End Times (8 page)

They passed the trailer and descended into a small ravine. It looked like it may have been a creek once, long ago—small, smooth pebbles lined the bottom, and it cut through the land in a lazy, meandering arc—but it had been dry even when Daphne was a kid, and stubborn bushes clung to the inclines on either side. At one point someone had decided to use it as a makeshift dump, and it still contained a smattering of old plastic bags, glass bottles, and the rusted shell of an ’80s-era washing machine.

“Well, I think you’ll be pretty pleased.” Floyd pointed to the rocks at the base of the washing machine. “You see these guys right here?”

“Sure.” Rick put a big, tan fist on each hip. “What about ’em?”

“See, well.” Floyd kicked at the rocks at his feet, suddenly embarrassed. “I took a look at some of your charts down at the ranger station, and, well, see, the rock type here—it’s the same as at a few other sites around the Northwest where folks found oil.”

Rick Bodey’s eyebrows curled up like a pair of angry caterpillars. “Just what are you trying to say?” he asked.

“Well.” Floyd smiled his most affable smile. “I was wondering if you couldn’t take a look and tell me if you think there might be oil down there.”

Rick Bodey looked at Uncle Floyd like he’d suggested taking one of the rocks and swallowing it.

“You want me to
look
at some
rocks
and tell you if there’s oil on your land?”

Floyd’s face went from pink to deep crimson. “Well, ah—I mean, it’s just an educated guess, and I’m no geologist,” he stammered. “But I’ve had this hunch for a while now, and I figured you may have some instruments and such that could help me figure it out once and for all.”

A mean little laugh escaped Rick Bodey’s leathery lips. “Those instruments you’re talking about cost thousands of dollars. I’d need to run soil samples, test for gravitational field variations, run checks for electromagnetic and radioactive properties and sound wave velocities, commission a full report and compare it to other prospecting reports in the county, probably even dig a test well . . .”

He laughed again, shaking his big, tanned head.

“So you can’t tell me if there’s oil here?” The lines around Floyd’s mouth sagged.

“Just by looking at some rocks? Nosirree, no way. You want to know for sure, you’d need to come up with a few grand. It takes money to make money and, no offense, but judging from that trailer there it looks like you folks barely have a pot to piss in.”

Daphne watched Floyd kick at a rock, sending it skittering across the ravine. “I just thought it was worth a try,” he murmured.

“Listen—you go to work and make an honest living, come up with that money, and I’ll put you in touch with a guy who can run some real tests,” Rick Bodey said. “Until then, you stick with your snakes and whatnot.”

He turned his back and ambled away from them, hooking his thumbs into his belt loops. Daphne could swear that his walk had gained more swagger since he’d put down her uncle—since he’d put down all of them, really.

“I guess it was a long shot. Dumb of me to think otherwise,” Floyd said quietly. The color had drained from his face, and he looked old suddenly, tired and defeated.

“It wasn’t dumb.” Karen scrambled into the ravine and put her arms around him. “You did your research—that man was just a little too big for his britches.”

“Figuratively
and
literally,” Janie agreed. She joined her parents, and the three of them stood with their arms around one another, strong and solid in the trash-littered ravine. Sticking together even when things weren’t great. Protecting one another. Giving one another strength.

“It’s just with all these miracles happening—those trumpet sounds, the Djinn viper—I thought maybe . . .” Uncle Floyd trailed off, shaking his head sadly.

Daphne’s heart ached even as anger flashed behind her eyes. It wasn’t fair for Rick Bodey to treat the Peytons that way—they were good people, better to one another and to her than anyone she’d ever met, and probably better than anyone Rick Bodey had ever met, either. Just because they didn’t have much money was no reason to make them feel like dirt.

A familiar shot of adrenaline surged through her, the same one that had kept Jim from getting what he’d wanted from her night after horrible night—the same one she’d felt when she plunged the knife deep into his gut.

It propelled her past the startled Peytons and up the ravine, her legs springing over the dry earth and toward Rick Bodey’s ample back.

“Hey!” she called. His pudgy ham-hand was on the truck’s door handle, ready to escape.

“Yes, miss?” he seethed.

“You can’t do that.” She jogged to a stop in front of him. “You can’t just treat my uncle like an idiot for asking you a simple question. He deserves better than that.”

“Miss.” Rick Bodey let out a sigh like a dump truck releasing a load of earth. “It’s not a simple question. Your uncle was wasting my time.”

“But—” The image of Floyd tapping the spot near the washing machine taunted her, so full of hope. “You can’t just leave him hanging like that. It can’t be as complicated as you say. Either there’s oil in the ground or there isn’t. Why can’t you just do a simple test?”

Rick laughed his mean little bark again. “You want a simple way to test for oil? ’Cause there’s only one that I know of.” He threw open the hood of his truck and pulled the dipstick from his oil tank. “This right here—
this
is an easy way to test for oil. Stick it in the ground and you just see if anything comes up.” He spat laughter at his own joke, showing pointed yellow teeth.

“Fine.” Daphne ripped the dipstick from his hand. “Then we’ll use this.”

She dimly registered his catcher’s-mitt face opening wide in surprise as she turned and marched back toward the ravine, clutching the dipstick’s orange handle and brandishing it in front of her like a fencer’s foil.

“Hey, wait just a minute!” he called, but she was past the engine block and then the trailer, her face stinging from wind and indignation as her feet skimmed the ground.

“Come back here with that!” She could hear his huffing footsteps behind her, the change jingling in his pockets. She scaled the slope and landed in front of the Peytons.

They stared at her in disbelief, their mouths open in shock.

Finding Floyd’s spot, Daphne kicked aside pebbles and found the dirt beneath, jamming the dipstick deep into the earth.

It slid in easily and felt eerily like the knife tearing through Jim’s shirt and skin and sinking fatally into his flesh. The memory sent a wave of nausea spinning through her, and as Rick Bodey jangled to a stop above her, she thought for a moment that she might puke right there on the ground.

Then the feeling was gone, and she pulled the dipstick from the earth.

The air filled with gasps—from Uncle Floyd, Aunt Karen, Janie, and even from Rick. Because coating the dipstick nearly to Daphne’s hand and falling in fat, glistening drops to the rocks below was thick, black oil.

• • •

IT must be a mirage. Or maybe there had already been oil on the dipstick before, from Rick’s truck. But there couldn’t have been that much. She would have noticed it. Or Rick would have. Or any of them.

Her hand began to tremble, shaking the oil off onto her forehead. It smelled mysterious and pungent, like power and death and giant decomposed lizards that had ruled the earth millions of years before. Like something dark and ancient thrusting itself upon her, christening her.

The dipstick felt hot and heavy in her hand, like a poker left too long in the fire. She dropped it, and it bounced twice before coming to rest on the ground. Oil was already bubbling out of the hole where she’d jammed it in, puddling in onyx-colored slicks around her shoes.

“My God.” Floyd bent and picked the dipstick up, running a hand over it in disbelief.

“Oh Lord!” Karen cried.

“Holy hell,” Rick said.

And then all three Peytons were jumping in the air and shrieking, grabbing Daphne and hugging her and dancing in the growing pool of oil spreading across the ravine.

Daphne felt her jaw go from slack to smiling, heard her own unfamiliar laugh echoing in the breeze. She had done it—unbelievably, magically, she had found a way to repay the Peytons for taking her in.

She felt a strong, sure hand on her shoulder and looked up into Uncle Floyd’s face. His eyes sparkled, but his tone was serious, almost somber. Even Janie stopped whooping and hollering long enough to listen.

“Daphne, you brought us this gift,” Uncle Floyd said, his kind brown eyes firmly on hers. “I truly believe that the good Lord sent you here to lead us to this oil. I knew as soon as I heard those trumpets that you were going to bring good things to this town.”

“But I didn’t do anything,” Daphne started to say. “I just . . . he just made me so mad . . .”

“You did everything,” Uncle Floyd assured her. “You believed. Thanks to you, this town can finally get back on its feet again—and we can put up the money for a real church, too. And as for you”—he turned to Rick Bodey, whose mouth was hanging practically to his belt buckle— “thank you very much for stopping by. We appreciate all your help, but you can go now.”

He tapped the dipstick, still slick with oil, against his foot. “We’ll be hanging on to this, but don’t worry—something tells me we’ll be able to scrape up the funds to buy you a new one real soon.”

AFTER the Peytons struck oil, Daphne started to feel like someone had lit a flame beneath Carbon County and the molecules of their lives were racing away from one another in the heat, bounding in haphazard orbits that eventually bubbled over and turned to steam.

Within a week, Uncle Floyd had made a deal with Global Oil to set up a rig and extract the oil, in exchange for a percentage of the proceeds. He even agreed to defer his own share of the money until profits started rolling in, preferring to put all the immediate funds toward Carbon County’s growth. The table of the banquette in the Peytons’ trailer was littered with blueprints for the rig and contracts for a new school building, and Karen was constantly on the phone with Pastor Ted and the director of the local senior center, making plans for how to spend the community’s newfound wealth.

“I’ve lived in this trailer for more years than you’ve been alive,” Floyd told Daphne when she asked about the arrangement. “I reckon we can stay cozy for another few months while this town gets back on its feet.”

As soon as the ink was dry on the agreement, a team of Global Oil contractors set up camp down the road from the Peytons, their identical tan trailers packed with complicated calibration instruments, giant white satellite dishes sprouting like mushrooms from their roofs. Black-and-yellow machines trawled the land like mythic beasts, braying at changes in the ground’s chemical composition and electromagnetic force that only they could sense, their cries sending men in sports jackets and hard hats into a frenzy of pecking on their tablets and making calls on their satellite phones.

And they weren’t the only ones with an eye on Carbon County. As soon as news of the oil got out, prospectors started arriving in droves, parking their trucks and vans in every available lot and racing across the once-barren valley with everything from complex calibration equipment to homemade detection devices that looked like little more than tinfoil affixed to sticks. Their hopeful days were followed by doleful evenings at Pat’s, the only bar in town, where they commiserated over lukewarm bottles of Bud Light. Even though they hadn’t had any success, it seemed like they wouldn’t stop trying. Their greed spread like a disease, luring other get-rich-quick hopefuls to the area until the Carbon County locals had to chase them off their driveways with hunting rifles and brooms.

None of it was what Daphne had imagined when she boarded the Greyhound for Wyoming, yet something about it was thrilling. Uncle Floyd’s enthusiasm about the rig was infectious enough to send her to the library for a big stack of books on geology and oil production, and as the days stretched into weeks, and
Help Wanted
ads began to appear in the town papers and the rig took shape around them, Daphne found one more reason to stay in Carbon County.

“You know you don’t have to do this,” Uncle Floyd said as she slid her résumé into a manila folder. Early morning sunlight filtered into the trailer, the lace curtains leaving a dappled pattern on the kitchen table where he was eating breakfast. “You don’t owe us anything—we’re happy to have you here. You’re family.”

“I know I don’t have to.” She sat down on the couch and began lacing up her work boots. “I
want
to.”

Floyd shook his head. “Being a roustabout is darn hard work,” he said. “You’d be at the very bottom of the rig-crew food chain, basically doing all the manual labor the floorhands don’t have time for. And I don’t even know if Dale—that’s the foreman, he’d be your boss—would want a woman around. Especially a young lady like you.”

“Then that’s discrimination.” Daphne stood and pulled her hair into a ponytail. “Which happens to be illegal, last I checked.”