The Elementals (8 page)

Offering his hand, Caleb said, “Fine by me.”

“The office is right this way,” the man said. “Having the hardest time getting this position filled, the war and all. Turned away any number of girls. Can you imagine?”

“Shame they don’t know their place.”

The man hummed agreeably, leading Caleb to a door at the end of a hall. Rounding his desk, he sorted through some papers until he found a half sheet and a pen. Glancing up from it, the man considered Caleb’s clothes, his worn hat, once more before pressing on. “All right, then, I’ll need your name for your packet . . .”

“Virgil,” Caleb said, and leaned over to watch him write it. “V-i-r . . . That’s right, and Walker.”

If the manager suspected a lie, it never showed.

***

The house was a lie. His life was a lie.

Julian stood in the front foyer, looking up the stairwell. Patterned carpet climbed one side of it, held down by brass tacks that Dad replaced every year on New Year’s Day.

The other half was a scuffed flat built over the stairs—a slide. Pressing fingers against his temple, Julian could summon a vague memory from before the slide. His pajamas had feet, and Sam’s didn’t; they always got sent to bed at the same time.

That was back when his bedroom was upstairs with the rest of his brothers’. After he came in from the barn, carried in because he couldn’t walk, the pantry became his room. It wasn’t noticeably pantrylike, except sometimes when the radiator came on, he smelled spiced apples. Somebody must have broken a jar of them in there before all the shelves came out and his desk and bed went in.

Sitting on the stairs, Julian hoisted himself up, step-by-step on his rear. The crutches rattled as he dragged them. At the top, he slid down polished floors, until he could get up and get his balance. Tucking his crutches under his arms, he slowly walked the hallway.

Cluttered with Tarzan novels and ripe with the scent of aftershave, Sam’s room was exactly him. Mysteriously, a single roller skate dangled from a peg. Beside it hung a hosiery ad from a magazine—as close to a pin-up as Mama would allow in her house.

A messy spray of baseball cards teetered on the edge of the desk, a few drifting beneath Sam’s bed. The quilt was made from patches of his old clothes, the ones that Julian couldn’t wear, and old toys he’d grown out of. The velveteen in one square used to be a stuffed rabbit. A faded patch of gingham was once a pair of short pants.

Julian moved to the next room, the one with pale yellow wallpaper and curtains of white lace. Mama’s black sewing machine sat in its clever cabinet, and an ironing board hung from the wall beside it. Shelves held dry goods, threads and buttons, bags of rags for future quilts. The air in there smelled like laundry brought off the line, and his mother’s honey soap.

When he closed his eyes, Julian could see another version of this room. It was silver and blue, full of Charlie’s things, with a full moon hanging in the window. The rasp of dried stalks coming for him sounded so real in his memories that Julian had to look out, to make sure.

A field of emerald green, the corn outside had begun to show its tassels. Bladed leaves cut through the wind, wavering and bent.

His heart seized, a trill caught below his collarbone. He wasn’t afraid of the corn anymore, but the animal bit of his brain still took pause. Resting a hand on the frame, Julian breathed on the glass deliberately, then watched the fog fade. This was the last place he’d ever stood on two healthy legs, on two steady feet.

Somehow, they’d made him forget everything. That he watched the corn from Charlie’s room and used to have a bed in Sam’s. That there was a time when he walked up the stairs and back down, when he wasn’t tucked in the pantry or carried anywhere. That they used to go to the church in Connersville, the one with impressive steps. Once, Julian was sure, he’d climbed a tree and gone ice-skating.

Polio had wiped it all away, and his family had helped disguise it.

There were hooks in the downstairs rooms for his crutches. His chores kept him in his mother’s garden or tending the chickens; he detasseled corn and snapped beans. He put laundry on the lines and took it down again, but someone else hauled it inside.

Bitterness rose in Julian’s throat. He was older than Dad had been when he went out West alone, and he had nothing. Not a girl, not a piece of land, nothing—wait, not true. He had a morbid, ugly gift that his parents warned him to hide. The one extraordinary thing of his own, and they’d tried to erase that, too.

Leaning over, Julian stared at a dead fly on the window sash. A surge of reckless discontent filled him; it blotted out reason and contemplation. Drawing a deep breath, Julian blew on the fly. Its iridescent wings trembled, then it staggered across the sash.

The flash of oblivion came on hard. It was a swift punishment, and brief. Julian clutched the side of the window, his knee buckling beneath his weight. He blinked, and everything came back at once. All but sound; the ringing in his ears drowned that out.

Revived, Julian slid downstairs, almost crashing into the front door. Wrenching himself upright again, he threw open the door and stepped onto the porch. Blood still sang in his ears, his pulse thin and wild. With a single breath, he revived the captives in a spider’s web, then clung to a rail for the aftermath. His heart quivered tentatively before catching its beat again.

As he stood there, he noticed a stiff, bent wing in the grass. He’d never tried to revive anything bigger than his pinkie. Somehow, that had seemed too great. Too godly. Cold crept over him.

It would have been easy to go back inside, to live in this oversized crib and blind himself to the truth once more. It would have been easy, and he’d never have been able to face himself again.

Hopping down the stairs, Julian nudged the bird with his crutch. Hardened in its pose, the bird—a sparrow— seemed insubstantial. It could have been made of papier-mâché. A light breeze ruffled the feathers, and Julian dropped down before he could think it through.

He burned all the breath from his lungs, but nothing happened. Still stiff, still dead, the sparrow lay on the grass, unmoving. With a sigh, Julian sat back. Nothing, just nothing. He should have known. Pressed by the sun, he reached for his crutches.

Abruptly, the sky changed angles. Beneath him, the earth shifted. Razored heat cut through him from the inside. He didn’t feel it when he hit the ground. Streaks of green crossed his vision. A fine veil of panic drifted over him. Everything hurt; nothing moved. When he breathed, he gagged on the stench of decay.

The sparrow stirred. Its limbs moved contrary to nature: talons flexing against the joints, and its head wrenched nearly backwards. Its eyelids dragged over milky, sightless orbs. Lurching through the grass, it fell over, then righted itself. Claws spasmed, wings jerked.

Skin itching like pestilence, Julian wanted to move; he tried to crawl away. But he was frozen, eyes fixed open. Light burned, but tears wouldn’t come. There was no blessed darkness for him. He had to see it, when the sparrow remembered how to flap its wings. The sight of maggots dropping from newly animated flesh branded him.

He prayed in formless desperation. All that mattered was ending this. He wanted it to stop, the bird, his own body, everything. Anything. The sparrow opened its beak and screamed. It was a high, ragged note, full of agony. Then the poor beast collapsed in silence.

“Thank you,” Julian rasped. He almost sobbed when the violent grip on his body finally relaxed. Trembling, cold, he closed his eyes and basked in the dark, in taking a breath untainted by death.

Footsteps approached, and Henry leaned over, blocking out the sun. “What are you doing down there?”

Pushing up on his elbows, Julian shook his head a little too hard. Pain swirled through it, and his stomach turned in unison. “Nothing.”

“Well, get up. Mama’s going to have a conniption if she finds out you’re playing with dead birds again.”

“Again?” Julian asked.

But Henry hauled him to his feet and was gone before he got an answer. Still unsettled, Julian didn’t follow. Instead, he pushed the sparrow’s body into the bushes. After all that, it deserved to sink back into the earth in peace.

Julian went to wash up with the brown lye soap Mama kept in the laundry—when he was done, he decided, he’d find out what else they’d been keeping from him.

“Couldn’t you leave him?” Mollie asked. She swept her hair behind her ear, offering her most winsome smile.

Sitting on the foot of Kate’s bed, she’d already changed into her costume and dusted her skin with cornstarch to lighten it. A touch of rouge stained her lips; crushed charcoal darkened the lashes beneath her eyes. She was both beautiful and frightening, and she couldn’t wait to get into the planter that would pose as a boat.

The smile, however, was lost on Kate. She hid beneath her quilt, changing the film in her camera. It wasn’t particularly delicate work, but Handsome stood on her back while she did it, making the task more difficult. Mollie would shriek if he flapped his wings, and he would certainly flap his wings if Kate disturbed his balance, so like a surgeon, she made small, precise motions to balance everything.

“I think it should be romantic if we had a raven to circle your grave,” Kate said.

Mollie narrowed her eyes at the bird. As far as she was concerned, he was a great, awful monster. She didn’t care much for the fact that he fascinated Kate nearly as much as she did. Making a face, Mollie spoke, her voice far sweeter than her expression.

“It is
very
romantic,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But he makes me nervous. I know it makes me a frightfully silly thing, but I won’t be able to give my best performance. You said that film was dear.”

Beneath the cover, Kate yelped when she closed her finger in the camera case. “It is, that’s true . . .”

Slipping to her feet, Mollie backed toward the door. Any moment, Kate would stand up and that nasty bird would go wild. It was worse than a rat; rats had the sense to run away from human beings. “And I do so much want to impress Mr. Griffith with a perfect reel.”

“Wouldn’t that be something?” Kate’s smile was evident in her voice, and she rose like a ghost. Uncovering one arm, she bobbed her shoulder to make Handsome work his way down. “He’d stare. Openly. In wonder! And I’d say, ‘D.W., you’re drawing flies, dear man. You must tell me exactly what you think.’”

Warming up to this fantasy, Mollie leaned her head against the door. “And he’d say, ‘It’s marvelous. It’s wonderful. We’ll want this for Triangle, straightaway.’”

“And I’ll pretend to think about it. ‘Oh, my, D.W., I don’t know. Mabel Normand is doing such visionary work at Keystone right now . . . ’”

“Don’t be absurd,” Mollie-as-D.W. roared.

Then she cried out, because Handsome spread his wings wide and roared back, “Nevermore!”

“Stop it,” Kate said, shushing him as she shed the cover. “You’re making my star nervous.”

Pressing again, Mollie put on her most frail voice. “He really is, Kate. Please, let’s leave him.”

There was only so much daylight; they’d already missed the morning on account of a silvery blanket of fog. It was lovely to look at, but without the sea and the sky, and enough light to capture every flicker on Mollie’s face, their film would be ruined. Mollie made certain she looked as nervous as she felt.

Kate relented. Opening the window, she nudged Handsome into flight. “Go to your home, darling. Go on. I’ll treat you later with a bit of steak.” Nudging again, she braced herself when he took off, both for the clutch of his claws and for Mollie’s little scream.

“Better now?” Kate asked.

Lit with a dazzling smile, Mollie threw herself at Kate. Nearly tipping them over, she flung her arms around Kate’s neck and hugged her expansively. Mollie’s foil circlet fell off, and the silver charms on her wrists sang merrily. “
You’re
marvelous! You’re the best director in the world!”

“You can’t say that yet,” Kate mumbled, blushing.

“I can! I do!” Mollie kissed her cheek, then whirled away. Sweeping the circlet from the floor, she danced into the hallway, then turned back, beckoning. “Hurry, before we lose your precious light.”

Kate grabbed her camera and satchel, and ran after her. It was brilliant, Mollie thought as they broke free across the sea grass and into the distance, that they got along so perfectly. With everything arranged, they’d be famous,
beyond
famous, hand in hand.

And if not hand in hand, then they’d each have someone to fondly remember from the balconies of their penthouse apartments, wouldn’t they?

Draped in white paper, the kitchen resembled a hospital room. A terrible one, with a white-aproned madwoman presiding over a table full of cubed flesh. Zora used the back of her arm to brush hair from her face, then smiled when she saw Julian approaching.

“Perfect timing, baby sunflower. I need someone to crank for me.”

His expression sullen, Julian moved to help with the grinder all the same. With a quick twist, he fastened the vise tight to the table. Once it was fixed in place, he turned the crank; it spun easily. Inside the grinder, metal teeth gnashed in anticipation.

Zora fed bits of pork and fat into the thing, matching her pace to Julian’s. It was quiet, gory work, occasionally made exciting when Zora dipped her fingers a little too close to the workings of the grinder. She feared no machine on the farm and had the scars to prove it.

“You’ve been quiet today,” Zora said.

Answering with a shrug, Julian turned the catching bowl so it wouldn’t overfill on one side. He moved automatically, his hands trained in the art of making sausage. He knew when to tighten the vise, when to reverse the crank to retrieve a bit of bone before it ended up in the casings.

“Is something bothering you?”

Julian shook his head.

“You can talk to me,” Zora said. She rounded the table, mostly to see if she could catch his eye from the other side. She couldn’t, but she continued anyway. “About anything.”

Mostly, she meant about Elise: She wanted to know why Elise had left the party early, what she’d said to put Julian in such a black mood. When he finally decided to answer, Zora expected a bit of romantic agony. What she got was something else entirely.