A Strong and Sudden Thaw
R. W. Day
Published by Lethe Press at Smashwords
Copyright ©2006, 2009 R.W. Day.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief citation or review, without the written permission of Lethe Press.
www.lethepressbooks.com / lethepress@aol.com
The Lethe Press edition published 2009 by Lethe Press, 118 Heritage Avenue, Maple Shade, NJ 08052.
Book Design by Toby Johnson
Cover art by Anne Cain
ISBN-13: 978-1-59021-063-5
ISBN-10: 1-59021-063-8
_______________________________
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Day, R. W. (Rebecca W.), 1962-
A strong and sudden thaw / R.W. Day.
p. cm.
Originally published: Colton, Calif.: Iris Print, c2006.
ISBN 1-59021-063-8
1. Young gay men--Fiction. 2. Dragons--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3604.A987S77 2008
813’.6--dc22
2008045506
Chapter 1
There’s an old scenic view about halfway up the mountain, alongside where the old highway runs. The signs are fading, of course, and the pavement’s cracked and ruined, invaded years ago by roots of the scrub pines reclaiming what men stole from them back in the Before. There used to be a fence, a low barrier of iron-grey metal put up by the old people, but it’s gone now too. My Mam always told me not to lean on that fence, and she was right, because one day late last summer, after a torrential rain that left us all knee-deep in cold black muck, that twisted metal fence went right over the edge. Just following after our whole world, I guess, plummeting over the edge into the abyss. Or at least that’s what Grandmam says, and she ought to know, as she remembers the Before times. She tells stories that make the old world sound like spun sugar candy you get at the Harvest Fair. Rich and sweet, but destined to crumble away at the first hard rain.
But to me, the land is still sweet and the old scenic view a touch of heaven. I can’t imagine how those old people in their metal wagons could have ever seen anything so fair as those far distant accordion-pleated ridges littered with the skeletons of trees, stark and bleached, reaching silently skyward in a useless appeal to the heavens, the patchwork of fields and red-roofed farmhouses, and soft clouds like the wool of our flock blending with the smoke from the chimneys to rise on the thermals.
This fall day, there was hawks riding the thermals, too, swooping lower now and again to spy out a mouse or ground squirrel. That time of year, game’s hard to find, for hawks or for humans. But as I watched, the big one—the male—stopped, and I could see him hanging there, waiting and watching. Then he descended, spiraling down into the valley while his mate screamed in triumph.
Heavy wings beating the air, the male rose again, and I could see he had prey in his talons. Grandmam says it used to be that you couldn’t even see into the next valley over because the air was so heavy with smoke and such from the machines. I can’t fathom that. The air’s always been clear, and mostly so cold and sharp it cuts you when you breathe, but I wouldn’t have it any other way, as in those old times I wouldn’t have been able to see the hawks in the valley like I do.
As I watched the birds take their prey off to their young, a shadow rippled over them and across the valley. I looked up, and above the hawks, so far distant in the sky that they seemed as toys, I saw the dragons. Still alive—so the posse had failed. Pa had figured they would.
Those dragons. There’s a mating pair like with the hawks, or at least that’s what we think. Jerzy Dodd, our hired man, claims there’s three, maybe four, but Master Burke the School says he’s wrong as dragons are territorial, not pack animals, and if there were three, the two would turn on the third and kill it. Unless the third was a baby. We figure there will be babies. That’s one truth you can’t ignore, male and female together eventually leads to babies, as true for dragonkind as humankind.
We’re not sure where they came from, but Jerzy was the first to see them up in the high hills while he was tending our sheep. He’d gone behind a tree to—well, you can figure out what he was doing—heard a frantic panicked bleating and come running to find four sheep, one clutched in each cruel talon, winging their way upward to the top of Pine Bluff Ridge.
Of course nobody’d believed him. Pa figured he was making up tales to cover his own irresponsibility, and that the four sheep had really been taken by wolves or fallen into a crevasse and lost. But about two weeks later, the dragons lifted young Lorna Massie straight out of her playpen in the yard of her very own house. Lorna’s mam had been hanging out the wash, had gone in for some extra clothespins and come out right in time to see the dragon, bigger than the Massies’ whole house, scooping little Lorna up. She flung a pickaxe at the beast, and a scale had fallen off.
Well, everybody believed then. Jane Massie was a no-nonsense sort of woman, not the type for flights of fancy, and besides, there was that scale, green-gold and leathery, on display down at the school plain as the nose on your face. Lorna was gone, the scale was there. Added up pretty neat, folks thought. And then there were other sightings—for a while it seemed that you weren’t somebody in our town if you hadn’t seen the dragons.
Got to the point where folks was keeping their children so close that you’d think it was dead winter, not the middle of a fairly mild Indian summer. Still, you couldn’t blame them. Bigger folk could spot the dragons and take cover, but the children hadn’t a chance. I think that’s where the old stories about virgins come from. In the olden days, anybody old enough to get out of the way was likely married off already. It was the young ones that got picked off.
So Sheriff Fletcher got a band of men together, and formed a posse to kill the dragons. About a week back they set off up the mountain, all grim and determined. My Pa and I watched them go, standing near the burying ground with Burke the Digger.
“Doomed to fail,” Pa said, shaking his head as the line of men trudged by. Sheriff Fletcher had deputized Mister Zack Tyree to lead the group made up of three claim farmers from the south part of the county that I didn’t know; Curtis Henslow, who kept chickens; and Mayor Casteel’s do-nothing nephew Elmer.
“Elmer Casteel gets within fifty yards of a dragon, he’ll shit himself. Tyree’s the only one can hit the broad side of a barn, and he’s got but one arm.” The Digger spat sideways. “Should’a taken you, Brock. Hell, even young Davey here could handle himself better’n that bunch.”
“Didn’t ask me,” Pa had said, and that was true. It was also true that my Pa was the best hunter in the valley, and everybody knew it. We always had meat on our table, even in the darkest winter, and he could track darn near anything that walked. Grandmam used to say it was a mercy the Ice had come, because if Pa had had to live in Before, he’d have been lost. So I wondered why he wasn’t invited to join the dragon hunters—made no sense at all.
On the way back up the hill to our place that day, Pa had opined that, with the exception of Mister Zack, who’d likely been the sheriff’s choice, the posse had been selected to give Elmer Casteel a chance to cover himself in glory so he could win a rich wife and maybe get out of Mayor Casteel’s hair and quit asking for money all the time. Now, seeing the dragons still flying high above me, I wondered if the mayor had managed to solve his problem in a more permanent way. Money don’t do you much good from inside a dragon’s belly.
The dragons circled a few more times, then headed south. I pulled my jacket tight, wishing it would be truly warm, like in the stories Grandma told about Before. But it wasn’t, and wasn’t ever like to be in my lifetime. Those old days was a tale whose end had been told.
Dusk was already coming on by the time I was in sight of home. Our cabin sat atop a middling sized hill, and all the lands around it sloping down to the creek and a good ways beyond were Anderson lands, and had been since before the Ice. The sheep were back from the summer pastures now, and I could hear the sounds of the bells that marked them as ours. Jerzy was herding them into the barn, an unsettled cluster of dingy white bodies bleating and baaing as I passed.
The sheep were Mam’s. She managed the flock and paid Jerzy’s keep and the shearers in the spring from profits she got off the wool, which she sold in bulk to Perkin Weaver and sent to the cities in trade. I hate sheep. My sisters love them. All three of them adopt a new lamb each spring as their own special pet. Not me. Sheep are stupid—I’ve seen a flock of sheep follow their bellwether into a gully in a storm. The whole flock would have drowned if I hadn’t been there to help Jerzy drive them out. Pa says I’m like him in that—he don’t like sheep much either, though he likes the money they bring into the house. He says sheep and people are alike, mostly. I don’t know that I agree, but he says I just haven’t lived long enough yet.
“Boy, is your Mam mad at you, David,” Jerzy called after me. “Says you and Benny C was supposed to be wintering in the herbs today. Benny C had to do it alone and he ain’t shut up about it all afternoon!”
His sing-song voice faded away as I trudged the last few steps towards the cabin. He was right; I’d forgot completely. The herbs could have waited a day, though, or Ruby could have helped Benny C—it weren’t like bringing herbs into the greenhouse was man’s work. I’d have to sweet talk Mam, court her with the brace of rabbits I’d snared. Steeling myself for an argument, I noticed a strange horse tied up to our barn fence. Company. There weren’t any way Mam would berate me in front of company. Sighing with relief, I swung the rabbits over my shoulder and pushed opened the door.
Smoking oil lamps blazed everywhere and the long table was set out with Grandmam’s old china dishes over a plain white cloth. Grandmam says our cabin would have been called tiny back in the old days, but I can’t fathom that. It’s got a large common room where we do our living, then back behind are two goodly bedrooms, one for Mam and Pa, and one for Grandmam. A ladder leads to a loft above the common room where there are two more rooms, one for boys, and one for girls.
Because our place was built in the Before, there’s a bathroom indoors too, but it don’t work proper no more. We wash up in the tub, hauling water from the fire, but for our other needs, it’s the outhouse in back. Grandmam says our place was originally a vacation cabin for Pa’s family. I’m not sure what that means, really. She says it’s like a house you only lived in sometimes, but I don’t understand that—if you don’t take care of your place year round, it’ll fall to pieces pretty fast. I guess things was different then.
While Grandmam tended to the fire, Mam was working at the big black cook-stove, sending Delia and Ruby scurrying around like chickens with their heads cut off, fetching and toting and setting out food. Benny C was nowhere to be found, probably hiding in the barn pretending to do chores, sulking about me. Pa was seated at the table talking to the guest—Mister Zack Tyree, his sleeve pinned up at the elbow to hide where he’d lost his arm. So the posse was back, then.
“David, where have you been?” Mam spun around from the fire and almost struck Delia with her wood stirring spoon.
I held out the rabbits in mute apology. She shook her head and sighed. “Lord, you’re your father’s son. Take those skinny little coneys out to the larder and mind you hang them high, you hear?”
She weren’t mad, then. That’s what she always said when I come home, as though after hunting more than half my life, I’d forget to hang meat out of reach of scavengers. If she’d been mad, she’d have just taken the rabbits herself. I went out to the lean-to that served as our larder and strung up the rabbits. I’d skin them later and we’d have rabbit stew tomorrow.
Coming back into the warmth of the cabin I caught the smell of something roasting in the oven: mutton, I thought. When I said I hated sheep, I should have said I love them...served with new potatoes and fresh mint. The aroma was mouth-watering, and I was suddenly starved.
Mam lifted the speckled roaster from the oven. “Can I help?”
“Oh, just stay out of my hair.” Mam shook her head. “Go on and sit with your Pa and help make Mister Zack feel at home.”
Mister Zack was talking as I slid onto the bench next to Pa. “...and I’d not have credited it, Brock, if I’d not seen it with my own eyes. Big as houses and covered in scales.”
Pa shook his head. “And you say your rifle didn’t penetrate the hide?”
Now, that surprised me. Mister Zack Tyree was what Mam called a proper gentleman. He had a huge spread of land to the south of town and a house that would’ve held three of ours, which had been in his family since a hundred years before the Ice or more. His rifle was dead-on accurate and gorgeous to boot, all inlaid with fancy silver.
“Do you mean your silver rifle, Mister Zack?” I asked.
“Yes sir, David, that’s exactly what I mean.” Mister Zack leaned back in my Pa’s chair, stretching his one full arm and his half arm behind him. “I got off three rounds point blank and you’d have thought my bullets were cast out of rubber, not lead.” He leaned forward and grinned sort of wicked-like. “That fool Casteel had one of those new army guns and the bloody thing jammed six ways to Sunday.”
Pa nodded. “The more moving parts you get on something, the more things go wrong. Like I’ve told you, Zack, in these times we’re best off using older guns with simple actions, things we can fix ourselves without factories and trained gunsmiths.”
I’d gone to school with Elmer Casteel—he’d been a few years ahead, but we’d read the same lessons sometimes as he wasn’t the brightest wick in the lamp. “What did Elmer do then, Mister Zack?” I asked, curious.
Mam was setting steaming dishes of food around us and from the corner of my eye I saw Benny C slip in from outside. He sidled up to me and poked me hard in the back, but I ignored him, so he went off towards the fire to warm himself.
“When his gun jammed—and I might add that the dragons had not even deigned to notice our presence to that point—Elmer, brave scion of the Mayor’s line that he is, threw that expensive firearm into the air and flew like a bat out of hell down the side of the mountain. He tripped on a root, twisted his ankle, and sliced up his lip.”
Couldn’t have happened to a better man. “Good.”
“David!” Mam’s hand reached out and cuffed the side of my ear, but not hard enough to hurt.
“Sorry, Mam.” Though I weren’t, not in the least. I turned back to Mister Zack, who looked for all the world like he agreed with me. “Is Elmer okay?”
“Not to hear him tell it. He made two of those claim farmers carry him in a litter all the way back to town, and he went straight to the healers. Was a bit put out when he discovered they were both upriver delivering a baby.”
Mam was herding the younger ones to the table, settling Delia and Ruby on their bench. They squeezed together to make room for Benny C, who’d normally have sat by me, but Pa was there since Mister Zack had taken his chair. The baby was missing.
“Where’s Almond?”
“She’s down with a sore throat and fever,” Mam replied, spooning out rich helpings of roast and potatoes onto the china plates. “And speaking of healers, you can take her down the hill to be looked over tomorrow.”
It weren’t a request, so although I’d planned to go check the traps in the morning, I just nodded and waited for the plates to be filled. Mister Zack and Pa had stopped talking, too, and Mister Zack was eyeing the food hungrily.
“May-Marie, that smells divine. Beef pot roast? I haven’t had roast beef in a dog’s age.” I remembered that Mister Zack, being a widower, would be mostly left to his own devices when it come to meals.
Mam smiled and the compliment lit up her face brighter than the oil lamp hanging down over the table. My mam was a beautiful woman once, or so Grandmam says. I think she’s still beautiful, with her thick honey hair and green eyes, but she’s tired all the time and her face looks all washed out and grey from all the work she does. “And you won’t be having it yet tonight, I’m afraid, Zack. It’s mutton—I’m culling some of the rams before the true cold settles in.”
“Well, whatever it is, it looks and smells delicious. And it’s food I didn’t have to cook, so I’m thankful for it.” Mister Zack tucked his napkin onto his lap.
“Zack, we’d be honored if you’d give the blessing.”
We all settled to quiet then as Mister Zack cleared his throat. Better him than me—I hated giving the blessing, especially when we had guests. Speaking out loud, talking to folks more than one at a time weren’t something I was particularly fond of, and hadn’t been since I was back at school and had made a complete fool of myself during the Fall Recitations every single year. Plus, I wasn’t half sure there was anyone or anything listening to our blessing anyways. Not that I could say that to Mam, though.
“Thou who hast brought us safe through the rigors of the Ice and hast seen us to prosperity in this new time, look favorably upon Your children here assembled. Bless us with warmth and food and health. In the name of God. Amen.”
“Amen,” we all echoed, then for a while the only sounds was the unfamiliar chinking of silver on china. It was an odd sound—our everyday plates were wooden, carved by Pa. I expected Mister Zack Tyree ate off china plates every day of his life, and Mam would have been shamed to offer him dinner on ugly wood trenchers.
Though I tried not to stare as that’d get me sent to the barn for the rest of the meal, I watched Mister Zack from the corner of my eye. I’d never seen him eat before, but had often wondered how he managed it with one arm. It was a sight to see—he alternated fork and knife so deftly you’d have thought he was a whole man.
“So, Zack,” Pa set his fork down. “You never did tell me how you managed to run those dragons to ground. Must have been a wonderment of tracking. No offense to you, but I didn’t think you had those sorts of skills.”
Everybody’s eyes were on the guest, and I was glad Pa had brought the talk around to the dragons again, and I could see the younger ones were as well. They’d been shielded from a lot of the talk, but were curious about the beasts, as was natural.
Mister Zack laughed. “No offense taken, Brock. I’m a fair shot, but I couldn’t track an elephant if it was fifty feet ahead of me with a sign tied to his ass-end. No, we ran across a small flock of goats—Brant McNally’s, I think it was—completely untended, and Casteel came up with the idea of herding them out into open ground and waiting. Worked like a charm—that boy’s got a devious mind.”
“That seems awful cruel to those goats. They weren’t doing nothing to warrant such treatment.” My sister Ruby had a soft place in her heart for animals—all animals, probably even dragons. I really hoped Ruby married a town man, because if she had to survive on a farm doing her own butchering, she’d starve.
“Ruby!” Mam glared down on her like icicles. Children were mostly seen and not heard at the table, or else they weren’t seen nor heard and ended up eating cold leftovers in the corner.
“No, May-Marie, it’s a fair statement.” Mister Zack turned to Ruby. “Don’t fret, Miss Ruby. Those goats were old. Likely it was their year to be butchered in any case, and they went quick and for a good cause.”
“Didn’t work, though,” Pa observed.
“Oh, it worked, all right. The dragons came; we just didn’t have any weapon that would do the job.” Mister Zack helped himself to seconds. “I tell you, Brock, I don’t know what it’s going to take to kill those things. They’re gigantic and damn near armor plated.”
“Giants.” Grandmam had kept close to the fire as was her custom, not joining us at table. “There were giants in the earth in those days.”
Mam gave her a sharp look, then turned to me. “David, take your grandmam a plate of vegetables.”
I picked out the tenderest of the potatoes and carrots and put them in a small bowl. Grandmam took it, but made no attempt to eat, just sat staring into the fire, clutching onto the bowl for dear life.
“...will have to wait till spring now, I’m afraid,” Mister Zack was saying as I got back to the table. “No point taking chances with the weather.”
Pa was scowling. “Another five months of those damn things making off with the best of our flocks and driving the game away. We never had dragons in these parts before the Ice, damn its frosted soul.”
“Brock, please, language—” Mam started to say, but Grandmam interrupted.
“Frost giants. It’s Fimbulvetr; it’s the cold before the end. Three ages of ice, then fire-giants will meet the frost-giants, Fenris Wolf will be released and the World Tree will be cut down.” She looked fretful, holding her plate close to her as though one of those frost giants was lurking behind her to snatch it away.
“Fire giants would be a blessing right about now,” Pa said mildly, looking across the table at Mam, who rose and led Grandmam away to her bedroom. “Sorry about my mother-in-law, Zack. She’s getting on in years.”
“No need to apologize.” Mister Zack dismissed it with a wave of his one hand. “She’s the only person left in this area who remembers Before. I think she’s entitled to a little eccentricity. Though I admit to being curious as to what she’s talking about.”
“It’s from her Bestamor, her own Grandmam. She was Danish and used to tell Gramdmam stories about them. Legends about their gods,” I replied, staring down at the remnants of my plate. I loved listening to those stories, had begged over and over to hear about Loki and Thor and the rest when I was a young child. In school we’d learned the myths of the Greeks, but I’d never taken to those stories quite the same as to Grandmam’s. Those old Danish people knew a thing or two about cold. No half-clothed nymphs and satyrs in Odin’s hall.
“Ah.” Mister Zack nodded, then got up from the table.
Pa stood up too. “David, I’ll see Mister Zack to the road, then join you in the barn for night chores.”
Ruby and Delia started in clearing the supper. Benny C would take a plate out to Jerzy, then he and the girls would get on with their school work. I was mighty glad those days were past for me. The only part of school I’d liked was the reading, and I could still borrow books from the school’s meager lending library to my heart’s content. Of course, I’d read them all ten times over before I’d ever left the schoolhouse, but at least now I wasn’t expected to recite on them, I could just read for the joy of it.
Full dark had fallen, and a bitter wind sprung up from the west, carrying away the sounds of Pa and Mister Zack talking as they walked towards the Old Road. Our barn lay nestled into a fold of the hill, partially protected from the wind and rain and snow. Pa had built it, and it was solid and cozy, a home for the sheep during the cold months, and for Pa’s horse Lightning and a small flock of chickens. Jerzy had a room in the back of it with his own hearth. I wouldn’t have minded a place like that for myself someday, when I was grown. Mam spoke at times of building me a house when I married, but I didn’t like that sort of talk much and would always turn the color of winter beets when she’d go on about it.
Marriage meant girls, and girls were trouble, and boring trouble at that. All clothes and cooking and begging to walk out with you, then when you finally gave in and went, they’d nothing at all useful to say. Joey Matthias said it didn’t matter none, as girls weren’t there to be talked to, and he’d go on about full breasts and tiny little waists and how fine they were, but I couldn’t fathom it at all. And now Joey was getting married to some claim farmer’s daughter not two years after we’d left school. No, that weren’t for me.
I started in on my evening chores slowly, banking the barn fires so the animals would stay warm and safe, blanketing Lightning, and securing all the heavy wooden shutters. It was important work, especially this time of year when a freak storm could burst upon us at any time and the animals could freeze if the fire was left unmade. And if not made well, the fire could get out of hand and the barn and stock could burn.
Behind me, Pa came in and started pitching hay into the troughs. The larders were full now as harvest was behind us, and the scent of the hay mixed up with the stale sweat of the animals to tickle my nose. It was a home smell, a comfort smell like the roast mutton had been, and having Pa beside me, even though, as was his wont, he didn’t speak at all, that was comfort too. Going off to a house of my own, with or without a wife, would mean an end to this. It would be change.
Oh, the seasons changed, with winter coming hard on fall, and then spring fighting tooth and nail for a toehold come April, but those shifts were temporary, and one chilly fall night was the same as any other, be it last year or the year before going back to before I was born. My leaving so that it would be Benny C who’d come out here every night and work beside Pa, that was for keeps. And what was happening to Grandmam; that was for keeps as well.
Pa must have somehow sensed my thoughts, for he stopped working and started stroking Lightning’s brown flank. “David, when you take Almond down to Healer Findlay tomorrow, you might ask her if she could ride up and have a look at your grandmam.”
I nodded. The chickens settled into their roosts and the sheep called softly to each other. I wondered, did they talk? Did the old ewes tell the young lambs stories about sheep gods and ram heroes?
“May-Marie won’t say anything, not to you, not even to me, but she’s worried. Sarah’s over one hundred years old, it’s natural for her to be declining, but it might be there’s something we could do to make her comfortable.”
As she’s dying. I heard his unfinished thought. Grandmam’s body had been frail for long as I could remember, but till recently her mind had been ever clear, and her wit would stab into you like sharpened steel. I closed my eyes and tried to picture our cabin without her in it; her chair empty and the fire tended by Delia or Almond. No. That was a change I couldn’t conceive.
“Pa—”
He shook his head. “Just talk to the healer, David. That’s all you can do. People die. It’s a fact of life, whether we like it or not. Your Grandmam’s had more years than most. Be thankful for that.”
He gave Lightning a precious lump of store-sugar and murmured soft words to her that I couldn’t make out, then left me alone to finish my work.
Chapter 2
Because Almond weren’t yet five and feeling poorly, Pa gave me leave to take her down the mountain on Lightning. Lightning, poor mare, is the most ill-named horse in three counties. Mam says she ought to be called Wishful Thinking or Hope Springs Eternal, but though she’s slow, she’s a good and patient friend. So not in a dash of lightning, but slowly and carefully, she picked her way over the broken pavement of the Old Road leading to town.
I walked ahead leading the reins while Almond bobbed in the saddle, clinging lightly to the pommel in her fever. We’d been lucky in our family and Burke the Digger hadn’t yet had to carve a stone with the name ‘Anderson.’. But Almond’s black hair hung lank over her thin face, and she was quiet the whole way down to the town of Moline. I was more than a little bit fearful for her.
To call Moline a town is, I’m afraid, more than a shade misleading. Compared to what I’ve been told of the big towns and cities, it’s little more than a village; just a town square, an old highway that turns into Main Street as it passes through, and a couple of cross streets. The square holds the school, which also serves as a town hall, for it’s the largest and best constructed building left standing. There’s a church and a tiny post office nearby, Perkin Weaver’s workshop and a few other storefronts where tradespeople conduct their business, a general store, and at the far south end of Main Street, the healer’s house.
I mounted Lightning just shy of where Main Street begins in earnest, not wanting to walk into town like a man unfit to sit a horse. Almond leaned back against me, so sweet and trusting, and forgetting my disbelief of the night before, I said a quick prayer for her. It was cold as is fitting for October, but not so cold as to make riding unpleasant, and the touch of the wind on my face was gentle enough. A month or so forward, it would be biting, and nobody in their right mind would have any inch of their skin exposed to the elements.
The healer’s house was built of rose colored bricks, a small, snug building, one compact story with dormers above, set slightly apart from the daily life of the town to give some privacy to those who come for treatment. I helped Almond from Lightning’s broad back and knocked at the door. Healer Findlay had delivered all us children; she’d nursed us through childhood illnesses and had set the bones in my leg when I’d fallen down a cliff and the bones in my arm when I’d tumbled from Lightning learning to ride. She’d have Almond fixed up right as rain, I knew it.
The door opened, but it weren’t a grizzled haired woman who stood framed in the open door. It was a man; a young man not much older than I, dressed in neat but threadbare clothing, and I recollected that Healer Findlay had taken an assistant.
“Hello, I’m Callan Landers. Did you need some help?” His voice was light, almost musical, but something in it reminded me of my Pa’s the night before, reassuring and calm. This Callan Landers couldn’t be more the opposite of Pa, though. Where my pa was short, burly, and strongly built, the healer was tall—taller than me, even, and I was taller than anyone in my family. Tall and slender, what Grandmam would have described as a ‘long drink of water.’ His hair reminded me of sunlight and shadow dancing over a field of wheat, dark in places, light in others, and his eyes were the almost invisible blue of the spring sky.
I felt awkward and clumsy as I smiled back at him. “My sister’s sick. I was hoping we could see Healer Findlay?”
He knelt down so he was eye-level to Almond, who looked at him with the first spark of interest she’d shown since we left the cabin—she almost never saw strangers. “So you’re not feeling well? Why don’t you bring your brother into the house where it’s warm?”
She nodded and grabbed hold of my hand, pulling me into the entrance hall.
“Healer Findlay’s upriver, a good day’s ride away. I only got back to town late last night myself,” the young healer was saying as he brought us through the inner door to the exam room. “I’d be happy to have a look at your sister, though, and see what I can do.”
“That’d be awful good of you. I’m David Anderson.”
“Hello, David. I think I’ve seen you around town before. And this is?” He looked down at Almond, who had suddenly gone shy, clutching my hand and hiding her face against my trousers.
“Almond, quit that.” I tried to pry her off me. “This is Almond, and I don’t know what’s come over her, Healer Landers, she’s not normally shy about speaking up. Mam worries that when she starts school she’s going to be forever writing lines and kept after for talking out of turn.”
“She’s ill and in a strange place with a strange person. It’s not surprising she’s a bit shy.” He knelt again. “Almond. That’s a lovely name. Did you know it’s the name of a tree?”
Almond looked up, eyes big, and shook her head.
“Well, it is—a great big tree with white blossoms. Would you like to see a picture?”
She nodded again and let go my hand. Healer Landers turned to a long bookshelf that stretched almost the whole length of the room and pulled a thick volume from its place. I made out the words ‘trees’ and ‘North America’ on the cover before he flipped it open and his nimble fingers turned the pages to a color picture of a tall tree covered in white flowers.
“That’s an almond tree from back in old springtime,” he explained. Almond took the book, and Healer Landers swiftly plucked her off the floor and set her up high on a table, where she continued to stare at the book. It was the only book she’d ever held, as our school texts were too precious to be trusted to so small a child.
“I don’t reckon we have those round here.”
The healer had put a stethoscope around his neck and was warming the loose end in his hands. “No, not any more, Mr. Anderson.”
“Mr. Anderson’s my Pa. I’m David, Healer.” I held out my hand and he took it.
“Callan. Stupid to be so formal, as I doubt I’m much older than you.” His hand was cool to the touch and clean, and I felt ashamed of my square cut nails which never seemed to rid themselves of traces of dirt. He had a gentleman’s hands, like Mister Zack. I turned his name over in my head, but I couldn’t say it, couldn’t treat such a person as though I was equal to him.
“I’m seventeen.” Then I flushed, my mam’s training too ingrained; I couldn’t lie, not even about my age. “Or will be, come April.”
“Twenty-three last month.” He’d slid the stethoscope up under Almond’s shirt. “Take a deep breath, sweetie.” He moved the instrument around on her back and chest, and I wondered what those hands would feel like on my bare skin. I’d never had such a thought before; it troubled me, so I turned away and looked at the long row of books. I’d not seen so many books in all my life—not even the schoolhouse held so many. Some of the titles had unfamiliar healer words, diagnosis and treatment of disease and anatomy, but others sounded like story books. I wondered if Healer Landers had read them all.
“There’s been pneumonia around, but her lungs sound fine. Good.” He put the stethoscope down and turned back to Almond. “What seems to be the matter, sweetie?”
“My thwoat.” Tears were welling up in her eyes in a manner that I knew very well was done a-purpose. She’d charm the skin off a snake, Almond would. I started forward, to berate her for making a fuss, but he caught my eye and shook his head ever so slightly.
“Well, let’s have a look, shall we? Stick out your tongue.”
Almond clammed up tight and shook her head.
“Mam’s told her not to stick out her tongue at people,” I explained. “She’s not wanting to be rude to you.”
He laughed. You hear about folks having a musical laugh. Till then, I’d thought that was just fancy talk, but Healer Landers’ laugh was like a low peal of bells from the old church tower. “Your mother’s right, and you should normally never put your tongue out at someone, but I can’t see what’s amiss with your throat if your mouth’s all closed up tight as a drum.” He paused and thought for a moment. “How about I stick out my tongue at you first, Miss Almond? Then you’d have to get me back, or it wouldn’t be fair.”
She considered that for a moment, then nodded. Soon enough her mouth was open and he was pressing her tongue out of the way with a piece of polished wood, peering down her throat.
“This would be so much easier with artificial lighting,” he sighed. “But it looks like she’s got a slight inflammation.”
“Mam’s had her gargle with salt water, given her willow bark tea for fever.”
“That’s good—she should keep doing that, and I’ll give her some horehound candies to keep the throat moist.” He sounded angry. Almond was looking at the tree book again, turning the pages almost reverently.
“What’s the matter?”
He went to a bin and started filling a paper poke with the speckled brown candies. “It’s just so infuriating. Look at this.” The healer set down the sack and pulled a large red book down from the shelf, thumbed through it, then pointed to tiny words on the yellowing page. “I’m almost positive she has a bacterial infection, probably streptococcal. This book tells exactly how to treat it, but it’s useless. In the old days, we could have given her a pill or a shot that would have cleared it almost instantly. Now,” he sighed. “Now we know what’s wrong. We know what to do about it, but mostly can’t do a damn thing to fix it.”
There weren’t much I could say to that, so I just nodded.
“I mean, Healer Findlay’s upriver at the Benson farm right now. They’ve had a baby that’s not quite right—it’s not able to eat. That baby’s going to die because we can’t do a simple surgery that in your great-grandfather’s day would have been routine. It happens every day, David, and sometimes I just get so incredibly tired of it all.”
He was leaning against the desk, not looking at me, and I could sense that he wasn’t truly talking to me so much as to himself. Truthfully, I didn’t give a lot of thought to what we’d lost from Before—life was what it was, what it had always been, but I could feel the frustration coming off him in waves. Hesitating, but drawn to make some gesture of comfort, I reached out my hand and rested it on his shoulder, and he relaxed.
“I’m sorry. I’ve just met you, and here I am going off on you like that. Forgive me?” He turned to face me, but my hand lingered on his shoulder. It felt right that it should.
“Nothing to forgive.” A loud pounding noise shook the small house.
“What the...?” Before the healer had time to go towards the door, it burst open and Elmer Casteel stumped into the room.
“I need a healer. Now.” Elmer’s gravely voice sounded like a growling animal.
Healer Landers stepped forward, deftly positioning himself between Elmer and my sister. “I’m with someone right now, but if you’d like to have a seat in the waiting room, I’ll be with you as soon as I’m done.”
“I’ve waited all goddamn night!” He seemed to fill up the room, soaking up all the peace of the place like a big old foul rag soaking up water in the byre.
The healer was outward calm, but I could see tiny tremors in his hands. Elmer Casteel could have snapped him like a twig. “I’ve been here, doors open, since just after dawn. It’s going on midafternoon—if it was such an emergency, you should have come in earlier. Now, I’m afraid, you’re just going to have to wait.”
That didn’t sit well. Elmer’d likely been hungover from drinking rotgut whiskey with his buddies half the night. Nobody ever saw him out before noon, injured or not. “I’ve been maimed protecting this town from a monster, and I’m entitled to treatment when I say!”
I stepped out from the shadowed corner. “Didn’t know running like a scared rabbit was protecting the town, Elmer. Guess you learn something new every day.”
He rounded on me, but I knew he wouldn’t dare hit me, not out of respect for the healer’s house, but because I was as big as him, the coward. “That’s a goddamn lie. Who’s been spreading that shit around?”
“Mister Zack Tyree was up to the house for dinner last night. He told us you threw your fancy gun away like garbage and went tearing off down the hill, tripped yourself up. Now, unless you’re saying Mister Zack was lying...”
He went pale. There weren’t no way he would accuse Mister Zack of being a liar, not in front of witnesses. One-armed or not, Mister Zack would pound Elmer into pieces. In our world, a man’s word was all he had. We didn’t have lawyers and contracts nor even much in the way of law enforcement beyond a sheriff, so your word was bond, and calling someone a liar was an almost unpardonable insult.
“Well, it don’t matter how I got hurt,” he mumbled. “I’m bleeding and I need a goddamn healer.”
“That busted lip don’t look half so bad as the one I gave you about four years ago when you was picking on Benny C in the schoolyard, Elmer. Now go on and sit down in the waiting room till Healer Landers is done with my sister. And you watch your foul mouth in front of her.” I wasn’t scared of Elmer Casteel and he knew it.
“You ain’t heard the last of this, Anderson,” he said, but he went, though not into the waiting room; out onto the street, judging by the slamming of the doors.
“He’s probably gone off to find more liquor,” I warned. “I expect he’ll be back.”
“Thank you for stepping in. I’m not much for physical confrontations in general.”
“Didn’t think you were.” Suddenly it mattered that he not think me a common street brawler. “Nor am I, when it comes to that. But you can’t back down from a bully like Elmer or he’ll never let up on you.”
“I know. I’d have managed him if I’d had to, but I’m glad you were here.” He smiled, really smiled for the first time, and it went straight through me. “Though I’m sorry your sister had to hear all that.”
Almond had spent the entire ruckus with Elmer just paging through the tree book, off in her own world. “She didn’t pay it no mind at all. She surely loves your book.”
The healer looked down at Almond, her nose riveted in a picture of a tree with green leafy branches sweeping gracefully to the ground as though it was living rain. “She can’t read yet, can she?”
“No, sir. She’ll start to school in the spring. The school don’t have any books like that one, though.” My eyes drank in the long shelf of books again. “Nor near so many as you have here. Are all these yours?”
“Oh, no. About half of the medical texts belong to Jeannie—sorry, I mean Healer Findlay. Some are mine, though. I brought them with me when I came here. Would you like to borrow one?”
Books are rare. Most families don’t own more than a Bible, and quite a few not even that. When the Ice come on so sudden and the cold looked to last forever, folks panicked and burned darn near anything that would burn, books included. That Healer Landers, no, that Callan—I forced myself to think the name—would lend a book to a grubby boy who was a virtual stranger, well, that set me back, and he could see it in my face.
“I mean it. I can tell about people, whether they’re book people or not. And you are. I trust you. Go on, take one.” His slender hand traced enticingly over the spines of the books. All older than Grandmam, likely. It would be worth a fortune in the cities, this collection.
“I wouldn’t know what to take.” I moved closer to him, examining the row of titles and authors. The nearness of his body was comforting, like a warming pan in my bed of a cold night and yet disquieting somehow at the same time. I recognized one of the authors’ names. “Mark Twain.”
“Oh yes. Huckleberry Finn. That’s wonderful. Have you read anything by Twain before?”
I nodded. “The school’s got a copy of Tom Sawyer that I must’ve read twenty times. Is this sort of the same?”
He pulled down the book, a tan colored hardback with a picture of two boys, one black, one white, on a raft. “It’s got some of the same characters, but it’s a much richer story, far more a ‘grown-up’ book. I think you’ll like it.”
Our hands touched briefly as he handed me the volume. He looked me straight in the eye and I was lost in a dazzle of blue. I could feel my heart pounding in my ribcage as though I’d run a hard mile. “Thanks,” I said, and looked down, suddenly shy.
“I’m happy to do it—maybe we can talk about it, when you’re done.” He turned away and began washing his hands in one of two basins set out on the table, not looking at me anymore, as though he was somehow embarrassed too. “Not too many people around here are interested in books.”
“Kind of hard to be interested in something you ain’t g...don’t have.” I never bothered much with proper speech, not even in the schoolroom, though I knew it right enough. Grandmam hated how we talked, so with her I forced the patterns and rhythms of the country down so she could pretend that the world hadn’t never changed and her kin weren’t ignorant hillbillies. It mattered with her. And for some reason, it mattered now, with Callan.
“That’s true enough. I was raised surrounded by books, so I forget things are different here.”
I wanted to ask about his childhood, would have loved to sit down with a hot mug of chicory or sassafras tea and listen to that voice for hours, but Almond was waiting, and I was pretty sure Callan had work to do. For that matter, so did I.
“How much do we owe you for Almond?”
There was a homemade bead abacus on the table, but Callan didn’t seem to need it. “Are you paying in trade or cash?”
“Either one, whichever you prefer.” Though it was still being issued by the government, cash money was rare. Most folks did their business in trade, but Mam got cash money for the wool she sold to the cities and Pa and I for the furs we trapped in winter, so we usually had coin.
“Five dollars cash, then, please. So few people have money, and I think we’ve about reached our limit of dried meat for this year.” He made a face, and as I counted out the worn coins, I had a thought.
“I don’t imagine Healer Findlay’s much good in the kitchen.”
“Neither of us are what you’d call chefs, but we make do.” He touched Almond on the head and she looked up, startled, as though she’d been in another world. “You can look at the book again next time you come, Miss Almond. Or I have a nice one with flowers you might like.”
“Thank you, Healer,” she said, and her little arms came round and gave him a hug. He responded, kissing the top of her head.
“Come to dinner, then.” I weren’t a sick child, didn’t need comforting like Almond, so why in the name of all heavens did I suddenly want to trade places with my baby sister? “My Mam’s a wonderful cook, and besides, Pa wanted me to see if you’d come up and have a look at my Grandmam. She’s doing poorly.” I knew Pa had his mind set on Healer Findlay, but I wanted Callan. Wanted him to meet my family, to see my home as I’d seen his.
He lifted Almond off the table and set her on the floor. “All right. It will have to be tomorrow though, as I can’t leave town with Healer Findlay gone.”
“Right,” I agreed. “Elmer Casteel might get a hangnail or something.”
He laughed again, and so did I, and so did Almond, though she had no idea what she was laughing over. “It was nice to meet you, David.”
“Yeah. Nice to know you, too. Callan.” I said the name slowly, like we said ‘amen’ at the end of the blessing, and I held the sound of it on my tongue, wanting to keep the memory of the word locked there. He walked us to the front door and I could feel him, watching me ride away.
The schoolyard was chock full of children out for their afternoon recess, so I waved to Benny C, who was standing against a wall with his friends, trying to look tough. I didn’t see Delia or Ruby, but a passel of girls was clumped together by the well, so I figured they was there somewhere. Almond made noises like she wanted to get down and play, but I kept her firm in front of me, wrapped in her coat and sucking on one of the horehound candies Callan had given her.
“No, Almond. You’ll go to school in the spring, and then you can play on the yard.” It was near time for the school year to end, just another week or two, and then the cold would keep the young ones indoors till spring. Grandmam says the school year used to run September to June and the summer was free. Before she started to get so forgetful, she’d tell stories of long lazy days chasing through the woods wearing hardly nothing at all, splashing in the creeks and swimming in something called a swimming pool, a type of false pond with clean, clear water.
Nowadays, the water never gets warm enough in these parts that you’d willingly dunk yourself in it, so I didn’t know how to swim, nor did anyone I knew, but Grandmam made it sound like heaven, floating weightless in warm water with the sun beating down on you. Nowhere to go, nothing to do but rest. I couldn’t conceive of it. There was always chores, always work to be done.
I wondered if Callan knew how to swim—he’d said he grew up surrounded by books, and that probably meant somewhere to the south of us, so it could be. As Lightning meandered down Main Street, I took Huckleberry Finn from inside my coat and looked at the two boys on the raft. What would that be like, two friends floating down the river into who knew what sort of adventure? If I hadn’t had Almond in front of me, I’d have started reading right then.
“David!” It was Benny C, hurrying down from the schoolyard. “I almost forgot—Ma said for you to stop at the General, the R&A man’s supposed to be in town with some new sort of wheat seed. She wants you to get some.”
The Department of Reintroduction and Agriculture’s forever trying to improve on the wheat and corn strains, make them more fit for the new climate, but it don’t really seem to have worked yet. They get something that grows fine in a lab, but out here, where you can’t predict the weather two days in a row, and where even in dead summer, a freak storm’s likely to drop snow without warning, it’s another story. But they keep trying, and so do we, as I’m fond of wheat bread when I can get it.
Haig’s General Store is on the opposite end of Main from the healer’s house, the last shop but one before you take the road back up the hill to our place. Only the tiny cottage where Taylor Mills attempts to eke out a living as an artist and jeweler stands beyond it. I expect he’d do much better over in Richmond or in the Southlands—we’ve not much extra money for fancy things, nor for the portraits he makes, though I’ve heard they’re mighty fine. But he was born in these parts, so I suppose that’s why he sticks it out. Home means something to most of us.
The General is a squared up log house that’s been built on over the years as trade has flourished. There’s a livery stable to the rear and a long fence in front of the storefront that I tied Lightning to, then deposited Almond in a corner of the porch and wrapped her up in both our coats, though the sun had come out and it wasn’t too awfully cold for October.
“Is there pictures in your book, David?” she asked.
There were. I weren’t happy about giving it up to her—having it near made me feel like I was still back at the office listening to Callan talk, but it would keep her quiet and still, so I handed it to her, warning her to take care of it.
The store was crowded with people, with the R&A man set up at the little table Mister Haig saved for the purpose. He must’ve just finished his talk, and was taking questions. All I wanted was to get my seed and get out—I’m not much of a farmer; neither’s Pa, really. But most of the crowd was claim farmers, always eager for any advantage they could get, for they had to produce enough crop to sell in order to keep title to their land.
A few of the men, friends of Pa’s, spoke my name and touched their hats as I worked my way to the front, and I spoke back in turn. I had been out of school for almost two years now, doing a man’s turn at our place for longer, but with these men I felt like a child, and expected I’d still a boy to them even when my hair had gone all grey.
“My question,” a thin voice cut through the crowd, “is what’s the R&A going to do about those dragons?”
I recognized the speaker as one of the claim farmers, though I couldn’t put name to face. Immediately as he spoke you could feel the chill spread through the room, like when the pond iced over and everything froze, waiting.
“Dragons?” From where I stood, I could see the R&A man—he’d been talking quietly to Mark Bevins, a slight young farmer just starting out who’d been a year ahead of me at school, but when he heard the word ‘dragons’ he shut up right quick and his face turned pasty white. “I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about. There are no such things as dragons.”
That got a reaction. You could hear rumbling about the scale on display down at the schoolhouse, and one of the claim farmers must have gone out with the posse, as he was shouting about how big they were up close. Joe Haig, who owned the store, came out from behind the counter kind of like he was ready to protect the R&A man if things went sour.
“No dragons? Tell that to little Lorna Massie, you pompous ass!” The shouting was growing louder.
The man was sweating, little beads of moisture clinging to his bushy moustache and sliding down his jowls. “I’m quite sure you’re mistaken. What you’re imagining to be a dragon is likely just a large turkey vulture or buzzard.”
I snorted at that. It’d be some turkey vulture with a wingspan as wide as a house. “Well, I know vultures and I’ve seen these things, Mister, and they’re not vultures.”
There were murmurs of agreement, but the man looked at me, eyes narrowing as though to reproach me for speaking up in this adult company. Then he smiled, taking in my shabby country clothes. “Sounds like someone’s been reading too many fairy tales in the schoolhouse.”
Elmer Casteel would’ve hit him. But you don’t get anywhere with people if you allow them to rile you up. I smiled back. “So you’re saying the R&A don’t know nothing about these dragons? They’re not some new species you’re trying to establish?” For they did that, too; bred and relocated game and farm animals, supposedly for our benefit.