes sunken. Robert had never met him, but he knew his uncle had been very brave. In 1914 a duke had been killed and the British had declared war on the Germans. And England was like Canada's big brother, so Edmund and thousands of Canadian soldiers signed up to fight the Great War in Europe, a war so big it had ended them all. Robert could picture them lining up across the whole country, getting on trains, climbing into ships and landing in France. Edmund had been shot during a charge over the trenches in the battle for Vimy Ridge. The bullet struck him right in the heart. He had given his life for a cause, died a hero. Robert often concocted stories about his uncle taking out machine gun nests, or going over the trench to rescue a wounded comrade. Robert had even dreamed about him several times.

Long ago, in one of his games, Robert had decided that it was good luck to touch the photograph. Rarely did he pass it without pressing his fingers to the glass. I'll feel better if I touch it, he told himself. He reached out his hand, fingers spread, and tapped his uncle's shoulder.

Uncle Edmund blinked.

Robert jerked his hand away, eyes wide with shock. His uncle stared back, then, with calm, unblinking eyes. Robert was seeing things. That was it. It was the same old picture.

He went outside. Heat thickened the air. The slender hairs on his neck slowly stood on end. It was that familiar electrical current that preceded a storm, but there were no signs in the sky. Just a vacant, bleached blue color. And yet the feeling was there. That "something is going to happen" feeling. Soon.

Robert walked toward the barn that his father had built in a time when he'd talked about wheat as tall as sunflowers and cattle as heavy as hippopotamuses. In the last five years the wind driven dust had peeled the paint and aged the building. It tilted west.

It was still a sturdy home for Cerberus. When they'd bought the milk cow, his father had let Robert name her. But when his mother had asked who Cerberus was, and Robert had explained that this was the name of the dog who guarded Hell's gate, she'd become furious and insisted they change the cow's name to Dot.

Robert still called her Cerberus, and she answered to it anyway.

Inside the barn the familiar smell of dried manure and old straw filled his nostrils. Robert believed there was magic here because this was where the calves were pushed out of their mothers, heads or tails first, bodies wrapped in a gooey sac. The calves' first bawling cries had consecrated this place (there was another word he liked), had made it so the wind never worked its way inside.

Three kittens—one gray, one black, and one calico—padded out to greet him. He patted each in turn, then walked to the feed room. He lifted the latch and opened the door, the light widening across the pile of oats. A soft scurrying followed. The kittens darted in and hunted around, but failed to catch any of the mice who'd been cavorting in the grain.

He scooped half a pail of chicken feed out of a sack in the corner, then headed to the coop, a small, red structure that looked like a sawed off outhouse.

None of the chickens was outside. They usually spent their time pecking at the ground, gobbling up anything that would fit in their beaks, which would eventually come out their other ends in white and gray piles that they'd leave around the yard like splashes of paint. Today they were hiding.

Robert poured the chicken feed in the small wooden trough, not worrying about spilling it since the birds didn't care whether they ate off the ground. If he were here, his father would have given him a talking to for that. "Keep your mind on your job," his dad always grumbled. His dad and Matthew were good at carrying pails. It was hard, Robert thought, to concentrate on something so simple. So ... mundane? Was that the right word?

Robert spilled a little more, causing a tiny chicken feed avalanche. Then he walked to the door of the coop. The slim twine that usually held the door shut was broken. He peered inside at the beds of straw. No chickens. He tied the door open using the remainder of the twine. His head brushed the top of the door frame.

"Here chicky-chick-chicks," he said, taking a few steps. The chickens were huddled in a corner, backs against the farthest wall, looking like a dirty snowbank partly buried in the straw. They shook.

He picked up the nearest hen. She cowered but didn't struggle. She seemed petrified.

"Your food is outside." He set the chicken down. "It's in the trough."

His voice echoed, as if in a cave. The chickens didn't move. Robert searched around their roosts for eggs but couldn't find any.

He finally lifted the hens one by one and discovered three eggs. They were an odd, gray color, and heavy. He placed them gently into the pail. Nothing felt right about this day any more.

He put the pail back in the feed room, then, holding the eggs against his chest with his left hand, he used his right to lock the door. He had to give a good push, and one of the eggs slipped from his grip.

It dropped slowly through the air, spinning like a planet in space. It smashed against the hard dirt, spreading a red guck across the ground.

Blood eggs. Robert had seen one a few years ago. They were eggs that had somehow gone bad, his dad had explained, and instead of yolk and the white stuff, everything inside was a red sticky gunk.

The cats wouldn't go near it.

He felt the odd weight of the other two eggs. He didn't like the look of them. They were probably the same. You couldn't cook them, and if he took them back home and his mom broke them, she might think the Devil had wormed his way into the house. Robert hid them beneath a pile of old straw.

As he stood up he heard a motor rev outside. Two doors slammed shut.

A man yelled, "Hello, anyone home?"

Robert peered into the farmyard. Two men were at the front door of his house, the bigger one banging away with a ham-sized fist. They were dressed in dark blue uniforms and wore Stetsons. A Royal Canadian Mounted Police car sat behind them.

They were majestic in their movements, like knights trying to enter a castle. Many years ago, men like these two had built Fort Walsh in the hills, after all those Indians had been massacred by wolfers.

Mounties. Standing right here. He bet they were from the detachment in Gull Lake.

One man opened the door. He took half a step inside, then paused, as though he'd heard a noise.

He knows I'm watching, Robert thought. He ducked back in the barn and sat silent for a few moments. His heartbeat quickened. He took a breath, then slowly peeked around the corner.

The Mountie was staring straight at him.

"Hello!" the man yelled. He closed the door and strode toward the barn, his long legs covering yards of ground. The other officer followed, glancing around as if expecting trouble. "Are you Robert Steelgate?"

Robert's lips were frozen. All he had to do was spit out a
yes,
but shyness had formed a stone on his tongue.

"Is that your name, son?" The Mountie was only a few feet away. His footsteps seemed to shake the earth. "Is that you?"

"Yes," Robert mumbled. "Yes, that's me. I'm Robert Steelgate."