Cloudmaker

by Malcolm Brooks

  Lindy had followed him into the shop, and she weaved in and out of his shins. He could smell the high heady sheen off the ribs of the plane, smell also the gasoline and grease on his hands from wrenching on the flivv. His belly growled something fierce, and he knew his head had gone a little light. Hunger and fumes.

  A week earlier he’d traced out a jig for the wing ribs. He built two of them the following evening, and by the third night he had a system down and built a half dozen more.

  Now he’d been away from the whole project for a few days, and with twenty-two ribs to go, he wanted badly to log some time but knew as well he needed his head on straight. He rocked the fuselage frame a time or two in its berth atop the horses, marveled again at how little this geometric web of sticks actually weighed. Bones of a bird.

  He knew by the door lamps and radio that Pop had already been by, that he’d no doubt driven this mystery cousin on to the ranch outside town. Huck had met her once, but too long ago to remember. Annelise, perpetually the sharp-featured little blonde girl with the Shirley Temple curls in the picture of the family gathering back in ’25, hanging on the wall at the farmhouse. She wore a sundress and a thin matching headband, although somebody had stuck a turkey feather straight up behind her head in the fashion of an Indian brave. Huck himself was still in a toddler’s smock, looking even then at the sky rather than the camera. He wasn’t the shaver in that picture anymore, which meant Annelise was not that little girl, either. But nobody had said a thing about a dang baby.

  He reheated a leftover kettle of what Pop called Texas hash on the gas range and forked down about half of it at the table. The first mouthful hit the floor of his belly like a hay bale dead-dropped from a loft.

  He still had the jitters. What a day it had been—Doc Lipton had stuck Shirley with two big hypodermics, and sure enough Shirley had quit gurgling and in four or five minutes lost about half the swelling in that balloon of a noggin, and he and Raleigh had started breathing again themselves. Doc Lipton told them they ought to get a medal, and he looked straight at Junior Joe when he said it. Such was the end of the story, other than Junior’s unconcealed sour grapes while he filled out his report.

  Or so Huck figured. The more he thought about it, Shirley had to be right. Raleigh was known to have a wild imagination, and how in tarnation would a dern body in a black business suit wind up in the river in the first place? Tractor tube, no doubt. What a day, though. His gut churned like a cement mixer. They kept milk in the icebox mainly for the cat, but he went for it now, thinking it might settle the storm.

  He spotted the note, there on the sideboard, scrawled on an envelope in Pop’s slanting script and with the terse cadence of a telegraph.

  Sonny—Took yr. cous. to the ranch, 6:30, back late or in the a.m.? Tx hash in kettle. Big excitement over to Roundup—gang of stickup men busted, one man shot and washed downriver, others still loose. Lock doors and keep yr. powder dry. Pops

  They made the train trestle with the sun yawning new and long over the coulees and breaks. Huck took his foot out of the pedal and idled down and stopped.

  “You have the radio on out of Billings last night?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “Hear any news from Roundup?”

  Raleigh considered. “Not a thing. What is it?”

  He fished the envelope out of his shirt pocket and handed it over. “Not any tire tube, be my guess.”

  Raleigh took a gander at the note. “Looks like ol’ Shirley can pound sand.”

  Huck turned onto the track and centered the wheels on either side of the left rail. He glanced down once midway across and saw the rip of the water thirty feet below, glimpsed it and glimpsed it again through the metered skip of the ties. He forced his eyes forward. “She cleared any?”

  Raleigh had his head craned over the passenger door. “Hard to tell. She’s still plenty silty.”

  He drove out past the plowed and furrowed table and down toward the water as far as the road could take him. He cut the motor and grabbed a rope coil and a shepherd’s crook he’d thrown in at the shop.

  From a high swell in the shortgrass before the land dropped away to the river bottom, they could look out to the south and see the opposing bench, see the grade Huck had backfired down the day before. Fifteen minutes later they looked downstream at the snag.

  The mergansers clattered again off the water, and the both of them jumped like pinched girls. “Glad it ain’t just me,” Raleigh said.

  They walked through a glaze of frost on the green grass by the water where the cold air pooled. They came up onto the snag, and sure enough from a downstream angle they could look back up into the eddy and see the same solid-black bulk when it bobbed up and paused before sinking back again, just shy of the fallen cottonwood.

  “We’ll have to get out on the sweeper to get a real look,” Huck said. “Was hoping we wouldn’t.”

  “You and me both,” said Raleigh, but he walked back and climbed up and began to inch his way out against the log’s vibrating tremble, and Huck dropped rope and staff in the grass and found his balance and inched out behind him.

  Raleigh made the first jutting limb, and with something to hold to, he sidestepped around as quickly as he dared so that Huck could reach for the same limb. They stood then on either side and looked goggle-eyed at each other as the trunk beneath began to lift with the flow like a whale breaching.

  They looked down. The river swirled with silt, opaque as fog. The black bulk rolled with the action of the water and lifted and broke through, a human hand protruding and fish-pale by contrast and then the bloated face, assembling through murk and flow and suddenly a half-lidded, blue-tinted ghoul. The dark wreath of hair pulsed around his head like sea wrack.

  “Dam-nation,” Raleigh breathed, and he clutched the limb with both hands and convulsed once or twice and vomited like a firehose, right out across the water.

  Huck clutched the limb. The sweeper dipped and his own gorge heaved.

  He choked it back. The face and its swimming fronds sank again into the murk. He wobbled for land.

  Raleigh finished being sick and followed, stumbled down onto dry ground and walked off by himself, shaking his head and spitting bile. Huck gathered his wits and shouldered the coiled rope. He climbed up on the log and started back.

  “Houston. Are you serious?”

  Huck kept on. He made the upright limb and put it in the crook of his arm, slid the coil from his shoulder, and tied a running bowline in one end. He could see the black shape through the silt and swirl, was already getting a sense for the timing of the thing. He set a ten-inch loop and let the loop dangle about where the hand would emerge. He looked over at Raleigh. “River’s rising again. This body comes loose, no telling where it’ll end up.”

  “Jeepers, who cares? It’s a dern dead crook.”

  “Might be a reward. I need to buy an engine.”

  Raleigh rubbed his eyes.

  The body breached a moment later, the bleached hand with its purpled nails, and Huck dropped the loop and drew the rope taut and tried and failed not to glance again at the face. Eye sockets bruised as plums. The knot in his stomach tightened as well at the solid tug of a waterlogged body, this odd combination of deadweight and buoyancy.

  “Now what?” said Raleigh.

  Huck steadied himself against the limb when the body again went under. He thought for a moment, tried to work out a plan. He tied the rope to the limb and balanced his way back for the shepherd’s crook.

  “Water’s below the bottom of the trunk in that stretch,” said Huck. “Just barely and probably not for long, way she’s coming up. I’ll send the rope under, snag it, and lead it back here.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then you’re going to reel while I crowbar him loose with the staff. Send him under the tree after the rope.”

  “You’re gonna fall in and
flipping drown.”

  “You watch. I think I got it figured.”

  “Houston. There is a fine line between calculated risk and famous last words.”

  Huck looked at him. “I don’t think he’s stuck by much. I think it’s mainly water pressure holding him in that pocket. Some weird hydraulic. I got a way to keep from falling, too. You watch.”

  Huck went back out to the limb with the staff, untied the rope, wound it back to a coil, and dropped it to the water. The body had again gone under. The rope passed beneath the tree on the current, and he turned and grabbed the limb, dipped the shepherd’s crook with his free hand, and snagged the rope where it trailed from the dead man’s wrist. He hung the crook overhead on a fork of the limb and walked the wet line back to Raleigh. “Anchor it to that bit-off alder. If the current gets him, this might be a real handful.”

  Raleigh took the rope. “You know this is crazy?”

  Huck didn’t answer, just headed back out. He made the limb, circled it with his arm, and undid the buckle on his belt. He pulled the long tongue back through three loops on his waistband, ran the leather around the limb, and cinched himself to the tree.

  “Houston,” Raleigh shouted. “Remember English class? The Wreck of the Hesperus?”

  “Christ save us all,” Huck shouted back, and when the body loomed up through the depth, he hooked his foot around the base of the branch and leaned into the bite of the belt. He held the staff in two hands and put the crook down into the water and watched it refract toward the dead man’s upper arm.

  He tried to hook the arm and felt the crook deflect. He tried again while the dead man bobbed and got the same result, the arm evidently in a rigid lock against the torso. The body rolled a bit against the prod and drag of the staff, and those dead-lidded eyes seemed to divert their attention in a scan of the sky, then bring their fixed stare right back upon him as the body centered again.

  He felt the dip of the tree and knew the pull of the water would take its claim again at any second. He thought to try for the dead man’s own belt with the crook, and he looked hard through the shimmer and saw only the flapping tail of the black jacket. And when the current began to pull him down, Huck looked full-on again at that ghoul’s face with its dancing hair, and he reached down and in one fluid motion set the hook behind the man’s neck. He felt the solid tug of contact, the stubborn resistance of a weight that wanted only to sink.

  He heaved with both arms and felt something resist and then release below the surface, and the head and chest sat up into the air like a jack-in-the-box, wet wreath suddenly plastered to the skull and a blue bullet hole the size of a dime in the temple. And Huck heard again the words Christ save us and realized the wheezing voice that went with them was entirely his own.

  He yelled for Raleigh to pull and the body did indeed jump with the current. He heard the rasp of fabric against the bark of the tree as the force of the staff shoved him into his belt, and he let go in reflexive panic and clawed for the limb. Staff and torso both dropped back for the water and slid under the tree, the staff at its skewed angle jutting and knocking against the trunk and torquing down with the heavy pull of the body, scraping under and springing back into the air on the other side.

  The corpse floated with the current. Huck’s head snapped to Raleigh, struggling to pull against the water, and he forced his fingers from the limb and fumbled with his belt, got himself free, and with one hand clutching his waistband somehow nearly vaulted back to steady ground. He made it to Raleigh in three leaping strides, and the two of them moved downriver, walking and hauling the body toward shore. They reeled him to the shallows, his arm stiff and seized tight yet against his torso, despite the loop at his wrist and the force of the water. The staff jutted.

  They steered the body to the gravel and looked at each other. “Houston, your pants are falling down.”

  “I saw the bullet hole, Rolly. Right in the side of his dern head.” Huck hoisted his trousers into place and buckled his belt. “It’s blue.”

  “Aye, yi yi.” Raleigh spat a time or two. “My mouth tastes awful.”

  They moved together toward the body on the bank, its legs trailing into the shallows. One foot was bare beneath the black pant leg, the skin pale as wax and weirdly hairless, the other clad yet in a wingtip shoe.

  “He looks like a dern lawyer,” said Raleigh.

  “Preacher.” The word popped out, and Huck immediately regretted it.

  Raleigh took a good hard look at the bloated face. Huck could hear him breathing, saw his hands still tight around the rope. He took hold of the staff and twisted the head. “There’s where the bullet got him.”

  “Ho-ly.” Raleigh looked away, swallowed hard and shook his head and looked back. “Dern thing must still be in his melon, otherwise he’d be missing half his head. That’s a .38 at least. Maybe bigger.” He seemed to notice his hands and the wet rope for the first time, and he half flung it at the ground, like a thing gone snake-alive in his grip. He looked at Huck. “Now what?”

  “Reckon we’d better get to a phone and call Cy. This cuss’ll bloat quick out here in the sun.”

  Raleigh seemed to gather his wits by the second. He looked upriver at the sweeper, then back to the body. “Let’s get the rope off him first.”

  Huck said, “Don’t you think we ought to tie him off again? Make sure he don’t float away on us?”

  “This here is a golden opportunity to get back on Cy’s good side after that stunt last fall, is what I think. Walking out on a sweeper and roping a dead guy ain’t gonna help your cause.”

  Huck crouched by the corpse and realized his knees were still shaking. He took the rope close to the stiff white wrist, tried to work the cinched knot with his thumb and index finger only, tried not to make actual contact with cold flesh or sodden cloth.

  The body really was stiff as a board. “I don’t know if I can get this loose. Dern knot’s like a turnbuckle.”

  He pulled the rope in different directions against what felt for all the world like the permanent grip of death itself, tugged this way and that and round and round, hoping to flex the thing loose from the bite of the knot. The stiff arm jerked, and the wet black cuff of the jacket slouched farther down the wrist. Huck pivoted on his knee to get a better angle and found himself staring at the moving hand of a clock.

  Not a clock but a wristwatch, a particularly enormous one, strapped to the inside of the dead man’s wrist. Huck watched the metered jump and stall of the second hand, the jump and stall, past the Roman XI and on again toward and then beyond the twelve o’clock apex. He watched the minute hand advance.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  He was not known to swear in the manner of most teenage boys, had in fact a sort of reverse notoriety for exactly the opposite. “Whoa,” said Raleigh. “You hurt?”

  Huck shook his head. The watch had a gigantic glass face and a steel bezel around the outer rim marked in degrees, one through fifteen, with graduated minutes of angle between each numeral. A prominent onion-shaped winding crown protruded at three o’clock, with a smaller crown positioned at two. LONGINES, in bold if diminutive block lettering beneath high noon. Huck reached over and pincered the two o’clock crown and twisted. An inset dial at the center of the face marked with its own arcane graduations rotated independently of the main Roman dial.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “What is it?”

  Jump. Stall. Huck couldn’t peel his eyes away. “It’s a Lindbergh flight watch. First one I’ve ever gotten a real look at.”

  Raleigh crouched beside him. “Holy—look at the size of it.”

  “I know it. So a flier can work it with gloves. They also come with a special strap to fit over a flight jacket.”

  “What all’s it do? With the dials and all?”

  Jump.

  Stall.

  “It’s for calculating
longitude. You set the watch to a radio signal from the prime meridian in England and then figure the hour angle of the sun by the settings on the watch, which gives you your location in the air. I don’t exactly know how it works. Colonel Lindbergh came up with it, after the Atlantic crossing. I can’t believe I’m actually seeing one.”

  “So this guy’s a flyboy himself, then.”

  The body. Huck pried himself from the jump and stall and started again at the distorted face of the deceased. He’d become fixated with numerology, with the steady blue momentum of time. He’d forgotten the body altogether.

  He looked back to the watch. Worn on the inside of the wrist, like a proper aviator. “Yeah, I guess he must be. Or was.” He looked at Raleigh. “I’d give a lot to have enough time with this dern watch to figure out how it works.”

  “So take it. Start figuring.”

  Huck shook his head. “More complicated than that. I’d need to study up on the basic science, then figure out the watch after. Plus, I think you’re supposed to use it along with a sextant or something. And a radio signal. No way I’m going to make heads or tails before Cy gets here.”

  “No, Houston, I mean take it. As in, take it with you.”

  “Take it?” Huck watched the needle jump again past twelve, watched the long, pierced point of the minute hand advance. Eight past nine and no doubt dead-on. Sunrise that morning had been shortly before six, and he’d left the shop not long after to meet Raleigh. “You mean steal it?”

  “Huck. He’s a dern dead crook with a bullet in his head who probably stole the thing himself. Or bought it with stolen loot at least. We hadn’t spotted him yesterday, and you hadn’t come along with Old Man Neuman’s rig when you did, no telling how this would’ve ended. Eventually he’d have come loose out of that snag and kept right on floating, watch and all. Or the fish would’ve eaten him. You believe in God, right?”

  Huck looked at him.