“This... Virgil. He a relation?” piped up another quarry lad.
Dixon ground his smoke under a boot heel. He breathed in slow and took his time. Wasn’t often folk listened without him having to shove his opinion up under their noses.
“No relation,” he confided.
The men hushed. Dixon could hear the womenfolk over at the store, their soft laughter alongside the chirruping of children.
“Josephine Splitz hired him in from some big college outta state,” he said to the men surrounding him. “Place called Stanford.”
The quarry boys kept on chewing their tobacco like calves on the cud. Only Ben got a knowing look. Dixon paid him no mind.
“Anyways. Pair of ‘em have butchered the field in front of Boar House good and proper with a great big drilling machine. The Burrower they call it. This Virgil and Miss Splitz, they climb inside and drive it underground for days, leaving Miss Nightingale to keep house.”
One mention of Miss Nightingale and he’d really got their attention now, these men with unsatisfied needs and empty pockets.
Not everyone was seduced though. Dixon dragged the back of his hand across his nose and got a whiff of disproval off Ben, Samuel and George.
Samuel beat his big hands again. This time the gesture was threatening. “I ain’t interested. Folks’ business is their own.”
“Unless it has a bearin’ on others!”
Reg Wilhoit made his way into the group with that stiff-legged, foot-scrapping motion of his. He halted, one hip at an awkward angle. “Jos should be forced to stop with the crazy machines. Liable to get someone killed.”
The quarry boys had sense enough to hunch their shoulders and look away. Samuel swallowed the last of his soda, eyes scrunched shut against the sun’s glare, then peered on over at the newcomer.
“It ain’t up to us to tell grown folk what to do in their own time on their own land, Reg,” he said quietly. “Just as no one had the right to warn you off working them machines before they decided to take a piece of you?”
“Thought I was helping Jos mine for new branches off Bromide Spring,” Reg embarked, deaf or bloody- minded. “Ten years ago, folk thought we could breathe new life into this town’s dry and weary bones and tempt the visitors back. Least that’s the way I saw it. ‘Course it wasn’t me that got to go underground in a giant metal worm.”
“That the problem, Reg?” Samuel’s tone stayed gentle. His words were more caustic. “You jealous some outta towner gotta ride in the big machines?”
“And lose my life, not just a pair of useful legs? No thanks, Sammy. I got crushed enough under that iron hoisting crane ten years ago. Just as well too. I’ve learnt to stand back and see Jos Splitz for what she really is.”
Dixon wore a sly look. “Miss Splitz, hey? Well, what’d ya know. Seems even old folk gotta get their kicks.” He let his mouth hang open.
“Mind outa the gutter, Dixon Goodwin. I’ll tell ya what Jos Splitz is. She’s a conjuress! A leech!” A fleck of spit escaped Reg’s sunken mouth. Shifting his balance awkwardly, he cast wild eyes about the group. “Not one of ya’s got the first clue what that dame’s doing over at Boar House.”
“I know plenty,” cut in Dixon with a grimace that suggested it was his time to talk and weren’t no cripple gonna shake him off his perch. “I know Miss Splitz is spitting mad at Virgil ‘cause he might’ve broke something on her burrowing machine. Heard her riding him for it when I went to the kitchen last night to get a glass of lemonade offa their house negro. I know Miss Spitz calls us farming folk a bunch of shitting pigs, blames us for killing off the land and leaving ourselves with nothing but dust.”
Dixon wove his words well. There wasn’t a man present who didn’t tuck a frown into their face or sheesh through their teeth or curse a dry old coot who’d got no right to judge.
Reg rounded on the group, dragged feet drawing snake-coils in the dirt. “There was nothing natural about the way that big old crane unpinned from its earth footings to come crashing down on me...”
“We gotta go there again, Reg?” It was the turn of George, ex-pharmacist, failed farmer, to roll his eyes.
Reg rolled his own back. “I know, it’s the word of a mad old cripple against those respectable whores at Boar House.”
“Shut your mouth, Reg. There’s an awful bad smell coming out of it.” Samuel threw out his arms. “Wasn’t a soul near you when the accident happened. Said so yourself all them years ago.” His stance was reinforced by mutterings from the quarry boys. Miss Splitz could go hang, but no one badmouthed a doll like Carrie-Anne. Not when there were so few young and single women left in Bromide for a fella to set his hat at.
“Yup, I sure did say as much.” Reg drawled his words. He seemed to burrow into himself. “But there is change afoot and Miss Splitz and her apprentice are at the heart of it. I feel them breaking through the earth beneath our feet more often these days. Vibrations offa those great tunnelling machines work their way up through the flesh and the metal and make my legs cramp.”
“What they burrowing for anyways?” said a quarry boy.
“My daddy says they are investigating why the land’s gotten so barren in these parts. And, yeah, you’re right about hunting out more branches of the Bromide Spring, Reg, but way I heard it, Miss Splitz’s thinking is to siphon water from deep below ground and find a way to feed it in beneath the crops since surface spray ‘d evaporate too quick.” Ben realised the entire group was fixated on what he had to say. He faltered. “Well, it goes something like that.”
Reg scrubbed at his cotton hair with two hands. “Except maybe it’s Miss Splitz’s mining activities which drained the land in the first place. Ever think of that?”
Over by the store, the women were creating their very own storybook, layering it with soft tones and sudden laughter. The children had sticks and were offering up war cries. Reg’s inconstant eyes flicked about the now- hushed menfolk.
“Nah, you didn’t think of that, hey?” He nodded sagely. “As I said, a conjuress and a leech.”
The garden at Boar House was as sweet-smelling and fertile as any botanical institute. Either side the lawn was a great spread of Indian Blanket, hundreds of small pink suns tipped with gold. The leafy vines of Morning Glory tendrilled the wooden fence, flowers peeping out like midnight-coloured eyes. Potato ferns filled eight large beds. Peppers and egg plant gave off their grassy, sap-like scent.
While the rest of the panhandle was barren, Boar House garden flourished for two reasons, the first of which was Josephine Splitz’s patented sprinkler tripod and underground irrigation system of interlocking copper tubes fed from giant water butts, and the second being that, when it came to dirt and what grew in it, Julie Sanders had the Midas touch.
“Tastes like the blood of summer.” Carrie-Anne manipulated what was left of the tomato with her tongue.
“Here.” Julie dug a hand through the vines and snapped off another. She offered it. “A fresh sacrifice?”
Carrie-Anne put the fruit to her nose. It smelt of the rich red dirt of her childhood, when the plains of wheat and prairie grass were flowing.
“They’re going under again. Virgil and Aunt Josephine, I mean.” She kept the tomato under her nose like smelling salts. “I asked them not to since it’s Palm Sunday tomorrow. Their absence from church’ll be even more marked than usual. Folk are already noticing.”
“Then folk should learn to mind their own!” Julie snapped. She stared over at Carrie-Anne and added blankly, “Yeah, I see the glint of disapproval in your eye. A housemaid shouldn’t talk so about good white folk as fix their hair and attend the preacher’s sermon every Sunday.”
Carrie-Anne frowned. “I didn’t mean that, Julie.” She cupped the tomato in a palm. “You surprised me was all. Most days, you’re a ball of hot roast sunshine. It’s odd to see you in shadow.”
Julie raised her large bovine eyes to the endless blue overhead. “I apologise, Carrie-Anne. Something’s hunkered down in the air these last few days, niggling at me. Might just be a woman’s flush? Might be the dry heat?” She lowered her gaze to Carrie-Anne, who felt its touch like a mother’s hand. “What I do know, chile, is we can’t take much more. A storm’s needed. Even hail’d be better than this devil’s blanket we’re under!”
