Prairie Gothic (19 page)

“There's no way I can be certain.”

“Yes there is, Doc. Just like I know that skull I brought you is Cheyenne, you knew that baby wasn't right. You just won't let yourself admit your occasional insights are every bit as valid as your scientific tests. Psychic diagnosis isn't something you're ready to accept. I know you, Doc. You wouldn't have done whatever you did unless it was necessary. And I can tell. Call it Cheyenne mysticism or psychic mumbo jumbo from the local nut case, but I know you found something in that autopsy to justify it.”

“But I couldn't have known then…”

“But you did. What was it, Doc. Tell me.”

“It's rare. There were hardly any of the usual external indications.”

“It had no soul, did it, Doc?”

“What's a soul? Where do I find it? Aw shit, Mad Dog. I don't know what to say. It was an anenceph baby. There was a brain stem that might have kept all the involuntary functions going if I'd let them get started, but not much else. The rest of the brain didn't develop properly. God! I suppose, if there is a soul, the brain is where it would live.”

Mad Dog pushed himself back across the hall. Doc had his personal space again, except inside. It still felt like whatever was Mad Dog, his spirit maybe, was pushing that same part of Doc. Manipulating him.

“No human died here,” Mad Dog said. “If someone had, I'd feel it. There would still be something left. You recognized that absence of humanity too.”

“Maybe I knew,” Doc admitted in a whisper, “but how can you?”

Not manipulating, Doc realized, guiding. With that understanding, the pressure receded.

“Same as any shaman, Doc,” Mad Dog smiled. “Same as you.”

***

They ran west, because that was the way Wynn Some happened to be pointed, and it was away from the house.

A Hornbaker was in the driveway to their right. He fired a shot in the air. Wynn didn't seem to notice. The girls couldn't hear the report because of the wind. When he didn't aim at them, they stayed on course and followed the deputy.

He used the limb of a handy hedge tree to vault the fence and get into the pasture. Heather English followed suit, but she had to stop and help her sister disentangle her jeans from the top row of barbed wire. By then, Wynn was out of sight. But his tracks weren't, though the wind was trying to scrub them away.

The girls pursued them until the prints came to a skidding halt about a hundred yards from the fence, then changed direction, going southeast even faster. His new course was paralleled by the tracks of what must have caused his change of direction. Wynn had encountered something massive enough for its hooves to excavate chunks of snow and frozen earth.

“What do we do now?” Two asked One, who didn't know. All she knew was that they couldn't stay out in this weather long.

“We can't catch Wynn.” She gestured at the hoof prints, “And I don't want to find what made those. Let's circle back toward the farm from the north. If that guy with the gun is following us, he'll have to make a choice. Maybe he'll follow Wynn instead of us. Whatever, we've got to find shelter, or transportation. It's miles to another farm. We've only been outside a few minutes and I'm already getting numb.”

Heather Lane nodded. “You're the native. You lead, I'll follow.”

“That could be a mistake,” One muttered, but she turned into the wind, lowered her head, and started jogging.

***

“Where do you live, Mary?”

Mad Dog sat on the floor in a modified lotus position. He wasn't quite flexible enough to get both legs where they were supposed to be without cramping up. That sometimes hindered his efforts to meditate. Actually, it wasn't exactly meditation, since he'd switched from yoga to Cheyenne shamanism, but there were similarities. What he was usually trying to do from the position these days was relax, free his spirit from his body so it could travel through time and space and commune with other Cheyennes, past and present, or visit the pantheon of beings who saw to it that the universe remained in order and operated as it was meant to. It took a lot of patience, something Mad Dog was trying to acquire. Now he was only getting down to Mary's level.

“I dunno.” She was kind of huddled up in the corner of the couch in Doc's office, half hiding under the blanket Doc had spread over her. She had one of those I-think-I'm-drowning grips on the rough of Hailey's neck. It wasn't something Mad Dog recommended with wolf hybrids, only Hailey seemed to recognize her need. It was like she had adopted the girl. When the grip threatened to get too tight, Hailey would just shift her head around and slather Mary's face with kisses until the girl calmed down and loosened it.

That was the kind of patience Mad Dog yearned for, and, he suspected, the kind he needed just now. Mary was very young and her mind seemed even younger. There were a lot of things Mad Dog wanted to know, things his brother needed to know. Doc too. Doc had collapsed in the chair behind his desk, swinging wildly on the pendulum of revelation between guilt and relief and doubt and wonder.

“Do you live on the farm where I found you?”

“I 'spose.”

“Who lives with you?”

She kneaded Hailey's fur. “It changes. Most times, Gran's there. Sometimes Gramps. And Uncle Simon, and Levi and Judah of course, and there's the witch at the end of the hall.”

Witch at the end of the hall? What was real, what was fantasy? Gran would be Becky, Gramps, Zeke, he supposed.

“What about your mom?”

She shrugged, like she wasn't sure what he meant.

“Where do you go to school?”

“I'd like to go to school.”

“Mary,” Doc interrupted. “Do you know a man named Tommie? Tommie Irons?”

Mad Dog had been avoiding Tommie's name for a couple of reasons. He didn't want to upset the girl, especially not before he got some useful information. And, he didn't want to talk about the man he'd befriended, not if Irons had done to this girl the things he was accused of. Only she didn't react.

“They don't let me see anyone else.”

Doc was as stunned as Mad Dog. “Honey. You must know him. He lived there too.”

She nodded her head. “I knew him. Don't tell, though, 'cause I wasn't supposed to. He was nice, then he went away.”

Mad Dog wondered what nice meant.

“Who's the father of your child, Mary?” Doc persisted. “Was it Tommie?”

She shrugged narrow shoulders and looked uncomfortable. “I dunno.”

Maybe Doc needed further evidence to support his wavering self-justification. Whatever, he wouldn't let it alone.

“Honey. You've got to know. You remember where your baby came from. Somebody had to plant a seed in that same place before it could grow. It might have hurt when he did it. Surely you remember.”

“Oh, that. Yeah, I remember.”

“Then who was it?”

“Uncle Simon once. Then somebody else. A bunch of times. I thought I knew who it was then, but I wasn't sure. So, I asked Gran. Sure enough, she told me I was right.” Mary beamed, delighted to be able to tell them what they wanted to know. “It was God.”

***

“This is a Beretta.” Englishman handed Judy the pistol he'd taken from Simon that morning.

“I don't need to know who made it to shoot it,” she replied. She took it by the butt, dropped the magazine to ensure it was loaded, racked the slide, and dry fired it out one of Mad Dog's shattered windows. One look at Mad Dog's place and she was ready to carry a firearm after all.

“Stubby little cartridges,” she observed.

“That's a 9 mm short.” Chairman Wynn was pleased to demonstrate his knowledge of firearms. “It's not that potent. If you have to shoot somebody, do it more than once.”

“Those hollow points will kill you quick enough at close range,” Englishman said.

Judy nodded. She replaced the magazine and found a convenient pocket for the semiautomatic.

“What's all this about, Englishman?” Judy asked. “What are swastikas doing on a dead baby and Mad Dog's kitchen floor? And what the hell has it got to do with where our daughters and Deputy Wynn are?”

“You hear her, Mrs. Kraus?” Judy was surprised that Englishman had keyed the walkie talkie in time for her speech.

“Enough,” the radio croaked.

“Chairman Wynn, Judy, and I are about the same age,” Englishman told her. “We're post-war boomers. The people saluting swastikas had already surrendered before we were born. I know some racists in the county, but I'm damned if I know any Nazis or white supremacists. How about you, Mrs. Kraus? Can you tell us anything?”

“I ain't that much older'n you,” she snapped, leading Judy to think she might be. This wasn't a moment for injured pride. Judy took the radio from her husband's hand.

“Mrs. Kraus,” she pleaded. “Our kids are out there. Please help us if you can!”

“Well, hell, Judy. I remember some German POWs worked at the agricultural station near Hays. And families here worried about sending their sons off to kill their relations. But there weren't any Nazi sympathizers around Buffalo Springs. Not that I ever heard about.”

“Any refugees come from Europe after the war?” Englishman wondered, taking the radio back. Judy found herself stumbling across the mess on Mad Dog's floor. She nearly fell and that focused her attention on the book that had caused her to trip.

“A Dutch family, real Dutch, from Holland,” Mrs. Kraus said. The wind made her hard to hear and it made the book's dust jacket flutter.

Judy bent down and picked it up. It was a history of the Second World War. Its jacket was covered with the flags of the combatants. There was something about Germany's flag.

“Isn't Hornbaker a German name?” Mrs. Kraus asked.

Judy carried the book over to the door to the kitchen. The ketchup swastika was beginning to smudge beneath a collection of snowflakes, but it was still as brutally intrusive as she remembered. And the other part was as she remembered too.

“I think so,” the chairman said, “but Zeke's no Nazi. He's a horse's ass sometimes, and he probably wouldn't eat anything kosher unless it was a pickle. Look, if Zeke's a racist, he's not an organized racist. He doesn't belong to anything more radical than the Farm Bureau.”

“Englishman,” Judy said.

He turned, but he didn't come join her in the doorway the way she expected. He didn't even ask what she wanted.

“Englishman. I think you should come look at this.”

“I've seen it, Judy, and we're kind of busy right now.”

He was being stubborn. It annoyed him when he thought she expected him to read her mind. And, she supposed, that was what she'd just asked of him.

“No really,” she said. “This swastika. You need to look at it again.”

Since their conversation with Mrs. Kraus was taking place on a mobile radio, there wasn't any reason he couldn't come. Englishman was stubborn, not stupid. And Chairman Wynn was curious enough to follow.

“What about it.” Englishman was puzzled.

She showed him the book.

“The arms,” she said. “The arms on this swastika. They're backwards.”

***

“I can't go much farther.”

Heather English understood Heather Lane's complaint. She couldn't feel her feet anymore. That made running a problem.

“You don't have to. Look, there's the fence.”

And there it was, only a few feet away, hidden until that moment by swirling snow that only seemed to be getting thicker. Surely the storm would have to ease up soon. One snapped off a couple of branches to clear the way, then held the top strand of barbed wire while her sister scrambled over. A cluster of weathered outbuildings stood a few feet beyond the fence. They weren't nearly as far north as she'd thought. On the other hand, they hadn't been caught yet. That probably meant the Hornbaker with the rifle had followed Wynn's tracks.

“Which one?” Two asked, returning the favor with the fence.

“It doesn't matter. Any of them, just so we get out of this wind. We may have to try lots before we find a snug hiding place or a way out of here.”

The nearest building was about a thirty foot square. Its windows had been boarded over. It had large swinging doors on the south end, big enough to drive a truck through, but impossible to open with more than three feet of snow drifted against them. There was a normal sized door on the north side. It opened out, against the wind. That made it difficult, but the wind had kept its approach swept clean. They forced it and found a room filled with dust-coated crates. The door slammed behind them, leaving them in dusky twilight.

“I can hardly feel my hands.”

Heather English almost wished she couldn't feel hers. They ached from the cold. She was afraid that not feeling them, as was the case with her feet, might mean frostbite was near. She tried blowing on the former and stomping on the latter as she began exploring the interior of the building.

Her eyes were adjusting. There was a large, boxy form over near the other doors. It took a minute, but then the familiar green and yellow, and the massive lugged wheels, began to make sense. It was a tractor, an old John Deere with small, tricycle-type front wheels and a cab around the driver's seat. “Wow!” she said. Here was a possible means of escape, complete with weatherproofing.

“Can you drive it?”

One of Two was a town kid, but it wasn't a big town. She'd driven old tractors like this before. Well, steered.

“Of course I can drive it.” She was pretty sure she could. It wasn't like you had to shift this manual transmission. You just found a gear going the direction you wanted and then let out the clutch.

She climbed into the cab. The key was in the ignition. She lowered herself in the seat and began examining the controls. She found neutral, pulled on the choke, and turned the key. It cranked over slow—on a day like this, the oil was probably thick and viscous—but it cranked over steady. What it didn't do was start, or even try.