Shadows Over Main Street, Volume 2

by Gary A Braunbeck

  A few months later, the war in Europe was over, and after a few more, so, too, was the war in Japan. Within a season, most of the men returned home, and life went on.

  But not for Vesta.

  Cyrus had left her with a house, with some land, but nothing much to remember him by.

  Certainly not a child, not one. Now, there’d never be one.

  She took over the running of the farm from Cyrus’s family, but did so with no great energy or love for the job. As years passed, she sold off chunks of it here and there, more so to unburden herself than for any financial need.

  —

  Seeds.

  Shug had showed her seeds, a few held in the open palm of his hand. That hand, so soft in all the right places, so calloused in all the right places, that hand that, just an hour or so earlier had cupped her in its palm, had…

  Vesta cleared her throat, wiped her hand across her brow.

  Why was it so beastly hot out here, and nearly October?

  Opening her eyes, she looked at the two or three seeds he held. She was no farmer, but these were like no seeds she’d ever seen.

  They were bigger in her limited experience than other seeds, almost… plump. And they were blue, blue like the skin of a blueberry, but powdery like moth’s wings, iridescent. As he rolled them back and forth in his palm, they left a bluish, chalky residue.

  “What are they?” she asked, extending a finger to poke at one.

  “Seeds. Got ’em in Europe after the war. Go ahead, touch ’em.”

  Her finger prodded one, and it gave against her fingertip, as if it were filled with something liquid.

  “Careful,” he cautioned, closing his hands delicately around them. “Don’t want to bust ’em or anything.”

  “Whatever are they for?” she said, staring at his partially closed fist. “And what are you doing with them?”

  “Planting them, darlin’.”

  “Now? It’ll be October soon. Getting late, even for winter wheat. And they’re… what?”

  “Not to worry about it,” he said, kissing her forehead. “I risked a lot to bring them here, to get them out of… well, where I found them. The war left a lot of wreckage behind.”

  He lifted her chin with a finger, looked into her eyes.

  “But it unearthed a lot of treasures, too, secret things, knowledge from a long time ago. Stuff that can help us get back on our feet, rule the world in ways we can’t even imagine. The way we’re destined to.”

  Vesta stared at him for a moment, then slapped at the center of his chest.

  “You’re always kidding me, Shug,” she said, turning toward the house. “Lunch’ll be ready around noon. Don’t you dare be late.”

  As she walked away, a shiver rippled through her, caused her to lose her footing a little on the path.

  She hoped he hadn’t noticed, because she was more than a little troubled.

  When she’d slapped at him, when her hand had made contact with the flat of his sternum, she’d had to hold her breath to keep in a cry of disgust.

  Rather than hard bone beneath his skin, she’d felt it give way, felt the flesh beneath squelch around her palm like cooked oatmeal in a sack.

  Or like one of those seeds.

  —

  By 1950, she had only about 100 acres and the farmhouse left. His parents had died in ’47, gutted by the loss of Cyrus and his only brother during the war. With neither producing children, the family effectively ended. Vesta was an only child, born to older parents. Her own father had passed shortly after she’d been married, and her mother joined him in the winter of ’48.

  With no family anymore, Vesta became disinterested in farming, or much of anything. She neglected to hire hands, shooed away those who came, unbidden, seeking work.

  So, the spring of ’50 came with nothing planted in the untilled ground. Fencing around the property fell into disrepair, and the house had taken an air of uncared-for dilapidation. Weeds choked the flowers in the beds near the front walkway. Chickens ran the yard untended, and the barn needed nails and a new coat of paint.

  Things were moving away from her; she could feel that. But she didn’t much care one way or the other. It just didn’t mean anything anymore.

  There was a new mood in the country, and she could feel it in town when she went in to buy her few groceries or pick up the infrequent mail. It was new energy, a new optimism. The United States had just won the war, and it had given people the feeling they could do anything, accomplish anything. This contagious optimism seemed to infect everyone… except Vesta.

  She was as unmoved as if she’d been inoculated against it.

  —

  On a Tuesday morning in late September, Vesta sat in her rocker on the front porch as she did most days now, her eyes closed, feeling the sun on her face. The sky was clear, and the air had that promise of coolness a good fall day can wear.

  As she sat drowsing, she heard an unfamiliar sound. Opening her eyes, shielding them from the bright sun, she saw an indistinct figure walking down the road, heat haze warping its shape as it approached. The sound was the crunching of its feet on the gravel road that led to Vesta’s home.

  She shifted forward in her rocker, squinted.

  The sun reflecting off the pale gravel made it hard for her to be sure, but it looked to be a man. Vesta rubbed at her eyes, watched carefully as the shape came nearer, took on definition.

  It was a man, tall, lean, wearing a pair of denim overalls, a white t-shirt, a battered fedora, knapsack slung over his shoulders. Another man seeking employment, another migrant looking for a few bucks. Someone who would offer to paint the barn or fix the sagging fencing in exchange for a hot meal or enough money to get one.

  As he came close, though, turning off the road and onto her front lawn, something changed. Vesta leaned forward again, this time involuntarily, stopped breathing for the space of a few seconds.

  The dark shape of the man came into sharp focus, limned by the too bright sun. He seemed relatively young, perhaps twenty-five years old.

  And he was beautiful.

  Beauty wasn’t something she was accustomed to in a man. Her limited experience had shown her that they generally fell into four basic groups—cute in an almost feminine way, plain, handsome in a very masculine way or ugly. She had never encountered beauty in a man, and surely not a kind of beauty that wasn’t, in some measure at least, feminine.

  He stepped onto the lawn, walked slowly toward the porch where she sat, trying not to stare at him.

  His hair was blonde and curly. His shoulders were broad, his neck thick. His arms and torso were well muscled, but not overly so. His skin was dusky, tanned from what she imagined were long hours working in the sun.

  As he stopped at the bottom of the steps, she could see his eyes were a pale blue-grey. A curious smile played on his full lips.

  “Morning, ma’am,” he said, removing his hat and holding it over his chest. The golden ringlets of his hair caught the sun, sparkled. “Just seein’ if you might have any work for a man like me. Some things you might need done.”

  The wry smile he wore flickered across his face, and for a moment Vesta imagined that he meant a whole lot more than what he was saying.

  She opened her mouth to reply, found that she had not taken a breath in a minute or so. Swallowing and trying not to gulp, she nodded before gathering the words to answer him.

  “I just might,” she said, surprising even herself. “I just might at that. Where you coming from, mister…?”

  “Oh, from here and there, down the road apiece,” he said. “Just trying to find a place where I’m needed. Folks in town told me that you might be looking for help.”

  Vesta licked her lips. “They did, did they? Well, I don’t take to gossipy people in town talking about me. How could they possibly know…?”

  “Said your husband was killed in the war, and that you had some land you might need help with. Figured I’d at least stop by and ask.”

  She
stared at the man, suddenly feeling the heat close on her.

  “Well,” she found herself saying. “As it so happens, I’ve got some fencing down here and there around the property. I could use someone who could fix that. Might be worth a few dollars, maybe a few meals. If you’re interested? Mister…?”

  The man smiled. “Sounds like a deal, ma’am! Just point me in the direction, and I’ll get started.”

  Vesta stood, pointed toward the barn. “You’ll find tools and such in the barn, everything you’ll need. Fence starts over the hill behind the barn. You can see for yourself what needs to be fixed. Mister…?”

  “Great. I’ll just get started then,” he said, moving off toward the barn.

  She watched him, flummoxed at why she had agreed so quickly and a bit annoyed that he ignored her attempts to get a name out of him.

  “Well, wait a minute,” she huffed, leaning against the porch railing and glaring at him. “What do I call you?”

  “Oh, whatever you like suits me just fine,” he turned back to her, winking.

  She didn’t see him again the entire remainder of the day.

  —

  Late that afternoon, as if falling back into habits forgotten almost a decade earlier, Vesta began supper. She hadn’t really cooked, not like this at least, since Cyrus was here. She was surprised, at some level, she even had the necessary items in the necessary quantities to produce a meal.

  The cast iron skillet came out. Chicken was cut up, dredged, arranged in the frying pan. Potatoes were peeled, boiled, mashed. Okra was cooked, along with a canned jar of the last of the green beans plucked from the overgrown garden out back. She did each of these things as her mother had taught her, cleaned up as she went.

  The dining room table was set with the nice china, the pattern she’d begun collecting a plate at a time from the Esso station each time Cyrus would take the Ford up to fill the tank. She’d only collected three place settings before he’d disappeared into the dark forests of Germany, but they’d do.

  She had a pitcher of ice tea and another of lemonade in the icebox, and a strawberry cake cooling on her mother’s crystal cake stand on the buffet. Remembering the recipe as though it were written down, she made boiled icing, frosted the cake with it, licking the spatula clean when she was finished.

  Vesta occupied herself so thoroughly with these tasks that she barely had time to acknowledge the butterflies in her stomach, the queer, girlish anticipation that bubbled inside her as she waited for the unnamed man to appear. She washed her hands primly at the kitchen sink, looked out the window at the roll of the hill that separated the yard proper from the fields.

  He appeared then, silhouetted against the setting sun.

  Again, her nerves jangled at the beauty of the man, the absolute breathtaking presence of him, and she smoothed the lines of her housedress with shaking hands. She went to the backdoor with a glass of lemonade, for what man doesn’t crave a sweating, cold glass of lemonade after a hard, hot day of work?

  Bumping the screen door open with her hip, she practically skipped down the steps and out the back gate. When she saw him at the pump handle, she nearly dropped the glass, fainted dead away.

  He was shirtless and slick, water sluicing over his smooth, well-muscled form. The sun glistened in each and every drop of water that clung to his skin, slid across his chest.

  Grabbing the dipper in a nearby bucket, totally unaware that he was being watched, he raised it over his head, upended it. Silver water poured onto his head, dampening the gold of his curls. Then he shook like some great, shaggy dog, and the spray formed a golden halo around him, flashing in the fire of the sun.

  Something, an arc of electricity or a skein of fire, something powerful and branching swept through Vesta, igniting every nerve along its path, seeming to shoot from the very roots of her hair.

  And she cried out, a nervous, keening bird call of a cry.

  He looked then, let the dipper fall back into the bucket with a clatter.

  “Oh, sorry,” he said, and she knew that he had clearly known she’d been observing him, even ogling him. “Just cleaning up a bit before I go.”

  “Go?” she squawked. “But I’ve made dinner…”

  “I’d be honored,” he said, stepping forward, still shoeless, shirtless, reaching toward her.

  Vesta closed her eyes.

  “Is that for me?” he asked.

  Yes.

  She felt his hand over hers, dry yet strangely soft. It plucked the sweat-dewed glass from her, and she opened her eyes, a bit startled.

  “Delicious,” he said, draining its contents, yet clearly, palpably meaning something else.

  She accepted the empty glass. “Plenty more where that came from.”

  He smiled, and it was like the smile of the sun god, gentle and beneficent.

  “I hope so. Give me a minute here to make myself presentable, and I’ll be in shortly.”

  “Mister, presentable is not something you have to work too hard for,” she said, then slapped a hand over her mouth, her cheeks radiating heat.

  Before he could respond, she fled back down the path and into the house.

  —

  Dinner that evening was mostly a silent affair. He ate huge amounts of food, drank the entire contents of both iced tea and lemonade pitchers, moaned his approval. But he said little, other than to have bowls of this or that passed to him or saying “Thank you” as politely as humanly possible.

  No details of his life were forthcoming, where he was from, his family. He looked to be about Cyrus’s age… at least as old as Cyrus would have been now… perhaps a bit younger. It was hard for Vesta to tell from his face. He had an indefinable air of age, the self-assuredness that comes from weathering the trials and errors of youth.

  But he also looked young. His skin glowed with that impossible-to-replicate aura of… well… not having been around long. And there was his beauty, for he was, even sitting there in Vesta’s kitchen under the spare, yellowed light of the frosted glass lamp, a thing of magnificence.

  When he had eaten the last crumb of cake and pushed back the plate, pushed back from the table, it occurred to Vesta that they had spoken literally of nothing.

  She sipped at her coffee, looked over the rim of the cup at him.

  “You intend to stay on a bit?” she asked, hoping that he didn’t notice the slight urging in her tone.

  He smiled, tremendously increasing the wattage of the room.

  “Oh, well, I expect I’d like that, if you’re sure,” he drawled, sucking at something that had caught in his teeth. “There’s a lot to do here, so much to do. And I’ve got a real itch to work.”

  Vesta stood abruptly, perhaps too abruptly. Her hip bumped the table, jostling the mostly empty dishes. “Well, I guess as how you can sleep in the barn, if you want. I can grab a few sheets, a pillow. Something to make you more comfortable. Weather’s still nice, so it shouldn’t be too bad.”

  “I should help clean up, to thank you for such a wonderful meal,” he said, rising slowly.

  “No, that’s fine,” she replied, beginning to gather the dishes. “I’ll handle them, always have. But let’s get you settled, first.”

  —

  She came from the linen closet bearing a stack of sheets, a pillow, a kerosene lamp, passed these over to him.

  “That should do you. There’s a box of matches under the pillow, but mind the lamp. Hasn’t been a living thing in that barn for years, so it’s bound to be as dry as a bone.”

  “Well, I’d best be getting out there,” he said, walking toward the back door. “Lots to do tomorrow, so it’s gonna be an early morning. Good night, ma’am. And thanks again… for everything.”

  Closing the door behind him, she decided that the dishes could wait until morning. She snapped the kitchen light off, went up the staircase to her room.

  She hadn’t been in bed long, when she was possessed of the silly, girlish desire to rise, cross the room to the windows, which look
ed out over the backyard… and the barn.

  Fighting it for as long as she could, she finally realized that her body, as taut as a stretched rubber band, was simply not going to let her rest until she did this thing.

  So, she threw back the sheet, stepped across the cool, bare wood of the floor to the window. A light evening breeze stirred the sheers that hung there, and Vesta could smell fall on the air, crisp with dried leaves, hay, damp earth.

  There was light inside the barn, and it flickered through the cracked and warped boards, like a picture on one of those atrocious television consoles she saw in the window at Murph’s Appliance Store in town.

  She expected it was the old kerosene lamp she’d given him to light the interior of the darkened barn so that he could find a comfortable place to sleep. Except this was not the comforting light of that lamp, tending toward the warmer yellows and oranges.

  This light was blue, and it guttered and pulsed through the barn’s rotten boards, bled between them, seemed to ooze on the air between house and barn. The blue light was odd, and, curiously, it made her head hurt, throbbing in beat with each of its pulsations.

  A hand fluttered to her head like a stricken bird, and she turned, stumbled back to bed, pulled the sheet and the quilt over her.

  Within minutes, she was asleep.

  Dreams of blue all night, waves of it, oceans of it.

  —

  “What do you get up to out there in the fields?” she asked as they sat in the parlor listening to Gunsmoke on the radio. Vesta paid only fitful attention to whomever Marshall Dillon was onto that week. She’d have much rather listened to Ozzie and Harriet, but she didn’t peg Shug to be a fan of that show. Gunsmoke seemed more his speed, so she darned a rip in a shirt of his as he leaned back in his chair, eyes closed.

  “Getting them ready,” he muttered, plainly exhausted. Whatever he’d been doing, he’d been doing for the last two weeks or so.

  “Ready for what, Shug?”

  “Planting.”

  “Well, now, we’re not going to be planting anything until spring. Surely, you can rest on that for a while.”

  Vesta heard the squeak from the chair as he sat up.