the whole house. “Julie and I spend our days sweeping it up.”
Glancing at Virgil, she rubbed one side of her nose with her knuckles as if to rub away a soot smear. He recognised the gesture as slight embarrassment and he understood. Carrie-Anne wasn’t really one for words. Not that she couldn’t hold a conversation if she wanted. Just she was a girl who spoke with her eyes, or a wisp of laughter, or the sorcery of her tongue at his navel.
Jos was talking now. Thanks to Carrie-Anne, the old gal had been lulled into a softer frame of mind. Conducting a symphony of science with her cutlery, she appeared intent on using her niece as a sounding board for the plethora of geological theories Virgil had helped her construct.
“...over-intensive arable farming methods. I told Bobby Buford so two years ago when he still had land worth ploughing and hadn’t pigs shitting over every inch of it. Drain the land of mineral, strip it of ground cover, and you’re gonna get a wind tunnel. All’s needed was a turn up in temperature and lack of rain, and, hell, I told them!” Jos screwed up her face, itself parched of moisture.
“But as I said, Aunt Josephine, there’s been no wind. Just this thick baking in.”
Carrie-Anne’s gaze shifted towards him as she spoke. Virgil felt the same mix of emotion he’d felt when he’d stood on the porch a couple of hours earlier and soaked her in. Everything had misted into the background except Carrie-Anne. The only thing worth seeing. After so many hours spent in twilight underground, he’d fed on the colours offa her. Then Wesley had stepped out onto the porch, and the mist and colours evaporated like a broken spell. Only Carrie-Anne’s tangibility had remained. He’d longed to mould her with his hands like wet sand.
“The wind will come,” he said softly. He carved at the lump of roast pig on his plate again.
“And when it does, we’ll all be blown away like stupid shitting pigs in straw houses,” cut in Jos. She scraped back her chair. “Now I’ve a mind to get Julie to cut me a slice of that pie I smelt baking earlier.”
Passing Virgil, she put a hand to his shoulder. “You want?”
It was as close to an apology as he’d get from Josephine Splitz.
Virgil glanced sideways, his mouth softened. “No. No thank you, Jos.”
He dared believe she might disappear into the kitchen and stay there, stuffing her face with pie, while he and Carrie-Anne got to sit together and talk some. But then Jos paused in the doorway.
“Go to the workshop and get all maps sketched in the last two months, Virgil. We musta missed that seam of gravel somewhere. And no...” She raised a hand to block his objection. “Tomorrow won’t do. We ain’t seeing the warmth of our beds ‘til I’m satisfied we’re not gonna drill a goddamn minefield in two days time.”
“Two days? But that’s a Sunday?”
Virgil could see Carrie-Anne turning her mind inside out in search of arguments against.
“I promised we’d all be at chapel Palm Sunday. Our attendance – or lack of it – has been noted, and not just by Preacher Richards. Folk talk, Aunt Josephine, and talk leads to trouble.”
“That it does, Carrie-Anne, and it’s gonna lead you into a great deal of it right now if you don’t stop gassing and get yourself to bed.” Jos’s eyes shone out like coal chips.
Virgil watched Carrie-Anne intently. His gal would never show that dry old coot what she felt on the inside. Oh no, she’d keep it stitched into the flesh lining over her heart and ribs.
He, on the other hand, knew no such restraint. But just as he would’ve happily strangled Jos on the spot, the old woman let her shoulders stoop. She looked incredibly tired all of a sudden.
“Please, Carrie-Anne. We’re out to save lives here. And that includes protecting our own.”
Saturday. Town Day. Once upon a time, Main Street would’ve thrummed with the footfall of folk who’d journeyed to Bromide to trade, swap and stockpile. The Ice Man would have busied his pick. The Blacksmith would have chipped at his anvil. The pharmacist would have returned a whisper across the counter and deposited some bottle or canister of powder into a bag which he’d carefully fold over. The girl at the Dry Goods store would have dragged the fabric bundle off the shelf and measured, snipped and ripped. In every store and business premises, proprietors and staff would have busied themselves to satisfy Saturday’s rush. Meanwhile, townsfolk and families from surroundings farmsteads would have gathered to speculate, commiserate, and nose into one another’s business. Once upon a time.
But Bromide had gone from riches to rags. All that remained of Town Day were a series of ‘
“Johnson said his cattle went on and ate the grass despite the dust. Lost half the herd to mud balls in their stomachs,” said George West, a pharmacist who’d stayed on after the drug store closed to farm his own patch of land before the drought hit.
Ben nodded. “Franklin Herby had the same, ‘cept he bailed a month ago. Packed Rita and the boys up in that old cart that was his daddy’s, hitched a nag to it, and moseyed on out. Rumour is he got a great aunt owns a fruit farm in California. So I’m guessin’ he’s all made up now.”
“Don’t you be so sure, Ben. I’m inclined to believe the news on the radio and as far as folk makin’ their fortunes out west, yeah, they get work on the fruit farms but they don’t make enough offa it to keep a bag-a-bones donkey in feed.” Quarry worker, Samuel O’Ryan, eyed the preacher’s son.
“Yeah, I guess.” Ben bowed his head. But something must have itched at him and he added, “Ask me, folk should have more faith.”
“Easy for you to say when your daddy’s the preacher. Come judgement day, you and your daddy’ll be sitting pretty on the right hand of the lord. Rest of us, well, we’ll starve to death and find ourselves looking up at ya from the pit of Hell,” hollered Dixon Goodwin, tinker and sometime yard’s man, who had the devil’s gift for saying exactly what would stir a man.
“Pit of Hell? Ain’t we there already?” Samuel beat his hands. His laughter had a sour note, but was echoed by the harrumphs of the others.
Drawing on his cigarette, eyes pinched against the smoke, Dixon kept on staring at the preacher’s son.
“Can’t but wonder though, Ben. While the rest of us are working the scrap of land we got left, or raising swine on soap weed, or fixin’ to leave the only home we’ve ever known, how’d you and your daddy manage to keep your shoes so nicely shined and sweet potatoes on the table? No, no, now...” Dixon raised his hands against an undercurrent of complaint. “I ain’t criticising Preacher Richards. He’s a man of the lord. I’m just interested to know if the preacher’s boy thinks he suffers like the rest of us.”
Ben eased back ox shoulders. “Me and my daddy seen suffering aplenty, Dixon. We take relief supplies to farmsteads as far out as the abandoned Indian academy. We’re the ones that dig a hole for them that have died of the dust pneumonia, who say a prayer o’er them. As for our shoes being shined, I was raised to mind what my neighbour thinks of me. As for sweet potato...”
“Why’re you picking on Ben here? Flea biting your ass?” shot Samuel, who apparently saw no good reason why Ben should explain what food ended up on his father’s table. The quarry man added, “You know darn well if there’s any fresh vegetables to be had around here, they’re from Miss Splitz’s homestead.”
George and a couple of others nodded.
Dixon hacked and spat into the dust. “Just ‘cause I got a spot as the new yard man out at old woman’s Splitz’s place, you think I’m in the know?”
“Aren’t ya?” shot one of six quarry lads sat in the road.
“Aren’t I what?”
“Aren’t you the one to fill us in on the place?”
“Whadaya wanna know?” Dixon kept a smile behind his teeth. No harm in splashing out a little gold dust about Boar House and its residents. He plumped out his chest. “The old gal’s machines? They’re helluva big, I tell ya. Steam-breathing hogs the lot. She’s got ‘em holed up in a workshop out back. As I heard it from their last yardman, place is lined with tools plus a whole host of thingamajigs Miss Splitz engineered alongside the hired help – guy called Virgil Roberts?” Dixon weighted his voice just right. Outsiders were the worst sort of intrusion when folk were down on their luck.
