Sunshaker's War (18 page)

“If you want to go with an old crow…” Liz finished.

“Well they can't get through this way, the road's blocked. I've gotta admire their dedication.”

“Yeah,” Liz said as she unlocked her door, “and I need to be admiring the way back to your house.” She paused. “Think I'll take a look at the damage first, though.”

David sighed. “Want a passenger? Maybe I'll get some idea when I'll be able to get over to Alec's.”

“Let me know what happens with that, okay?”

“Of course! But shoot, girl, you're not even gone yet. You did say you were stayin' through the afternoon, didn't you? I mean, jeeze, why don't you just spend the night
and let 'em get the road really fixed and the traffic straightened out? You can study up here, I'll be quiet, I promise.”

“Yeah, but my books are down there! I did that deliberately so I wouldn't be tempted!”

“You devil!”

“You should talk,” she said mischievously. “You're the one doing the tempting now.”

He grabbed her suddenly and planted a sloppy wet one on her mouth.

“Jesus, David! Not here in front of these folks!”

“Give 'em something to preach about!” David laughed. “Show 'em some sin just waitin' to happen!”

“‘Get thee behind me, Satan!'” Liz giggled in turn, as she slid out of David's grip and climbed in, reaching over to unlock the passenger door.

“If I'm Satan,” David continued from inside, “then that makes you…?”

“Missus Satan?”

“We're not married that I notice,” he protested, wishing he hadn't mentioned that word, which Liz had a time or two. Not that it was a
bad
idea, but not yet…not quite yet. The image of the papoose returned, but coupled with it was Liz in bathrobe and curlers holding a copy of
Soap Opera Digest
in one hand and a coffee pot in the other, while he balanced tiny replicas of a sprawling brick ranch and a station wagon in either hand. He'd seen too many cartoons, he knew. Far too many.

“Uh…no,” he managed. “Lilith, maybe?”

“Thought she was Adam's first bride.”

He shrugged, feeling chagrined at his ignorance of his own mythology. Now if she'd asked him about Cuchulain…

“Maybe,” Liz said, backing the car into the muddy road and turning east.

*

“Well,” Big Billy announced to the world at large, “that sure is a fine mess.”

David, who, with Liz, had joined him on the gravelly
shoulder of the main highway, nodded—a gesture precisely mimicked by Little Billy. “That's a fact,” he replied.

He stared at the scene before him: steep, raw bank on the left crested by a file of trees where the terminus of a series of steep ridges had been sliced away to make way for the highway, the far slope pitching steeply down to the Coker Hollow road—next up the highway from Sullivan Cove. The creek flowed out of there, too, and the highway had forded it until last night. To the right was the narrow end of his pa's bottomland, bounded to the east by the rest of the creek, and beyond by Enotah National Forest, all beneath a heavy loom of clouds that now and then let through shafts of fitful sunlight. And straight ahead was the highway, mostly invisible beneath the gleaming bulks of slow-moving vehicles.

The road was cut all right: a ten-foot slice taken out straight across, with the thick, hard stratum of pavement visible above a base of clay and granite gravel. The vast corrugated cylinder of the displaced culvert lay crumpled and abandoned at the absolute apex of their field. As for the creek that had caused the present havoc, it was back to normal, no more than the usual foot or so deep, and David wondered once more at the amount it had taken to wash something like that out of the ground. On either side of the break, the blue-and-gray bulks of the Georgia State Patrol's Crown Victorias (and one pursuit Mustang) blocked traffic, blue-suited patrolmen equipped with bullhorns and whistles maneuvering traffic in each direction while a dump truck emptied its second load of gravel, preparatory to inserting a fresh culvert. Liz was probably right: they'd doubtless have at least one lane open by that afternoon. He'd have to be careful, though, next time he came barreling over the hill up ahead.

“Gosh!” Little Billy gasped. “Did that li'l creek do all
that
?”

“Sho' did,” Big Billy replied. “I tried to tell 'em when they put that there thing in that it 'uz too little, but they
wouldn't listen. I been here a long time, seen how much it can rain.”

“Yeah,” David said, finding himself for once in agreement with his pa.

“Good thing it didn't happen 'fore commencement, though,” Big Billy added philosophically. “Otherwise you'd've been givin' your speech to the cows and gettin' your diploma by mail.”

“Maybe so,” David chuckled, struck by the image of himself addressing his impassioned paean for independence to the unflappable Madame Bovary, while her new calf, Voltaire, looked on. “Or maybe they could have worked up some kinda satellite link, or something. Video cameras here feedin' into the high school. Diplomas comin' in by fax machine.”

“We don't have a facts machine,” Little Billy observed.

“No, but we have a
fact
machine,” David told him. “One 'bout three feet tall and blond-headed!”

“That's a fact,” Big Billy put in, and David started, surprised at his pa's joke. Odd, he thought, how the weather made everybody else irritable and left Big Billy alone. Or maybe they'd just all sunk to his level of grumpiness and he felt less outclassed now.

“Gonna be a bitch come Monday, though,” Big Billy went on. “They don't have that thing fixed by then we'll have to go to Helen to pick up groceries.”

“I'll go if you like,” David volunteered quickly. “If I can't get to MacTyrie I won't have anything else to do.” And besides, he added to himself, it'd keep him out of the house and out from underfoot. The first day of summer vacation stuck on Sullivan Cove with his rascal brother, his moody ma, and his sweat-of-the-brow-raised pa, was not a notion he relished.

“Maybe so,” Big Billy grunted. “Reckon we oughta get on home. Reckon I might even apologize to the old lady.”

“Might be a good idea,” David acknowledged, exchanging expressions of relief with Liz, who took his hand and started back to the car she had parked at the end of the road.

They had almost reached it when he became aware of a subtle variance in the steady drone of traffic that had been turning around behind him: something beyond the idle of engines and the crunch of tires and the occasional squeal of an overstressed power steering pump. He frowned, then recognized it as the sound of a motorcycle—a big one, thumping expertly through the maze. He stopped in place, searching, and found it: a Bimmer R 80 G/S, shiny and black, headlight on, as was the law in Georgia. Not new, but still impressive. He stared at it appreciatively, and turned to go, sparing the merest glance toward the rider: a muscular fellow in black helmet, black leather jacket, jeans, and Frye boots. But as Liz tugged his hand gently onward, he heard the cycle's engine gunned, and turned again—just as it ground to a halt behind him. Already wired (he was always that way now) David tensed, ready to assault the cyclist with some scathing remark.

And caught himself just in time. There was something familiar about that grin, about the blaze of perfect white teeth and full lips above a square-cut chin. And then he figured it out: that skin was ruddier than it ought to be, and the cheekbones a tad wider.

He squinted through the visor, then caught the glint of a beaded necklace above the jacket collar and the gold stooping falcon pins that decorated either lapel.

“Calvin!” he cried, dropping Liz's hand and rushing forward. “Hey, folks, it's Calvin!”

They stopped in place, turned and began to approach: Liz calmly, Big Billy at his usual saunter, Little Billy at a full-tilt run.

“Long time no see, Kemo Sabe,” was all Calvin could get out before Little Billy was tugging on his leg. “Hey, Thunder-kitten,” the Indian added, removing his helmet. He reached over to rub the small boy's hair. It was a reference to Little Billy's favorite TV show of the previous summer.

“Awww, that's old stuff,” Little Billy piped. “It's Ninja Turtles now!”

“Oh yeah,” Calvin said quickly. “Those are the guys with the Italian names, right? Hope they don't have one named Caravaggio. “

“Huh?” wondered the Brothers Sullivan as one.

“He liked little boys,” Calvin mouthed to David over Little Billy's head.

“Oh,” David mouthed back, then; “Hey squirt, why don't you take off and let me and Mr. Fargo catch up and all, we'll be along, don't worry—that is,” he said, “if you're up for lunch at the old home place.”

“Always!” Calvin cried.

David aimed a kick at his brother's backside. “Now scat, kid.”

“Awwww, Davy!”

“I said
scat
!”

Calvin raised an eyebrow, and then neither of them could hold back any longer. A quick high-five ensued, followed by a hearty, brotherly hug made awkward by the fact that Calvin was still astride the cycle. “So how's it goin', man?” he asked, shaking out his mane of black hair—longer now than when David had last seen it. There was an ear stud too: another falcon.

“Let me guess, you need a bed, a bath…”

“All of the above,” Calvin chuckled. “But more to the point I need to talk to you.”

“Any particular reason?”

“Good things and bad things.”

“Give me the good first.”

“No, he has to give me a
hug
first,” Liz inserted, joining them.

“Glad to oblige.” Calvin grinned. “And I'll give you a better one once we get to Dave's house.”

“You said something about good and bad things…”David supplied. He loved Calvin like a brother, but he didn't quite trust him around Liz yet, even though he supposedly had a girlfriend, the never-seen Sandy.

“Oh, yeah, right,” Calvin laughed, releasing Liz. “Good things first, I guess: I need some ideas about a wedding present for G-Man.”

“You came over here to ask me
that
?”

“I came over here 'cause I got some
real
disturbing news last night—or this morning, or sometime. Stuff that I need to bust tail on.”

“Sounds serious.”

“It is,” Calvin affirmed. “But not so serious I can't spare sometime for lunch,” he added, eyes twinkling. “We can rap till then.”

“Well that settles one thing,” Liz said. “I'm certainly gonna hang around a while longer now!”

“I hope so,” Calvin replied, once more grinning at her.

“Your bike?” David asked, to change the subject. Calvin shook his head sadly. “Sandy's. But let's not stand here blockin' traffic. Hop on and I'll give you a ride.”

David hesitated, glanced at Liz.

She shrugged. “Go ahead. I think I know the way on my own. And I know how much you like wheels.”

“I think you can make it part way up the drive now,” David said. “Just park where you can.”

“I've
got
a brain, David!
And
eyes!”

David rolled
his
eyes at Calvin and climbed on behind him, while Liz returned to her car and began turning around.

“So,” David wondered as Calvin trundled off, “where'd you come from all of a sudden?” He paused, wrinkled his nose; then chuckled. “No, let me guess: from Our Lady of the Smokies?”

Calvin's stubby nose wrinkled as he sniffed. “Damn! Thought she scrubbed all that off me 'fore I left. God knows she like to have scrubbed nearly everything
else
off—what she didn't wear off other ways!”

David giggled and wondered when he'd get to meet Calvin's squeeze. Thus far all he'd seen was a fuzzy wallet photo of a pretty, though rather hippie-looking lady.

And then he had no more time to wonder, for Calvin was wheelstanding down the Sullivan Cove road.

*

“Well,” David announced a few minutes later, when he, Calvin, and Liz were ensconced in his bedroom, “welcome to Georgia!”

He was reclining on his elbow on one of the flanking twin beds while Liz sat on the floor beside him and Calvin eased his feet out of the boots and white socks. The Indian wiggled his toes blissfully. “New shoes,” he offered by way of explanation. “Birthday present from…”

“I bet I know,” David laughed. “But what about this trouble?”

“Well,” Calvin began, “I guess you know I've been kinda out of touch lately, 'specially since Christmas, but the fact is, it's not really my fault. I've been spendin' time in Galunlati. You remember Uki said I could visit, so I've been goin' every chance I get.” He fished in his pocket and brought out an uktena scale. “I burn one of these to get there, and he gives me a new one every time I come back. It hurts like hell to transit, though; and I don't much like to do it unless I have to, or can stay a long time. In the meanwhile, I've been livin' with the woman I told you about.”