Dust (9 page)

"One year I was too slow," his uncle said, hooking the latch on the coop door, "didn't get them all, and the brainless birds couldn't find cover. They were flattened dead as doornails by hail. Every bone in their bodies broken. Couldn't even make soup out of them. So I rolled them up and sold them as doormats." He paused. "Ha! Just kidding you, Robert."

Robert laughed out loud. He bent over, held his breath, and nearly broke into a fit of giggles. It had been a long time since he'd laughed like that.

Next Robert and Uncle Alden walked out to the pasture. His uncle's herd was small: ten cows, four calves, three steers, and one old Hereford bull named Mino. "I'll head the rotters this way and you steer 'em to the gate." His uncle clapped his hands together. "Steer 'em! Get that? It's a pun. Those are steers and you're going to ..."

Robert gave him a blank look.

"Oh, never mind," his uncle huffed. He jogged to the far end of the pasture, his cowboy boots barely touching the ground. Robert grinned at the sight of his uncle's gawky running. Careful, he wanted to yell, your legs might come flying off. Just like a grasshopper's.

Steer the steers ... "Wait," he said, "I get it." But Uncle Alden was out of earshot.

He examined the hills above him. His uncle had said the ice age formed those hills; there were indented rings where the ice had retreated, season by season. He imagined ice grinding everything flat across the land, pushing people ahead of it, south to America.

The world was like a big clock, every day a second of time, every year a minute. His life was a blink in the passing of all that time. Perhaps one day the ice would return. He pictured it. Nothing but ice. Horshoe covered in ice. The roads, the fields all ice, packing everything flat. Like a huge, cold hand pressing down on the earth.

"Hey, Don Quixote," Uncle Alden yelled, "it would be helpful if you got behind the cows instead of standing around in the middle of the pasture."

Robert shook his head, mumbled, "Sorry," then circled into position. Why was his uncle calling him
Don Coyote?

The pasture narrowed into an alleyway that led to the barn, a long, rectangular building with an aging roof. He wondered if the hail would strafe it like the bullets of a war plane.

When they guided the animals into the barn, the old bull was at the end of the line. He shook his shoulders and belly as though he were trying to drive off an army of flies. He slammed his horns against the gate and attempted to turn around but the alley wasn't wide enough. Uncle Alden grabbed the bull's tail and twisted. "Hyaa!" The bull then smacked the fence with his massive shoulder and two posts broke, giving him room to turn. He faced them, snorting.

He'd always been a friendly bull, shuffling around the pasture. Robert had even petted him before. But now the bull's eyes were wild, as though the Devil were riding him. The bull dug in his feet, bawled once, and charged ahead, knocking Uncle Alden to the ground.

He lay still. Robert ran to his side, worried that he'd been badly hurt.

His uncle smiled. "Please excuse me whilst I swear," he said. "Damn. Damn! Damn bull!" he ranted as he struggled to his feet, wiping off his shirt. "Close the barn door and let him stay out. He can shelter by the tree, if he thinks of it. His head is thick enough he should be safe, in any case. Speaking of shelter, we'd better get home."

They jogged out of the barnyard. Wind hissed between the shingles, making boards rattle, saying
Hello, I'm here, guess what's following me.
Behind them the clouds had switched direction and were coming straight for the farm, curling in on themselves. Robert found it odd how black they were. He ducked into the house behind his uncle, who forced the door closed. He was relieved to be inside Uncle Alden's home.

They sat at the table. Books lined the shelves by the windowsill; were piled next to the large mahogany radio. Others were stacked on the floor. Magazines had been scattered in a corner near Uncle Alden's easy chair, with names like
Weird Tales
and
Suspense Detective.
Robert knew Uncle Alden had even written stories for a few of the magazines.

His uncle clicked on the mahogany RCA Victor radio and spun the dial. All he got was grumbling and roaring, as though the box were broadcasting the voice of the storm, getting closer and louder.

"Well, wouldn't that frost your petunias," he said, switching it off. "We're missing The Shadow."

It had been a long time since Robert had sat near his uncle's radio, eyes closed, turning the words to pictures in his mind. His mother didn't let him listen at home. Their radio, like everything else on the farm, had to have a "good" purpose: to hear the weather, the price of beef, or announcements from the government.

"Well, I feel sorry for that ol' reverend," Uncle Alden said, "a bad ticker
and
epilepsy. He was a stodgy sky pilot but not too overbearing, though most of what he said sounded like barking. Hard time they'll have getting some other sucker with a collar out here. Who'd leave the east for all this dust?"

Robert wasn't sure how to respond. This was adult talk, but then his uncle had never differentiated between Robert and older people. He decided to shrug, the way his dad often did when neighbors chatted about the weather.

"You finish the John Carter book?" his uncle asked.

"I read it three times."

"Jeez, kid, you must be a whiz. I'll smuggle you a few more. Maybe Jules Verne. There's one where these guys get captured by a submarine captain and taken on a ocean journey:
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.
Right up your alley."

The thought of a new book made Robert vibrate with excitement. "Submarines? Are there whales?"

"Whales? Of course, and giant squid with tentacles a hundred feet long. One grabs onto the submarine and tries to drag it to the ocean floor, so Captain Nemo gets a ..." He stopped. Winked. "I better not give anything else away. I can see you'd like to read that one."

Robert frowned but understood; it wasn't good to know the ending. It stole some of the magic.

"Did I tell you about the book I'm reading now?" Uncle Alden asked. "About Thermopylae?"

Robert shook his head.

"You'd love it. It's a history of battles. Thermopylae was this mountain pass in Greece. In 500 b.c., Xerxes, the Persian king, invaded with two hundred thousand fighters, including the Immortals, his crack troops. Three hundred Spartan hoplites and their king, Leonidas, held them off at Thermopylae—they must have been tough. They battled for three days, long enough to allow the rest of the Greek army to escape. Then the Persians crept down a secret path and surrounded the Spartans. They fought to the last man."

Thermopylae. Robert ran the name through his head. It made him feel as though he were traveling back in time. He heard the clash of spears. Saw the hoplites raise their shields. Then he thought of the trenches in the Great War.

"Was Thermopylae like the battle for Vimy Ridge?" he asked.

Uncle Alden nodded. "Yeah, I guess. I never thought of it that way. Except we won, well, took the ridge from the Huns that is. No one else had been able to, not the French or the British. Only the Canadians did it. We became a country then—I don't care what the history books say, that's when we proved our mettle to the world. We paid a heavy price."

Sadness made Uncle Alden look about ten years older. Robert knew he was thinking about his brother Edmund. Robert wanted to ask more questions about Edmund, but decided not to interrupt his uncle's thoughts.

A blast of wind hit the side of the house, so Uncle Alden went to the window. "It's almost here! It's a bruiser, too, like the hand of the Devil. Maybe there
is
an Armageddon."

Robert had read about that in the Bible. That was when everyone started fighting and the Devil was unchained and let loose upon the world and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse went out chopping off heads and releasing diseases. He knew it was a bad, bad time that was coming in the future. He had read about it several times because it was exciting—a great ending to all the stuff that happened in the Good Book.

He stared out the window. Armageddon clouds, with lightning horsemen galloping along their underbelly.

"I saw clouds like that at the theatre," his uncle said. Robert held really still, not wanting to miss a word. "In that mirror. First flowers and rain, all this beautiful malarkey, then I saw those clouds. Black as molasses."

Robert felt feverish. The air was too hot and close, as though the storm was pushing it through the cracks in the walls.

"What ... what did you see?" Robert asked.

"Clouds. Thunder. And guns and ...it looked like Vimy ridgeÉ for a moment I heard my brother yelling a warning. Even thought I saw him. Quite the magic trick."

Robert whispered, "But I saw him too."

Uncle Alden went pale. "You what?"

"I saw Uncle Edmund. In his uniform. He was at the war. The great one. And he was yelling,
'Evil.'"

"You didn't even know Uncle Edmund."

"I look at his picture every day," Robert said. "I've even had dreams about him."

"What kind of dreams?"

Robert looked down at the table. "Just dreams about the war, about being a hero. Then I saw him in the mirror. What do you think he was warning me—us—about?"

Uncle Alden tapped his fingers on the table. He cleared his throat. "I saw Edmund's body. He was dead. And dead people don't come back. That's one lesson I learned in the war. You've been staring at Edmund's picture too much, that's all. You've got an imagination the size of Texas. It wasn't magic." Uncle Alden wagged his finger at Robert, as though he were chastising him. "Abram's a trickster; he'd sell you the steam from your own pee. I know he suckered people into signing up for his work teams."

"Dad signed up," Robert offered.

Uncle Alden shook his head sadly. "I ... well, I don't know what to think of that. There was some kind of mesmer stuff going on with that mirror. It was all back lighting and swirling colors so different people saw different things, depending on where you were sitting." He paused. "But I saw the clouds. Others saw flowers and green crops. I saw clouds." He faltered. "It was a trick, Robert, don't worry your head." Uncle Alden put a comforting hand on Robert's shoulder. "A parlor trick," he said, with finality.

Something cracked into the roof, startling Robert, and a moment later came a
thunk thunk thunk
that grew into a constant, heavy drumming.

"Hail." Uncle Alden laughed breathlessly. "Just what I need."

The bull's ears were bleeding, and so was its nose. Its eyes were glassy, cold marbles. It had fallen on its side. The light inside that kept it moving, snorting, and rummaging for food had been hammered out. A few melting hailstones, about half the size of Robert's fist, decorated the bull's body. The ground was moist.

"Mino," Uncle Alden said quietly. "He's gone. I should have chased him in. I've never heard of a hailstorm killing a bull. They've got such thick skulls." Mino had been smart enough to stand by the tree, but had found little protection.

"He's very dead," Robert said. The bull's hide was wet, and drops of blood had formed here and there, like red tears. His ribs showed, as though the hail had pounded away his flesh.

"I'll pull him to the dump yard with the tractor," Uncle Alden said. "He was a good bull. A good guy. I shoulda chased him in." He sighed loudly. "We better see if there's anything left of the wheat."

He tramped across the pasture toward his crop. Robert tried to keep up with the long-legged, desperate stride of his uncle. They stopped at the fence line.

One word entered Robert's head: devastation. The crop had been flattened, as if a giant had crushed it underfoot. Every stalk of wheat lay against the ground, broken to pieces. He knew this was a bad, bad thing to have happen.

Uncle Alden squeezed his hands into fists. "I'll be damned," he said, softly, so it didn't even sound like swearing. "I'll be good and damned."

Harvest was in full gear.

Robert was helping his father, piling the sheaves into stooks, while the threshing machine growled fifty yards away, a big metal monster that devoured wheat. It hissed and banged and breathed steam and spat the kernels into a pile.

This was harvest, and that was a word that needed a capital H—it had meaning and weight. The start of school, meals, even sleep—nothing was as important as Harvest. This was the first time he had stayed home from class. His parents had always said he was too small, but his body was now growing into a man's, and they wanted him there.

Which was nice.

Robert was sad about missing the first two weeks of school, because sometimes they studied other countries and history—and even Mrs. Juskin couldn't make that stuff boring. He was happy not to see her, though. She was a plump spider, sitting at her desk, waiting to sting any student who didn't pay attention.

For Harvest he had to get up early and work hard and long, until it felt as though his body would fall apart, that everything inside had been sweated out and he was nothing but a shell. Then the sun would go down and they would go home to a deep sleep. Harvest was a demigod with special commands to be obeyed.

Maybe building the pyramids had been just like Harvest—work that
had
to be done. He pictured row after row of slaves, their brown backs sweating as they hauled giant blocks of stone up half-built pyramids. The sphinxes sitting like lions waiting for the end of the world. Pharaoh Ramses would watch from his chariot or litter, the Egyptian sun as hot as a forge, reflecting off the Nile.

"It's not the worst crop I've ever seen," Robert's dad said, clapping a hand on his son's shoulder. Robert had to run the words through his head a few times before he understood them. His dad watched Uncle Alden and the three hired men work away at the fallen wheat. They were threshers. Threshers. Robert liked the word. It sounded old, as though it came from the Bible. Let us be threshers of men. Or was that fishers?