Dust girl

by Sarah Zettel

  That couldn’t be all there was, I thought desperately. There had to be something else. But I didn’t dare open my magic sense to try to find it. I’d tried in the rail yard and was paralyzed by the anger and fear that I found. If I froze up now, I would die. Those people back there wouldn’t see me. All they’d see was another varmint destroying what little they had left.

  A rabbit flashed in front of me, too close. I tripped and plowed face-first into dirt and dead weeds. Dust drove into my eyes and under my nails. I pushed myself up, hacking and coughing like the dust pneumonia had come back.

  “Get up!” screamed Shimmy, hauling on my wrist. “Get up!”

  I staggered to my feet, trying to blink the dust away as I ran forward. Die, die, die. The wish pummeled me. I coughed, and knuckled the blow dirt out of my eyes, and kept running. Sweat streamed down my face and turned the dust on my cheeks to mud, and all at once my mind clamped tight around a new thought.

  There was another wish, a wish that every person in Kansas wanted to come true, even these people driving us to die. They wanted it more than the death of the varmints they’d set out to slaughter, more than revenge against a world gone so wrong for so many years.

  They wanted rain. They wished for rain each time they stepped out into their dead fields. They wished for it now, under the banging of the pots and the pans.

  “Shimmy!” I shouted. I put on a fresh burst of speed and held out my hand to her. “Help me!”

  She grabbed hold of my hand, and I felt her magic rise up. I squeezed my eyes shut and let her drag me along, blind. It didn’t matter if our enemies could find me from the wishing magic. They were already here. Bull Morgan had brought their magic with him to blind the folks behind us. I squeezed Shimmy’s hand, and with all my might, I wished for rain.

  I remembered the cool smell of rain filling the wind as I ran to the top of the hogback ridge near the Imperial, and how the black and gray clouds built up into mountains overhead. I remembered the hard smack of the first drop against my skin, and the way the goose bumps spread out from the touch of cold water on a burning-hot day. Then there’d be another drop, and another. Soon there’d be too many to count, pattering on the ground, making a sound like paws.

  I’d wished for rain every day since the dust came, just like all the folks behind us did. It was my wish and their wish, all together, as strong and as real as the wish for food among the hobos in the rail yard.

  The wind blew hard and suddenly cold. Behind us, the clamor faltered. The light turned dirty-canvas yellow and then smoky gray. I risked a glance up. Clouds churned in the hard blue sky. But these weren’t brown dust clouds. These were thunderheads, great piles of them, filling the sky.

  Something cold hit the top of my head. Then my arm, and my cheek, and my brow.

  Rain.

  Fat, ice-cold raindrops hit the ground and raised puffs of dust. They smacked against the dead cornstalks, making the stems buckle and sway. I could see the people between the drooping cornstalks now. The whole line of folks in dusty clothes, with hats on their heads and dented pots in their calloused hands, stood with their faces turned toward the sky.

  “My God!” someone cried. “My God!”

  They stared openmouthed at the sky. The individual drops now turned into a solid sheet of water, rippling in the wind, pouring down over the dead earth and the desperate people. The rain fell faster and thicker with every heartbeat. It poured out of the clouds, out of my wishing, and out of me too, until I swayed as much as any of the cornstalks.

  “No!” bellowed Morgan. “Get after ’em, you fools!”

  But no one was listening to him. The rabbits vanished into the corn, splashing through the new puddles as they made their escape, and no one cared. The people laughed and held their arms out to the sky, mouths open wide to let the rain pour right in. They hooted and hollered and banged on the pots, the ones they weren’t holding up to catch the water. They danced among the cornstalks, swinging each other around and shouting hallelujahs.

  With the rain, I felt something else dissolve. The spell on their eyes. My rain washed that magic clean away.

  I wasn’t the only one who felt it. Bull Morgan roared. He swelled like he was a bag filling up with the rain, and he teetered toward us, the revolver stretched out in front.

  “You’re dead, you darkie brat!” he howled. “Abomination! Gonna kill you dead!”

  “Run!” hollered Jack.

  I tried, but my legs had turned to rubber and I just sagged. Jack caught my arm and kept me upright. Shimmy grabbed my other arm, and between the two of them they dragged me deeper into the cornfield. Shimmy pushed me forward into Jack’s arms so he could pull me with him while she shoved us both from behind.

  There was a shot, and another. How many bullets had that been? How many did Morgan have left? My head spun. My stomach heaved. I was jouncing and jolting, deadweight in Jack’s arms. The clouds I’d called up hid the sun. I had no sense of direction. Jack swung around to the right, like he knew where he was going. Maybe he did. He always had before. Behind us, Morgan shouted and plunged through the corn and the pouring rain.

  A hollow opened up in front of us. Jack threw himself flat on his face in the mud and pulled me down beside him. Shimmy dropped to her knees and then to her belly beside us. There was something wrong with her dress. It had a dark stain across the shoulder, something shining and wet that mixed with the rain and the mud. Shimmy put her hand on my back and held me down like she thought I might get up and start dancing. I couldn’t move. Each raindrop that hit me felt like it weighed five pounds. I was being pummeled flat into the ground by my own rain.

  “Give it over now, Callie,” Shimmy said. Then she coughed. “Give it to me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The-the wish.” She coughed again.

  Panic was blooming inside Jack. I could feel it like the rain battering my skin. Something was wrong, very wrong. I knotted together the last of my strength and made myself look at Shimmy, and at that dark, spreading stain. It wasn’t just a stain; it was a tear, straight through her shoulder.

  She was shot.

  “I got it now.” Shimmy’s voice trembled. “You let go.”

  “But you’re… you’re bleeding…”

  She coughed. “It’s not so bad.”

  I made my eyes roll up to look at Jack. He shook his head. Shimmy was lying.

  “I can’t let you…”

  “Yes, you can!” Shimmy snapped. “You wish you felt better, don’t you, sugar? You wish you could run. Give it to me now.”

  Shimmy huddled on the slope of the hollow. I didn’t know what to do. Bull Morgan was thrashing around up there with his gun, looking for us. It was a matter of seconds before he tripped over us in that little hollow, and I didn’t know how many bullets he had left, but I figured it was enough. The rain was punishing me down to my bones. I had no strength for another wish.

  “You got to get away,” croaked Shimmy. “Take the car, get to Kansas City. You got to promise me you will.”

  “Okay.” I swallowed hard. “I promise.”

  Shimmy smiled, and I saw the glimmer of golden light in her brown eyes. “Don’t look like that. You just be sure you tell our king and queen that Shimmy never let you down.” She wrapped her hand around mine. It was as cold as the rain, as cold as death. I felt her reach inside me, felt the spark of mischief and determination, and her wish. I felt Shimmy wish I could give her the rainstorm, and I passed it over to her. Simple as breathing.

  It was like a whole sack of stones rolled off my back. I could stand. I could back away.

  Shimmy rose up from the mud. She was tall and solid, more real than the storm overhead or the mud underfoot.

  “Bull Morgan!” she shouted. “Bull Morgan! Come here!”

  Jack pulled me deeper into the corn and the rain.

  We heard Morgan shout. We heard Shimmy laugh.

  We broke through the edge of the corn, and there was the Packard,
parked crooked on the side of the road. Jack had known where he was going after all.

  A shot split the air like thunder, and another.

  I dove into the passenger side of the Packard while Jack cranked the engine to life. I dug into Shimmy’s handbag for her compact. The tires spun and squelched in the mud as Jack forced the car forward, rocking and bumping across the dirt road’s ruts. I flipped the compact open.

  Show me, I demanded of the mirror. Show me!

  The mirror went black again, then gray and shimmery with rain. Then the rain cleared away.

  Bull Morgan was squinting, turning drunkenly in place, waving his revolver. Looking for us. For me. Shimmy lay in the mud at his feet, and she wasn’t moving.

  “Where are they?” he shouted like she could still answer him. “Where?”

  The wind blew until the cornstalks bent almost double. Then, slowly, the light began to change. It grew clean, bright, and hard. The rain slowed, then stopped. The white light turned Morgan’s sagging skin the color of chalk, like he’d walked off the screen from some old silent film.

  “You have failed us, Samuel Morgan.” The voice came from nowhere and everywhere. There were no beautiful beings this time, just this voice that belonged to Judgment Day.

  “No…”

  “We gave you our trust and our favor, and you have failed!”

  “No! No! I can still find her. I know where she’s gone!”

  “Your time is over, Samuel Morgan.”

  The light faded. Bull Morgan cried out and staggered forward, but he collapsed to his knees. He sagged slowly, deflating like a tire with a slow leak. I watched, my heart in my mouth, as Morgan slumped forward until his hands pressed into the dirt.

  “No. No. Don’t leave me! I can find them. I will find them.”

  But the magic was gone. The light was only the bloody twilight over the ruined prairie. The long stripes of the cornstalk shadows fell across him like bars. Morgan’s elbows buckled until his forehead touched his hands.

  “They ain’t gonna escape. They ain’t. I ain’t givin’ up. Bull Morgan don’t. Give. UP.”

  Ever seen a movie that’s been run through the projector in reverse? The cars and the people all head backward, and anything that has broken apart flies into one piece again. That was what this was like. Morgan’s head lifted, and his neck drew back into his collar. His hands lifted themselves up, and first one knee straightened, then the other, and he stood.

  But the strength that had puffed him up before was gone, along with the light in his eyes. His colorless skin sagged against his bones, like all the juice had been sucked out of him. It even puckered unevenly around his flat, dry eyeballs as he stared into the twilight. One hand, the skin loose and rumpled around the finger bones, felt for his club, then his gun, then his badge.

  Morgan turned from where Shimmy lay and blundered through the rain-drenched corn.

  My hand went cold and curled into a fist, snapping the compact closed.

  “What is it?” shouted Jack. “What did you see?”

  “Drive,” I told him as the tears ran down my face to mix with the last of the rain that had saved our lives. Ours, but not Shimmy’s. “Just drive.”

  21

  Ain’t Gonna Be Treated This a-Way

  The next town we came to was Madison. We sold Shimmy’s Packard for seventy-five dollars to the one auto dealer, and bought two tickets for the bus to Kansas City. I kept Shimmy’s handbag with her compact and her wallet. There was a paper in there that told me everything I needed to know about what to do once we got into the city.

  There wasn’t any discussion about where we were going. I said what was going to happen and Jack agreed, and he set about dickering with the auto man, who already knew we’d take whatever he cared to offer. Jack wasn’t even looking in my direction any more than necessary, and that was just fine with me. If he hadn’t run out on me, Shimmy wouldn’t be dead. I clenched her white bag in my hand and looked out the bus window. Things were going to be different from here on out. Something had changed inside me when I’d made that wish come true, and again when I’d passed it over to Shimmy. That was all right too.

  Kansas City was another world.

  It was still flat, and the sky overhead was still colored by the dust. But unlike Slow Run, or Constantinople, or sad little Burden, Kansas City teemed with life. People filled the paved streets, crowding the sidewalks between stone and timber buildings. Some of those buildings were as much as ten stories tall. Cars, trucks, and wagons jostled each other in the streets. It smelled of exhaust and excitement. I wanted to plunge straight into the crowds and find out where they were going and where they were coming from. I wanted to wrap my arms around the city and hold it so close it would become part of me. Even the hard parts-the cops in blue coats and hats, with their clubs and guns on their hips, who seemed to stand on every corner; the men lounging against the walls, unshaven, cigarettes dangling; the apple sellers, with ragged families tucked in the shadows; the long line of people in front of the mission waiting for bread and soup.

  Even in my excitement, there were parts I could have done without. Along with the signs for hotels and shops and cinemas and food, I saw the signs on the doors that said WHITES ONLY and NO COLORED. They hadn’t needed signs like that in Slow Run. Sheriff Davis kept anybody with brown skin from staying in town overnight. Mama kept the black hobos she put up behind closed curtains in the Imperial’s rooms. If Sheriff Davis came to inquire about who she had there, she distracted him with her cooking. But Kansas City was too big for simple tricks like that, and there were too many colored folks walking the streets. They had to be told straight-out where they weren’t welcome.

  But I wasn’t going to let that matter to me. Not this time.

  Jack wanted us to find some cheap boardinghouse where we could hole up, but I wasn’t having it. From the bus station we hailed a taxi. I climbed into the backseat and looked right into the eyes of the skinny white driver.

  He wished we were rich folks. He needed to make the rental on his cab for the day, and he wanted a good fare, maybe somebody going to the Savoy or the Muehlebach Hotel. So I took that wish and made it come true. Just a little, just enough so he saw exactly what he wanted: a pair of rich white folks in his cab.

  “Take us to the Savoy,” I said.

  “Yes, miss.” He tipped his hat to me and pulled the taxi into traffic.

  Jack opened his mouth, but I looked at him too, daring him to say a single word. He didn’t.

  Finally, we pulled up in front of the biggest, grandest building I’d seen yet. I counted bills out of Shimmy’s purse. Of course there was enough. I should have known. There was all we needed, plus enough for a big tip.

  A doorman with deep black skin, wearing a red coat with gold buttons and white gloves, opened the car door. He tipped his shining top hat to us as I marched through the front door and up to the registration desk.

  The manager wore a pin-striped suit and a tight frown. He looked down at us with watery gray eyes. His name badge read WENTWORTH, and he wished that was his real name, instead of Weinstein.

  “May I help you?” Mr. “Wentworth” asked in the sort of voice that meant the only help he was going to give was the kind that would get us out of his shiny marble and gold lobby as quickly as possible. Like the cabdriver, he wished we were rich folks, maybe movie stars on our way to Hollywood.

  “My name’s Callie LeRoux,” I said to him. “I’ve just signed a three-picture deal with MGM Studios. I’m going to be the next Shirley Temple, but the train to California is delayed by a dust storm and I need a place to stay until the track is cleared.”

  My magic shivered between me and Mr. Wentworth, and those watery eyes flew wide open. He shot out from behind the mahogany registration desk, rubbing his hands and all but bowing to me.

  “Miss LeRoux, please allow me to welcome you to the Savoy. We are delighted to have you here. I’m so dreadfully sorry to hear about the delay of your train. Of course the
Savoy will be more than happy to accommodate you.”

  He took us up in the elevator to the top floor. He opened the doors of a suite so big, the entire staff quarters of the Imperial could have fit in there and still would’ve had space to rattle around. It had a sitting room with a dining nook, three bedrooms, a private bath with a claw-foot tub, and a balcony facing the distant green river.

  I pulled a knot of bills out of Shimmy’s purse and laid them on the table for the manager to pocket. I wondered about that money, whether it was real or like the Hoppers’. Not that it mattered. Mr. Wentworth wished it was real, and that was enough. The manager bowed and smiled and rubbed his long, clean hands as he backed out the door.

  As soon as he was gone, Jack turned to me. “Callie…”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I told him. I didn’t care what “it” was. I was done talking and worrying. And I wasn’t going to show up in front of a king and queen looking like a Dust Bowl refugee. That wasn’t how Shimmy would have done it. For her sake and mine, I was going to do things up right, and Jack could see how it felt to trail along and not know which way he was going for a change.

  I bought us a huge luncheon in the Savoy’s dining room-Waldorf salad made table-side, steak, and lobster in butter sauce with heaps of french fries. We had banana splits piled with whipped cream for dessert. I told Mr. Wentworth I needed to do some shopping, and he phoned over to Kleine’s department store so the floor manager was waiting at the door with a small army of store clerks when we arrived. We were ushered up to the third floor and seated on plush chairs in a special alcove. Women in starched white aprons brought us lemonade and cookies. Boys in green jackets who looked about Jack’s age brought us one outfit after another for our approval. I bought us both enough fancy clothes for a week and paid with more cash from Shimmy’s purse.

  Through it all, Jack looked like a hound dog whose owner had died. I told myself I didn’t care, and I almost believed it.

  Back at the hotel, the bellhops carried the boxes filled with new clothes into our suite. I tipped them all, then used the private phone to order room service. Steak and french fries and more ice cream. It was going to be a long night, and I wanted a good dinner.