Steampunk! Part 13

Thirty minutes later, the mountain exploded. A great white cloud swelled up into the sky, then its soft flesh of steam burned away to show its black, ashy bones. The cloud flashed with fire and continued to grow and throw off boulder bombs and thick bolts of lightning. The ships in the harbor leaned over till their spars touched the water. Then they were torn from their moorings and overturned. The cloud toppled slowly and inclined toward the town. A white half circle raced off across the sea toward the horizon - faster than anything in nature.

The people in the airship watched the mountain fall in on itself and the sea turn into a mountain.

The zeppelin was blown away from Gethsemane on a blast of hot wind, but when the cloud collapsed, it was caught at the edge of the ash fall. The survivors waited in numb dread as ash acc.u.mulated on the airship's canopy. But the top of the canopy was thickly rubberized, strengthened for flights in European snow. The ash scoured the rubber but didn't puncture the canopy. And the weight of acc.u.mulated ash finally brought the ship down in the ocean seventy miles from Gethsemane.

Weeks later, in his hospital bed in Westport, Southland, McCahon told reporters that he owed his life to an able seaman from the John Bartholomew. The quick-thinking, strong old man had caught the ladder as it flashed by, fidgeting over the turf. "He grabbed the ladder in one hand, and me with the other, and told me to hold on. We were, by turns, dragged along the ground or in the air. He took off his belt and fastened me to the ladder, and then he let go."

When people heard that a girl had survived, carried off on one of the airship's mooring lines and hauled up by its crew, there were many who had hopes. Even Alice had hopes of her bold friend, Sylvia. But only one man was lucky. It turned out that the girl was his daughter, Amy.

The lucky father told people that he'd known his daughter was in Gethsemane. She had run away a year before. She had stolen his horses and sold them. He'd traced the horses, but hadn't been able to find his daughter. He didn't like to speak ill of the dead, but he had to say that Gethsemane's sheriff wasn't a very helpful man.

Why had she run away? Her mother was dying of a terrible illness. A cancer of the bones of her face. No one had expected the girl to keep watch by her mother's sickbed, but still . . .

What's that? Do I think it was a punishment? Well, sir, do you suppose G.o.d would destroy a city in order to punish one weak girl?

The doctor left town, and lived. Alice was sent away, and lived. The nine men and one girl on the airship lived - and witnessed everything. "The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us," said the skipper of the airship. But McCahon said it wasn't like that. Years later he wrote a memoir of the eruption that destroyed the beautiful town, burned and buried all its houses and gardens, and sent a giant killing wave rolling northward, swamping islands and drowning villages. He wrote, with stark honesty, that he'd willingly dig a thousand graves and fill them himself just to see something so beautiful again.

There was one other survivor.

The manager of the carnival took Amy's hand as she climbed the steps to the low door. "There you are, ma'am," he said, and went away.

The colored lights of the midway failed to illuminate the interior of the caravan. Amy left its door open. There were louvers on one window. The bed was striped with light. She said, "May I sit?"

A hand came through the grid of shadow and pointed with blunt, fused fingers at a stool tucked under a bench. She drew it out and set it down by the head of the bed. "Does the light hurt your eyes?"

There was no answer.

"The darkness must be a respite from being looked at."

The figure in the bed moved his head on the pillow and faced her. His flesh was like rough plasterwork, the scars were like trowel marks, and pigmented purple, and beige, and gray-white. His right eyelid had fused to his brow bone, and the hairs of that eyebrow showed in places like some dry herb not fully mixed into a smooth batter.

She regarded him calmly. "The bill of fare doesn't have your picture, only your story. It says the jail had thick walls and its windows were high and small and faced away from Mount Magdalene. It relates how that jail, its walls packed in hot ash and pumice, turned into an oven. And how, when you were found, the newspapers dubbed you the Baked Man. It says that the carnival has no option to call you anything different, since you never told anyone who you were."

His mouth was like a turtle's beak, but he could make himself understood. He said, "I know you."

Amy said, "I hadn't ever thought to speak to the Baked Man, because I never realized it was you, James. Tonight I came along to the carnival with my children, and a barker on the midway was shouting out your story." She unfolded a bill of fare and smoothed it on her skirt. She read: "'The Baked Man is the only person to live through the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Magdalene, which destroyed the South Pacific town of Gethsemane. He was discovered in the town jail and it is possible he has kept his ident.i.ty secret because his ordeal and disfigurement were not enough to make him stop fearing the rope. For, with no record of arrest, or witnessing officers of the law, who is to say that this pitiful figure's silence isn't evidence of the magnitude of his crime? For why else, ladies and gentlemen, would this man have remained silent for so many years?'"

Amy stopped reading and returned her gaze to the eyes in the botched face. "It says the Baked Man wouldn't even admit to his race, wouldn't say whether he was black or white. And that's when I realized it was you. You see, your grandfather told Mary your story. And McCahon was there. And, as soon as he was able, McCahon came to tell me how Mary had died, and that she hadn't died alone."

The figure in the bars of light gathered himself to speak, and Amy leaned close to hear him.

He said, "I wanted the life a pale skin could give me. I wanted to be something I wasn't, and because of that I accepted the attentions of anyone who would go along with my fiction. I was trying to steal a better place in the world. And I didn't have the patience to try to make my purchase with my good character. My grandfather was a good, civil man, and I let everybody think he was only my shipmate. I was ashamed of him. I denied him. And now I'm dead." The ruined eyes grew wet.

Amy tried to take his hand, but he wouldn't be comforted. After a time he managed to choke out, "If he had lived and found me, I'd have shouted out to the world, This is my grandfather!"

He wept for a time, and she didn't offer to comfort him again, only waited. When his sobbing had subsided, she said, "Mary used to say that she was dead, too, and she was, except in the way it mattered most. And in that way she's still not dead. And neither is your grandfather. My husband always says, 'That man saved my life.'"

"Is it a good life?"

Amy laughed. "He walks with a limp. He's still in the same line of work. He built the thermal power station in Spring Valley. He's still poking at beehives."

The man on the bed was quiet for a long time. Finally he said softly, wistfully, "The window was facing the wrong way," then, "I wish I'd seen it."

Fran's daddy woke her up wielding a plant mister. "Fran," he said, spritzing her. "Fran, honey. Wake up for just a minute."

Fran had the flu, except it was more like the flu had Fran. In consequence of this, she'd laid out of school for three days in a row. The previous night she'd taken four NyQuil and fallen asleep on the couch, waiting for her daddy to come home, while a man on the TV pitched throwing knives. Her head felt stuffed with boiled wool and snot. Her face was wet with watered-down plant food. "Hold up," she croaked, and began to cough so hard she had to hold her sides. She sat up.

Her daddy was a dark shape in a room full of dark shapes. The bulk of him augured trouble. The sun weren't up the mountain yet, but there was a light on in the kitchen. There was a suitcase, too, beside the door, and on the table a plate with a mess of eggs. Fran reckoned she was starving.

Her daddy went on. "I'll be gone some time. A week or three. Not more. You'll take care of the summer people while I'm gone. The Robertses come up next weekend. You'll need to get their groceries tomorrow or next day. Make sure you check the expiration date on the milk when you buy it, and put fresh sheets on all of the beds. I've left the house schedule on the frigerator, and there should be enough gas in the car to make the rounds."

"Wait," Fran said. Every word hurt. "Where you going?"

He sat beside her, then pulled something out from under him, one of Fran's old toys, the monkey egg. "Now, you know I don't like these. I wish you'd put 'em away."

"There's lots of stuff I don't like," Fran said. "Where are you going?"

"Prayer meeting in Miami. Found out about it on the Internet," her daddy said. He shifted on the couch and put a hand against her forehead, so cool and soothing that she closed her eyes. "You don't feel near so hot. Joanie's giving me a ride down. You know I need to get right with G.o.d." Joanie was his sometime girlfriend.

"I know you need to stay here and look after me," Fran said. "You're my daddy."

"Now, how can I look after you if I'm not right?" he said. "You don't know the things I've done."

Fran didn't know, but she could guess. "You went out last night," she said. "You were drinking."

Her daddy spread out his hands. "I'm not talking about last night," he said. "I'm talking about a lifetime."

"That is -" Fran said, and then began to cough again. She coughed so long and so hard that she saw bright stars. Even so, despite the hurt in her ribs, and despite the truth that every time she managed to suck in a good pocket of air she coughed it all right back out again, the NyQuil made it all seem so peaceful her daddy might as well have been saying a poem. Her eyelids were closing again. Later, when she woke up, maybe he would make her breakfast.

"I left two hundred-dollar bills by the stove top," he said. "Which leaves me but fifty for gas money and prayer offerings. Never mind - the Lord will provide. Tell Andy to let you put groceries and such on the tab. Any come around, you tell 'em I'm gone on ahead. Ary man tells you he knows the hour or the day, Fran, that man's a liar or a fool. All a man can do is be ready."

He patted her on the shoulder and tucked the counterpane up around her ears. When she woke up again, it was late afternoon and her daddy was long gone. Her temperature was 102.3. All across her cheeks the plant mister had left a red raised rash.

On Friday, Fran went to school because she wasn't sure what else to do. Her temperature was down a touch, but she fell asleep in the shower and only woke up when the hot water ran out. Breakfast was spoons of peanut b.u.t.ter out of the jar and dry cereal. She couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten. Her cough scared off the crows when she went down to the county road to catch the school bus.

She dozed through three cla.s.ses, including calculus, before having such a fit of coughing that Mr. Rumer sent her off to see the nurse.

"What I don't understand, Fran, is why you're here today," Mr. Rumer said. Which wasn't fair at all. She came to school whenever there wasn't something else she had to do, and she always made sure to turn in the makeup work.

The nurse, Fran knew, was liable to call her daddy and send her home. This would have presented a problem, but on the way to the nurse's station, Fran came upon Ophelia Merck at her locker.

Ophelia Merck had her own car, a Lexus. She and her family were summer people, except that now they lived in their house up at Horse Cove on the lake all year round. Years ago, Fran and Ophelia had spent a summer of afternoons playing with Ophelia's Barbies while Fran's father smoked out a wasps' nest, repainted cedar siding, tore down an old fence. They hadn't really spoken since then, though once or twice after the summer, Fran's father brought home paper bags full of Ophelia's hand-me-downs, some of them still with the price tags.

Fran eventually went through a growth spurt, which put a stop to that; Ophelia was still hardly a speck of a girl. And as far as Fran could figure, Ophelia was still the same in most other ways: pretty, shy, spoiled, and easy to boss around. The rumor was her family'd moved full-time from Lynchburg after a teacher caught Ophelia kissing another girl in the bathroom at a school dance. It was either that or Mr. Merck being up for malpractice, which was the other story - take your pick.

"Ophelia Merck," Fran said. "I need you to tell Nurse Tannent you're gone to give me a ride home right now."

Ophelia opened her mouth and closed it. She nodded.

Fran's temperature was back up again, at 102. Tannent even wrote Ophelia a note to go off campus.

"I don't know where you live," Ophelia said. They were in the parking lot, Ophelia searching for her keys. Fran had a pocketful of toilet tissue for her nose, and a c.o.ke.

"Take the county road," Fran said, "one twenty-nine." Ophelia nodded. "It's up a ways on Wild Ridge, past the hunting camps." Fran lay back against the headrest and closed her eyes. "Oh, h.e.l.l. I forgot. Can you take me by the convenience first? I have to get the Robertses' house put right."

"I guess I can do that," Ophelia said.

"I wish I didn't have to ask," Fran said. She turned her head to look out the window.

At the convenience she picked up milk, eggs, whole-wheat sandwich bread, and cold cuts for the Robertses, Tylenol and more NyQuil for herself, as well as a can of frozen orange juice, microwave burritos, and Pop-tarts. "On the tab," she told Andy.

"Your pappy was creatin' and aggravatin' the other night," Andy said. He licked a finger, then flipped pages on the dirty yellow legal pad, thick with other people's debts. He found the page he wanted and stapled Fran's receipt onto it. "Way he carries on, may be best he doesn't come in here no more. Maybe you'll tell him I said so."

"I'll tell him when I see him," Fran said. "Him and Joanie went down to Florida yesterday morning. He said he needs to get right with G.o.d."

"G.o.d ain't who your pappy needs to get on the good side of," Andy said.

Fran coughed and bent over. Then she straightened right back up. "What's he done?" she said.

"Wish I could say it was nothing that can't be fixed with the application of some greaze and good manners," Andy said. "But we'll just have to see. Ryan's all riled up."

Half the time her daddy got to drinking, Andy and Andy's cousin Ryan were involved, never mind it was a dry county. Ryan kept the liquor out in the parking lot in his van for everwho wanted it and knew to ask. The good stuff came from over the county line, in Andrews. The best stuff, though, was the liquor Fran's daddy brought down and traded Andy and Ryan for every once in a while. Everyone said Fran's daddy's brew was too good to be strictly natural. Which was true. When he wasn't getting right with G.o.d, Fran's daddy got up to all kinds of trouble. Fran's best guess was that in this particular situation he'd promised to supply something that G.o.d was not now going to let him deliver. But it weren't Fran's problem anyhow. Andy weren't ever a problem, and it was no hard thing staying out of Ryan's way, long as you did your shopping at the convenience in the daylight hours. "I'll tell him you said so."

Ophelia was looking over the list of ingredients on a candy wrapper, but Fran could tell she was interested. When they got back into the car, she said, "Just cause you're doing me a favor don't mean you need to know my business."

"OK," Ophelia said.

"OK," Fran said. "Good. Now, maybe you can take me by the Roberts place. It's over on -"

"I know where the Robertses' house is," Ophelia said. "My mom played bridge over there all last summer."

The Robertses hid their spare key under a fake rock, just like everybody else. Ophelia stood at the door like she was waiting to be invited in. "Well, come on," Fran said.

There wasn't much to be said about the Robertses' house. There was an abundance of plaid, and everywhere Toby mugs and statuettes of dogs pointing, setting, or trotting along with limp birds in their gentle mouths.

Except that up in the master bedroom, Fran waited for Ophelia to notice the painting. "Is that Mr. Roberts?" Ophelia said. She proceeded to turn an interesting shade of red.

"I guess," Fran said. "Although he's poochier around the middle nowadays. Mrs. Roberts painted it. All the paintings downstairs of bowls of fruit and trees in autumn are hers. She has a studio down the hill. It's got a refrigerator in it. Nothing in it but bottles of white wine and Betty Crocker vanilla cake icing."

"I don't think I could go to sleep with that hanging over my head," Ophelia said. Mr. Roberts grinned down at them, life-size and not embarra.s.sed in the least.

"Maybe he sleeps in the altogether, too," Fran said. But then she began to cough so hard that she had to sit right down on the bed. A bubble of snot came right out of her nose and plopped on the carpet.

Fran made up the other rooms and did a quick vacuum downstairs while Ophelia put out fresh towels in the master bathroom and caught the spider that had made a home in the wastebasket. She carried it outside. Fran didn't quite have the breath to make fun of her for this. They went from room to room, making sure that there were working bulbs in the light fixtures and that the cable wasn't out. Every once in a while, one of Mrs. Roberts's fruit bowl paintings would set Ophelia off, giggling. She sang under her breath while they worked. They were both in choir, and Fran found herself evaluating Ophelia's voice. A soprano, warm and light at the same time, where Fran was an alto and somewhat froggy, even when she didn't have the flu.

"Stop it," she said out loud, and Ophelia turned and looked at her. "Not you," Fran said. She ran the tap water in the kitchen sink until it was clear. She coughed for a long time and spat into the drain. It was almost four o'clock. "We're done here."

"How do you feel?" Ophelia said.

"Like I been kicked all over," Fran said. She blew her nose into the sink, then washed her hands.

"I'll take you home," Ophelia said. "Is anyone there? In case you start feeling worse?"

Fran didn't bother answering, but somewhere between the school lockers and the Robertses' master bedroom, Ophelia seemed to have decided that the ice was broken. She talked about a TV show, about the party neither of them would go to on Sat.u.r.day night. They weren't the kind of girls who got invited to parties, or at least Fran wasn't. She began to suspect that Ophelia had had friends once, down in Lynchburg, before she'd got caught in the bathroom with her tongue in some other girl's mouth. She had the habit of easy conversation. She complained about the calculus homework and talked about a sweater she was knitting. She mentioned a girl rock band that she thought Fran might like, even offered to burn her a CD. Several times she exclaimed as they drove up the county road.

"I never get used to it, to living up here year round," Ophelia said. "I mean, we haven't even been here a whole year, but . . . it's just so beautiful. It's like another world, you know?"

"Not really," Fran said. "Never been anywhere else."

"Oh," Ophelia said, not quite deflated by this retort. "Well, take it from me. It's freaking gorgeous here. Everything is so pretty, it makes your eyes ache. I love the morning, the way everything is all misty, like a movie with a unicorn in it. And the trees! And every time you go around a corner, there's another d.a.m.n waterfall. Or a little pasture and it's all full of flowers. All the hollers." Fran could hear the invisible brackets around the word. "It's like you don't know what you'll see, what's there, until suddenly you're in them. Are you applying to college anywhere next year? Everybody talks about Appalachian State, party school, yay, or else they're joining the army. But I was thinking about vet school. I don't think I can take another English cla.s.s. Large animals. No little dogs or guinea pigs. Maybe I'll go out to California."

Fran said, "I'm not the kind of people who go to college."

"Oh," Ophelia said. "I know you skip cla.s.s and stuff, but you're a lot smarter than me, you know? I mean, you read books. And there was that time you corrected Ms. Shumacher in physics. So I just thought . . ."

"Turn here," Fran said. "Careful. It's not paved."

The dirt road wound up through beds of laurel into the little meadow with the nameless creek. Fran could feel Ophelia breathe in, probably trying her hardest not to say something about how beautiful it was. And it was beautiful, Fran knew. You could hardly see the house itself, hidden like a bride behind a veil of climbing vines: virgin's bower and j.a.panese honeysuckle, ma.s.ses of William Baffin and Cherokee roses overgrowing the porch and running up over the sagging roof. b.u.mblebees, their legs armored in gold, threaded through the meadow gra.s.s, almost too weighed down with pollen to fly.

"Needs a new roof," Fran said. "My great-granddaddy ordered it out of the Sears catalog. Men brought it up the side of the mountain in pieces, and all the Cherokee who hadn't yet gone away came and watched." She was amazed at herself: next thing she'd be asking Ophelia to come sleep over and trade secrets.

She opened the car door and heaved herself up, plucked up the poke of groceries. Before she could turn and say thank you for the ride, Ophelia was standing in the yard. "I thought . . ." Ophelia said uncertainly. "Well, I thought maybe I could use your bathroom?"

"It's an outhouse," Fran said, deadpan. Then she relented. "Come on in, then. It's a regular bathroom. Just not very clean."

Ophelia didn't say anything when they came into the kitchen. Fran watched her take it in: the heaped dishes in the sink, the pillow and raggedy quilt on the sagging couch. The piles of dirty laundry beside the efficiency washer in the kitchen. The places where hairy tendrils of vine had found a way inside around the windows. "I guess you might be thinking it's funny," she said. "My dad and I make money doing other people's houses, but we don't take no real care of our own."

"I was thinking that somebody ought to be taking care of you," Ophelia said. "At least while you're sick."

Fran gave a little shrug. "I do fine on my own," she said. "The washroom's down the hall."

She took two NyQuil while Ophelia was gone, and washed them down with the last swallow or two of ginger ale out of the refrigerator. Flat, but still cool. Then she lay down on the couch and pulled the counterpane up around her face. She huddled into the lumpy cushions. Her legs ached; her face felt as hot as fire. Her feet were ice-cold.

A minute later Ophelia sat down on the couch beside her.

"Ophelia?" Fran said. "I'm grateful for the ride home and for the help at the Robertses, but I don't go for the girls. So don't lez out."

Ophelia said, "I brought you a gla.s.s of water. You need to stay hydrated."

"Mmm," Fran said.

"You know, your dad told me once that I was going to h.e.l.l," Ophelia said. "He was over at our house doing something. Fixing a burst pipe, maybe? I don't know how he knew. I was eleven. I was making one of my Barbies kiss the other Barbie. I don't think I knew, not yet anyway. I just didn't have a Ken. He didn't bring you over to play after he said that, even though I never told my mom."

"My daddy thinks everyone is going to h.e.l.l," Fran said into the counterpane. "I don't care where I go, as long as it isn't here and he isn't there."

Ophelia didn't say anything for a minute or two, and she didn't get up to leave, neither, so finally Fran poked her head out. Ophelia had a toy in her hand, the monkey egg. She turned it over, then over again. She looked a question at Fran.

"Give here," Fran said. "I'll work it." She wound the filigree dial and set the egg on the floor. The toy vibrated ferociously. Two pincer legs and a scorpion tail made of figured bra.s.s shot out of the bottom hemisphere, and the egg wobbled on the legs in one direction and then another, the articulated tail curling and lashing. Portholes on either side of the top hemisphere opened, and two arms wriggled out and reached up, rapping at the dome of the egg until that, too, cracked open with a click. A monkey's head, wearing the egg dome like a hat, popped out. Its mouth opened and closed in chattering ecstasy, red garnet eyes rolling, arms describing wider and wider circles in the air until the clockwork ran down and all of its extremities whipped back into the egg again.