End Times (4 page)

The bus sputtered through a turnaround, past a sign welcoming them to the town of Carbon County (pop.: 3,901; elev.: 6,394 ft.), and into the dusty parking lot of Elmer’s Gas ’n’ Grocery. A recent rain had washed through town, and a single, golden ray of sunlight peered through the still-steely sky.

“You got a bag under here?” the driver asked as Daphne climbed off the bus, the trumpet blasts growing shriller with the first cool breath of fresh mountain air.

She nodded.

“Well, hurry up and get it out—those horns are starting to give me the creeps.”

Daphne grabbed her duffel from beneath the bus and stretched her legs. A sudden high note sounded as she glanced around at the parking lot’s cracked pavement and the tree growing through the window of the abandoned Sleep-EZ Motel across the street.

“There she is!” Uncle Floyd called from across the parking lot. He lumbered toward her, his face open in a wide, affable grin, and wrapped her in a bear hug. His hair had gone gray around the temples, and he walked with a bit of a limp, but he still had the same broad shoulders and mile-wide smile she remembered from her childhood. The same as her dad. “Just in time to witness this miracle from God. Good to see you again, niece!”

Burying her face in the wood-smoky smell of his plaid flannel shirt, Daphne felt her shoulders relax for the first time in months. To Uncle Floyd, she wasn’t a burden or a victim or a murderer. To him, she was still just Daphne.

He held her at arm’s length. “Lookit you: a grown woman. Little skinny, but a couple weeks of Aunt Karen’s cooking will fix that.” He laughed good and deep.

“Do you know where that noise is coming from?” she asked as the bus pulled away, kicking up a cloud of dust as it turned onto Buzzard Road.

Floyd grinned. “Isn’t it amazing? It just started, practically the moment I got in the truck to come pick you up. It’s like a sign from God, coming from the heavens.”

Daphne frowned as she followed him to his ancient, rust-spattered pickup. “But there has to be an explanation,” she said. “What about the high school band? Maybe they’re practicing?”

“Doubt it,” Floyd said amiably, hoisting himself into the driver’s seat. “Music got cut from the school budget years ago.”

Daphne rolled down her window, letting the long metallic notes sweep in on a brisk, clean breeze. “Maybe it’s a trick of the wind?” she suggested. The air felt so fresh and pure on her face, it seemed almost possible that it could manufacture a sound exactly like a trumpet fanfare.

Floyd’s laugh rolled deep and rich from his chest. “Could be,” he surmised. “But I’ve lived here my whole life, and I’ve never heard anything even remotely like it.”

He swung the pickup onto Main Street, passing the movie theater where Daphne remembered going to see cartoons with the Peytons as a child. It was boarded up, a lone
P
hanging haphazardly from the marquee. Beyond it, more stores were shuttered permanently, with dusty
For Rent
signs in the windows and tattered awnings flapping in the wind. She noticed with a pang that the ice cream parlor where she’d always ordered a chocolate cone with double rainbow sprinkles had been converted to a pawnshop—and even that looked like it hadn’t been open in months. The village that she remembered as a candy-colored vacation mecca seemed more like a sleepy town ravaged by the recession, a drive-by on Highway 80 somewhere between Cheyenne and Salt Lake City.

“Hey, Hal!” Floyd called to a man sitting on a bench outside the hardware store. Daphne vividly remembered visiting her uncle there, the way he’d held her up to see the wall of flashlights and brightly colored electrical tape and helped her open the gleaming drawers full of every size and type of screw, proudly explaining to her how he’d organized them all himself.

“Floyd!” Hal, whose big, round ears stuck out of the side of his head like a pair of bolts and washers, creaked to his feet. He wore a faded flannel shirt and overalls, and the grin under his baseball cap was enormous. “Can you believe this?” He gestured at the sky. “Like it’s coming straight from heaven!”

Floyd slowed to a stop, his engine idling. “Like a sign from God,” he agreed.

“Straight out of the book of Revelations!” Hal peered into the truck. “Say, is this your little niece? She ain’t so little anymore!” He grinned at Daphne. “Last time I saw you, you had a bullfrog in your hands that you refused to let go. Did you bring this miracle in with you on the bus, or what?”

Daphne shook her head. She dimly remembered Hal as her uncle’s boss, the owner of the hardware store. “I’m clueless,” she said. “Maybe there’s a band or orchestra visiting from out of town?”

“Visiting Carbon County?” Hal whooped, underscoring a series of low, brassy notes that seemed to boom straight from the sky. “That’s a good one. Wherever they’re from, I can guarantee there’s even less to see here.”

“Well, I should get Daphne home to unpack—and see what the missus has to say about all this.” Floyd pointed at the sky. “Ten bucks says she’s already called Pastor Ted.”

“That’s one bet I’m not willing to take,” Hal chuckled. “See you around, Floyd.”

They chugged on down the street, the trumpets waxing and waning like a fire alarm all around them. Daphne was starting to feel like the music was following her—no matter how far they drove, it always seemed to be coming from just over the next bend.

“It’s good the hardware store’s still open,” she said. “You must be glad to be working.”

Uncle Floyd’s grin disappeared, and the lines in his face grew heavier. “Well, Daphne, I guess that’s something I should tell you. Times are a little tough around here, and business hasn’t been so good lately.”

Foreboding tickled the back of her throat. “Are you only part-time now?” she guessed.

“Not exactly, no.” He concentrated heavily on the road, not meeting her eyes. “Hal kept me on for as long as he could, but it’s all he can do to keep the lights on. I’ve been out of work since December.”

The tickle in her throat turned to a full-fledged ache. Why hadn’t Floyd mentioned that when she called? If she’d known the family was struggling, she would have found somewhere else to go. But before she could ask, Floyd pulled the pickup past a stand of scrubby pines and up to a narrow trailer home propped up on cinder blocks. Auto parts, old metal lawn chairs, and a long-forgotten birdbath rusted on patches of dry brown grass out front.

“Here we are.” His tone, behind a jovial grin, was almost apologetic. “Home sweet home, trumpet fanfare and all.”

Daphne gaped. “You’re still living in the trailer?” she asked before she could stop herself. The last summer she’d visited, when she was eight, the kitchen table had been spread with blueprints for the house Floyd planned to build. He’d been so proud when he pointed to the guest room where her parents would sleep, then to the square that would be Janie’s room, big enough for two twin beds and all the sleepovers the girls could dream of.

Again, Floyd avoided her eyes. “I never could quite scrape together the money,” he said as the mysterious trumpets sounded a mournful note. “Tax rates went up, and the bank’s been pretty stingy with loans. But you should see what Karen’s done with the place—we got a new living room set a few years back, and everyone swears the foldout’s as comfy as a real bed. You’ll be snug as a bug in a rug.”

He grabbed her bag, and Daphne followed him up the scrubby path to the trailer, her head still spinning. Nothing was the way she’d imagined it back in Detroit, where the glimmer of Carbon County and her uncle’s welcoming smile had gotten her through so many of the long, uncertain nights since Jim’s stabbing. It hadn’t even occurred to her that the Peytons might not be doing well themselves.

“There you are!” Karen Peyton threw open the trailer’s door and wrapped Daphne in a cinnamon-scented hug. The trumpet blasts disappeared momentarily into the folds of her aunt’s fleshy shoulders as Karen squeezed her tight.

“Welcome back, dear.” Aunt Karen pulled away, still grasping Daphne’s wrist in one of her pudgy hands. Wispy blond hair flew around her face, and a basket of cartoon kittens grinned from her sweatshirt. “Can you believe this . . . this . . . ?” She waved her hand in the air, at a loss for words.

“This miracle?” Floyd supplied.

“Miracle, racket, whatever you want to call it!” Karen hustled them inside, letting the screen door slam behind them. “Me an’ Janie’ve been on the phone with everyone, and of course the first person I called was Pastor Ted.”

Uncle Floyd caught Daphne’s eye and winked.

“Does he agree?” Floyd asked. “This could be that sign from God he’s been talking about all these years?”

“Well, he doesn’t know for sure, of course. Some folks say it’s gotta be a busload of trumpet players or something, some trick of the wind. But as far as I’m concerned, there’s really only one explanation: The good Lord is trying to send us a message, and He found the absolute loudest possible way to do it.” She raised her head to the trailer’s low, curved ceiling. “We hear you up there, okay, Lord?” she said. “And we’re ready and willing to do your bidding, always have been and always will be—so you can stop driving us nuts with that noise already!”

“For real!”

Over her aunt’s shoulder, Daphne saw her cousin Janie coming toward them from the hall. The towheaded girl who had once made Daphne call her Princess Janie was still blond, but now her color came with hair spray and dark roots. Her eyes were ringed in thick blue liner and accentuated with layers of mascara, and peachy gloss coated her lips. She’d filled out, too, with big breasts and pudgy shoulders and . . .

“Oh my God.” Daphne set down her bag and stared at the bulge under her cousin’s top. “You guys didn’t tell me Janie was pregnant!”

“We don’t take the Lord’s name in vain in this house,” Janie said sunnily. “And—yep, surprise! I’m gonna have a baby boy.”

Daphne’d been wrong. This was all wrong. She’d be an imposition on the Peytons, taking up space they didn’t have in a trailer that could barely accommodate them in the first place, stealing food from a baby that needed it way more than she did. She never should have come. The trailer felt like it was closing in on her, even more claustrophobic than her mother’s apartment. A claw of panic seized at her throat as she realized she’d have to leave, to find a whole new place for herself in the world, one without any friends or family at all. Maybe it was what she deserved.

“I’m sorry—I didn’t realize,” she babbled. “You should have told me. I could have gone somewhere else . . .”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Janie swooped in to give Daphne a hug. “We wanted it to be a surprise! There’s plenty of room for all of us here—like Pastor Ted says, if there’s room in your heart, there’s room in your home. Now come on, I’ll show you where I cleaned off a shelf in my room for your stuff.” She eyed Daphne’s duffel. “Although if that’s all you brought, I guess that’s a good thing, ’cause I’m a bit of a slob. So can you get a load of these trumpets or what? It’s all anyone in town can talk about . . .”

The claw eased its grip on Daphne’s throat as Janie led her down the hall, chattering the entire way: about clothes, the ordeals of pregnancy, and the kooky trumpet sounds that still filled the air. If the Peytons minded having her there, they sure did a good job of hiding it.
I’ll help out however I can
, Daphne promised herself.
I’ll do the dishes, try to get a job—maybe even start a garden out back.

Daphne reminded herself that even if the situation wasn’t ideal, she was safe with the Peytons. It was time to forget about what had happened back in Detroit, to forget the nightmare of the past nine years. It was time to be a Peyton again.

THE trumpets continued as Janie showed Daphne around the trailer, serenading them as her cousin pointed out the holder for her toothbrush in the closet-sized bathroom and how to kick the stubborn leg on the foldout couch where she’d be sleeping in the living room. As cramped as the trailer was, she could tell that the Peytons had tried hard to make it feel like a home. The pint-size kitchen was painted a cheery yellow, and clean lace curtains hung over the windows above the sink and built-in banquette.

Two steps away, the living room was stuffed with plush, rose-colored furniture. Daphne saw her own seven-year-old face grinning from a photo on the wall, clutching an ice cream cone in one hand and her father’s swim trunks in the other, the entire family wet and sunburned and smiling. The photo was surrounded by Janie’s school pictures, framed certificates, and inspirational posters, and a big wooden cross decorated in hand-painted vines and flowers dominated the wall.

The trumpets blared through dinner, interrupting with blast after triumphant blast as Janie tried to lead the family in a lengthy grace blessing the Lord, the food, the baby, the baby’s daddy, Cousin Daphne’s poor dead stepdad, Pastor Ted and the entire congregation of the Carbon County First Church of God, and also Wal-Mart for having such cheap maternity clothes. Daphne had just finished doing the dishes when a bright green pickup truck decorated with shiny black lightning careened into the driveway, a dirt bike strapped to the back. An oversize guy in an Abercrombie T-shirt and Carhartt jacket, with hulking shoulders and a thick, pink neck, came lumbering out.