“So, Connie, I was wondering… do you think you’ll be feeling better in time for the Corn Festival?”
“Hah, of course I will! I can’t miss that, now can I?”
Raxx grinned in response, “Well, see, I was kind of wondering—” he looked at her with a rakish grin “Seeing as you gotta have somebody to take you there…”
“Oh, don’t worry about that — Jeff’s going to be taking me!”
Raxx’s features froze, but she went on as if nothing had happened.
“See, he’s my second cousin—” she counted off on her hand, “So the tradition is that he’s gonna take me — always been, ever since the War. But you’re gonna come too, Raxx, ai?”
“Uh, yeah. Of course.”
“Oh, good!” she leaned forward to give him another hug. “I’ll make sure to save a dance for you, ‘kay?”
“Yeah… yeah, sounds good.” He leaned back, trying to make his smile spread properly. “Hmm… Listen Connie, I’d better get heading. Your mam will have a fit if I keep you too long.”
Her smile subsided, and fatigue took her in its grip. Smiling gently, she nodded, and snuggled into her covers, “‘Kay, Raxx…”
“You feel better, okay?”
“Mm-hmm…”
He gripped her knee and gave it a squeeze, a pained expression on his face.
“G’night, Connie.”
Chapter 6
Shape, Shadow, Silhouette; Texture, Spacing, Sound; Movement and Shine: the Ten Reasons Why Things Are Seen.
He could never remember the last two.
But it didn’t matter. While his mind traced through the list, his body moved by instinct. It pulled him through the woods, finding the shadows and avoiding the twigs.
It was a padded list, anyways.
The midsummer smells of dust and dry rot pervaded, while shafts of light shone through the trees, confusing the senses. The precautions he’d taken over the past couple days, scouting the eastern arc for a possible tail, had calmed his mind but left his body full of nervous energy. He stepped out of the woods near the ‘Town of Blackstock’ sign, but he didn’t climb up onto the Highway.
His gait transformed into a nondescript stroll, while his thoughts drifted back to the long trek he’d been on when he first passed this way. He stayed to the low ground. Beneath the surface his muscles were twitching.
A sun dipped behind some clouds, and he crossed the street, over towards Landfall’s. The hair on the back of his neck stood up as he drifted into view of the market, but nobody looked over and saw him. He slid into the bar’s welcoming darkness.
The Mechanic was there; his hunched form was sitting in the far corner. With a discreet motion, Wentworth slid his duffle bag down his arm, and propped it against the stairwell heading up to the pool room. His rifle — damn! He should have put it away, or at least slung it before coming into town. None of the other patrons seemed to have noticed though — that loudmouth caravan guard was at the bar, drawing everyone’s attention — so with a casual movement he tucked it under his duffle bag, then walked away, sliding into the empty chair at Raxx’s table.
“How’s it going?”
The Mechanic’s eyes clicked up from the pint they’d been staring into. For a moment Wentworth felt bad for sneaking up on him, but the man showed no discomfort. The Mechanic’s face was blank.
It was only a heartbeat before he replied, but for that instant his visage was stripped away. Gone were the mannerisms, the cheerfulness Raxx showed the outside world. His face was a stone clock, ticking away. A cold, benign intelligence.
“Hey.”
Wentworth tilted his head in acknowledgement, then glanced over at Eddie behind the bar. The man paused in his conversation with Billy, and held up an empty pint glass. Wentworth nodded, and the two of them waited for the beer to arrive before continuing.
“So you find what you were looking for out there?”
Wentworth shrugged. “Yeah. Just getting to know the lay of the land.” He took a sip of his beer. It was warm and bitter. He crossed one leg over the other, and leaned back against the wall, staring out at the room. He felt comfortable. Stable.
“You know,” he glanced over sharply, “locals are what they are. You can’t change that.”
Raxx’s shoulders slumped and some emotion returned to his face. “Yeah, I know that.” He stared down into his drink. “Sometimes I forget stuff I already know.” He took a swig then fell back in his chair. “Fuck.”
Eddie took a slow sip from his pint glass. With the rim half-covering his eyes he watched the mullet-haired guard flirting with Marie at the front of the room. She was ignoring her drink and toying with her hair. Off to the left her brother was glaring at nothing. Elmo had been spending most of his time in the bar since the mule kick, using the alcohol to medicate the pain. But tonight it seemed to be making it worse.
“Ai, Billy,” the mohawked-foreigner was sitting at the bar, nodding his head in time to the music. “Your buddy there,” he nodded in Verizon’s direction, “He’s pissing on somebody’s lawn.”
“Eh?” Billy glanced back, “What, he’s just talking to her. Why you beefing, Eddie? He ain’t doing nothing.”
He eased back on the bar, “It ain’t me that’s angry, Billy; I’m just explaining how things work here. You know I appreciate your business — I always like it when you foreigners come out here and buy my beer. But just now we got a situation, and it ain’t nothing to do with me. Back behind you on your right — past your buddy Raxx — is a big ox. His name’s Elmo. Marie back there is his cousin. And he ain’t feeling too happy. You catch what I’m saying?”
“Aw, come on, they’re just talking — if you appreciate our business, why’re you getting all upset over a conversation?”
Eddie shook his head. “T’ain’t me. It’s Elmo over there. I just thought you might like a chance to go talk with Marie and your friend… you know, before Elmo decides to speak with them himself.”
“So I’ve been thinking. And I have a theory.” Raxx took a sip of his beer. “See, there was this other place up North I stopped at for a while, and I think the same thing happened there. It was part of what they called the ‘Woodsman’s Code’ — it was a lot like the ‘Corn Cycle,’ it was their rules for how to farm — trees up North, not crops, but still — and how to run the town.”
He took another sip of his beer. He was forcing the idea out, and it was coming in halts. “I’ve got to tell you another theory first. You remember the Silver Beetle plague a few years back?” Wentworth didn’t, but he nodded to keep Raxx talking. “The only barley that wasn’t hit was the one they use for animal feed — the two-row barley. That year all the farmers switched over to it, and didn’t grow the other stuff until the beetles disappeared. I remember the beer being shitty. I switched to drinking whiskey.”
The statement reminded him of his drink and he took a sip, eyebrows still furrowed. “But here’s what most people don’t realize: I was talking with these farm hands one time, and they told me that during the plague they’d sometimes find a crop of two-row that was infected. So they’d burn those ones, just like they burned the fields of Four-row and Six-row. Now here’s where it gets interesting. The next year — after the plague was over — they said that the two-row had changed. Four- and six-row were still the same, but the two-row was a darker brown than it used to be.” His shoulders hunched. “Why? Why had it changed, when the others were still the same?”