Children of the Earth

by Anna Schumacher

  “C’mon, son.” Vince was already out of the Buick and striding up the dark slope toward the parking lot. “Now’s not the time to get chicken—we got business to take care of.”

  Doug fumbled with his seatbelt and stepped out into the cooling night. The wind picked up whispers of smoke and the cloying scent of generator fuel, night mutters and bawdy laughter from the drifters.

  “Why are we here again?” Doug heard a whine creep into his voice and hoped his dad didn’t notice.

  “I told you.” Vince didn’t break stride. “Taking care of business.”

  Doug was a big guy and prided himself on walking like a man, fast and with purpose, but he still had to practically scamper to catch up to his dad. A low haze of light hung over the parking lot as they approached, the sickly gleam of gas lanterns throwing shadows on the earth, and bare, strung-up bulbs scattering beams into the sky. A feeling of unease gnawed at Doug’s stomach, fueled by the stench from a pair of beat-up porta-potties set flush with the edge of the woods. He’d heard rumors about this place from his friends at the Vein, rumors that the guys here packed heat and didn’t appreciate nonsense, rumors that knife fights were as common here as money was scarce. Heck, even stuck-up Daphne Peyton had gotten attacked here. But Vince didn’t flinch as he approached a group of stringy-haired, unshaven men huddled in camp chairs around a fire that was more smoke than flame.

  “Gentlemen?” Vince went right up to their circle and tipped his cowboy hat. One of the drifters, a lanky guy with a weathered face and hooknose, guffawed.

  “Gentlemen? Hardly.”

  Vince placed his hat back on his head, undeterred. “Whatever you want to call yourselves—who here’s looking for work?”

  The chatter around the campfire died as a dozen pairs of eyes turned hungrily toward them. Vince had their attention now, and Doug felt his chest puff out with pride. The Varleys may not have had much, but they had something the drifters wanted.

  “That’s what I thought.” Vince surveyed the circle with approval. “I’ve got a deal for you fellas—a good one. I had a little luck on a piece of land I happen to own down by the Global Oil rig. I’ve got a foreman and an investor, now all I need is folks to work. The first twenty able-bodied men who show up at eight ` tomorrow are guaranteed jobs. And just to sweeten the deal, I’ll pay twenty percent more than those suckers on Floyd Peyton’s rig make.”

  There was silence around the circle as Vince fingered his belt buckle, a self-satisfied smirk on his face. Then the drifters exploded with questions: “Where do we show up?” “How soon do we get paid?” “Is this even for real?”

  “Hey.” Vince held up his hands, quieting them. “It’s my rig, and I ask the questions. Got it? I got equipment coming into the train yard outside of town. Be there at eight A.M. And have a valid driver’s license, okay? I don’t need the law on my back.”

  He turned so quickly a spume of dust spun in his wake, then he started briskly away from the camp. Doug watched him, realizing a smile had settled onto his own face as well, the first in what felt like months. He quickly wiped it clean, not wanting the drifters to think he was the type to get swept away by emotion. He’d be their boss soon, he reckoned. It was time to toughen up his game.

  “See you tomorrow, boys,” he said authoritatively. Then he turned and followed in his father’s footsteps, back down the dark road that no longer seemed scary and ominous, to the car gleaming like a soft beacon of hope in the night. The Varleys would be on top again in no time—and boy, would it feel good to be back.

  9

  “WANT TO HIT THE CANTEEN?” Daphne loped across the hard-packed dirt toward Owen, hardhat in hand. Her hair was matted to her forehead and her black T-shirt clung to her sleek, hard curves. The rig pumped away behind her, dipping into the yielding earth and bringing up gallons of oil.

  Owen’s appetite surged at the sight of her—but he wasn’t hungry for food.

  “My truck.” His voice was gruff. “Now.”

  Daphne looked him up and down. He’d been hauling sacks of drilling mud all morning, and his muscles were tight and hard under his thin shirt as his heart thudded from the morning’s work and his sudden, all-consuming desire. He saw her take in the look in his eyes, the need for her so overwhelming it made him dizzy. Her eyes widened, and her mouth parted in soft surprise.

  “We don’t have much time,” she said as they started toward the parking lot.

  “We have enough.” His voice was a low growl, and it took every fiber of his self-control not to grab her right there in front of the rig, to kiss her with all their coworkers watching.

  They couldn’t get into his truck fast enough. He fumbled with the keys, could barely see straight as he turned them in the ignition, hands shaking while the motor rumbled to life.

  “Drive,” she begged.

  He peeled out, scattering gravel, and careened onto the service road that ran the perimeter of the rig’s property. Five minutes later they were tucked safely into a scrubby grove of trees at the base of the mountains, soft pine needles brushing the windshield.

  The motor was still dying as he reached for her, plunging his lips onto hers. He drank from her, tasting the metallic tang of sweat above her lip, running his hands over the contours of her body and up under her shirt, feeling the heat come off of her in waves as she pressed into him, moaning. He submerged himself in their kiss, the ache in his muscles melting as their bodies pressed together until there were no thoughts or feelings, no pain or memories, no nightmares or prophetic tablets or Children of the Earth—just the two of them, sealed inside his car, far away from the rest of the world.

  “Hey, there are people in here!”

  Owen and Daphne leapt apart, struggling to straighten their clothes. Owen turned to the window, where a face loomed like a pale moon pitted with acne scars, surrounded by choppy layers of dusty blond hair.

  “Who are you?” Owen’s arm was somehow tangled in his shirt.

  “I could ask you the same thing.” The man took in Owen’s skewed clothes and the way Daphne’s cheeks blazed as she adjusted the waistband of her cargo pants. He looked to be in his midtwenties, rugged in an unseasoned way, a clipboard pressed to his brown Carhartt jacket.

  Owen introduced himself, coolly extending his hand.

  “Dwayne.” The man gave it a hearty shake. “Are you on my list?”

  He examined the clipboard, squinting, and clicked his tongue softly against his teeth. “Hmm . . . I don’t see an Owen here.”

  “What is this?” Owen started to ask again. But a rumbling phalanx of construction vehicles interrupted him, roaring into the clearing carrying bags of concrete, lengths of pipe, and spidery pieces of rigging. “You guys aren’t drilling over here, are you?”

  Dwayne grinned. “Sure are.”

  “But,” Daphne looked up, confused, “Floyd’s not planning to expand. I just talked to him the other day.”

  Dwayne shrugged. “This ain’t Floyd Peyton’s land.”

  “Then who’s drilling?” Owen asked.

  Daphne put a hand on his arm. “I think I know,” she said darkly. “C’mon. We have to get out of here. Break’s almost over.”

  “Right.” Owen checked the time on the dashboard. “Crap. Dale’s gonna be on my ass if we’re late.” His rig’s foreman had started giving him a hard time recently, most likely influenced by Floyd’s mistrustful glances whenever he was around.

  Owen turned the keys in the ignition, and the truck roared to life. “So who do you think is behind this?” he asked Daphne as he peeled away, leaving a fountain of dust in his wake.

  Daphne bit her lip. “I’d bet money it’s Vince Varley. This is his family’s land.”

  “That guy?” Owen shook his head. “He’d have to be crazy. A million prospectors have been by here, and nobody found a thing.”

  Daphne sighed. “I don’t know what
he’s thinking. But if I know that guy, he’s got something up his sleeve.”

  They pulled into the parking lot, and she turned to him, her eyes dark with anger, mouth still swollen and red from their all-too-brief encounter in the scrub grove. Owen couldn’t help it—he leaned forward and kissed her, his lips lingering on hers. For one sweet moment he felt her acquiesce before she tensed up and pushed him away.

  “Owen, we can’t.” Her voice was steel, but he could hear the longing underneath. “You know how Dale is about relationships on the crew.”

  “I know,” Owen muttered. He knew all too well. He tried to cool the fire in his blood as they walked back to the rig side by side, getting there just in time to punch back in and start a grueling afternoon of work.

  Owen was on valve detail, in charge of checking pressure up and down the complex web of pipes in the rig’s bowels. It was work he’d done a million times before, and he went about the task mechanically, his hands flying over the warm steel connectors, his eyes automatically scanning and recording numbers on the pressure meters.

  Usually work soothed him, made him forget that he was stuck in what felt like a dead-end limbo in a one-trick town, denied the release of motocross or the relief of following the voice in his dreams, the one nudging him ever closer to the other side of town and the Children of the Earth. But with news of the latest, competing oil rig banging around his brain and Daphne’s caresses a stinging, unfulfilled memory beneath his skin, even the easy repetition of hard work couldn’t quiet his mind. He thought of Daphne’s body, the iron of her muscles softening beneath his touch. He thought of his mother and sister and stepdad, back home in Kansas, missing him. He thought of his dream the night before, in which he’d finally seen all twelve faces of his earth siblings. He believed that meant the last one had arrived in Carbon County, and soon he’d need to figure out a way to let Daphne know.

  And as much as he tried to push away the image, he thought of his sister Luna, her green eyes brimming with tears as she packed up her things to move out of the small apartment they’d shared when they first moved to town.

  “Come with me, Earth Brother,” she’d begged, her eyes the color of a rainforest after a storm, tears streaming down her face. “It’s your destiny—our destiny. Once we open the Vein, all our brothers and sisters will come.”

  “No.” He’d shaken his head, trying not to look at her, yet drawn in by the magnetic force that kept him loyal to her even as she became more and more unhinged, a force that felt stronger than loyalty and ran deeper than blood.

  “Owen, please!” Luna sank to her knees then, taking both his hands in hers. “We’ll finally be a family again, and we can do what we have to do to make things right.”

  He wanted to follow her like he wanted to win at the motocross track, like he wanted to succumb to the voice in his dreams. But he held himself back, yanking his hands from her grasp.

  “I am making things right.” He gritted his teeth against the siren song of her sobs. “I’m keeping my job at the oil rig and staying with Daphne. There’s nothing you can say to stop me, so don’t even try.”

  “Daphne!” Luna spat the name like it was poison. “That false prophet. And the oil rig! How could you? How could you go against your nature like that?” She looked up at him from beneath a colorful veil of dreadlocks. “That oil is the blood of our father. It’s the blood of the earth.”

  The blood of the earth. The phrase echoed in Owen’s mind as he balanced on the rig’s scaffolding high above the ground, reaching to turn the metal wheel that would tighten one of the valves.

  The wheel broke off at his touch, tumbling from the pipe like a ripe apple falling from a tree.

  “Heads up!” Owen screamed to the workers below. He dimly heard the echoing ping as it bounced over metal beams, but in seconds a rumbling roar overshadowed it. Owen turned back to the valve. With a sinking feeling, he realized it was trembling, shaking from the pressure of oil building up in the pipe behind it.

  Without a wheel there was no way to adjust the pressure. The trembling grew in force as he fumbled in his tool belt for a wrench, bucking and shaking as if the rig’s metal scaffolding wanted to throw him to the ground.

  He had just wrapped his hand around the wrench when the valve burst, sending geysers of thick, warm oil spewing into the air.

  For a moment he was blind. The oil was in his eyes, turning his vision scarlet, filling his nostrils with a warm, spicy scent. Oil is the blood of the earth, his brain whispered as he swiped it away, smearing it across his cheeks, his vision still blurred. He forced the idea to the back of his mind and tried to stop the leak with his hand, watching in horror as oil seeped out between his fingers.

  There was something wrong with it, something deeply wrong. The oil wasn’t black and tarry, like it should have been. It didn’t have the telltale smell of crude, a moldering organic scent that made him think of dinosaurs slowly fossilizing in the earth. It was thick and red, and its scent was metallic.

  Oil is the blood of the earth.

  There was no time to analyze. The pressure under his hand was building, pulsing against his palm. It would only be a matter of seconds before he couldn’t hold it off on his own anymore.

  Ordinarily he would have reached for the wheel, twisting it until the valve closed and the flow went back to normal. But with the crucial piece a dozen stories below, he’d have to improvise. He struggled to close the wrench over one of the bolts where the wheel had been attached, but the oil made everything slippery, impossible to grip. After several attempts he tore off his T-shirt, the seams screaming as they ripped. Bunching it up in his hand, he used the soaked cloth to wipe down the valve, rushing to clamp the wrench in place before the next gush could soak it in thick, slippery oil.

  Biceps straining, he yanked on the wrench’s handle, hoping the leverage would compensate for the missing wheel. He felt a muscle in his shoulder flicker as the valve refused to budge, and pain spilled through him. He kept pulling through it, trying to coax the valve with his mind as well as his aching arms.

  “C’mon, I know you want to move,” he muttered at it.

  He visualized the valve spinning slowly shut even as the pain in his shoulder grew to a roar. He was about to give up and radio for help when he felt something start to yield beneath his grip.

  “You want to move.” The words were clearer now, crowding everything else from his mind. The pain in his shoulder and the pounding in his heart and the clanging, screaming commotion below him faded away, and it was just him and the broken valve, a battle between his mind and the metal before him.

  “You want to move,” he said again, out loud, and as the bolt began to budge he knew with a searing, tingling certainty that he was going to win.

  Shaking and straining, the veins in his arms popping with effort, he managed to bring the wrench in a full circle, shutting the valve. The last spurt of oil sputtered out around the opening, and he found himself standing limp and exhausted at the top of the derrick, the machinery around him drenched in thick, viscous liquid.

  “Hey, what the hell happened up there?” Dale was below him, hands cupped to his mouth as he called up to Owen. “You wanna get down here and explain?”

  Owen’s blood felt thick and electric as he climbed down the side of the derrick. He knew this feeling: It was the same sensation he’d gotten when he’d freed himself from Daphne’s seizure grip. Maybe it was adrenaline—but he’d felt adrenaline before, plenty of times on the motocross track. This was something else, something more powerful.

  He was less than a story from the ground when he saw that a crowd had gathered around Dale, and the closer he got to them, the more their faces twisted in horror.

  “What?” Owen knew he was dirty and sweaty, shirtless and covered head to toe in oil, his arm moving a little slow from the pain in his shoulder. But that was nothing new. Minor injuries were common on the ri
g, and every single one of them left work each day smeared in crude.

  He started toward his crew, but they all stepped back, terror etched across their faces. Only Dale stood his ground, something between fear and resolve flashing in his sun-faded blue eyes.

  “What’s going on?” Owen asked again. He looked down at himself, expecting to see oil snaking in trails across his chest and puddling in the dents between his muscles.

  Instead, he saw blood.

  “Oh.” The sound escaped in a slow puff of breath. He held out his hands and saw that they, too, were soaked in scarlet, the blood already coagulating between his fingers. His jeans, his shoes, all of it . . . covered in blood.

  “Everyone back to work!” Dale hollered. The crew scattered, leaving him alone with the foreman in front of the rig.

  Owen ran a hand down his chest, searching for a cut. But there was no cut. The oil is the blood of the earth, he thought, chilling the sweat on the back of his neck.

  “You find where that blood’s coming from?” Dale’s voice was thick with suspicion.

  “Not yet,” Owen admitted.

  Dale’s eyes narrowed. “Well, there sure is a lot of it. Want to tell me what happened up there?”

  “I was just checking the valves,” Owen began, “and I guess my mind was wandering a little, and I thought . . .” He trailed off midsentence. He’d thought the oil is the blood of the earth, and now he was covered in blood, blood that had gushed from an oil pipeline, blood that should have been oil.

  He’d thought: You know you want to move, and the bolt had moved.

  Something was happening to him, something he didn’t know how to control and couldn’t understand. The dull roar of fear pounded in his ears, almost drowning out Dale’s next words.

  “Your mind’s been wandering a lot lately.” Dale’s tone was flinty. “You think I don’t see what’s going on with you and Daphne, but I do, and I don’t like it. Floyd wouldn’t like it either, if he knew, and he’s the one I answer to.”