Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories (26 page)

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 God." 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 butter 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 classes, 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 Coke.

"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, hell. 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 on to 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 God."

"God 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 God, 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 God 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 embarrassed 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 Saturday 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 damn 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 class. Large animals.