“It’s all right. I’m going to be a traitor, too, someday.” Lane stomps on another corn shoot. “One day the Sleeping Dogs are going to come through here and I’m gone.”
Cael rolls his eyes. “This again.”
“Yeah. This again. You have your dreams. I have mine, pal.” Lane pops his knuckles. “The raiders are real.”
“I know they’re real. They’re just not as noble as you think. You think they’re armed, Empyrean-hating mutineers hiding out in the Heartland, working for the common man, trying to change things by bringing down the heavens. They raid towns, Lane. Our towns. Don’t be naive.”
Lane shrugs. “Some of our towns need raiding.”
“What kind of name is that anyway?” Cael asks. “Sleeping Dogs. Who’s afraid of a bunch of sleeping dogs anyway? You ever watch a dog sleep? Wanda’s mutt just lies on his back, snoring, slobbering, and passing gas so bad it could strip the plasto-sheen off a long road.”
“It’s a saying. Let sleeping dogs lie.”
“It’s a dumb saying, then. You ask me, you should wake them the hell up. Maybe you wake a dog up—” Cael’s about to say more on the subject, but it’s then they arrive at their destination.
Poltroon’s garage.
They all stop and stare. Inside they see Poltroon’s son, also Earl, sharpening a spiral of harvester blades. Sparks rain down around him as he stomps a pedal to spin the whetting wheel. The embers reflect back in Earl Jr.’s dark goggles.
“I don’t want to go in there,” Rigo says.
“We got to,” Cael answers.
“We know things,” Lane says. He doesn’t need to explain what things. Town’s been abuzz with what happened to Poltroon. Most assume he went on a bender and took his motorvator out. Some have whispered that the Empyrean thought he was too good at his job and whisked him away in the middle of the night—either to put him to work for them or to slit his throat, depending on the teller of the tale.
Cael grabs the other two, drags them in. “C’mon, we need to do this.”
Earl Jr. sees them approaching. He stops sharpening the blade and lifts the goggles from his eyes—around his eyes are deep pink impressions where the specs bit into his skin.
“Boys,” Earl says. He’s a few years older than they are. He looks them over with narrow eyes. “Now, I know you don’t need any motorvator parts. What’s up?”
Cael looks around the garage at all the motorvator parts hanging off the walls on pinboards and dangling from chains: control boards and rasp bars and wheel-treads. “I figure you don’t deal much with boats, but we need a new hover-rail for Doris—ah, the pinnace we’re borrowing.”
Earl Jr. stands. Bites at the fingers of his gloves to pull the gloves off. “Yeah. Heard you wrecked yours. That’s tough stuff. Life in the Heartland, right?”
“Life in the Heartland,” the boys intone together.
“Sorry,” Earl says, shaking his head. “Had something, but Boyland came in, bought it.”
“Godsdamnit!” Cael mutters. Figures.
“I’ll keep my ear to the ground, though. If anything turns up, it’s yours.”
Cael offers a hand. “Thanks just the same, Earl Jr.”
Earl shakes it. His grip lingers. It’s as if he’s searching Cael’s eyes. Which is insane; no way he could know anything about what they saw. It looks like he’s about to ask something—Cael can feel the sweat on his hands and brow go suddenly cold. But then Earl nods, pulls away.
“See you, Cael.”
“See you, Earl.”
They hurry out of there. As they step outside, Rigo says, “I feel like he knows.”
“He doesn’t know,” Lane says. “Don’t be an ass.”
“We should tell him.”
“We should tell him his daddy was a Blighter? That’ll go over well. Word gets out, people will be throwing him in the jail, locking the door, and calling the proctor.”
The two of them continue to argue, but Cael barely hears them. Because the wind turns, and a smell reaches his nose: a familiar soap scent coupled with a deeper, fancier fragrance.
Rose hips.
Vanilla.
Gwennie.
Cael turns, sees her standing about ten feet away. She gives him a small wave.
“Cael,” she calls to him. “I need to speak with you.”
“Stay here,” he hisses to the others before he heads over.
She looks different. She’s got on a little makeup, for one: a bit of blush, a pink shine to her lips. But her clothes have gotten an upgrade, too. Good denim. Red crosshatch shirt with some frills on it.
“Hey,” she says, shifting nervously.
“Don’t you look nice.” Way he says it, though, doesn’t sound nice at all.
“New clothes.”
“And makeup.”
“That, too.” She stares him up and down. “What’s your damage, Cael?”
“I’m just saying, nice clothing. Boyland has good tastes.”
She rolls her eyes. “Are we doing this already?”
“You thought we’d exchange pleasantries?”
“You don’t have to like it, Cael McAvoy, but Boyland is my Obligated. We are to be married in one year’s time. And I am now an official crew member of the Boxelder Butchers.”
Cael’s nostrils flare. His head feels hot, his palms slick. “Question isn’t whether I like it, Gwendolyn Shawcatch; it’s whether you like it. And I bet you do.”
She doesn’t offer any answer to that. Which galls him all the more.
“Listen,” she says, “I’ve come to fetch you.”
“Fetch me. Like a dog looking for a bone.”
“Boyland’s back at your house.”
Cael’s jaw tightens. “My house. Why is that bastard at my house?”
“That’s his business, not mine. My business is fetching you.”
“Fine. Tell him I’ll be along.”
She shakes her head. “I brought the yacht. We can hop in and take it—”
“I said, I’ll be along. I’m not riding with you. You go on ahead. I’ll get there when I get there.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
“You’ve changed, Cael.”
“Really? Because I’m not the one in whore’s paint and a frilly shirt.”
Her jaw drops. She heaves back, gives him a hard slap that reddens his cheek and makes his molars bite into the inside of his mouth. And then she storms away.
His friends ease up behind him.
“You have a real way with women,” Lane says.
“Come on,” Cael snarls. “I’ve got an ass to kick.”
Marching back home, Cael stops to reach into the field, ignoring the way the leaves lacerate his arm, and wrenches an ear of corn right off the stalk. The corn squeals in pain, a sound just loud enough to be heard up close.
As he walks, he shucks the corn, leaving a trail of silk and husk.
Rigo and Lane walk on either side of him. They’re doing all the talking.
“He’s the mayor’s son,” Lane says.
“And he’s built like two motorvators stacked on top of each other,” Rigo adds.
“I don’t know what you’re planning on doing—”
“Cael, you better think about this.”
“—but I don’t like the look in your eye.”
“Maybe take a breath!”
“Cool down a little.”
“Let’s stop walking for a minute.”
Cael hasn’t said a damn thing this whole time. But now he stops and gives them both a look—a look so toxic it could probably kill a ten-foot radius of corn with just a sweep of his gaze.
“This ends here.” His jaw tightens, and his eyes narrow. “It’s time Boyland Barnes Jr. gets what’s coming to him.”
And then he continues walking.
Rigo and Lane don’t say anything after that.
Cael comes up from the side of the house; but before he does, he stops, unzips his fly, and coats the
corncob with his own piss, taking care to avoid splash-back. Not that it really matters: It’s his piss no matter how you cut it. Then he rolls the corncob in the dust with his foot, picks it back up, and tucks the whole ear into the pocket of his slingshot.
Boyland’s up by the front door. The shovelhead’s got a little wax candy bottle in his hand, and he’s pinching the last of some colored corn syrup into his wide mouth.
Boyland turns and notices Cael, but it’s too late.
The dirty, piss-soaked corncob pirouettes through the air and nails the dumb bastard right across the bridge of his nose. He blinks away dust and urine, crying out, and that’s all the opportunity Cael needs.
Cael runs at a full clip and jumps like a dog trying to catch a stick. He tackles Boyland right in the midsection, knocking the mayor’s son off the front step and into the dead shrubs that ring the old farmhouse.
“You godsdamn dirt-monkey!” Boyland yells just before Cael elbows him under the chin.
The two tussle on the ground, rolling out of the shrubs, covered in broken branches and dry leaves. Cael thinks he’s got the upper hand—after all, he has got his knee in Boyland’s chest, his arm across his foe’s throat—but both of Boyland’s hamhock hands remain unaccounted for. Rigo yells for Cael to “watch out!” but it’s too late. One fist clubs Cael on the side of the head; the other comes in from the opposite direction and does the same.
Cael’s ears ring. It’s like that day when they crashed the cat-maran, just a high-pitched whine echoing in his head. Boyland picks up Cael and throws him to the ground. The mayor’s son casts a long shadow over Cael as he stands tall. Boyland grabs Cael again, but Cael’s not done yet, not by a long shot. Even though his vision is blurry and his ears are going eeeeeeeEEEEeeee, he still has enough wherewithal to slam his head forward into Boyland’s mouth. Boom.
It hurts like a sonofabitch, what with Boyland’s teeth cutting into Cael’s forehead like that. But even still, it does the job—Boyland recoils, dropping Cael against the steps. Blood dribbles from Boyland’s split lip, his teeth smeared red. Both of them are bleeding: one across the forehead, the other from his mouth.
Cael can’t help but laugh—this is what he’s wanted to do since forever, to make that buckethead bleed. It’s not as if he hasn’t fought back before, but then it was always a shove here, a scuffle there. But this, this is how it should be. This, he thinks, is not how children fight but how men do. With fists and blood.
This moment is like the eye of the storm. But just before the mighty winds can crash together once more, the front door opens.
Pop steps out.
And so does Mayor Boyland Barnes.
“Uh-oh,” Lane says. Which just about covers it.
The mayor smiles, licks his teeth. “Why don’t you boys come on inside?”
A PROPOSITION, THICK AND FOUL
MAYOR BARNES IS sauced. Not fall-on-his-face drunk; he never is. The elder Boyland always walks the razor-thin bridge between clear-headed sobriety and full-on dipsomania. Even now he sits there in the kitchen of the farmhouse with the pewter mug he carries with him most times. Cael can smell the sour beer within. The mayor swirls his mug, takes a deep breath by sticking his nose in it, and then satisfies himself with a long, indulgent slurp. As if it’s his morning coffee.
The mayor and his bloody-lipped son are now the focal point of the room. Barnes Sr. sits at their small table alone. Barnes Jr. stands behind him, arms crossed, chest puffed out like a strutting rooster, a smug look on his face that shows he knows what’s coming next. Cael, his friends, and Pop stand at the other end of the room.
Pop leans his body so it’s tilted away from his bad hip. It must be hurting.
But something else is bothering him, too.
Cael thinks Pop is afraid. He can’t suss out why, but there it is.
“Boys,” the mayor says, winking and dipping his chin in a friendly nod. The man tucks a thumb under one of his red suspenders, draws it out like a bowstring. “I’m to understand you’re having some difficulty with your operation.”
Cael sees the flash of satisfaction across Junior’s face.
“Now, that’s a right shame,” the mayor continues. “Your crew always did… nice work. Forever number two, hot on the heels of Junior’s operation. Scavenging, as you know, is useful—perhaps even critical—to our town’s survival. The Empyrean, Lord and Lady bless them and favor them, have instituted a stiff policy of self-reliance, which is a wonderful thing. We Heartlanders take to self-reliance the way a squealer takes to mud: we like to get all up in it.”
Lane bristles.
“Scavenging prevents us from seeking handouts from our friends in the heavens. It lets us embrace that self-reliance. Whether you find a crate of canned peas or a binary carburetor for an old model Straw-Walker, well, that’s just one more thing we do ourselves. Ain’t that right?”
Cael and his crew share bitter glances. Grudgingly, they nod.
“You might think I was happy to hear of your predicament, what with that limiting competition for my son’s crew and thus increasing his potential compensation.” Mayor Barnes leans in, smacking his lips, his jowls trembling. “But that could not be further from the truth, boys. The loss of one of your crew is a detriment to Boxelder’s continued survival.”
Cael can’t help it; he speaks up. “We didn’t lose a crewmate; she was stolen, and we’re not in a predicament! We got a boat now, and we’re getting her up to speed. It’ll just be a day or three—”
“Fixing up that boat means buying parts, but last I checked, those parts seemed woefully unavailable.” Did Cael just see the two Boylands share a conspiratorial look? Of course they’re unavailable, you sonsabitches. “Your farm’s already behind. You’re just not bringing in the ace notes. Maybe you want to dip into your savings?”
The mayor waits. Cael’s sparking mad now, and it takes everything he’s got not to say something that will only sink him in deeper.
The elder Barnes mmm-hmms and nods. “Don’t have savings? Lord and Lady, who could blame you? People’s piggy banks ain’t full of fatback—hell, the only thing sitting in most of those banks is the squeal of the pig. Times are tough for all of us.”
“Tough for you,” Pop says, sucking air between his teeth. “Nice yacht. Big house. A cut of all the ace notes that get kicked upstairs. Sounds hardscrabble, Mr. Mayor.”
Barnes shoots Pop a sly look—his mouth is smiling, but his eyes flash with sudden irritation. Then the mayor stifles a quiet burp, thumps his diaphragm with the side of his fist. He turns back to Cael, ignoring Pop. “What I’m saying, boys, is that you’re just not bringing in the money. You’re all getting older, so it seems a good time to let another, younger crew come up—I hear the Shustacks got a strong captain candidate in their son Lucas.”
“Lucas is only twelve!” Rigo blurts.
Cael steadies himself against the table with both hands. He leans in to the mayor and feels his shoulders slump with the burden of what he’s about to say. “Sir, Mr. Mayor, please. We’re a good crew. This is just one bad kernel in a good cob—we’re strong scavengers, each of us has another year in us, easy. We’ll be getting back on our feet in no time at all.”
If they put us on the processing line, we’ll lose the boat and won’t have a spare hour to spend harvesting that garden.
Mayor Barnes chews on this. It almost looks as though he’s rolling the idea around his mouth with a drunken tongue. “Well. You’re right that you’re good scavengers. And you do have some more time on that clock—now, I’ve gone ahead and set you up with other jobs already at the processing facility, but I might could hit the brakes on that if you were willing to… dissolve your own crew and join up with the Butchers.”
“Wh…” Rigo can’t even finish the word. “Whuh?”
But it seems Boyland Jr. feels the same way. His jaw near falls off his stunned face. “Dad. Daddy. Come on, you can’t be serious. Don’t mess around, now. They aren’t Butchers material, and
you damn well know it!”
Suddenly, the room erupts as everyone talks over everyone else. Lane gets all up in Boyland Jr.’s face, telling the mayor’s son to keep his mouth shut. Rigo’s babbling about what his father’s going to think. Cael’s going back and forth between the elder Barnes and his own father, trying to get one of them to inject a little sanity into this kitchen table meeting.
It’s over when the mayor stands up suddenly, the chair behind him grinding on the floor and almost toppling over. He slugs back the rest of his beer and then clips the mug to a carabiner on his belt. He reaches out with a meaty paw, shakes everybody’s hands from Pop on down.
“I’ll be looking for your answer…” The elder Barnes stops and thinks. “Well, Lottery’s tomorrow night, so guess we could hold out on the very rare chance one of you wins a free ticket to the life in the big sky above. Let’s call it morning after next, then.”
“Barnes,” Pop starts, but the mayor stops him with a silencing finger.
“Arthur. Boys. One more tiny little thing I may have forgotten to mention. A caviling grackle landed on my shoulder the other day and told me a secret, a secret I’m sure couldn’t be true. That little birdy said that not only had your daughter run away again, Arthur, but that she is sending you packages that could’ve come from nowhere else but upstairs.” The mayor’s presence suddenly looms large, and Pop looks small. “Now, I’m sure that’s not true. You’re an upstanding man with a good family, and the shame of your daughter being a vagrant is enough for you to bear. But I’d hate to have to alert Proctor Agrasanto to all of this ugly business.” He shrugs. “Why not stay still? Why struggle? Lie back and dream of better days.”
“Pop—” Cael starts, but Pop silences him with a sound that could silence a hound.
“Go on, Mayor,” Pop says, forcing a mirthless smile. “You won’t find any trouble here.”
“Good to hear.” The elder Barnes looks to his son. “Come on, boy. Your momma’s probably cooking up some stew.” He gives a sideways glance to Arthur. “We managed to get a quarter cow. You believe that? A quarter cow.” The message is implicit: You’ll never get hold of a quarter cow, will you?
Under the Empyrean Sky (The Heartland Trilogy) Page 12
