“Your call,” Colleen said evenly to Cal. “Hell-bent for leather, or…?”
“Goldie?”
Colleen snorted. “Right, trust the one with the personality dis-”
“Colleen.”
Goldie considered the mob, lapsing into a strange calm, as if there weren’t a herd of buffalo stampeding toward him. After a long moment, he muttered, “Look like a nice group of folks.”
A fortune cookie with a sting in its tail, like so much of what Goldie said. Was he being ironic, or…?
Cal brought his horse around to face the attackers, unsheathed his sword. Colleen took the hint and unslung her crossbow; Doc freed his machete.
Goldie sat on Later and watched them come, began to hum under his breath. Cal caught a snatch of tune, realized it was “It’s a Wonderful Day in the Neighborhood.”
Refrigerator slowed as he drew near, raised his hands. “Easy, easy there, boss. We got no harm.” He turned back to his followers. “Lay ’em down, folks.” They set their weapons on the ground. Cal lowered his sword, nodded at Colleen and Doc to stand down.
Refrigerator strode up close to Cal, nearly his height standing on the ground. “You’re Griffin, ain’t you? Cal Griffin.”
Cal hesitated a moment, then nodded.
Refrigerator squinted one big blue aggie eye, wrinkles fanning out. “You don’t look like such a long drink of water.” Then he bellowed a laugh like a volcanic eruption and seized Cal in a bear hug, nearly yanking him off his mount.
Colleen whipped up the crossbow reflexively, but Doc put a steadying hand on her wrist.
The big man let go and stepped back, still laughing, wiping tears from his eyes. His companions were all staring ardently at Cal, smiling shyly.
Up close, Cal could see now they were a weary and malnourished bunch, though leanly muscled as if used to hard labor. Their jackets and overcoats were buttoned against the chill, a sad attempt given the rips and tears that gaped like toothless mouths; their tattered clothes hung off them as if they were scarecrows outfitted by an indifferent assembler. Most were in their twenties and thirties, with a scattering of teens.
“I’m Mike Olifiers,” Refrigerator said. “These others, hell, they can all introduce themselves. We been long traveling, out of Unionville, hugging the Missouri River mostly, but it’s been worth it, yes sir.” He pulled a big kerchief from his pocket, blew his nose explosively, then fixed Cal again with an admiring gaze.
“We heard about you. You beat the Storm back in West Virginia, blew it clean outta Chicago.”
“Well, sort of, not really…”
“You’re famous in these parts, boy, don’t you know that?”
“Hard to believe word’s gotten around so fast,” Colleen cut in. “I mean, it’s not like we’ve got CNN or even E! True Hollywood Story, God help us.”
“Word travels fast, even so,” Olifiers replied. “Good word, ’cause there’s so damn little of it.”
Cal felt chilled rather than warmed. Oddly, he had a memory of when he was eighteen, when his mother died, and he had decided in that garish police waiting room to raise Tina on his own. He thought, then as now, I’m not big enough.
“I’m sure whatever you heard is mostly exaggeration,” Cal said. “And besides, I didn’t do it alone.” Or succeed, Cal thought bitterly, remembering the slashing nightmare of the Source blasting into existence in the devastated Wishart house in Boone’s Gap, spiriting Fred Wishart and Tina away.
“You’re modest; I heard that, too,” said Olifiers. He reached out to put a meaty hand on Cal’s shoulder. His wrist came clear of his sleeve and Cal caught sight of a livid mark along the skin. Seeing this, Olifiers pulled his hand back as if burned, shame blossoming in his eyes. He pulled his sleeve down to cover it, looked at the others.
They shifted where they stood, tried to make subtle adjustments to their clothes at the neck and wrist.
Colleen picked up the vibe, looked in confusion from the group to Cal. But Doc had seen the mark, too. Cal nodded to him.
Doc dismounted, approached Olifiers and his band. “You will excuse me….” With the expert hands of a physician, he examined Olifiers’s wrist, turning it this way and that in the muted twilight. Then he drew near the others. Olifiers signaled compliance. No longer effusive, they stood as Doc lifted collars, pulled up pant legs to reveal thin ankles, inspected necks and shoulders.
He turned back to Cal, the expression on his angular face all the affirmation Cal needed. “Rope burns, lesions from manacles and shackles, welts-possibly from lashing…”
It was as Cal suspected. At the Preserve, Mary McCrae had told him of such things, but he had never seen it firsthand. Another wonder of this new world.
Cal’s lips felt numb, reticent to pronounce the words. He forced them out. “You’re escaped slaves, aren’t you?”
The sun dipping low and every sign of a hard snow on the way, Cal elected not to question their new companions until he found them safe harbor for the night. As he, Colleen and Doc rode point through the grasslands, Goldie drew up alongside on Later, speaking low so the fugitives straggling behind couldn’t hear.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings-”
“Since when?” Colleen interjected.
Cal cut her off with a wave, but Goldie was unperturbed. “As long as we have Winnie the Pooh and the other residents of the Hundred-Acre Wood accompanying us on our jaunty way, it’s virtually a sure thing we’re gonna get a visit from the paddyrollers. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of our lives.”
“The paddy-what?” Colleen asked. “They anything like the Tommyknockers?”
“No, Colleen, those are creatures from folklore and a Stephen King novel,” Goldie said, with a patronizing air she would’ve liked to chop into little pieces and stuff down his throat. “I’m talking reality, or at least history here.”
Cal nodded, remembering the lessons his mother had given him to augment the inadequate-and inaccurate-courses he had endured back at Hurley High. “The paddyrollers were men who made a living pursuing escaped slaves and returning them to their masters.”
Doc added, “During and in the period immediately prior to your American Civil War.”
Colleen groaned, reining Big-T back as the big gelding tried to surge forward. “Am I the only one here without the least excuse for an education?”
Doc smiled gently. “No, Colleen, you are educated in the skills that are most useful of all. The rest of us have simply accumulated a magpie collection of mostly useless facts.”
Colleen grimaced. “God, Viktor, I hate it when you’re charming.” But her eyes were smiling. “Paddyrollers, huh?” She contemplated Olifiers and the group of footsore men and women gamely bringing up the rear.
“Or something with an alternate name but the same enchanting job description,” Goldie noted.
“It may be a new world,” Cal said, sorrow welling in his voice, “but it’s a whole lot like the one that came before it.”
Colleen let out a slow breath, considering. “If they’ve got a good tracker, or anyone with a map ability like yours-” She nodded toward Cal.
“Like I used to have, you mean.”
“Whatever. We’re in for a hell of a ride.”
“An E-ticket ride, if I might elaborate,” muttered Goldie.
“Yeah,” Colleen said. “And no one would know what the hell you’re elaborating about, as usual.”
“Oops, sorry, I always forget you’re of a generation without cultural grounding.” Goldie plucked one of the five aces from his hat, toyed with it between his fingers. “Second vocabulary term of the day. It’s an old thing from Disneyland-back when there was a Disneyland, I suppose. My esteemed mother and father took me there, a little side trip from a couple of symposia they were attending.” A flick of his fingers and the ace was gone…appearing back in the brim with the other cards. “They didn’t just use to have one pass where you’d enter and ride all the attractions. There were tickets with letter grades-A, B, C, D and E. The A tickets were really lame-trolley rides on Main Street, that sort of thing. But the E-ticket rides, now that was real magic, the monorail, jungle cruise, haunted mansion…. It was the highest you could go, the best.”