Scowler (15 page)

Marvin toed the edge of the crater. Sarah joined him like it was nothing, her blond hair close enough to tickle the Winchester’s trigger. Jo Beth had no choice: She swept in beside her daughter, darting an arm around her shoulder and pulling her away from the weapon, but then leaving the gesture half
fulfilled when she saw what lay at her feet. Ry came last, slow as old age. His hope was that his father would be wrong—a rare and delectable occurrence—and the contents of the crater would be something rather pedestrian: a weather satellite, a ball of hail, some other atmospheric burp. The truth, though, was in his family’s postures: the shrinking back of an insecure species.

The hole bored through countless strata of soil. At the top, the crater spanned nearly thirty-five feet, a giant toothless mouth. The walls were smooth as charcoal from the heat that had seared them. Stray ends of root systems dangled like cauterized arteries. The crater’s overall effect was dizzying, even though it was only roughly fifteen feet deep; a steaming pool of muddy water hid the precise depth of its lowest point. Peeking through the liquid was a rock of indeterminate size, a couple feet in diameter, maybe more, black and glossy and fascinatingly notched, a miniature planet of coral-reef complexity. Though only a few inches were revealed, Ry could vouch that it was like no stone he’d ever seen.

“Water,” Marvin muttered. He looked sidelong at his son, droplets of steam fattening on his glasses while his beard darkened and curled. Ry’s stomach cramped at the irrefutable evidence of his incompetence. This surprise vat of moisture showed that the farm’s lifeblood still flowed.

“Marvin.” Jo Beth’s face was as blank as paper. “Is it safe?”

“It’s safe, Mom,” Sarah said. “Can we go get the camera?”

“No.”

“Can I go down and touch it?”

“Of course not.”

“We’ve got to,” Marvin said. “Good Christ. Good
Christ
.”

Marvin shifted the gun to his left hand, placed his right
on his knee, and leaned over the hole. His forehead peaked at the heightened smell. Ry could not help but be intrigued. He followed suit, leaning over, and when he sniffed it hit him like a too-cold drink, not just the overpowering smell but sheets of magnetic waves so charged they puckered the pores of his skin. He inhaled, choked, tasted salt, and expected a nosebleed.

(hello)

Ry swallowed to clear his throat of blood before responding. But there was no blood and no one had spoken. He looked to Sarah, but she showed no signs of hearing a thing. She leaned into the magnetic field as if it were a thrill ride, her lashes fluttering as vaporous forces moved each long blond hair. Ry felt it too: His eyebrows twitched like insect feelers.

“I’ll do it,” Sarah said. “Is anyone listening? I’ll go down there.”

“That smell’s going to make us all sick,” Jo Beth said.

“No worse than pumping diesel,” Marvin said. “I pulled that duty for a month. You get used to it.”

“And it’s hot. Look at the steam. Let’s go back. The two of us can talk. I’m sweating.
We’re
sweating.”

“If it was that hot there’d be fire,” Sarah insisted.

Ry noticed the fresh space in his sister’s teeth and felt a crazy certainty that he would find the missing tooth in the crater, its fluoride polish impervious to the volcanic glass that caked everything else.

“There’s no fire,” Marvin growled, “because all that’s left out here is dirt.”

“The whole hole is so big,” Sarah said. She turned to her brother. “The whole hole. Ry
—the whole hole
.”

With her attention on him he considered asking if she had
heard that faint, ringing
hello
. But he was an older brother and with that came the responsibility of being amused by pointless wordplay. He mustered a sickly smile and a jittery wink—the best he could do.

“It’s big, all right,” Marvin said. He reached into the front pocket of his shirt and with practiced agility withdrew the sorriest pack of cigarettes Ry had ever seen: flat, gray, and speckled with errant flakes of tobacco. Luckies—Jeremiah’s favorite. While trying to shake free a stick, Marvin raised an eyebrow and scanned the cemetery remains of the land he loved. “Makes the whole back eighty look … I don’t know. Little. That isn’t how I remember it. Not at all.” The crooked cigarette went between his lips and his nimble fingers dove once more and came back with a crumpled book of matches. “You remember the night the steers got free, like they were angry about the low-grade hay, like they knew the milk cows were getting the good stuff.” He tucked the shotgun under his arm and struck a match. The flame was butterscotch, weak. “And out of bed we jumped, all of us in our underwear, flying through the corn back here trying to round them up.” His lip hiked, betraying real affection. Ry’s mind, too, conjured snatches of the frenzied hunt, his muddy briefs, the moronic thrill of flailing unclothed through nature. “Jo, you remember. How long did it take us?”

The hand holding the lit match was trembling.

Ry concentrated on it, willed it into a symbol of hope.

“All night,” Jo said. “Into morning.”

“God, the mornings here. The mornings.”

His voice softened in a way Ry wasn’t sure he’d ever heard before.

“Things here,” he said, “weren’t perfect. But I did try to provide. It was all I knew how to—”

The fire died. Marvin’s fingers shook even harder for a moment, a death spasm, and then snapped into a fist. There was no breeze to blame so he blamed inconvenience. Having to hold the gun under his arm while trying to ignite damp matches was too awkward, and with brusque motions he stuffed the cigarette, soft pack, and matchbook back into his shirt pocket—and there Marvin froze. Relief rinsed his face as the tips of his fingers fondled an unseen object bulging from the bottom of the pocket. Ry felt a warning in his gut that there were other secrets yet to be revealed.

“Yes, indeedy. Half the day was spent wrangling. Because loaded with crop, this here stretch was—there’s no other word for it. It was
big
. Bigger than eighty acres, once you were inside it. A rock, even one like this, had it fallen from the sky back then?” He looked at them in turn: wife, daughter, son. “Why, I believe the corn would’ve gobbled it up. In fact …” He let his eyes tickle across Ry’s face. “Those one or two steers we didn’t find that night, I’ve always figured that’s what happened. Corn got hungry.” He jerked his eyebrows. “Chomp.”

Ry jumped. He hated it, but he did.

Marvin grinned. Filaments of tobacco floated in his beard like scabs.

“Time’s a-wastin’.” He motioned the shotgun barrel at the crater.

Ry took a deep breath and squinted. The clouds of steam were thinner now. Sun blasted off the water, which hissed as it lapped at the rock. The lustrous ore seemed to squirm in its stew of energy like a knot of wrought-iron snakes. Ry had no business down there, none of them did. But his mother’s
haggard face—how easily a bullet could unsnap tendons from bone. The padding of girl-fat that swaddled Sarah’s organs—how crudely a shot would yank garish colors from the paleness.

Marvin appeared to read his son’s mind. His red and weary eyes examined both possible targets. Ry wasted no more time. He stepped over the edge of the crater, dug his left heel into the soot, and eyed a path that should not prove too difficult for a young man of sure footing. It wouldn’t be fun, but as Marvin had said a million times, running a farm never was.

T
hree feet down the smelly exhaust enveloped him like warm honey. He wiped it out of his eyes and flung it aside. Another step lower and he found himself emerging damp from the steam clouds. Magnetism at this level was palpable; his pulse struggled against confused gravity. With his heel he kicked a foothold into the smoldered grade, leaned back, and slid—seven feet down, eight feet, nine. He crouched and locked his arms around his knees. Less than a foot away, the pool, roughly four feet across, swayed like melted chocolate.

The meteorite was an extravaganza. Ry leaned forward, extended his neck, and held the posture breathlessly. The exposed rock gleamed with mercurial liquescence and twinkled in neon tones of pink, purple, and blue. Ry angled his head and an entire world of sparkling lace revealed itself, floating within the rock like a field of golden mushrooms. Ry longed to grip one of the rock’s many outcroppings—how much like handles they looked!—and see what other dimensions there were to discover. He stretched out a hand.

The field of energy straightened the hair on his knuckles. His arm hairs rose next like flowers awakening to sun. After that his neck stubble became a garden of thorns. Then the pressure upon his skull began to build, steady as a closing vice. Ry’s jaws scraped past each other with an abrupt squeak and he pushed himself back from the meteorite, clutching his ringing head between his palms. Bitter methane folded like construction paper down his throat. He gagged and his vision went black.

(hold still)

(i can’t find you)

(yes, you)

Ry opened his mouth to scream that he was
HERE, RIGHT HERE!
—and with that he crested from blackness to discover a slamming headache. Long black fingers had wrapped around his legs. He gasped and kicked but they were just shadows from the people staring from fifteen feet up.

“Ry? You okay? You okay, Ry? You okay?”

The subsequent cough told him that this concern came from Sarah, not Jo Beth, and even in this crippled state the slight from his mother hurt. He nodded in response, but that was a bad idea because it widened what already felt like a gaping hole in his head. He pushed himself farther from the meteorite.

“Feels weird,” he managed to say. “Real weird. I’m coming up.”

Sun glared from shotgun metal. The muzzle made the scribbly motions of aiming.

“That’s not necessary, Marvin.” Jo Beth’s voice carried well in the absence of the birds. “He’ll do what you say.”

“I’ll judge what’s necessary.”

“But I can help. Just talk to me.”

“Talk? Jo, I can barely
think
.”

“Because you’re hurt?”

“Because the situation is tense.” Marvin probed the gap between his front teeth with his tongue. “And because I’m hurt.”

“That’s what I’m saying. Let’s slow down. Let’s think this through. You haven’t told me a thing. How you got here, anything.”

Ry took a knee and tried to reestablish a normal pattern of breathing. It was possible that these requests from his mother were a brilliant ploy. If she could draw answers of any detail from her husband, Ry might have a chance to make a move that counted. He’d just need to hang on to his slippery powers of judgment.

“There’s nothing to tell,” Marvin said. “I got out.”

“Because one of these things fell?”

“That’s right.”

“And it knocked down some walls?”

“Knocked down? It turned the east end of my cell to chalk.”

“And you climbed out?”

“What else? Only it was up, Jo. I climbed up.”

“Up?”

Ry stood and turned toward the crater wall. He winced as the heel of his shoe crunched through the glasslike surface. It was the kind of noise Sarah would jump at, if her attention wasn’t fixed upon her parents.

“The ceiling’s what fell in,” Marvin explained. “That’s what buried the Professor. If I’d used the toilet first, it would’ve been me.”

“Well, I’m grateful.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I am,” Jo Beth insisted. “That’s not what I would have wanted.”

“Please don’t say that.”

“I’m sorry. But weren’t there any guards to stop you?”

“Guards? Christ, yes. They were everywhere.”

“Then how …?”

Marvin at last deigned to look at her. The gun dipped and its bead slid from Ry’s forehead like a drop of sweat. “How. How.” Marvin’s lips flattened strangely, and it took Ry a moment to identify the emotion as amusement. “Jo, the questions you ask.” He was pleased, though, and symmetrical patches of beard thickened with the twists of a wry grin. As a master of the kitchen-table soliloquy, the only thing Marvin Burke might crave more than revenge was a chance to bask in his own ingenuity.

Ry crouched, prepared his muscles to move.

“There was a game room,” Marvin said. “Directly above my cell.”

“A game room?”

“Pool, shuffleboard, darts. You know, rewards for good behavior.”

“It was above your cell?”

Ry moved on all fours up the side of the crater. His parents seemed to leap closer.

Marvin’s whiskers twitched with his grin. “The noises would drive the Professor crazy. Me, I came to like it. Little men and their little games. When the ceiling opened up, all of it just sort of … slid.”

“Even the pool table?”

“Fell right into my cell. Christ if it wasn’t a sight. Balanced up there on the edge, big as a whale. Then it was lumber.”

“And you used it to get out somehow?”

The climbing noises of Ry’s hands and feet, even those of his labored breathing, were too loud. He froze, held his breath. Somewhere above his head he could hear his father swallow, how the subsequent inhale peeled his tongue from the roof of his mouth.

“Men on the inside,” he said, “that’s all they talk about. What they’ll do if God reaches down and rips open a hole. You know me well enough. You know I’d have a plan. And a contingency plan. And a plan three, a plan four.”

“I do know that. Or I should’ve known. I’m sorry if I forgot.”

“Darts. Billiard balls. A pool cue. Maybe I picked up other things too, I don’t remember. But in the right hands, these objects are not toys.”

“Did you hurt anyone? Tell me.”

Ry was practically within arm’s reach of Marvin’s ankle, but Ry looked at his shaking wrists and locked elbows and found that he could not move another inch until he heard the man’s response. Because before grappling with his father it would be wise to know exactly what he’d become.

“Did I hurt …” Marvin laughed once, a sandpaper sound. “I don’t know, Jo. To get out of that place I had to do some things, and some of those things were surely bad. But I’m telling you—it was like it wasn’t me. It was like someone else was doing them. I don’t remember the half of it; I wish I did. You don’t have to believe me, but it’s the truth.”