The Boneshaker (20 page)

Heat rose on Natalie's cheeks as her heart sank; the blush spread like fire across her face. There was no mistaking it. He knew.

George shoved past his sidekicks. "Or maybe you just like bruises. Is that it?"

The push he gave her wasn't hard enough to leave a bruise, but whether by accident or not he caught her necklace in his fingers and, after a sharp, quick pain from the cord cutting into her neck, Natalie felt it snap. The little sprocket she wore like a charm fell in the dirt.

The older boys laughed as Natalie scrambled to pick it up. George cracked his knuckles unpleasantly. She looked up at him in disbelief. Was he really going to hit her right there, in plain view of anyone who happened to pass in the street? He couldn't be that stupid.... But he was looking at the bicycle, the fastest in the world, the beautiful one her father had built just for her. The one she could not simply jump on to escape.

"You know what I think," George said. "I think that bicycle's too big for you."

He was going to take her bicycle.
The anger welled up like blood in a cut, flooding her brain. The fact that he certainly wouldn't be able to ride it either didn't even matter.

She took a step forward. She would fight. She would kick and hit so it would take all three of them to steal it from her, and then she would chase, she would run after it until her legs gave out....

Then from somewhere in the street beyond George and his friends, Natalie heard music: she would not have known it was a guitar if she hadn't already witnessed with her own eyes and ears what a guitar could do in truly gifted hands.

She faced George Sills. He was no demon. What could he do, really? Forcing the answer (
He can take my bicycle, the fastest bicycle, my dad's bicycle, isn't that enough?
) from her mind, she willed the uncertainty to drain out of her eyes and let the space fill up with something else.

Confidence.

It was different from facing Mrs. Byron; there was something to lose here, something real she needed to defend. The other boys made noise, but Natalie didn't hear. She held her ground, her wide, bright eyes staring into George Sills's taunting ones.

He's no demon,
she thought.
He's just a kid. He's tall and he's mean, but he's a kid like me. That's all.

A few feet away, George hesitated. He flexed his fist, brought it halfway up, and changed his mind. "Can't even ride it," he sneered, and shoved a hand out to grab the handlebars. The fast motion made her want to flinch, but she didn't, and she didn't let go.

His lip curled in a sneer, and he shook the bicycle. Natalie forced herself not to look away. Why didn't he just take it? He could've pulled it right out of her hands.

He could have, but he didn't.
Because it was working.

As if he had heard her thoughts, George gave the bicycle one last shove, hard enough to almost topple her, and retreated. "Can't even ride it."

His friends waited, suddenly quiet. George stamped between them and back into the street. The other two followed, shooting curious glances over their shoulders at Natalie as they went.

When they were out of sight, Natalie followed the music around the corner to where Old Tom Guyot leaned against the wall of the stable. "It worked!"

"I heard," he said with a big grin. "And no damage done?"

"Nothing hurt but my necklace." She held out the dusty little sprocket. "Guess I lost the string."

Tom rooted in one pocket with a weathered hand. "Here, darlin'. See how this'll do."

Natalie took the length of string and looped it through the center. It was heavy and not quite white. "What's this?"

"Busted guitar string, real old. An 'E,' prob'ly. Bust a lot of Es, playing like I do. Catgut." He grinned. "Gotta give it a good knot so's it'll stay tied."

Wordlessly she handed it back and watched as Tom carefully knotted the string with his arthritic fingers. He dropped the necklace ceremoniously over her head.

Maybe, just maybe this was one of the guitar strings that had beaten the Devil! In any case, it had been on Tom's guitar. It was special, and now it was hers.

Confidence surging through her, she swung her leg over the bicycle seat. This was it. This was the day. She put a foot on one pedal and kicked off, and landed in the dirt three feet away.

The stars were out by the time Natalie trudged home, but the light spilling from the barn told her that her dad was home and still hadn't called it a day.

She heard Charlie's voice first. "I'm telling you, it's uncanny! I don't know how it works, but it works! Everyone in town's talking about it."

Natalie leaned the Chesterlane against the wall and squatted just outside the big doors, listening.

Her father's voice drifted out quieter from up in the loft. "They're hucksters. They have dozens of tricks to make you think they're legitimate."

Natalie felt in her pocket for the little bicycle Charlie had handed her at the fair and inched closer.

"Dad, I tried it. I didn't tell him anything, but he knew. What if they can do something for—"

Tiny handlebars and pedals dug into Natalie's palm.

You shouldn't have done it, Charlie,
she thought.
I don't know why not, but I'm right—I'm sure of it.

"No. Doc said not to worry until he gets back and finishes the tests."

"What if he's gone longer than—"

"Charlie—"

"Dad, what if there's an answer, and we don't find it because we don't try everything?" Her brother's voice broke into a strange little choking noise. There was a long pause from inside, then Charlie again: "Would you just ... just go yourself, then? If you still think it's a sham, I won't say a thing; I won't bring it up again. But if he changes your mind..."

The little bicycle snapped in her palm. Natalie wrenched her hand from her pocket as if she'd been bitten and flung the broken pieces of the toy into the weeds by the barn.
She backed away from the shop doors and made for the house. Whatever they were talking about, she didn't want to hear any more.

A hush sat curled like a cat in the Minkses' front parlor. Natalie frowned in the doorway. "Mama?" Where were the clanging, the dropped pots, the knocked-over books, the sounds of her mother?

She searched the house, picking up speed as she raced from room to room. Kitchen: empty. Parlor: empty. Dining room: empty.

But there was a noise, soft and repetitive, from somewhere on the floor above.

Snick-thump. Snick-thump. Snick-thump.

Natalie took the stairs two at a time, stumbled and fell headlong at the top, then flung herself into her parents' bedroom. She collapsed against the doorjamb in relief.

Her mother was asleep, a record skipping softly on the Victrola.
Snick-thump.
Natalie tiptoed across the room, reached into the big mahogany cabinet, and lifted the needle. The skipping stopped.

She was halfway down the stairs again when a nagging thought crept into her head. She hadn't seen her mother out of bed in a long time.

Her father's footsteps were quieter than usual in the hall. He put a hand on her shoulder and guided her gently down the stairs. "Let's make supper ourselves tonight, what do you say?"

Halfway down the staircase, something inside Natalie started to click into place: a realization, something she half
knew but didn't want to know. There was a question she should ask her father, a question he would answer if she asked it now, because he would never lie to his daughter. She felt the question take shape, felt it rise to her lips, felt her heart prepare for the answer she already knew would break it.

On the last step she opened her mouth, but even as she spoke the words, she was running, sprinting out the door and off the porch, tearing hell-for-leather away, anywhere, so long as her father couldn't hear the question and she couldn't hear the answer.

The night cooled her face. She listened to the sounds of clinking crockery in her neighbors' kitchens and the little shivery songs of katydids and crickets. She heard the creak of carriage wheels and the whickering of horses, the whisper of warm breezes through cornfields, the padding of her feet in the dust, snippets of conversation as voices carried in the night. Summer sounds; normal sounds. Natalie shuddered and ran faster, listening for the noises of ordinary things. She ran until her face was dry again and for a little while longer, she forgot.

When she had gone as far as her legs would carry her, Natalie stopped and wandered back past the general store. It was late for the store to still be open, but hushed voices drifted out of the screen door. She remembered the failed robbery the night before and stopped to listen in the shadows where the stairs rose to meet the porch.

"Is it worth our asking him?" The voice was unmistakably Mr. Tilden's.

"I doubt it." That might have been Mr. Swifte, the blacksmith. "He doesn't do anything without his reasons, and he doesn't explain his reasons to anyone."

"But is it worth our asking anyhow?" (Mr. Tilden.)

"I should have thought anything would be worth trying." (Mr. Finch, the pharmacist.)

Then, after a moment's pause came Mr. Swifte's reply: "Asking, in itself, might carry its own ... risks."

Natalie scowled. How did asking a question carry a risk? And what were they all doing there, anyhow?

"What's the issue here?" Natalie wasn't sure whose voice that was. "They seem harmless enough. Their medicines even seem to work."

"Every once in a while, Maliverny, your caution looks like cowardice," said Mr. Tilden. So the unknown voice belonged to the saloonkeeper.

"Not everything has to fall to us!" Maliverny snapped. It sounded like a fight was about to break out. To Natalie's surprise, the next voice was Tom Guyot's.

"If Simon Coffrett ain't sitting out there in his big house waiting for us to ring his bell, I'll run for mayor."

After that, nobody spoke for a while. She heard a sound that might've been Tom's fingers drumming on the tin guitar, and a shuffling noise that immediately made her think of nervous Mr. Finch moving his feet. Then the screen door swung open.

Natalie squeezed under the stairs as fast footsteps strode across the old wooden porch and down into the street. Mr. Maliverny stopped close enough that she held
her breath. He mumbled angrily to himself as he fumbled with a cigarette, but before he could light it, heavier feet sounded on the porch—probably Mr. Swifte, who always walked heavily, as if each footfall were the landing of a hammer. Maliverny shoved the unlit cigarette back in his pocket and strode away.

Dark hobnailed boots descended the steps, and the blacksmith also strode down the street into the night. After Lester Finch and Old Tom Guyot had made their own exits, Natalie sat in the shadows under the stairs and thought hard.

What did they want to ask Simon Coffrett about? And what could possibly be risky about the bespectacled man who lived in the mansion?

Then Natalie remembered the two bizarre flashes that had come to her like memories: Mr. Coffrett walking to the center of the Old Village, seeing the town's dreadful past as clearly as Natalie saw the present, and Mr. Coffrett inexplicably plunging in sorrow and pain from a terrible height.

You think you're dead, Mr. Coffrett.

It had never occurred to Natalie to be afraid of Simon Coffrett, but as she remembered the way he had smiled, unsurprised, at the phrenologist's final, bizarre pronouncement, she was frightened.

The tents of the nostrum fair cast odd, flapping shadows by the light of the round bulbs strung from the roofs. Dr. Limberleg, cigarette smoldering in his gloved fingers,
watched his last patient leave the Dispensary to head for home. The thin man called Dalliot slumped slowly on his stool, one hand still on the register and chin descending to his chest as if he were falling gently into sleep. From the deepening shadows between the tents, Vorticelt, Acquetus, and Nervine came to join Argonault near the stage.

"The mechanic is still looking for a wheel," Limberleg said without turning.

Vorticelt adjusted his spectacles. "How long?"

"His son says he'll build one, if necessary, but it will take time."

"We shouldn't have started dispensing yet."

Dr. Limberleg regarded Vorticelt, face harsh. "I am so tired of you behaving as though setting up shop here was my idea. The
rule
was my idea, Vorticelt. Two hundred miles or a hundred years in between stops, that's what I said, back in the days when the gingerfoot was the world's best game to you four!" He took a deep pull on the cigarette. "Well, we broke the rule. It was going to happen sooner or later. There's nothing for that now. If necessary, we'll take a wheel off another wagon."

"I think the better idea is to get the mechanic moving a little faster."

"Is anyone else at all concerned about the way that girl of his turns up everywhere?" Limberleg muttered.

"If you don't like it, do something about it," Nervine snapped, "but we need to be able to
move!
"

Dr. Limberleg took a last pull on the cigarette and flicked
it away. "Two hands can only do so much, gentlemen." He turned on his heel and stalked into the maze of tents.

Deeper into the fair, a soft noise made Limberleg pause on the steps of his wagon. He turned and squinted into the dark alley between the booths, but the sound of rattling tin did not repeat itself.

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
Natalie was up and out the door before anyone else in the Minkses' house woke. Barely twenty minutes after that, she was crawling into an old watering trough hidden by an overgrown hawthorn just outside the still-sleeping village of tents in the lot. It was perfect. She peered through the branches and waited for the nostrum fair to wake.

She nodded off once or twice before figures began stirring among the tents. One of the doctors—it looked like Nervine, with his spiky gray hair—moved here and there, putting placards on easels. Another untied the flaps of the Dispensary (had that pale man called Dalliot slept in the tent all night? How odd).