Storming: A Dieselpunk Adventure (4 page)

When he reached the Berringers’ mailboxes—one neat and whitewashed and the other huge and rusty—he turned off the road into the trees that fringed the creek. His secret spot was on top of a flat boulder about a half mile down from the road. The rock had a round, hollowed-out spot on top, just perfect for sitting on.

Nobody else ever came out here. Well, maybe the old Berringer brothers, since it
was
their creek, but they never came out in the early morning. They wouldn’t mind him fishing here. Or at least Mr. Matthew wouldn’t. Mr. J.W. though, he was kind of grumpy and scary sometimes, like when he’d shot at Mr. Matthew’s prize hen and spooked her out of laying for a whole month.

Mr. J.W. hadn’t known Walter was hiding behind the fence post. Then, when he walked by and saw Walter, he winked and gave Walter a penny for hard candy. Walter still had the penny in a sock under his bed. Didn’t feel right somehow to spend a present from Mr. J.W. when he was afraid of him.

That was another reason he liked to come out here in the early mornings. Less of a chance of meeting Mr. J.W. or anybody else—like all these murdering sky people everybody in town was talking about lately.

Walter wasn’t supposed to know about that, of course, but he’d heard Mr. Fallon from the dry goods store telling Mama Nan. In the last few weeks, five dead people had been found roundabout. Nobody knew who they were, just that they were dressed funny—old-fashioned, kinda like Grandpapa Hugh back when he was alive.

Two days ago, old Mr. Scottie, who always spent all day sitting inside Dan and Rosie’s Cafe on Main Street, swore up and down he’d seen one of the bodies fall straight out of the sky. Everybody laughed at him like they didn’t believe it. They all said maybe it was one of the pilots here for the show, who’d gotten drunk and crashed his plane. But they’d all started talking about the sky people after that.

Why
not
sky people? Walter peered upwards. Better that than the gangsters and bootleggers in the radio programs. A shiver lifted the downy hairs on the back of his neck. Now that the airshow was in town, maybe the sky people would be scared off.

He clambered up onto his rock. The coolness of its pitted surface, still protected by the morning’s shadows, tingled against his feet. He settled down cross-legged, pole across his knees, and reached for the can he’d strapped around his waist. The piece of canvas tied over the top had kept the worms from falling out during his somersault.

Something splashed. And not a splash from a fish or a splash from a frog, but definitely a splash from a person.

He froze, then looked up.

There, on the opposite side of the creek, a few yards down from his special rock, was a lady. She crouched on the bank, leaning forward to drink from the water. She was wearing a big blue dress like people wore in some of Evvy and Annie’s storybooks about fairies and queens. But it was all torn on the bottom, maybe even burned in places.

She looked up and saw him.

He stared back, not even daring to breathe.

Her face was like a face out of the storybooks, pale and kind of glowy. Her hair was long and light brown, but it seemed shriveled, almost melted, at the ends.

She tilted up the corner of her mouth, and then she grinned full on at him.

His heart flopped over in his chest, and he grinned back. He even dared a wave.

She laughed, and it sounded like the creek gurgling past, only deeper. “
Zdravstvuyte
,” she said. “
Prekrasnoe utro
,
ne tak li
?”

She didn’t look like anyone around here, so it made a sort of sense she wouldn’t talk like anyone either.

He shook his head.

“Mmm.” She rose to her knees and gestured to her clothes. “
Mne nuzhna novaya odezhda.
” She mimed taking off the dirty dress and throwing it away, then pulling on a shirt and a pair of pants. When she was done, she shrugged her shoulders almost to her earlobes.

Now
this
was a conversation he knew how to have. The only question was where she could get a new dress. Mama Nan could give him one, but she might not be happy about it. She’d told Molly the other night that she’d have to be more careful about keeping her dresses mended, since only the sweet angels knew where they’d get money for a new one. Molly hadn’t much liked that.

But still, maybe Mama Nan could give him one to
borrow
, until the lady could find her real clothes.

He set his pole down on the rock and stood. He repeated her gesture of putting on new clothes, then pointed to the road. If she could walk over there, she could climb onto the bridge without having to wade through the stream. Her dress was so long she’d get it all wet if she tried to cross here.

She turned her head to follow his pointing finger, then pushed to her feet. “Umm... tonk yuu.” She bowed her head to him and disappeared into the brush.

So she spoke real words after all! He gathered up his pole and worm can and ran back through the trees to the road.

But when he got to the bridge, she wasn’t there.

He climbed up to stand on the railing. From that height, he could see down the creek on one side, and on the other across Mr. Matthew’s hayfield to the top of the fourth-story tower on Mr. J.W.’s house.

She was nowhere.

For five minutes, he waited. Then he climbed down and scouted back up the creek on her side of the bank. Still no lady.

But maybe she wasn’t a lady. Maybe she was one of the sky people. He leaned his head back to look past the tree branches at the blue glitter of the sky. She looked too nice to murder anybody. So maybe... maybe she was one of Mama Nan’s sweet angels come down for real.

Four

THE WOMAN’S FOOTPRINTS led Hitch right up to the two mismatched mailboxes. On the smaller one,
Mr. Matthew G. Berringer
was painted in square black letters. On the larger one, nail heads formed the words
JOHN WILFORD BERRINGER, ESQUIRE.

So those two old buzzards were still at it, tooth and claw, determined to outdo one another or die trying. Some things around here hadn’t changed, at any rate.

He shook his head and knelt to look at the woman’s footprints in the thick dust on the side of the road. A set of much smaller footprints had joined them, then veered off down the road behind Hitch. A child’s?

He looked over his shoulder, squinting against the early morning sunlight.

Sure enough, a kid in overalls—cane pole over one shoulder—was tearing off down the road. Late for his chores, no doubt.

Hitch remembered the feeling well.

He stood up and surveyed the lay of the land.

The Berringer brothers lived only a mile or so away from that big lake, and there wasn’t much in between, so it made sense that one or both of the jumpers would have ended up here. From the looks of the footprints traveling on into the green sway of the hayfield, it seemed the woman was now alone.

After some cajoling, he had talked Rick into dropping him by the lake before Rick and Lilla drove on into town to see the sights. Unless Scottsbluff had changed a whole bunch since Hitch had left, they wouldn’t likely find much to see. But he hadn’t told them that. He needed the ride, and no matter what they saw, Rick would be dissatisfied and Lilla was almost sure to be pleased.

Hitch had located the woman’s footprints from the night before and followed them back to the road. In the daylight, he found his bearings right away. This was where he fished trout and hunted coyotes as a boy. The Berringers had always been willing to let him fish their creek as a bonus for his work. They would hire him for odd jobs whenever his old man gave him time off from the farm work. They paid good—outbidding one another to see who would hire him. And if he said so himself, he was pretty skilled at getting them to keep the bidding going.

Of course, looking back, the question was whether they had known all the time what he was up to.

And now here he was again. The rail fence surrounding Matthew’s hayfield looked different somehow, smaller, even though Hitch had been more than full grown by the time he left home. A wave of something—not exactly homesickness, but a kind of sad queasiness—washed through his stomach. He’d left because he had to, as much as because he’d wanted to, and there wasn’t anything for him here now. He’d known that after Celia had died.

He gripped the dry, splintery wood of the top rail. “Home again.” But not for long. Home, with his feet in the cornfields, was a prison. Flying—that’s where his happiness was.

He climbed the fence and crossed the field.

While he was here, he might as well stop in and say hello. The Berringers had always liked him. In contrast to some other folks in the valley, they might be willing to give him a quick job so he could afford those parts for Earl. And maybe they might have noticed a strange woman wandering through their yards.

On the far side of the field, he climbed another fence and started up Matthew’s drive. J.W.’s drive was right next to it, ten feet away. Their houses sat side by side, across the property line from each other. Matthew’s was a modest clapboard, whitewashed, single-storied, with a roofed-in porch across the front.

J.W.’s was a monstrosity, and he’d built it smack-dab between Matthew and the view of the Wildcat Hills to the south. It looked like something some maharajah had rejected: three stories with two jutting towers and four chimneys. It was close to being the biggest house in the county, even though J.W. lived in it alone. Definitely, it was the most outlandish.

Hitch squinted at the sun. Probably only 7:30 or so, but both Matthew and J.W. might already have left for their respective fields by now. Crazy farmers and their early-bird ways.

Hitch took the three steps to Matthew’s porch in one stride and thumped on the screen door. Nobody answered, so he crossed to the other side of the porch and jumped down. The ground was so dry, the dirt puffed up around his feet. He’d almost forgotten how bad the droughts could be here. Without the irrigation, nothing much would grow in these parts—and even then, it was a struggle whenever the weather refused to cooperate.

Around the back corner of the house, the wash on the line flapped into view. Faded long johns, dungarees, and a voluminous blue gown wafted in the breeze.

He stopped short.

The dress was shiny, sateen or something, with black lace up the front. One side of the skirt hung in charred shreds, and the whole thing was about as rumpled and dirty as you’d expect after having been dragged through a lake.

He scanned the yard.

And just like that: there she was.

She wore a white shirt and a pair of overalls, which she must have pulled off the line before putting the gown in their place. They were Matthew’s, of course, so they were about ten sizes too big for her slim frame. She had rolled the sleeves up past her elbows and the pant cuffs above her bare ankles. She stood at the water barrel beside the house, with her back to him. She had a big knife in one hand and was systematically hacking off her tawny hair.

“Hey,” he said.

She spun around, going into a half crouch, the knife out in front of her. “
Zhdi zdes
.” A charred wisp of hair floated from the blade to the ground.

“Err... what?”

She shook the knife at him. “I...” Her face wasn’t streaked with grease anymore, and her skin was pale, almost transparent under the morning sun. Her eyes were big and wild—with fear or maybe anger. Either way, she appeared more than ready to use the knife.

He raised his hands, trying to appear peaceable. “Look, it’s okay. No speakum English, I get it.”

“I...” she said, “am... having sorrow.” She tapped the coveralls on her chest. “But... need.”

“Okay, do speakum English.” Or something like it.

She sure didn’t seem likely to be part of a flying crew. So what did that leave? That she’d maybe been
thrown
out of that plane or whatever it was? That maybe that guy from last night had been shooting his flares at her on purpose—and not at Hitch?

“Look, why don’t you give me that knife? Nobody wants to hurt you, and I’m sure you don’t want to hurt me.” He could hope anyway. “Matthew’ll lend you what you need to wear, but he’s not going to be too happy about losing the knife.” He took a step and held out his hand.

She hissed, sort of like an angry cat, and jumped away. “You—back.”

He walked his fingers across his palm. “I followed your tracks out here, understand? I wanted to make sure you were all right.” And satisfy his own curiosity. Which currently was very far from satisfaction.

Her eyes shifted, and he could almost see the whir of her thoughts as she sifted through translations. “Follow me?” She didn’t sound too impressed by his chivalry. “Kill you I will—you follow me!
Plohoi chelovek
.” She spat to the side and came back up glaring.

He dropped his arms to his sides. “Listen, sister, I ain’t here to cause you any trouble. You want me to go, then after we explain to Matthew what’s going on, I’ll go. But it looks to me like you need a translator if you’re going to go wandering around these parts.”