In a Handful of Dust

by Mindy McGinnis

  “I wish he’d move a little faster,” Lynn said, rounding Black Horse back to ride beside Spatter. “Once we hit the bridge, I’d like to be running. Somebody wants to stop us, it’s the perfect place. Block either end and we’re sitting ducks.”

  “You could try shooting up in the air,” Lucy suggested. “It got them moving before, back in Indiana.”

  “It also made them pitch two of their riders.”

  “True,” Lucy said, thinking of the bloody point of bone sticking from Joss’ leg.

  Lynn looked morosely at a spot between Black Horse’s ears. “These horses attract a lot of attention. Some people might let two women with nothing but what’s on their backs walk on by, but two women with three horses is another matter.”

  “I’m not giving him up,” Lucy said, running her hand along Spatter’s neck.

  Lynn sighed but didn’t say anything. They were traveling along a gravel road. A hulking mass of gray clouds blocked the sun for the time being. An overgrown cemetery loomed on the left, only the tallest of the ancient headstones announcing its presence among the grass.

  “How far to the river?”

  “Not long now,” Lynn said. “I wish . . .”

  Lucy glanced up as Lynn’s voice trailed off. “You wish what?”

  “I was gonna say I wish I knew what the hell I was doing,” Lynn said, a slight smile on her face. “But I realized that’s kind of a stupid thing to say.”

  “I’d have been dead hundreds of miles back without you.”

  “You wouldn’t be,” Lynn said. “You get a light in your eyes now when we talk about California. You want it, and you’d keep going without me in order to get it. As far as me knowing what I’m doing,” she continued, “I’m not so used to being the one on the road, you know? I’m accustomed to being the kind of person we’re trying to avoid now. People with things to protect.”

  “Is it weird, being on the other end of things?”

  “Weird’s one word for it,” Lynn said, nodding toward the skeletal form of the bridge, looming in the distant haze. “I keep riding and hoping fate doesn’t feel like being an ironic bitch today.”

  The town on the other side of the bridge was Fort Madison, Iowa.

  “You like towns with the word ‘fort’ in them, or what?” Lucy asked.

  “I don’t like towns, period.”

  Spatter picked up speed to keep pace with Black Horse. Lynn was leading Brown Horse, their packs bouncing along with her steps as they emerged out of the field and onto the main road. Lynn jerked her horse to a halt, and Spatter fell in beside him. The bridge was a mile distant, the haze making it hard to see more than its vague shape reaching toward the sky.

  “All right,” Lynn said. “I’m going to get Black Horse moving as fast as I can, and yours should follow nicely. If Splatter—”

  “Spatter,” Lucy corrected her.

  “If your horse stops for some reason, yell out. If I don’t hear you, shoot into the air. We’re crossing that bridge as fast as they’ll go. Assuming this horse will mind me, I’m breaking south the second we hit the town. The road follows the river a little ways before heading back west. You stay so close you can grab my tail, understand?”

  “You don’t have a tail.”

  “And don’t get distracted by the river,” Lynn added, ignoring the joke. “I’m guessing it’s a sight to see, but you concentrate on staying on your horse.”

  “’Kay.”

  Lynn gave her a grim smile and looped Brown Horse’s reins around her pommel. “Well, here we go.”

  She slapped Black Horse’s rear, sending up a cloud of dust from his rump and the sharp sound echoing over the fields. He only flicked his ears at her. Lynn growled in irritation and dug her heels into his side, getting a slow walk that kicked up into trot when she did it again.

  Spatter jumped to follow and Lucy dug her own heels into him, surprised when he immediately bolted past Lynn’s mount with his head in the air, flying toward the bridge at a pace she’d never guessed the little horse had in him. She tightened her thighs around his middle, wrapped the reins around her wrists, and closed her eyes against the wind whipping past her face. Behind them, she heard the other horses burst into a matching speed.

  At that pace, the bridge came up quickly, and Lucy ignored the bite of the wind and opened her eyes to see the river. Spatter broke onto the bridge at a dead run, his hooves sending out an echo that rang back at them from metal struts and the endless expanse of water.

  At first glance Lucy thought Lynn must have been mistaken. This was no river. Water stretched as far as she could see, wider than any field from home. It had to be a lake, or even the ocean itself. It should have made her glad to see a seemingly endless supply of what so many yearned for, but she screwed her eyes shut against it. The sheer terror of something so large existing in the world she had thrown herself into only made her own smallness more apparent, the very fact that she was alive meaningless to anyone besides herself.

  She heard Lynn pulling up beside her, Black Horse’s hoofbeats ringing out in time with Spatter’s, gaining on them, then passing them, followed closely by Brown Horse. Still, she kept her eyes closed.

  When the first raindrop fell on her cheek she cried out in alarm, her eyes flying open. The dark clouds that had hovered all day were cracking open and dropping their burden. She could see the far shore now, and the buildings of the river town they were heading toward at breakneck speed. Most of the houses looked deserted; the empty eye sockets of glassless windows stared blankly at their approach.

  Lucy leaned low over Spatter’s neck, not daring to glance left or right at the endless stretch of water, focusing only on Black Horse’s flying tail and the flash of his hooves. They cleared the bridge and Lynn’s horses followed her guidance, breaking to the left and following the river as it flowed south. Spatter was losing ground on the bigger horse, his smaller legs unable to eat the distance as quickly.

  Lucy clamped down on the urge to cry out to Lynn. Buildings stretched along her right, more than she had seen in a long time, sparking memories of Entargo. Lynn shot a glance over her shoulder, but Lucy waved her on despite the distance opening between them. There were no signs of life, no reason for concern as their mounts sped southward.

  The wet smell of the ground opening up to welcome the rain filled Lucy’s nostrils, and she pulled it deeply into her lungs, happy for the reminder of home—a place where she had mattered. The buildings on the right gave away to a residential area with houses set so close to the water it made Lucy shiver to think of every drop of rain falling into the river and swelling it. A brick house flashed past, and she just had time to register the sight of three buckets set out on the sidewalk to catch the rain as she passed.

  Soon the houses grew sparse, and the road veered west again. Spatter followed it, a deep huffing in his lungs giving voice to his irritation at Black Horse for leaving him so far behind. Lucy could see Lynn had slowed her mount after breaking into the open. Spatter pulled up alongside him, and they matched each other at a slower pace, the riders not exchanging words until they were well clear of the town, and the river no longer lingered in the air.

  “Well,” Lynn said, wiping raindrops from her brow and motioning toward the unbroken road ahead of them. “We’re in Iowa.”

  “Wow,” Lucy said, still breathless from their ride. “And I thought Indiana was flat.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  Fifteen

  The heat beat down on them, drawing all their water to their skin and killing the grass that filled the plains. An endless sea of brown stretched to all sides, undulating with the wind and reminding Lucy of the rolling Mississippi, but drawn in dead tones. The horses stopped to rest more often, and their riders let them, their own misery trumping the need for progress.

  Lynn slid from her horse and nearly tumbled into th
e shade of a tree. Lucy followed suit, not bothering to loop Spatter’s reins around a branch like she usually did. She wiped her face with her shirt and sank beside Lynn, whose eyes were closed against the unending glare of the sun. Her lips were cracking slightly.

  “You need to drink more,” Lucy said, uncapping her own water bottle.

  “I’m fine,” Lynn said, her eyelids not even fluttering. “Right now I’m wishing I could take my own skin off and wring it out.”

  “I know it,” Lucy agreed, wiping more sweat from her brow.

  “I’m thinking we might consider traveling at night,” Lynn said, eyes still closed. “We’d make better time, and it’d be less work on the horses.”

  Lucy pulled from her water bottle. “Could we even sleep in this heat? Not to mention anybody could see us.”

  “True enough. There’s nowhere to hide out here.”

  It was impossible to leave the road without creating a trail behind them. Anytime they allowed the horses to wander into the grass, a perfect line of broken stalks followed them. Lucy pictured a group of men much like the ones from Indiana veering off course to follow the curious path of crushed grass, and finding Lynn and Lucy peacefully asleep at the end of it. Even in the heat, she had goose bumps.

  “I think we should stick to what we’re doing, for now,” she said. “The heat has to break sometime.”

  “You’re talking about Ohio weather,” Lynn reminded her. “We’ve got no idea if Iowa follows the same rules.”

  Lucy took another tug of her water and held it out to Lynn. “You need a drink.”

  “I’ve got my own.” Lynn waved her off and dug her bottle out of her pack, checking the water level inside before drinking.

  “That your last bottle?”

  “I got another.” She took a sparing sip and shaded her eyes against the glare of the sun. “We’ll be out of Iowa in a few days. Farther west we go, all these little springs the horses keep finding will be drying up.”

  “Right,” Lucy said, eyeing Spatter as he cropped off grass with his teeth, flicking velvety ears when flies landed on him. “We won’t be able to keep the horses forever.”

  “No, we won’t. But beyond that, since Joss took some of our bottles, we’ll be needing to replace them sooner rather than later. We can’t walk into the desert with four bottles between us.”

  “We still all right on food?”

  “We’re okay,” Lynn said. “This heat has been good and bad in that we’re not very hungry, so we’re not eating. But we’re not eating, so we’re wore out.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I want to get to Nebraska, find a nice out-of-the-way house that hasn’t been raided of everything useful, and rest for a few days.”

  Lucy shot Lynn a sideways glance. “That sounds awfully optimistic of you.”

  Lynn allowed a rare smile. “Well, that’s the happy version of what I want.”

  “What’s the other one?”

  “Get to Nebraska without dying or having to kill anybody.”

  The heat refused to break, and the miles passed slowly. Spatter’s head sank lower as they moved westward, his interest piqued only by the smell of water. They filled their bottles at every chance, drank sparingly in between streams, and watched Iowa slip past them as they kicked up dust on unpaved roads. Lucy’s fine hair was coated with dirt, her scalp itching as layers of grime and sweat dried on it. Lynn’s own heavy mane was so thickly filled with dirt she would shake it out at the end of the day, creating her own dust storm.

  It was too hot to talk, and the only thing to talk about was how hot they were, so Lucy kept her mouth shut and her hands busy putting tiny braids in Spatter’s mane as he followed Black Horse’s lead. The intricate braids held her attention, a convenient excuse to not look up at the all-encompassing nothing that surrounded them. The Mississippi was behind her, but it had been traded for the vastness of the prairie, a river of grass that seemed to have no end.

  Looking at the endless road under the vast sky drove a spike into Lucy’s heart. She didn’t matter out here. At home she’d been loved by a few, and known by many. Away from there she could easily drown in a river, or lie down to die quietly in the waving grass, and no one would care. She’d be swallowed by the earth as easily as the rain.

  Lynn stopped early one evening when they reached a stream. Her legs buckled from underneath her as she slid from the saddle.

  “Lynn,” Lucy croaked, her voice dry in her throat. She jumped from Spatter to Lynn’s side, but the older woman was already waving her off.

  “I’m fine, just tired and hot’s all.”

  “We’re done for today,” Lucy decided.

  Too tired to argue, Lynn only nodded. “Too hot,” she said weakly. Her face was pale underneath her tan.

  “You need to cool off, right now,” Lucy said, masking her fear.

  “I’ll rest here in the shade,” Lynn said. “You get the horses unsaddled.”

  Lucy went to work, glad to have jobs that would distract her from the unfocused look of Lynn’s eyes and the pallor of her skin. The horses gathered around her, patiently waiting to be unburdened. She pulled the packs off Brown Horse and glanced at Lynn, whose eyes had slid shut.

  She opened Lynn’s pack. It didn’t look like she’d touched her jerky since Indiana. The dried peas and corn were barely depleted, and the granola container was full. They’d been taking most of their meals on horseback, and it would’ve been easy for Lynn to look like she was eating, even if she wasn’t.

  Lucy jammed everything back inside the pack and walked over to where Lynn was resting. She kicked Lynn’s foot. “You haven’t been eating.”

  “I’m fine,” Lynn growled, without opening her eyes.

  “You’re not,” Lucy argued. “You can’t get down off your horse without falling over.”

  Lynn opened one eye and looked at Lucy, then closed it again.

  “What’s your plan then?” Lucy felt her anger rising, all the heat her skin had absorbed coming back out of her in a rush. “Die of starvation halfway through so I’ve got plenty to eat?”

  “The second part, mostly.”

  “That’s stupid, Lynn! Plain, flat stupid!” Lucy sputtered, ignoring the tears that rose in her eyes at the thought of Lynn putting empty handfuls to her mouth, pretending to eat so there would be more for Lucy later. “I can’t make it alone, even if I had all the food in the world. I’d lay down and die right now if I were alone. I thought I could do it, for a while, you know? It was like I was going on an adventure, and I could jam all the scared parts down inside me and look forward to the end of the road. But now I’ve seen new things and most of them bad. Horses bleeding out on the road and Joss’s bone sticking into the air when it’s supposed to be under her skin. I can’t unsee it, and I don’t want to see any more.”

  Even as she said it, she knew it was true. She wasn’t like Lynn; she didn’t have the courage to face the long, empty roads and the cloudless sky without someone beside her. The loneliness of the country they traveled through had penetrated her, opening up a well of fear she’d managed to keep covered at home. The blank fields, the vast sky, all spoke of nothingness.

  “God, Lynn.” She choked on her fear as she admitted it. “There’s nobody out here.”

  Lynn lifted one hand and rested it on Lucy’s shaking shoulder. “I know,” she said. “Here you are terrified we haven’t seen anybody, and I’m thrilled to death.”

  Lucy pulled her handkerchief free from her neck and wiped her face, leaving dirty tracks behind. “I can’t stand it,” she said. “I can’t stand thinking that if something happened and we died, it wouldn’t matter. No one would ever find us, no one would ever know. And we’d lie out here and rot and maybe no one would ever even find our bones. It’d be like we never were.”

  Lynn’s hand tightened on her shoulder. “But we are, little one. And that makes all the difference, whether people know you’re here or not.

  “I exist as I am, that
is enough.

  If no other in the world be aware I sit content,

  And if each and all be aware I sit content.”

  Lucy felt a smile tug at the corner of her mouth. “That’s downright cheery, compared to the stuff you usually throw at me.”

  Lynn shrugged. “I didn’t write it.”

  “Who did?”

  “Walt Whitman. You’d know that, and a few things more, if you could’ve been bothered to listen to me when you were little.”

  The extent of everything she didn’t know washed over Lucy, as deep as the cold waters of the Mississippi. “I feel so small,” she said, her voice cracking. “At home I mattered, but out here—you and I both—we’re nothing, and we matter to no one.”

  Lynn pulled herself up to look at Lucy, gripping her face in her hands. “You matter to me, and even if I were gone, you would still matter to yourself. All that time I spent alone before meeting Stebbs? All I mattered to was myself, and I got by.”

  “I’m not like that. I need people.” Lucy took one last swipe at her face with the handkerchief. “So stop thinking you’re doing me a favor by not eating.”

  Lynn settled back against the tree. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll promise you that, if you promise me something too. If something should happen, you got to keep going without me. Joss wasn’t a good person, but that didn’t mean all she had to say was wrong. She’s dead-on right when she says you got to want something in your life. Me, all I ever wanted was rain and water, wood to get by, and food for the winter. That way of living is so ingrained in me it’s hard to see anything else. But you, little one, you’re meant for more and you know it. You want to get to California, but wishing alone won’t do it. It’s going to be hard—everything worth doing is.”

  Lucy brushed a tear away but didn’t try to deny the truth of Lynn’s words. “Why couldn’t I want something easy?”