The Drought (24 page)

Jar closed the door approaching with care. “Mom?” He touched her lightly on the shoulder. Instead of soft skin his fingers encountered a layer of grit.

“Mom, what are you doing?”

“Can’t you see it, Jared? It’s getting inside. We can’t let it get inside.”

Jar looked around. The seams of each window were covered with a thick strip of gray electrical tape. His stomach churned. His mother hadn’t been to work in almost two weeks. A few days ago he was worried about how they were going to pay the electric bill. Somewhere deep down he understood they were way beyond just worrying about bills.

His mom was still struggling with the tape. Two fingers were bleeding where her nails had torn away from the skin. Periodically, she wiped her hand across her leg, leaving a smear of blood. Jar kneeled down and tried to hold her. Oblivious to his concern she ripped at the tape.

“Stop it Mom. Stop!” He grabbed at her hands, trying to contain her erratic movements but she became more persistent.

“No. We can’t let it get in Jared, we have to cover all the holes.”

Crying, he pulled at her hands. “Please Mom, stop.” Then he saw what she was trying to cover up with the tape. Two, perfect, miniature jet streams of sand were blowing softly from the electrical outlet. Below, a small pyramid of sand grew where his mother’s knees met the thin carpet.

Mesmerized, he forgot about the hunger gnawing at his belly and the deep ache in his bones. He watched those two golden plumes waver gently on the dry wind propelling them through the small holes. Sand. The trailer was filling up with sand. He stopped struggling with his mother. Without taking his eyes off of those two golden plumes he said gently, “I’ll do it Mom. You go lay down. I’ll finish taping up the holes.”

He reached into his pocket and withdrew his dad’s pocketknife. He cut off a strip of the electric tape, and laid it firmly across the outlet. Hearing a soft hiss to his left, he crawled across the floor until he reached the next outlet. He moved from outlet to outlet until he ran out of tape.

Outside, the hot day had faded into night. His mother had long since returned to her room and Jar had finished taping up the electric outlets. He sat at the kitchen table eating a bologna and ketchup sandwich trying to figure out what Griffin Tanner had to do with what was happening to the town of Junction.

He was too tired to think. He stumbled into the living room and fell exhausted and filthy onto the couch. Golden dust lifted and floated in the air. He tried to make a plan. Tried to think it through but he was too tired. He mumbled, “Barry and I will figure it out.” A ringing tone echoed through his head like an emergency broadcast signal and overwhelmed the nagging voice trying to remind him Barry wouldn’t be around to help. He fell toward sleep and dreamed he was still in the tunnel, his hand ragged and bleeding from dragging it along the wall and the darkman was there whispering in his lilting English,“You better move li’l mon. Pretty soon ain’t nobody gettin’ out o’ Junction.”

Jar rolled over on the couch, trying to get away from the voice and find a more comfortable position. Jean-Claude lingered. He leaned close and whispered in Jar’s ear. “Wake up, possum boy. De sand is gettin’ een!” The roar of his laughter startled Jar into a sitting position. He opened his eyes. The sliding door was open. Gusts of sand blew across the floor.

Junction, Texas

Barry spun through darkness. He shattered into a million particles, scattering everywhere. He floated through time, existing nowhere. He felt Jar with him in the darkness, saw the baseball with the name Carlton Fisk etched across the surface and knew Jar was coming. Barry drifted with the sand scuttling across the town of Junction, a ghost town covered in a golden haze. He watched Les McCollum open the oven on his old gas stove and light the pilot, before sticking his head inside. He saw Cathy on her knees in the back of the Junction café, her head bobbing back and forth against Leo’s crotch, while out front her husband entered the deserted restaurant carrying a gun.

He heard the spreading silence as the power went and each air-conditioner in Junction shut down. And as he floated over the house Griffin built, he saw the nurse, MaryAnne crash her practical Toyota Camry through the gates at the end of the driveway and knew she wouldn’t make it past Highway 10 before her car got caught in the sandstorm. Death had most definitely left his calling card.

With the nurse gone, there was no one to witness the sudden erratic pulse at the base of his throat, no one to calm the twitching limbs or put a hand across his clammy forehead when he started to moan. With the nurse gone there was no one to feel the sudden draft of air, or witness the prone body, sink into the mattress as if something heavy had just made impact.

Barry’s eyes snapped open.

A deep ache kept him motionless on the bed. The time he had spent with his mother hadn’t been a dream but he knew the second he moved, the second his feet touched the floor, every moment he’d had with her would only be a memory, subject to the rules of time. He could see every angle of her face, see the reflection of light in her eyes and smell the scent of soap and perfume against her skin. The thought of those details fading kept him still.

She
was
real.

She
was
real.

He repeated the three words in an attempt to imprint her image forever into his subconscious. He wanted to file the details away in a safe place where he could return at his leisure and shuffle through the memories like he would a forgotten box of photographs stuffed in the back of a closet.

Get up, you have to help Jar.

His eyes flew to the closed door. The space between the door and the bed seemed an impossible distance to traverse. He threw the covers from his body. His summer tan had faded. Pale, thin stick legs jutted out from baggy boxer shorts. He reached down to touch the alien limbs, doubting they could get him across the room. The cool skin felt numb. He grabbed each leg and pulled at it until it hung over the edge of the bed. The world spun. Brown dots speckled his vision. He steadied himself like a man in a small boat on a rough sea. Needles and pins started in his toes, the sensation intensifying as it moved up his legs. Attempting to stand too soon he rolled forward and landed on the floor with a thump.

The image of Jar coming through the sandstorm, the certainty he needed help, forced Barry to keep trying. Dragging his half numb, half tingling legs behind him, he army crawled toward the door. Bracing his back and butt against the wall, he reached up and turned the doorknob. The door swung open.

Exhausted, he remained seated against the wall. His legs were on fire with pins and needles. He rubbed at them, trying to help the circulation. Certain he wouldn’t be able to stand he continued through the door and down the hall in the modified army crawl. When he stopped to rest his head against the floor the voice would urge him on.

Hurry, you have to help Jar.

The path he followed led him to the center of the house where the landing looked down over the immense foyer. Somewhere below he could hear the echo of his father’s voice raised in agitation.

He used the balustrade to pull himself into a standing position. His legs buckled. Too weak to stand on his own, he clung to the banister. Below, the pink marble floor spun slightly before coming into focus. He closed his eyes. More than anything he wanted to return to his room; return to his comatose state and the warmth of his mother’s embrace.

Jar needs you.

Struggling to stand he moved toward the stairs on wobbling legs. Grasping the rail, he descended the stairs one step at a time. The gun case in his dad’s office gave him focus, the image of the key taped snug beneath the desk, strength.

Junction, Texas

Jar rode his bike through the growing sand dunes. He wore a baseball cap, a pair of sunglasses and a bandana in an attempt to keep the sand out of his eyes, nose and mouth. It wasn’t working. Gook was forming in the corners of his eyes, a fine ring of sand lined each nostril and he could feel the grit between his teeth.

Inside his backpack he had a canister of water, three granola bars, his dad’s pocket knife, a map, the Carlton Fisk ball and ten dollars worth of change he’d stolen out of his mom’s tip money. Dry air hit the back of his throat and made it difficult to breathe. Already exhausted from his long ordeal in the tunnel, his progress across town was slow and torturous. The bike kept slipping in the shifting terrain and it felt like he would never make it to Barry’s house.

More than once he had envisioned going out to Tanner’s house and rescuing Barry but in his wildest fantasy he hadn’t imagined riding through a sandstorm, going alone and without a real plan or a chance of success.

In the past twenty-four hours, everything had changed. Not only did he have to find a way inside the Tanner estate, he also had to figure a way to get his best friend to safety and find whatever had been given to Tanner in that crate.

The voice of reason interrupted his little plan.
You do realize if the crate is real, so is the dark man. Have you really thought any of this through?
He shook his head. He’d deal with the rest when he had to.

When he saw the entry to Tanner’s estate, he nearly dropped the bike and did a little jig. The gates were broken. It looked as if someone had crashed through before they had a chance to fully open. Sand drifted against the stone wall, lending an air of abandonment to the scene. He pushed the bike through the wrecked entry and pedaled up the driveway.

As he came around the last curve in the driveway, the size of the house shocked him. No one in Junction lived like this. He couldn’t even fathom how many shifts his mom would have to work at the diner just to pay the electric bill in a place this size.

The stone house rose from the golden gloom, daunting, impenetrable. He stood for a moment in indecision, unsure how much leverage the Carlton Fisk ball gave him. In one scenario he saw himself knocking on the front door and bartering with Griffin Tanner—but he didn’t think so. He was pretty sure he’d just disappear if he went to the front door. He felt his heart quicken. Suzy still thought he was in the drainage pipe. He hadn’t called her, hadn’t gotten the chance in the madness. Griffin could kill him and no one would even know he’d been there.

He abandoned his bike on the driveway, ducked down and moved around the side of the house and into a courtyard which offered some protection from the stinging wind. He was hoping he might get lucky and find a small window unlocked. The windows along the side of the house were all too high. He didn’t even have to duck to stay out of sight. When he came to a side door he stood dumbstruck. Like the front gates, the door stood slightly ajar. A long, narrow wedge of sand had formed across the marble tile.

It occurred to him Mr. Tanner could have fled, in an attempt to get out of town before the storm closed off the interstate. He tried to picture Mr. Tanner rushing away, forgetting to close or lock the door behind him. It didn’t fit.

Pushing the door wide, he peered inside. The dry wind whipped around his legs. The wedge of sand shifted and spread across the smooth marble floor. He mumbled, “Jesus, Barry, I had no idea.” The trailer on 15th street, the place he called home, would have easily fit inside this one room.

The hallway leading away from the kitchen was cavernous. The lights were dim and a faint hum vibrated through the darkened corridors. A generator was supplying power. He moved quietly down the hall, peering into rooms. The snippet of thought he’d had the day he rode out to the library, repeated in his head.
When the electricity goes, and I know it will, she won’t last a day.
He saw an image of Edna Mae in her office working on the Junction Eagle, roasting in the small space like a fat turkey.

He turned a corner. A disembodied voice floated in the gloom. “Damn it Michael, I need those bids by the end of today. I’ll be surprised if I have phone service by then. The electricity has gone out and we’re having some type of sandstorm out here. Michael…? Michael? Damn it!”

Something crashed against a wall, the sound resounded down the hall. Startled, Jar darted into the nearest room. He hunkered down against the wall waiting for Tanner to calm down or go away. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, they also widened in disbelief. He was in Tanner’s collection room.

It looked like a museum. Intricate book shelves lined a wall at least twenty feet long and wooden pedestals topped with glass domes were set up in rows throughout the room. Unable to resist, Jar moved slowly down an aisle created by the cases. Now he understood why Barry couldn’t stay away. Each case held an item more tempting than the last. A hand carved Indian tomahawk, gold doubloons from the Spanish flotilla, Aztec drawings, old maps on parchment paper, small wonders a boy could only dream about.