End Times (13 page)

“A third ditch?”

“Bingo.” She started across the oilfield, pointing out landmarks along the way: the place where the derrick would go once it was trucked in, the company vehicles, the sheds where they kept the tools and calibrators and drilling mud. They crossed through the grove of pines and into the ravine behind the trailer, where Uncle Floyd had bought a small plaque to mark the spot where the oil had first been found.

“
Here God’s blessing touched us
,” Owen read.
“Site of the first Carbon County oil discovery, made by Daphne Peyton on May 28. And may His blessings keep coming.”

He turned to her. “You were the one who found the oil?”

“Not really.” She brushed some dirt from her sleeve, wondering what had possessed her to bring Owen to the ravine.

“That’s not what the plaque says.”

“Well, it was kind of a group effort,” she relented, telling him an abbreviated version of the story with Rick Bodey and the dipstick.

“And that’s how all this happened?” Owen gestured to the trailers and huts and rows of construction vehicles, the crews in hard hats bustling around.

“Basically, yeah.” Daphne looked down at the ground, where a faint slick of oil was still visible on the rocks. “It all started here.”

“That’s crazy.” Owen crouched in the ravine and touched the oil slick, a bemused smile on his face. “There was oil under here all along, and it took you to come along and realize it.”

He stood, examining his fingers where he’d touched the oil.

“Whoa.” His voice dropped, and a trace of fear flashed across his eyes. “That’s weird.”

Daphne looked at his hand, and a cold shudder of dread seized her body. On the tips of his fingers, where the oil should have been, was a shimmering patch of deep red blood.

She stood gazing at it for a long moment, waves of frigid nausea crashing in her stomach. A droplet fell from his hand to the ground, cascading in slow motion until it plopped red and ominous onto the stones below.

“I must have cut my hand on a rock,” Owen murmured, wiping the blood on his T-shirt so that it left a long, bright streak like a scar. His eyes had darkened to the color of moss in a rainstorm, and his playful smile was gone.

“Are you okay?” Daphne asked uncertainly. “There’s a first aid kit in every hut; we can go get you a Band-Aid.”

He nodded shakily. “Maybe that’s a good idea,” he said.

They hurried to the nearest trailer. Once inside, Daphne grabbed the first aid kit from the wall and riffled through it.

“Let me see,” she commanded, opening an antiseptic wipe.

Owen held out his hand, and she took it in hers, ignoring the prickles of heat that rushed up her arm. She examined his fingers closely, turning them over in her palm and swiping at the flesh carefully with the wipe.

But she couldn’t find any sign of a cut, not even the faintest scrape. His palms were rough and cool, with smooth callouses on his fingertips from the hours he put in at the track. But the skin was intact.

She glanced up at him to see if he was seeing what she was seeing, but he was looking at her. Her palms went clammy as their eyes met, and she quickly let go of his hand.

“We have to get back,” she said apologetically, tossing the unused Band-Aid in the trash and returning the first aid kit. “Dale will get mad.”

“It’s fine.” Owen was already pulling on his work gloves. His skin looked pale, but maybe it was just the trailer’s fluorescent lighting. “It was probably just one of those things that bleeds all over the place and then disappears, like a paper cut.”

“Probably,” Daphne agreed. They hurried back to the ditch, their banter forgotten in the strangeness of the incident and their rush to get back to work. But for the rest of the afternoon and into the early evening, as the ditch grew deeper and the ache in her arms became a burn and Owen worked silently and tirelessly by her side, Daphne couldn’t shake the image of the blood from her mind. There hadn’t been a cut—she was sure of it.

It was almost like the oil had turned to blood at his touch.

JANIE leaned close to the bathroom mirror, brushing sparkling shadow over her eyelids.

“You should let me do your makeup,” she called.

“Why?” Daphne stared up at the trailer’s ceiling, trying to muster the energy to sit up. It was Friday night, and she’d just come off a grueling shift at the rig that left every muscle in her body feeling like a stage for tap-dancing fire ants. “We’re just going to the track, right?”

“Oh, no reason.” There was something forced about Janie’s casual tone. “It’s just that you’re so pretty, and you never do anything about it. I could totally bring out your eyes.”

“Maybe next time.” Daphne felt bad turning Janie down: She knew it would make her cousin happy, and it was the least she could do while she was sleeping on the Peytons’ couch, eating their food, and keeping secrets from them about her past. But she was just too tired. She finally picked herself up off the couch, telling Janie she’d wait for her outside.

The trailer’s screen door banged shut as she stepped into the first golden tinge of sunset. One of the contractors waved as he hurried past, covered in dust and yelling into a walkie-talkie over the screech of static, heading toward the new oil derrick.

It had arrived that morning, trucked in on a doublewide flatbed surrounded by a phalanx of safety vehicles flashing amber lights. Now it sat in pieces about a half mile from the Peytons’ trailer, huge chunks of metal scaffolding waiting to be assembled into a tower that would reach ten stories into the sky.

She turned at the sound of Doug’s truck pulling into the driveway, spraying gravel as it skidded to a stop.

“Hey, Daff!” He leaned out the window, beady eyes grinning. “You ready for our hot date?” He licked his lips suggestively, and her stomach turned. Just looking at his oversize head made her feel ill.

“I’ll get Janie,” she said curtly. But her cousin had already emerged on the steps, stuffed into a hot pink sundress and blinking rapidly to dry her mascara.

“Hi, boys!” she called, waddling down the steps.

“Boys?” Daphne turned just in time to see Trey climb out of the truck, holding the door open to help them in. He wore a button-down shirt over khaki shorts, and his blond hair was combed neatly against his scalp.

“Hey,” he said to Daphne, ducking his head.

“Hi, Trey,” Daphne said, surprised. Nobody had told her he was catching a ride.

“You girls ready to roll?” Doug asked. He put the truck in reverse and backed up abruptly, gravel skittering against the windows.

“Watch it!” Janie called. “We don’t even have our seatbelts on yet!”

“Well, hurry up and buckle ’em.” Doug was already barreling down the road, swerving around a slow-moving water truck and jouncing over a series of potholes. Global Oil’s construction vehicles had chewed up the road to the consistency of hamburger meat, and it had developed a treacherous pattern of potholes in protest.

Daphne pressed her forehead to the glass and watched the dust clouds drift and the day fade and the low, scrappy mountains rush by. The scenery danced to a blur out the window, like a painting gone over one too many times with a brush. Her head thudded against the ceiling as they careened over another bump.

“What’s with the speeding?” She turned to Doug, rubbing her head and trying to keep the irritation out of her voice.

“What speeding?” His tone dripped with false innocence.

“You’re going really fast, and the roads suck now. You sure that’s safe with your baby momma in the car?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Doug stepped on the accelerator.

“You
are
going pretty fast,” Janie said tentatively. “Maybe you should—”

“I know how fast I’m going!” Doug snapped. His eyes in the rearview mirror narrowed into slits, and the back of his neck glowed an angry red. Janie ducked her head and began to cough, waving away the dust pouring in through the open window.

“Doug, slow
down
,” Daphne said through clenched teeth. “Janie’s
pregnant
, for chrissake!”

In the rearview mirror, Doug bared his teeth. “Listen—” he began.

Trey cleared his throat. “Hey, man, she’s right. Pregnant girls are more delicate.”

Doug’s glare turned to a silent hiss. He eased his foot off the gas, loosening his neck with a menacing crack. “Whatever,” he said. Daphne’s shoulders sagged in relief. “We’re almost there anyway.”

He turned onto a gnarled road that twisted up into the mountains. It was so narrow that the tree branches met above them, forming a dark tunnel through which only a mottled patchwork of light left sunspots on the ground.

“Where are we going?” Daphne asked. “This isn’t the way to the track.”

“Oh!” Janie turned to her, a slightly guilty look in her eye. “We actually, uh, thought we’d go check out the new house real quick. Just to, um, see how it’s coming along.”

Ever since Uncle Floyd and Vince Varley had shaken hands at the church picnic, Janie had been talking nonstop about the new house the Varleys planned to build with their share of the money. According to Janie, it was going to be modeled after a French castle, with real marble baths and a special wine refrigerator and a whole wing just for her and Doug and the new baby. Daphne didn’t think all the wine refrigerators in the world would make living with the Varleys worth it, but she’d managed to keep her mouth shut so far.

“Aren’t they still clear-cutting the land?” she asked. It seemed to her like the Varleys were putting the cart before the horse, starting to build before they had more than a verbal agreement in place. But maybe that was just how things worked in small towns.

“They’re done.” Doug smirked. “Wait’ll you see the view. It’ll be, y’know, romantic ’n’ crap.” He grinned at them in the rearview mirror, and Janie giggled.

Daphne looked from Doug to Trey to Janie and back again. Doug and Janie were repressing laughter, while Trey stared resolutely out the window.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“Doug’s family’s owned this land forever,” Janie said quickly, evading the question. “They’ve always wanted to build a house up on Elk Mountain—and now they can, thanks to you!”

“You mean, thanks to your dad,” Daphne corrected. It was bad enough that everyone thought she’d manifested the oil, but it
really
hadn’t been her choice to give half the money to the Varleys.

Doug eased the truck up a steep incline, past an earth-mover and logging truck crouched by the side of the road. Just when it felt like they couldn’t climb anymore, the road took a hairpin turn and flattened out in a wide dirt circle on the mountaintop. Orange tape marked the massive hole that would be the house’s foundation, and several bags of concrete were stacked at the edge of the tree line. Aside from that the space was clean and empty. Clear-cut.

“Here we are.” Doug cut the engine, and the sudden quiet wrapped around them like a quilt. The sun sat low in the sky, the color of a ripe nectarine, and a thin crescent moon had already begun to rise over the mountains.

“Let us out so we can see the view!” Janie chirped.

Trey fumbled with the handle, got it open, then caught his foot in the seatbelt, nearly falling face-first onto the gravel. Janie stifled a giggle as he righted himself and turned to offer his arm, his face tomato red. He helped Daphne down from the truck, his hand lingering on her elbow. She took a step forward, and then another.

Carbon County spread out below them, mountains fading to gentle rolling hills that eventually bottomed out into the flat, brown valley they called home. She could see the railroad tracks and the makeshift steeple on the Carbon County First Church of God, the flagpole in front of the high school and the pieces of the oil derrick waiting to be assembled.

Across the valley, the hills rose into jagged peaks, some still topped with the last vestiges of snow. Mountain lakes hovered in their crevices, still and shiny as pennies bouncing back the last light from the sun.

“Wow,” she said. “You guys weren’t kidding about the view.”

“Isn’t it amazing?” Janie agreed. “We all come up here for parties sometimes. It’s actually the first place me and Doug ever—well, you know!” She giggled.

“Wanna go relive the memories?” Doug appeared behind her and kissed her neck, a beer already sweating in his palm.

“Why, Doug, how dare you even insinuate!” Janie teased. She ducked out of reach of his lips and fixed her hair, still giggling.

“What, you’re gonna get all virtuous on me
now
?” Doug helped himself to a handful of her butt, and she leapt to the side, squealing.

“You stay away from me!” she cried, already trotting toward the woods.

“I’ll get you, and you’ll like it,” Doug retorted, chasing her into the shadows.

“Wait, where are you going?” Daphne called after them. The only answer was a frenzy of cracking twigs and giggles. As their laughter turned to slurps and sighs, she realized she was alone with Trey.

“What was
that
all about?” she asked, turning to him. “I thought we were going to the track.”