Under the Empyrean Sky (10 page)

“The Lottery is being postponed,” the mayor says. A chorus of boos and hisses rises up to meet him, and he has to raise his voice so he can be heard. “The piss-blizz—ah, the pollen drift is too bad, and it’s not just here; it’s across half the damn Heartland! The proctors have to—”

More boos. And hisses. And stomping of feet.

“I
said
, the proctors have to head back to the flotillas before they get grounded here for a couple days—” Clearly the proctors wouldn’t get caught dead tooling around the Heartland for longer than a day.

Someone throws a glass toward the stage, and it shatters.

By now Barnes is holding up a folder to protect himself from both the pollen and the threat of getting hit by something. “They’ll draw the Lottery in one week! They’ll announce it over the Marconi! One week! Now go home!
Go home!
”

Mayor Barnes ducks and darts toward the back of the stage and, like that, he’s gone—and, just then, the pollen kicks up
hard
. For a moment it’s tough to see more than
a few feet. It stings the eyes. A tickle itches inside Cael’s nose—like a spider crawling there.

Then the wind dies back and the curtain parts anew, and a great cloud of grief-struck incredulity washes over everyone. In one long minute the crowd’s anger has deflated into a kind of collective depression.

The crowd breaks apart like a clod of dry earth as the Heartlanders disperse. Lane just shakes his head and mutters, “Suckers.”

But Cael’s anger hasn’t deflated. “Now what?” he asks.

Lane shrugs. “Guess we go home.”

Cael takes another pull off the fixy, hands it to Lane.

“I say we make our own damn Lottery.”

Lane gives him a look.

“Let’s go get those vegetables.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes! Tonight. Lane, here’s our shot. Nobody’s going to be paying attention to what we’re doing. Hell, nobody can see their hands in front of their fool faces. This piss-blizzard isn’t a problem. It’s a damn
opportunity
.”

“It’s a crazy, godsdamn idea is what it is,” Lane says. “You should not be allowed to drink, Cael McAvoy.”

Cael grabs him by the wrists. “I’m going out there tonight. I’ll walk if I have to.”

“Cael, if this is about Boyland and Gwennie—”

“Hell with them! This is about us. This is about taking what’s
ours
, Lane.” Cael snatches back the fixy, takes another pull until it’s gone. “Besides, once she sees what we’ve done and how we’re rolling in ace notes, she won’t be so quick to cotton up to the mayor’s son.”

“She’s Obligated, Cael.”

“Fuck the Obligation! I’m going. Either you’re coming or, or…” Cael thrusts out his chin. “Or you’re not on the crew anymore.”

“You can’t do that!”

“I’m the captain; I can do whatever I please.”

Lane narrows his eyes. Licks his lips. “Fine.
Fine
. Let’s get Rigo and do this.”

“I ain’t ready to leave yet, godsdamnit!”

They’re at the top of town, near to the spot where Gwennie offered Cael a taste of chicha beer earlier that day. Folks are starting to leave, a herd-like movement urged on by the fear of getting caught in the throes of a full-bore piss-blizzard.

“
I still need another drink.
I said, I still need another—
What
? What are you looking at?”

They recognize that perpetually slurring, ever-growling voice. Cael grabs Lane by the belt loop and drags him
toward the voice as another whipping gale rises, sending forth a whorl of golden pollen.

There, out behind one of the fixy stands, away from the crowds, is Jorge Cozido. His son trembles before him. Rigo’s got a paisley handkerchief held up against his head because the more he breathes in the pollen, the worse off he’ll be. He won’t die. But he’ll bloat up like a chigger-worm fat from feeding.

“Got your little mask on, do you?” Jorge bellows, hoarse and boozy.

“I need it!” Rigo cries. “My allergies.”

“Your damn allergies. C’mere.” The man makes a grab for Rigo’s face and swipes the handkerchief away—just in time for Rigo to catch a face full of stinging pollen. He sneezes, coughs, sneezes again.

All the while, Rigo’s mother stands behind his father. Hands folded tight under her armpits. Looking like a scared little mouse. Cael can’t stand her. She’s weak. She’s doesn’t have the grit and the stone needed to be a proper Heartlander. Then again, maybe she had it once. Maybe that husband of hers—a husband she didn’t choose—beat it out of her long ago.

Rigo tries to reclaim his handkerchief when his father pretends to hand it back, but then Jorge yanks it away as soon as Rigo jumps for it. “You little pussy. Like your
damn mother, pussy. I don’t care about your allergies; I want another
drink
—”

Rigo reaches again for the handkerchief, but Jorge shoves him.

Then Jorge rears back with a fist. Rigo cringes, anticipating the blow.

But before it comes, a ball bearing
thwacks
hard into the back of Jorge’s hand, and his arm recoils like a snake hit by a stick. Ammo from Cael’s slingshot rarely flies false, not as long as he’s the one doing the shooting. This time he didn’t pull the pocket all the way back—if he had, Jorge’s hand would be hanging limp by his side with all its delicate bones broken.

“You sonofabitch!” Jorge wails. He tries to step forward and come after them, but all he does is fall to his knees, cradling his hand. Blubbering like a drunken old fool.

Lane waves Rigo over. “Rigo. Rigo!”

Rigo looks to his father, looks to his mother. She turns away.

He hurries over to his friends. Cael gives him his own handkerchief, and they rush to join the exodus of the crowd. They all pray to the Lord and Lady that come morning, Jorge will have blacked out—again—and forgotten how he hurt his paw. Small prayers never hurt. Though Cael wonders if they ever help.

The handkerchief is soaked through and shellacked with snot. Rigo’s eyes bulge with white froth pooling at the corners—it looks as though they might pop like corks any minute now.

They hurry along in the crowd of Heartlanders heading north out of town. The crowd thins as folks turn off toward their roads, toward their farms. All the while the wind blows harder, and with it the blinding sheets of pollen. By morning the piss-blizzard will have paralyzed the town. Gumming up motorvators. Dirtying windows with golden grease. Nobody will earn ace notes tomorrow. Nobody.

Cael isn’t thinking about that, though. All he’s thinking about is Gwennie. And Boyland. And those vegetables.

Cael pulls his two friends close.

“I’m going after the garden,” he says.

“Jeezum Crow,” Rigo says. “Cael, I can’t—I can’t do that. I don’t feel good.”

“My sister ran off again,” Cael says. “Did you know that? She just packed a bag and hightailed it out the window. She’s off living the high life somewhere, and we’re stuck here. Well, I’m tired of being the responsible one. Tired of sucking hind tit and liking it. I want those vegetables. Lane’s in—”

Rigo shakes his head. “You won’t make it. The storm’s getting—” He rears back and sneezes so hard he almost concusses himself against Cael’s forehead. Cael barely manages to dodge the inadvertent head-butt. “
Worse
. And we don’t have a boat!”

“We’ll hoof it,” Cael says. “Like we did earlier. We’ll track the beacon and—”

“In this mess?” Rigo asks.

Cael looks up. “Now, hold on a minute. I have an idea.” Cael points, and through the pollen they see the offshoot of Orchard Road.

“No,” Lane says. “No, no, no. That’s cruel. You’re not that cruel.”

“They have a boat.”

“That’s
cruel
.”

“I don’t want to be mean. But I have to do this.”

“Fine, we’re coming with you,” Rigo says.
Fide, we’re gumming wid you.

“Shit,” Lane says. “Fine.
Fine
.”

The Orchard Road stands before them. And Cael heads toward it.

THE BLACK ORCHARD

THE NIGHT GLOWS
golden. It would be pretty if the pollen wasn’t stinging their eyes so bad. The wind snarls and keens through the corn, casting streamers of pollen into their eyes and mouths. They can’t see ten feet in front of them: It’s all just a yellow haze, the air suffused in a dandelion wash.

It turns out that Rigo
could
get worse. His skin, normally the color of an over-milked coffee at Doc Leonard’s diner counter, is now beet red. His face is so swollen it looks like a fat cherry. Even Cael is feeling the effects: The edges of his eyes are starting to crust over, and his sniffles have kicked into high gear.

Cael starts to feel dizzy. A tiny ember of fear burns inside him, becoming a match flame, then a campfire. Everything out here is corn and asphalt, and it’s all behind an eye-blistering curtain of too-bright pollen. With the wind yowling like a chorus of lonely cats, they can barely even hear one another. Cael knows where they are, but it still feels as if his bearings are lost, as if they could be anywhere in the Heartland.

As they stagger forward, Cael sees something.

A ramshackle lean-to. Cael knows it well. It’s the Burkholders’ old farm stand. Cael remembers it from when he was a kid, from when you could buy things like red peppers, green beans, and heads of cabbage from other local farmers. Those days are gone. So too are the Burkholders. Otto was the first to go, with a skin cancer on his back that reportedly looked like a blackened biscuit. Then, only a few weeks later, they found the Burkholder boy, Peter, down in the well like a gopher. Hard to believe that he fell in; most say he took his own life. Missy, the mother, well… they found her a year after, sitting in a rocking chair, still rocking, dead as a doornail. Nobody can say for sure how it happened, but they all
know
. Heartbreak is a powerful thing in the Heartland, sharp as a corn sickle, mean as a twister.

Still, the Burkholders knew how to build things. The
farm stand holds mostly together, even with the climbing stalks of corn slowly trying to mash it into the earth. It’s there they stop for a while. Mostly just to clean up Rigo a little.

“This is still a bad idea,” Lane says. Outside, the piss-blizzard rages.

“It’s the only idea,” Cael says.

“Fine, then it’s just plain
mean
.”

“It’s not mean!” Cael says. “It is what it is. They’ll say yes because they’re nice people. And it’s our only shot.”

“I’m drowning in my own phlegm,” Rigo says.

He’s not. They ignore him.

“Then what?” Lane asks. “What will you do once you get to the vegetables?”

“I…” Cael can’t find the words. “We’ll sell them. Not to the maven, though—you can be sure she’s tucked tight in the mayor’s pocket. We can sell direct to the townsfolk. On the down-low. Now, let’s go get ourselves a boat.”

“You mean, let’s go get
Wanda’s
boat.”

Cael doesn’t say anything.

“This is insane. You know that?”

“It’ll be fine,” he says, unconvinced.

“My face feels like a hot pumpkin,” Rigo says.

“Heck-a-damn, shut up, Rigo,” Lane grumbles. “Let’s get on with it, then.”

All around the house stand the shadows of dead trees just visible behind the wisps and whorls of pollen. Each is like a darkened hand stripped of flesh, the finger bones reaching upward for something they’ll never grasp.

The Mecklins used to make a living tending to the fruit trees—apples, pears, peaches—with the other orchard families, but then the Empyrean decided that the only crop worth growing was corn. And so they sent some men down here with tanks of an oily fluid, dark and turbid like the runoff from a motorvator’s busted radiator, and they hosed down all the trees. Within days the leaves dropped, the bark blackened, and all the fruit shriveled to hard peach-pit nubs. Only a few trees produce fruit now, and that fruit ends up getting thrown at the likes of Pally Varrin. Or it gets left for the bees.

Once the Empyrean made its proclamation, Artie and Janine Mecklin went to work with the corn like most everybody else. They don’t let Wanda work, though. Wanda stays home and tends to the farm.

Now Cael, Rigo, and Lane stand on the porch of that farm. They’re mostly protected from the pollen by the porch roof above their heads, but it’s gusted in, made the porch slippery. Rigo almost goes ass up not once but twice.

Biting the inside of his cheek, Cael knocks on the door.

They hear a flurry of hoarse barks rise up inside. It must be the infamous Mecklin mutt, a dog whose existence betrays all common sense and biology, a dog who should have died years ago. What’s his name? Cael can’t remember, but it’s something to do with fruit.

The door flings open and out trundles the dog, a midheight mix-breed with a sausage body and thin little matchstick legs. His one eye is a winking asterisk. (He tangled with a plasto-vator, one of the robots that lays the plasto-sheen on the roads.) His tail is a vibrating stump. (He got it caught in a door.) And one half of his body shows caved-in ribs. (He thought it would be fun to go toe-to-toe with a fell-deer buck with one good antler.) Everyone jokes that the dog is still alive only because he’s too stupid to know any better.