by Chloe Garner
“Sit.”
He scratched his scalp, then came and sat on the floor, crossing his legs and holding his ankles, looking up at her like a schoolboy.
She knew he was mocking her, but she didn’t let him. She slid back so his head wasn’t angled so hard and crossed her arms.
“Speak. Sense.”
The corner of his mouth twitched.
“You know the story of the Spaniards?” he asked.
“Old earth,” she said. He shook his head.
“It’s a story. One I expect you know. The Spanish were an old-world power, exploring new continents and bringing back plunder. Only they got too much, and they crashed their own economy because they had too much gold running around.”
“I do remember,” Sarah said, and he nodded, craning his head forward.
“You didn’t want Pete’s claim to get out, because you were afraid of what would happen to Lawrence. Overrun by people with no resources and then have the whole thing bust again and they all turn against you. Right?”
“Yes.”
He nodded.
“We could do that to the whole world.”
She paused.
Sat.
He watched her, chaotic sprites dancing behind his eyes.
“And you’re thrilled,” she said. He grinned.
“I just wish you were, too,” he said. “Don’t you see?”
“People want to kill me because I know where to dig damned rocks out of bigger damned rocks,” she said. He shook his head.
“Think like Elaine.”
She sighed, letting her head drop, remembering the years at the Lawson house, how much Elaine had loved Peter, despite how unstable he was sometimes, how she’d run the house, built everything…
She lifted her head.
“We need to go,” she said. Jimmy nodded.
“And buy guns. Lots and lots of guns,” he said.
She shook her head.
“I don’t like it, Jimmy,” she said.
“We can stay here,” he said. “That was my plan. Stay here, dig around, try to get more clues put together on who was paying the bills. But if it’s you who’s the target, not me, and it’s not about Lawrence, then we need to get ourselves dug in and surrounded by an army, because the problem isn’t going away. And it’s not about some single decision I made. It’s…” He bit his lip. Glee. “It’s about the shape of the world, going forward.”
“You want to form a one-man cartel,” she said.
“Don’t know how long it would have taken me to get there on my own. I might owe this guy a basket of exotics for making me see it.”
“What about Lawrence?” Sarah asked. “I’m not interested in world domination. I just want my home to survive.”
“So pay someone,” Jimmy said. “We’re gonna be rich beyond anyone’s ability to measure it.”
Sarah shook her head.
“Ain’t the way it works, in Lawrence.”
He grinned, pulling her to her feet and grabbing both bags.
“It will be, soon.”
--------
He bought an entirely new car.
Sarah thought it was a bit over the top, but he did it anyway, a sleek, black car that looked like it was going to try to jump off of the road the first opportunity it got.
It reminded her of Gremlin, for that.
They drove back to Preston and bought train tickets for cash through an intermediary Jimmy paid to get the tickets for them. They spent the afternoon at Wild Blue, sitting at a tall table and drinking fizzy, light alcoholic beverages that kept Sarah from thinking about what was going to happen next, then a man came and dragged a third chair up to their table, sitting down.
“Heard you wanted to place an order,” he said. Jimmy nodded.
“I’ll want to ship it,” Jimmy said, “but I’ll send someone with the shipping address in two weeks.”
The main raised an eyebrow, but Jimmy didn’t flinch.
“All right,” he said.
“And we’ll be paying cash,” Jimmy said.
The man looked from Jimmy to Sarah.
“You’re serious?”
Jimmy put cash on the table, his chin ticking a fraction up. The man eyed the cash and then Sarah again.
“Lotta regulations when it comes to this many guns,” he said.
“I think you’ll find the money there is adequate to compensate you for any unforeseen difficulties,” Jimmy said, fingers resting on the money. Sarah raised an eyebrow at the man, and he narrowed his eyes.
“Look, I know I do this for a living, but I’m not in this to start a war.”
“We didn’t start it,” Sarah said, and he chuckled.
“That’s what they all say. Look, you come with good references. I know you aren’t gonna bust me. But you can’t blame me for being curious.”
The corners of Jimmy’s mouth shifted up, an apology.
“I think we’ll contact someone else, then,” he said, his fingers completely unmoving. The man looked at the money again.
“This the only time you’re going to come looking for munitions?” he asked.
“No,” Jimmy said. “But I suspect it will be the only time I do it without a signed invoice.”
There was a promise there. Bait. The man nodded, sliding a piece of paper across the table to Jimmy.
“Take a look. Let me know what you need.”
--------
It wasn’t until they hit the platform that Sarah smelled home. They’d waited until the very last minute; Jimmy’s new phone rang as they sat a block from the station and they got out of the car and started walking.
Someone would be watching. They had to assume that someone was watching. The risk wasn’t that someone would know they’d gone back to Lawrence. The risk was that he had a crew of armed men waiting there to catch them when they came. Or that they had men on every one of the trains just running up and down the line, watching for them.
But they had to get back to Lawrence, and it would be easier to survive a gunfight on a train than it would to make it to Lawrence in one piece on horseback. It was a month’s ride, at least, and a lot of that distance was controlled by bandits of various local flavors.
Sarah frowned when she saw the private car attached near the end of the train. Jimmy tightened his grip on her hand and pulled her into one of the other cars, sitting down on the side away from the platform as the doors closed behind them.
“What is that doing here?” Sarah growled.
“Been running up and down from Lawrence since the day you left for Elsewhere,” he said. “Decoy.”
“Expensive one,” she said, and he shrugged.
“Not that bad,” he said. “Once you have it, the cost of using it is trivial.”
She shook her head, and he smiled, facing resolutely forward.
Sarah was hyper-alert for the first five or six hours out of Preston, and she was aware that Jimmy didn’t sleep that night, but when they got off in Mont Blanc and switched to the private car, they both relaxed a fraction.
“Are we going to tell the investors anything?” Sarah asked, halfway between Mont Blanc and Wellsley, midway through the third day.
“What would we tell them?” Jimmy asked, lounging on the side bench again. He rested his temple on two fingers to look at her.
“That they need to be extra careful with their shipments, because there’s a well-funded man out to kill them?”
He smiled.
“He isn’t out to kill them,” Jimmy said. She raised an eyebrow and he drew a breath, letting his eyelids flutter as he did it. Patronizing. It might not sound patronizing, but whatever he said was patronizing in his own mind.
“Would you have killed someone who had an armload of absenta coming down out of the mountains, if you knew for a fact that he didn’t know where he got it?”
“No.”
He shook his head.
“No. You just want the one with the knowledge. Now, they’re gonna have a hell of
a time getting it to market, but that’s always been true of absenta, and they’re going to be ready for that.”
She went to sit at the other end of the bench from him.
“Should have shot you in the chest the moment I saw you, too.”
He smiled, content.
“Too late for that.” Sighed. “Wouldn’t have worked, anyway. Lawrence was dead the minute Pete dreamed up the way to pull absenta out of the roots of the mountains.” That was compassion, there, in his eyes. Worse than patronizing, it wasn’t fake. “You know that.”
She did.
But it didn’t mean she had to say it out loud.
--------
The station at Lawrence was exactly how she’d left it. Sandy, worn, and overburdened.
They walked to town alongside cartloads of goods and unemployed men, but here, they all knew her. She wore her own clothes, letting Jimmy manage the purple bag, and she stood tall under her very own hat.
They stopped in at Granger’s, where Sarah leaned on the counter for a while and just took it in, appreciating the familiarity of it. Jimmy left to check in on the family, and Sarah turned her attention to the sweating man behind the counter.
“How have things been since we left?” she asked.
“Rumors were startin’ to go around that you weren’t comin’ back,” he said. “Lawsons held on fine enough, but the homesteaders…” He shook his head, taking off his spectacles and cleaning them. “Oh, and there was a new Doc showed up, ‘round ‘bout a week ago. Talks like he knows you and Jimmy. Lawsons vouched for him, but I reckon the town ain’t so ready to take him as the new Doc.” He shook his head again, putting his spectacles back on and wiping his hands on the cloth at his waist. “Brought in a bunch of fancy equipment. Ain’t seen nothin’ like it, I tell you.”
“Bought with Jimmy Lawson’s money,” Sarah said. “I ain’t gonna say nobody’s gotta go see him, but he’s got a shiny new paper what says he’s a doctor, right enough.”
Granger nodded slowly.
“Gonna be a lot changing,” he said.
“No way ‘round it,” Sarah answered. “How was the gremlin crop?”
“Worked out,” Granger said. “Lotta holes, Sarah. I go through lumber fast as I can get it in, and it’s never enough.”
She nodded.
“Jimmy promised me a local sawmill.”
“When?” Granger asked. It was a demand. She narrowed her eyes and he took his glasses off to clean them again.
“There’s an old saying about tryin’ to build the plane and take off at the same time,” she said. He shrugged.
“Sure.”
“We ain’t tryin’ to build a plane, Granger. We’re tryin’ to build a space ship, and you know what you got when you’re tryin’ to launch a space ship and ain’t got one built yet?”
He gave her another shrug, adjusting his glasses and using the cloth to wipe the shiny bit of his head.
“One hell of a bomb,” she said. He gave her enough of a chuckle to affirm that he still believed in her, and she slapped the counter. “Things are gonna change, Granger. Faster and faster and faster, they’s gonna change, and we just gotta hold on, but right now, I got more power than I ever did. And I ain’t gonna forget the folk who were here when they weren’t.”
He nodded, and she nodded back, touching her hat with a fingertip and heading for the door.
There was a fight on the boardwalk in front of the tavern and she tossed both men into the street, going through the unlocked doors of the tavern.
“Those ain’t shots of tea you’re pourin’ there, are they, Willie?” she asked. He looked up, smiling with a feline sort of look.
“We finished the lodgin’s,” he said. “Peter Lawson signed off on ‘em and everythin’.”
She sniffed and looked around the room. Barely past midday and the room was half full. Business was going to be good for Willie and Paulie for the foreseeable future.
“We’ll see,” she answered, giving the room one more hard look before she went back out.
Stopped.
She hadn’t seen it the first time by, but coming out of the tavern, there was no missing it.
Her wedding dress in the front window of Kayla’s shop.
Two of it, actually. The tattered and blood-stained one she’d taken off that day, and a replica, pristine and otherwise identical.
Sarah stared at it for longer than she had time for, then shook her head and started back down the boardwalk.
She’d give that girl a piece of her mind in good time. Weren’t no good gettin’ distracted by frivolities just now, though.
Second Street was taking real shape, empty shops on both sides of the street filling in with real ones. A barber appeared to have taken residence across the street from Jimmy’s spa, and there was a little restaurant, from the look of it, where men in slightly better-than-average clothes sat at tables in the open air and ate.
Sarah was tempted to give them a good long look, too, but she needed to find Jimmy and keep him from doin’ anything she didn’t want to have a shot at stopping.
Rhoda was sitting on a swing outside of her house, and she waved merrily at Sarah.
“Over here,” she called. Sarah took a quick look to see if there was an obvious clue where Jimmy had gone, but Rhoda was her best lead. The woman patted the other seat on the bench as Sarah got close.
“Now that’s novel,” Sarah said.
“Thomas had it built for me,” Rhoda said. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
Sarah shrugged.
“Bit too much sun for just sittin’ around, just here.”
Rhoda reached behind her and pressed a button and a canopy sprung up over her with a flutter. She laughed deliciously and patted the bench again.
“I don’t mind it,” she said, shaking her head. “But I’m not working outside all day like you.”
“You see which way Jimmy went?” Sarah asked.
“Yes,” Rhoda said with a grin. “But if you keep stalling, I’m going to call Kayla out to sit with us. Right now, you only have to answer my questions.”
Sarah sat.
“For once, I reckon that’s gonna take up more of my time,” she said. Rhoda gave her a conspiratorial look.
“She wants to know about the honeymoon.”
Sarah jerked her head back.
“Like hell.”
Rhoda shrugged, eyebrows arching nonchalantly.
“It’s what everyone figures you did with your extended vacation.”
Sarah shook her head.
“Ain’t nobody’s business but mine and Jimmy’s, but the truth is I spent a number of weeks with your folks.”
Rhoda went still for a moment, trying to read her.
“Kayla says you lie just to lie,” she finally said.
“I do,” Sarah said. “But I got your brother Gun shot and patched him the same mornin’.”
Her mouth fell open.
“Is he okay?”
“Doc said he’d do fine,” Sarah said. Nice to have the upper hand with this woman, for once.
Rhoda shook her head, trying to catch up.
“Why were you in Elsewhere?”
“Ain’t nobody’s business but mine and Jimmy’s,” Sarah said.
“Hell no,” Rhoda said. “You were there when my brother got shot. You got him shot? You owe me more than that.”
“She was hiding,” Jimmy said, coming around the corner of her house and leaning there, propping his toe in the dirt to cross his ankles.
Rhoda looked from Sarah to Jimmy.
“Sarah wouldn’t… do that.”
“My orders,” Jimmy said. His fingers were playing a pattern that remembered a cigarette. Sarah pulled out the bag of gremlin from Elsewhere - she was going to need to buy more from Granger - and rolled one, starting it and holding it out for him. Rhoda was staring.
“What happened out there?” she asked.
“Lots of things,” Jimmy said, drawing on the cigarette and then
handing it back. “We need to get home. I have too much to do.”
“That’s it?” Rhoda asked. “You two disappear for more than a month, and other than my brother getting shot, you aren’t going to tell us anything?”
“You should keep that to yourself,” Jimmy said, his eyes closed as he tipped his face up toward the sky. “We’ll have a dinner at the house tonight. I won’t promise we’ll say much that you want to hear, but we have too much to do to waste the afternoon.”
He sighed at the sky, drinking the light. He was too pale to look right in a desert, but he was home. Sarah felt the way he looked.
He broke his moment abruptly, looking at her.
“Thomas has kept horses here for us since we left.”
“Where?” she asked. He smiled.
“The barn.”
Sarah stood and followed him around.
Sure enough, there was a little six-stall barn out back, proper with a hayloft and everything.
A giant white head looked out at her.
“Flower,” she said. “They been treatin’ you right?”
“He’s a lot easier to handle than the black one,” Thomas said, coming out of the back of the house. Sarah smiled at this.
“I’ll teach him.”
Thomas snorted, and Sarah looked at Jimmy.
“Where are the bags?”
“Thomas will bring them at dinner,” Jimmy said, not looking at her as he pulled another horse out of a stall and tied it to a ring in the aisleway. “Unless you want to wear Inge’s dress for Kayla to see.”
She put her hands on her hips.
Pursed her lips.
“No,” she said. “No, we got a contract, Lawson. It comes with us.”
He glanced at her.
“Suit yourself.”
She looked at Thomas.
“Just the dark one. The purple one… Hell if I care what you do with that one.”
“It’s got all of her Intec clothes in it,” Jimmy said, swinging a saddle up on to the dark bay’s back.
“Rhoda would love to see what you got,” Thomas said, and Sarah spun.
“Fine. Bring both. Even load’s better, anyway.”
Neither bag weighed enough to bother the great big white horse, but she was worried about the unknown quantity of two irregular bags bouncing on his haunches. No alternatives, though. She eyed the horse, who bobbed his head at her and stomped the floor.
