Mr. Shivers (13 page)

There was no sound but the crackling of flames. Connelly said, “Yes.”

“Yes. You all’ve just tasted violence. You’ll taste more, certainly. If you continue, that is.”

Lottie covered her mouth with one hand.

“So what do we do?” said Roonie quietly.

“We keep going. We can find out where that train stopped and search for the gray man there.”

“But he’ll be miles away by then!” said Hammond.

“I’ve never let distance deter me,” said Pike, and his voice was like ice. “It didn’t at the start. It won’t now. I’ll walk
until my legs are stiff and broken, that I’ll do, amen.”

He fixed his gaze on them, and, feeling its force, they nodded, one by one.

Connelly’s thoughts strayed back to the few words they’d heard their attackers share. He couldn’t help think that they were
somehow familiar with the scarred man, which made him wonder if more than miles lay between them and their quarry.

“How many more rounds do you have, Roosevelt?” asked Connelly.

“Dozen or so,” he said softly.

“I hope that’ll be enough, if we need them,” said Hammond.

“I hope so, too,” said Pike. “Buying bullets gets a lot of attention. Attention we don’t need.”

Lottie shivered and wiped at her eyes. Roonie was rocking back and forth like a clockwork toy. The only ones who did not move
were Pike, Hammond, and Connelly, who sat like they were made of stone.

“Well, then,” said Hammond. “Well, then.”

They then turned in for sleep, and, exhausted, slept soundly.

Mr. Shivers

They awoke in the morning cold and hungry. They walked north and west, roughly in the direction they thought the train was
headed. Roosevelt said the track curved west after a ways, but he did not know when. They trekked across dry brown fields
and far, far to the west they saw the hint of mountains, mere bumps underneath the wide sky. Clouds seemed farther away than
normal and sunlight fell in streaks and shafts, like rain.

“Big country,” said Monk, and they agreed.

They came to a fence and realized they were on someone’s land but saw no sign of livestock or owner. They climbed it and headed
north and came to a road headed west and took up upon it. They saw no other travelers, no cars nor trucks. This path appeared
to be one unused by the flood of migrants searching for better lives. It was an empty place and they passed through it silently,
as its greatness seemed to eat words before they were even spoken.

Toward midday they saw cars pulled off the side of the road, big heaps of jalopies parked in a circle in a field. Pike slowed
to a stop and Connelly and the others followed suit. Pike looked the cars over slowly, his bright, cold eyes watching each
flicker of movement. Then he made a motion and they continued forward.

As they neared the vehicles they were spotted by a small dirty child sitting by the road. He got to his feet and stared at
them. Then he ran back to the trucks. Four men came out and behind them five women. They watched Connelly and the others approach,
their faces blank, their eyes thin.

Hammond came forward, smiling. “Good day!” he said.

One of the men nodded. “ ’Day,” he said.

“Sorry to be so forward, but you folks wouldn’t have any food you’d be willing to trade, would you?”

The man examined them. “You boys ’bos?”

“I suppose you could say that, sir.”

“Looks like you folks been on the losing side of a few beatings.”

“That’s so. We were trying to get up into Colorado. Headed west, like everyone else. We got tossed and robbed something fierce.
Beat the hell out of a few of us.”

“What line was it?” said another man.

Hammond told him.

“All the lines have gotten tougher,” said the man. “My nephew tried to ride down to the city. He got tossed and they whupped
the tar out of him.”

“Sounds familiar,” said Hammond with a smile.

The first man sighed, pushed his hat back, and scratched his rangy red hair. “You folks wouldn’t happen to know much about
cars, would you?”

They looked at one another. Connelly said, “I know a little.”

“Do you?”

He nodded.

“Well… We got one of these cars broke down,” said the man. “Damn bastard sold us a lemon—”

“Clark,” hissed one of the women in reprimand.

“Sorry. My apologies,” said the man, “but I just knew he was doing it by how he smiled at us. I knew this thing would break
down soon enough on the road. But we did it anyways. If you could get us back on the road, sir, well, we’d help you folks
in any way we can.”

“I could take a look, I suppose,” said Connelly. “Which one is it?”

“That one yonder,” said the man. He and Connelly started walking over to it. The man stuck his hand out. “Clark. Clark Hopkins.
My wife back there is Missy.”

They shook.

“Connelly.”

The truck was hardly a truck anymore. Its bedding was made of slats of wood, with everything hanging from it that could hang—mattresses,
lanterns, bags of produce, bits of string and wire, rope, and jugs of water. As Connelly walked to it the rest of the family
emerged from the back of the cars. Three boys and a girl, all barely past toddlers, a young man almost a teen, and a girl
younger than Hammond, he supposed, about twenty. He felt nervy with them watching him.

“Damn, I hate cars,” said Clark, and glanced around to make sure his profanity had gone unnoticed. “Never used one before.
I didn’t know what I was doing. The others, my brother and my brothers-in-law, they know how to drive, but how its guts work,
that’s beyond us. I prefer mules, I got to say. You know how a mule works, what goes in, what comes out. Cars, well. That’s
a different story.”

“Mighty young family to be traveling with,” said Connelly.

“Don’t I know it.”

Connelly took off his coat and hat and rolled up his sleeves. His arm still twinged but at least it worked. “What happened?”
he asked.

“Thing was going fine before. We cut off the main road, thought we’d take a direct road into New Mexico. We pulled off for
the night and in the morning we couldn’t get her started again.”

Connelly wiped at his forehead and squatted to look below. Clark joined him, then the children did, then Pike and the rest
joined him as well.

Connelly glanced at them, uncomfortable. “I’m going to need a little light,” he said.

“Oh,” said Clark. “Oh, sure.”

The family shuffled backwards. Pike motioned and led his followers away to the side of the road. Connelly looked at the car
and thought.

“Can you start her up?” he asked.

Clark’s brother climbed in the cab and tried. Connelly listened to it turn over but never catch, nodded to himself, and popped
the hood and lifted it up. He looked in, then made a circle in the air with his finger, signaling to try again. The engine
wheezed and clicked and clanked but never caught. He reached in and began sorting through it, not pulling but touching carefully,
remembering which parts of the engine did what, like greeting old friends at a party. He was examining the carburetor when
he noticed a small mop of brown hair peeking over the side, and below it two brown eyes looking into the hood with him. The
eyes moved down and darted about the workings of the car like their owner was trying to sort out enemies. The looker noticed
Connelly watching him, blinked, and stood up. It was a boy, small and gap-toothed, but he had been fed better than most boys
Connelly had seen. They stared at each other and the boy said, “Is it sick?”

“It’s a car. Cars don’t get sick.”

“What do they get?”

“They get broke.”

“You going to fix it, then?”

“Going to try,” said Connelly.

The boy nodded gravely, then pointed at part of the car. “What’s that?”

“That’s the rotor,” said Connelly calmly, not dismissive, not irritated. Just treating the question like it had come from
anyone.

The boy nodded again. Connelly returned to the car.

“And that?” said the boy, pointing at another part.

“That’s the spark plug,” said Connelly.

“Is that the problem?”

“Oh, I don’t think so.”

“What is the problem?”

“I’m not sure yet.” He glanced at the boy, then made another circle with his finger. The engine groaned and grunted as it
tried to move and the boy jumped back, startled by the noise. Connelly’s hand shot out and grabbed on to the boy’s arm to
stop him from falling. He was still breathing fast as Connelly eased him back onto the bumper of the car.

“Watch out,” said Connelly. “It won’t bite, but don’t hurt yourself.”

“For Chrissakes, Frankie, get down from there and let the man work,” said Clark from behind.

“It’s all right,” Connelly said. “I don’t mind.”

The boy nodded at him gratefully and Connelly went back to work as though nothing had happened.

Connelly reached in and touched two slender wires. He looked at them, then carefully brought them together. There was a spark.
He nodded and placed them back together and then made the motion with his finger again.

Clark’s brother hit the ignition. Again there were the clicks and grunts as the engine sought the connection, but then it
caught, rolled over, and with an unhappy grumble began to run again.

There was an eruption of cheers from behind him so loud Connelly swung around in surprise.

“Hot damn, you did it!” shouted Clark. He ignored the slap his wife gave his shoulder. “How’d you do it?”

“It’s the condenser,” said Connelly quietly, and waved Clark up. He pointed at the wires he had connected. “The points had
come loose. It happens all the time with these older models. Usually I’d say you just need to have the condenser replaced,
but you should be good until you can get to the next auto shop. If it happens again, check there first.”

“We’re lucky it was nothing serious,” said the little boy solemnly.

Connelly looked at him, amused. “Yeah. Yes, we are.”

“Well, you just saved the day for us,” said Clark.

“It was nothing. Just a few stray wires.”

“Oh, be quiet,” said Missy. “Come on down here. Lunchtime’s coming on and you and your friends look hungry as wolves. When’s
the last time you ate?”

Connelly hesitated and glanced sideways at Pike and the others, who were getting to their feet. “A while,” he admitted. “A
long while.”

“Well, we’ve got salted pork and nice rolls we can cook up for all of you.”

“There’s a lot of us,” said Connelly.

“That don’t mean nothing,” she said, grabbing his arm and steering him toward their makeshift shelter. “There’s a lot of us,
too. There’s a lot of everybody. If you hadn’t come along at the right time we’d have been stuck here for… Oh, well, I shudder
to think. I shudder, I really do.”

“God looks after His own,” said Pike as he approached.

She smiled at him. “If that’s not the truth, I’ve never heard it. Are you a man of the cloth?”

“Once,” said Pike. “Now I’m just a man.”

“Well, anyone who’s done the Lord’s work is a welcome guest at our table.” She frowned. “Even if we don’t have a table.”

“Ma’am, we haven’t even seen a bed in weeks,” said Roosevelt. “We’d be awful picky to turn you down just because there’s no
dinner table on one of your trucks.”

“These times,” said one of the other women, fussing over them. “Oh, these times. I seen little boys with arms like sticks.
We’re lucky to be doing as good as we are.”

They sat them down among the entire family and began their preparations for cooking. Connelly and the others could tell the
family didn’t have much and so did their best to refuse what they could, but they were ravenous and soon accepted.

“Where you boys heading?” asked one of Clark’s brothers.

“West,” said Hammond. “South and west. To wherever we can find work.”

They accepted that. It was a common story among everyone.

Connelly turned to survey Clark’s cars again. “I could look those over for you,” he said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I
bet there’s a few, well…”

“Problems,” Clark finished. “Because the man who sold them to us was a snake.”

“I guess you could say that.”

“I would appreciate that. I really would. And we’d be happy to help you folks out.”

Connelly smiled a little. “Getting tossed from a train isn’t exactly fun.”

“We’ll do whatever you need in return,” said Pike. “Any help you need, you let us know.”

“Well, sir. I suppose all we want is just the chance to keep moving,” said Clark. “That’s enough for me.”

The Hopkinses’ convoy was in worse shape than they had imagined. Connelly spent the next day checking whatever came to his
mind. He managed to scrounge up a crescent wrench and went to it before the sun came up. Cleaning fuel lines. Teasing radiator
lines back into place. On one wheel the bearings were run down to the point of dissolving, mere days away from smoking and
catching fire. Connelly used a jack and managed to remove the wheel and scrape away what was left of the bearing. He took
a piece of rind from the pork barrel and cleaned it of salt. Then he wrapped it around the spindle and replaced the wheel.
He told Clark this would not last for more than a hundred miles or so. Clark and the other men listened. They listened to
every quiet word Connelly said like it was the word of Christ himself. And Clark’s son Frankie refused to leave, having assumed
the role of Connelly’s tagalong. He stood beside Connelly whenever he could, like a lieutenant standing beside his general,
looking out on a battlefield.

It was not long before Lottie joined the women in looking after the children. They cleaned and cooked and spoke, made sure
the loads in all the cars were even, and spent time mending clothing and tending to wounds. For every second they were awake
there seemed to be four more things to fix.

Pike and Hammond did not fit in well. Sometimes they came forward to help Connelly and the others but mostly they stayed at
the outskirts, conversing in tones too low to hear. Roonie stayed with them, as he proved too nervous and uncoordinated and
his help was more of a hindrance. Connelly, for once, was the center of all the attention. Monk and Roosevelt joined the Hopkinses
and Connelly quietly gave them all direction, taking apart this and putting together that. Rubbing bar soap over holes in
the fuel tanks caused by gravel from the road. One car burned oil and if Connelly had not gotten to it the engine would have
been lost. Whoever had pawned the heaving wrecks off on the Hopkinses had done so knowing he was sending a family out on the
road to flounder.

And Connelly enjoyed himself. He liked working with his hands again and he liked helping. He enjoyed seeing something wrong
and putting it right. As afternoon came on his muscles ached but it was a pleasing ache. His body was letting him know that
he had done something worth doing.

He sat and leaned up against a car and surveyed his work. He sipped water in the noonday heat and felt more satisfied than
he had in weeks, even months. Frankie came and sat next to him, looking sideways to take in Connelly’s posture, then mimic
it. Connelly offered him his canteen and the boy took it and sipped from it with a serious air.

“We’re going to New Mexico,” the boy said.

“You’re in New Mexico now,” Connelly told him.

He considered that. “New Mexico is where cotton is, though. And work. Money to make.”

“It’s out there somewhere,” said Connelly. “But not here.”

The boy struggled with something. “New Mexico is where we can build another house,” he said, and he looked at Connelly earnestly.
“New Mexico is where I told Jeff I’d be.”