Earthquake Weather

by Tim Powers

  Louis and Andre had told him with satisfaction that their original five-year-old consumers were now in their late twenties, and as a segment of American society were beginning to show valuable symptoms.

  These men are monsters, Armentrout thought. They’ve trekked much farther out into the dark than I ever have, and abandoned items from the original spiritual kit that I could not ever abandon.

  And he might have spoken—but now Louis and Andre had hiked their chairs around and were staring at the television over the bar.

  On the screen, Muir and Armentrout’s mother had got to their feet and were doing an awkward dance around the studio floor; his dripping mother was making swimming motions, and Muir had pulled up his diaphanous pants cuffs and was walking on his heels. They were both staring right into the hypothetical camera, right out at Armentrout—he avoided looking squarely into their phosphor-dot eyes, even though he doubted that they could get a handle on his soul through the television screen—and they were chanting in unison, “Why so stout, Richie Armentrout? Let ’em all out, Richie Armentrout!”

  Louis’s face was pale as he turned back to stare at Armentrout, and his voice was actually shaky: “They’re … talking to you?”

  “Leftovers from the old Dale Carnegie days,” Armentrout said hoarsely as he shoved his own chair back and stood up. “We’ve got a deal—let’s get out of here.”

  Outside, the Grant Street pavement glittered with reflected neon, and rippled like sketchy animation with the constant rearrangement of the falling raindrops.

  CHAPTER 28

  Brethren and sisters of the hold-door trade,

  Some two months hence my will shall here be made.

  It should be now, but that my fear is this,

  Some galled goose of Winchester should hiss.

  —William Shakespeare,

  Troilus and Cressida

  THE RAIN KEPT UP all night, and into the morning.

  In spite of Mammy Pleasant’s wish for as much on-time as she might still be able to have, she didn’t appear at all throughout the gloomy morning, and Pete Sullivan wound up making lunch—tacos of fried ground beef and chopped ortega chilis, with the corn tortillas heated in the grease and a hot red salsa splashed liberally over it all. There had been only one Alka-Seltzer cup on the table this morning, and at lunch it was just Cody who sweated and scowled as she ate the restoratively spicy Mexican food and washed it down with a succession of cold beers. She was wearing one of Cochran’s dress white shirts, with MONDAY freshly inked over the pocket.

  After Kootie had cleared away the dishes and Angelica had taken the ads from the San Francisco Chronicle out to the living-room couch, Cochran stood at the back door and looked out across the wet yard at the Torino, which for all of Cody’s work still shook as its engine was gunned.

  Cody herself had shambled back to bed right after lunch, declaring that she needed to rest the cracked ribs and sprained hand that Angelica had diagnosed and taped up yesterday evening; it was Arky Mavranos who was out revving the car engine in the rain—pointlessly, for the Torino was blocked in by the Granada that was parked behind it.

  “He’s near used-up,” said Pete quietly, standing with a freshly opened can of beer beside Cochran and looking too out the window. “I don’t know what his part in this thing tomorrow is supposed to be, but it better not call for liveliness. He doesn’t even drink beer anymore, and he doesn’t eat, either, except for rice and beans and tortillas. That shrapnel-hit to his skull, or else that ghost that was on him …” he said, shaking his head, “broke him down.”

  “At least the engine’s in park now,” said Cochran. “A few minutes ago when I ran out there he had it in drive. I told him there’s a mud track that curls down the slope to the 280 at the back of the yard, but that he’d have to drive right through the greenhouse to get to it.” He tossed his cigarette out through the hole in the door window onto the patio. “Now I think of it, I’m glad he didn’t just do that.”

  “No chance,” said Pete with a faint, sad smile. “He wouldn’t run over Scott Crane’s skeleton. And he wouldn’t have the heart to move the bones, either.” He finished his beer and visibly thought better of throwing it out the window after Cochran’s cigarette.

  “Morituri emere, or something,” he said, stepping into the kitchen. “ ‘We who are about to die go shopping.’ Angie and I are going to take the Suburban truck out to fill the tank and check the oil in preparation for whatever it is that’s going to befall tomorrow, on resurrection day—and Angie’s made a list of bruja items to shield Kootie with, so we’re going to stop at a grocery store. Oils, candles, chalk, batteries for the stuffed toy pigs. Anything you want? Beer’s already on the list.”

  “A Kevlar suit and hat,” said Cochran absently, still staring out at the unhappy man sitting alone in the roaring, smoking car. “A squirt gun full of holy water. A home skitz-testing and lobotomy kit.”

  He turned away from the broken door-window and walked into what he still thought of as Nina’s kitchen, littered now with Coors twelve-pack cartons full of empty cans, the shelves crowded with Angelica’s morbid herb bundles and saint-decal candles. “No, if you’ve got beer on the list, I guess I—” He sagged; all at once the whole house was too depressing to bear. “Oh hell, I don’t appear to be going to work today, and I’ll just get in a fight with Mammy Pleasant if I hang around here. I’ll go with you.”

  “Oh.” Pete picked up his denim jacket from the pile of damp clothes and scarves on the kitchen table. “Okay. We’ve told Kootie to stay away from Plumtree, and it looks like she’s down for the day anyway. Angie’ll want to leave him her .45, but she’d do that even if you were staying.” He pulled on his jacket and then lifted down one of Angelica’s stuffed pigs from on top of the refrigerator. “Get you fitted for a battery,” he said to it.

  Kootie stepped into the kitchen now from the front hall, and Cochran could smell wine on the boy’s breath. “Is Mammy Pleasant planning on making dinner?” Kootie asked. “I’d rather order in a couple of big American pizzas, actually, than have another Creole thing.” He shrugged. “I believe tomorrow I’m gonna be eating in India.”

  Cochran and Pete stared at him, and Pete began to stammer a response, waving the stuffed pig.

  “I hear they have a New Delhi,” Kootie added hastily.

  Pete exhaled. “Here comes your mother. Don’t upset her unless it’s necessary, okay?”

  Angelica stepped into the hall, carrying her stainless-steel .45 automatic in one hand and tucking a shopping list into the hip pocket of her jeans with the other. “Good deal on Coors at Albertson’s,” she said. “Are you coming along, Sid?”

  “Thought I would, instead of going to work.”

  “Here, Kootie,” she said, handing the gun to the boy. “Cocked and locked. Sid, we’ve got the carbine in the truck, but why don’t you bring your .357 too.”

  Pete took the truck keys from a hook by the door as Cochran nodded and hurried back into the living room to get his revolver out of the locked strongbox on the bookshelf. “We should be back in an hour,” Pete told Kootie. “If Pleasant shows up, tell her we’re getting pizza. Tell her she might like it.”

  Freed of the two car covers, the red truck was in good enough condition to drive. Last week Mavranos had pulled out the holed, starred windshield and sealed a new windshield in place, and scraped the broken glass out of the rear panel windows and replaced them with sawn pieces of plywood. Mavranos himself had not driven the vehicle since parking it in Cochran’s driveway thirteen days ago, possibly because it would agitate the fragments of Scott Crane’s skeleton that were scattered among the cubes of broken window glass in the truck bed.

  Angelica got into the back seat, so Cochran climbed into the front and sat in the passenger seat while Pete started the engine and let it warm up. The truck interior smelled of fresh plywood and old beer. Cochran had just settled back in the seat against the hard bulk of the revolver at the back of his belt, and lit a cigarette, wh
en through the rain-blurred new windshield he saw the front door of his house pulled open, and saw Plumtree step out.

  She was wearing his old leather jacket now, and sneakers—and when she stared across the driveway at the truck, Cochran’s face chilled in the instant before he consciously recognized the narrower face and higher shoulders.

  “I guess Cody wants to come along too,” observed Pete, moving the stuffed pig so that Cochran could scoot over.

  Cochran ground his cigarette out in the ashtray. “It’s Janis,” he said.

  He stared toward her, and their eyes met with an almost palpable reciprocation through the glass; and Cochran was peripherally aware that a big raindrop rolling down the outside slope of the windshield stopped at the top edge of their linked gaze as if at an invisible barrier, then wobbled off to the side and ran on down to the black rubber gasket without having crossed between their eyes.

  Then Janis was hurrying across the wet pavement with her head down and her hands in the pockets of the leather jacket, and she opened the front door and climbed in beside Cochran, who shifted to the middle of the long seat to give her room.

  “Janis,” he said, “I’m glad you—”

  She touched her ear and shook her head. “I’m deaf, Scant,” she said in a loud, droning voice.

  “Oh.” All he could do then was look into her eyes and nod, as Pete clanked the gearshift into reverse and backed the truck around on the wide driveway, then drove down the road to Serramonte Boulevard and made a right turn onto the southbound lanes of the 280.

  “Janis’s mom!” said Angelica sharply from the back seat. And when Janis just kept looking ahead at the rainy highway lanes for several seconds, Angelica said, “I guess she really is deaf.”

  “Don’t … tease her,” said Cochran, “even if she … can’t know you’re doing it.”

  Janis had seen him speaking, and looked at him; he looked into her eyes and lifted his right hand, and then held it raised even though after the first few seconds he thought Pete must be expecting him to thumb his nose at the traffic ahead. At last Janis brought up her unbandaged left hand and clasped his, creaking the sleeve of the leather jacket. For several seconds she squeezed his hand hard; then she had released it and looked away, out at the road shoulder rushing past outside.

  “I wasn’t teasing her,” said Angelica quietly. “And I’m glad she’s along. I wasn’t thrilled to be leaving her back there with Kootie, and just poor Arky.”

  Beyond the window glass the livid green San Mateo County hills swept past under the low gray sky, with pockets of fog visible in the hollows, and columns of steam standing up like white smoke from behind the middle-distance hills.

  Black crows were flapping low across the rainy sky, and for a panicky moment Cochran couldn’t see any buildings or signs, and there appeared to be no other cars on the highway.

  Then Janis spoke loudly: “Why would someone be hitch-hiking on a day like this?”

  The truck’s engine seemed to roar more loudly after Pete had lifted his foot from the gas pedal. Obscurely reassured by a glimpse of a couple of cars passing the truck on the left, Cochran leaned forward to peer out between the slapping windshield-wiper blades—there was a lone figure in flapping white clothing on the misty highway shoulder a hundred yards ahead, trudging south, the same way they were going, with its highway-side left arm extended.

  “Well, it can’t be the hitch-hiker the old lady told us about,” said Angelica matter-of-factly, “today’s not the day. Tomorrow’s Tet.”

  Pete was pressing the brake. “I’m not risking any more carelessness.”

  “How far are we from Soledad?” protested Angelica. She was leaning forward across the seat, her breath hot on the back of Cochran’s neck. “That’s probably an escaped prisoner!”

  “Do they dress them in bedsheets?” asked Pete quietly.

  The right-side tires were now hissing and grinding in the muddy shoulder gravel, and the mournful squeal of the brakes made the walking figure stop.

  “We’re a hundred miles north of Soledad,” said Cochran.

  The hitch-hiker was barefooted and wearing a sort of stiff, blue-patterned white poncho, and when Cochran made out the letters ARLI on the fabric and looked more closely, he realized that the garment was a big painted-canvas banner from one of the roadside garlic stands down in Gilroy. The person was still facing away from them.

  “Long dark hair,” said Angelica. “Is it a man or a woman?”

  “There’s a beard,” said Pete.

  The figure had turned its head in profile to look back at the vehicle, and Cochran recognized the high forehead and chiselled profile. “It’s—” he began.

  Beside him, Plumtree jumped violently. “The Flying Nun!” she wailed.

  “—Scott Crane,” said Angelica, after giving Plumtree a startled glance. “I remember the face from when he was stretched out dead on my kitchen table down in Solville. Well, we’re really in the animal soup now.” She levered open her door, and the sudden chilly breeze inside the truck carried the earthy smells of wet grass and stone. “Uh … hop in,” she called over the increased hissing of the rain, squinting as she leaned out of the still slowly moving truck. Obvious fright made her speak too loudly. “Where you headed?”

  With shaking hands, Plumtree cranked down the passenger-side window, and Cochran flinched at the damp wind in his face.

  Scott Crane’s ghost turned to face them—it might have been naked under the makeshift poncho, but it was decently covered at the moment. Its beard and long hair were dark and ropy with rain water. “Jack and Jill went up the hill,” the figure called back, “to fetch a chalice of aquamort. To the grail castle, to take away the container of the god’s reconciling blood.” Its voice was baritone but faint, like a voice on a radio with the volume turned down. “I will brook no … trout,” the ghost said.

  “Before its time,” agreed Plumtree. The voice was Cody’s, and fairly level, though Cochran could hear the edge of hoarse strain in it. “We can drive you there,” she cried. “But you got to tell us where to turn.”

  Can we get there by candlelight? thought Cochran, quoting the old nursery rhyme; aye, and back again.

  “And we might need to stop for gas,” said Pete shakily.

  Cochran was shifted around with his right elbow down the back of the front seat now, and he saw Angelica visibly consider climbing into the back of the truck or even over the front seat and right onto his lap; but by the time the king’s ghost had limped to the truck’s side door she had simply slid all the way over to the left.

  The ghost was as solid as a real person as it climbed in—the truck even dipped on its shocks—and when the dripping bony face turned toward the front, Cochran could feel cold breath on his right hand. “What gas would that be?” the ghost asked. “Not nitrous oxide, at least. I’m running on a sort of induction coil, here.” Its eyes squinted ahead through the rainy windshield. “Straight on south,” the ghost said, pulling the door closed with a slam. The thrashing of the rain on the highway shoulder was shut out, and there was just the drumming on the truck’s roof.

  “I know the way,” said Cochran nervously as he shifted back around and clasped his hands in his lap, “and we won’t need to stop for gas, if it’s the Winchester House in San Jose.” He was breathing fast, but he wasn’t panicking; and it occurred to him that Crane’s ghost wasn’t nearly as scary as his dead body had been.

  “Find the green chapel,” said the ghost. “Take what you’ve dished out; there’s a New Year’s Eve party coming that’ll square all debts.”

  When Scott Crane’s ghost directed Pete to take the Winchester Boulevard off-ramp, following the signs meant to lead tourists to the “Winchester Mystery House,” Cochran nodded. “Be ready to take a left onto Olsen,” he told Pete quietly. “The parking lot’s right there.”

  Cody pointed at a bleak hamburger-stand marquee sign that read STEAK SAN/PASTRAMI. “I think we’re supposed to go to the San Pastrami Mission,” she
whispered to Cochran. He could feel her shivering next to him.

  But, “Take a left onto Olsen,” said the ghost in the back seat. Its voice was deeper now, and louder. “The parking lot’s right there.”

  Cochran remembered that ghosts tended to be repetitive. And the same thought might have occurred to Cody, for beside him she whispered, “I never need mouthwash, after Mammy Pleasant has been on. Ghosts don’t have spit.” Cochran looked at her in time to see teardrops actually fly out from the inner corners of her eyes.

  “Valorie never has spit—I—never have to gargle, after Valorie.”

  “I don’t think you need to—” Cochran began.

  “Valorie’s dead!” said Cody wonderingly. “Isn’t she?”

  Cochran took her hand. “It’s—it’s not,” he stammered, “I mean, you—” The truck interior was steamy since the dead king had got in, and Cochran was sweating under his windbreaker. He wanted to say, If it works, don’t worry about it. “Whatever Valorie’s status is, Cody,” he said finally, “you’re certainly not dead.”

  “But she’s the oldest of us!” Cody gripped his hand, hard, as if the truck was tipping over and she might fall out. “All the rest of us are at least two years younger! She’s the one who has our, our birth!”

  Angelica leaned forward across the dead king’s ghost to squeeze Plumtree’s shoulder. “Cody,” she said strongly, “lots of people are divided from their births by some kind of fault-line. Most of them aren’t fortunate enough to know how it happened, or even that it happened—they’re just aware of a pressure-failure back there somewhere.” She paused, obviously casting about for something else to say. “Plants often can be safely severed from their original taproots, if they’ve developed newer roots further along the vine.”