Sand: Omnibus Edition (30 page)

“I’ve got to go,” Conner said.

“Yeah.”

“Good to see you,” he told his brother. And the two of them embraced. They exchanged hearty slaps on each other’s backs that loosened the sand in their hair. And Conner remembered how angry he’d been at Palmer the last few days, at the betrayal of his not being there to go camping with them, and such concerns seemed petty. Beneath his worry.

“I love you, Brother,” Palmer whispered in his ear.

And Conner had to turn and go quickly away before his great facade crumbled.

51 • Waterpump Ridge

Conner moved through the darkened dunes with an empty dive tank on his back and a regulator swinging by his hip. He didn’t head straight for the sarfer. There was one other person he needed to see before he left. He had to know she was okay. Had to see Shantytown and his home and some place where he could imagine life clinging and continuing on when he got back.

There were a few torches and lamps burning out across the dunes. Occasional voices could be heard as people shouted into the wind, calling for one another. The sand in the air was mild, the stars overhead bright. The glow of illumination in Springston that normally drowned out the constellations had been smothered. Extinguished. Conner thought of all the diving that would need to be done to reclaim what the sands had taken.

As he headed toward Gloralai’s place, Conner became aware of some guilty and latent thrill at his being alive. He felt a raw power for having survived being completely buried in drift. There was also some strange pang of guilt for having been present and on the earth for so momentous a disaster as the fall of the great wall. It wasn’t enjoyment—was nothing like enjoyment. There was too much a darkness over everything, too much a longing, a deep ache; but behind it all there was a tiny voice telling him how good it felt to be breathing, how great it felt to be above the sand, and could he believe what he’d just witnessed?

Conner hated this voice. There was no excitement in this. Nothing but tragedy and loss and now an uncertain and terrifying tomorrow. The wind-blown dunes would swamp Shantytown as never before. Another chaotic Low-Pub awaited here. A lesson was coming for his people, a lesson that there is always a new and greater misery to fall back upon. And thinking this caused the endless days to stretch out before him—days when hauling buckets away from the water pump would be remembered with the same blissful nostalgia as hot baths and flushing toilets. Always more room to fall. The sand went down and down and didn’t stop.

He veered slightly out of his way as he thought these things; he wanted to swing by his house. There was nothing there for him—he’d carried everything out of there for his trek across No Man’s Land, a decision and deed that seemed so very far away now—he just wanted to make sure the front door was unburied, that he and Rob would have a place to go to, that the sand around their home hadn’t collapsed shut from the grumbling of the earth.

The door was still there. The scaffolding was still webbed atop his home. And it looked like there might be a lantern burning inside. Light squeezed around the crooked door.

Conner approached slowly. He didn’t knock, just tried the handle, found it sticky as usual but not locked. He pushed it open.

A man turned toward the door, his eyes growing wide over his neatly cropped beard. He and two boys sat around Conner’s kitchen table. There was the smell of food cooking. The man got up, the chair tipping backward and crashing to the floor, both of his hands out in front of him.

“I’m sorry,” the man said. He reached for his children, who had stopped eating their soup, who sat with frozen expressions on their faces. They all had on such nice clothes. “We’re going. We’ll leave. We meant no harm.”

“No,” Conner said. He waved the man back. “Stay. This is my place. It’s okay.”

The man glanced toward the dark bedroom. Conner couldn’t tell if there was anyone in there, thought maybe the man was thinking that there wasn’t room enough for him and his children to stay.

“Are you from Springston?” Conner asked.

The man nodded. He righted the chair and rested his hand on its back. The children went back to slurping. “I took the boys out on the sarfer this morning. We saw it happen, saw all of it. My wife—” He shook his head and looked away.

“I’m sorry,” Conner said. He adjusted the empty dive tank on his back. “Stay here as long as you like. I was just checking on the place.”

“What about—?”

“I’ve got somewhere to stay tonight,” Conner assured him, thinking of the sarfer and a night beneath the stars. “I’m sorry for your loss.” He turned to go, but the man was across the room, clasping him on the shoulders.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Conner nodded. Both men had tears in their eyes. And then the man hugged him, and Conner thought how this would’ve seemed a strange thing a day ago.

••••

Gloralai wasn’t at her house. Conner knocked and waited, but the windows were dark, and there was no sound within. He tried the schoolhouse next, thinking that this was where his friends would gather. He spotted Manuel’s mother hurrying between the dunes, her face partly lit from the spitting torch in her hand. Manuel was a classmate. Conner stopped her and asked how he was. She squeezed Conner and said that he was at the well with the others. She asked about Rob.

“Rob’s fine,” Conner said. He asked if she knew where Gloralai might be.

“I think all the sissyfoots are at the well.”

Conner considered the hour and realized he was probably supposed to be there as well. It had been a school day, a fact forgotten not just from looking after Violet at the Honey Hole but from leaving class on Friday expecting never to come back. It was after dark, and he would normally have hauled his quota by now. He thanked Manuel’s mom and hurried toward the well. The sudden awareness that the sand would never stop hit him. Not even for the collapse of the wall. Not even that night, for them to rest and regain their senses, to count and properly bury their dead. Buckets still had to be hauled or they would go thirsty. The gods were merciless. Vic was right. This was the sort of cruelty that only came from turned backs, from being ignored. Well-aimed lashes and direct blows were more easily understood. At least then the stricken knew their anguished cries were being heard.

He aimed for the dancing torches atop Waterpump Ridge. A lot of activity. He could imagine the haul shifts starting late, a period of chaos as the schoolhouse emptied and the sand washed out Springston, nobody knowing what was going on. It was strange, the separation he felt from his peers, thinking on where he’d been all day and what he’d been doing. But here they were, his classmates, keeping the water flowing, saving far more lives than he. There was perspective in this. The man who had broken into his home and had stolen what little Conner had left in his cupboard—that man couldn’t be blamed. The larger rules of the world were broken, the Lords’ rules. But the simpler rules that guided the heart of each man were intact. These were the rules that never changed. Knowing right from wrong. Surviving and letting others be. Maybe even lending a fucking hand.

“Conner?” someone asked, as he approached the outhaul tunnel. It was Ashek. He must’ve been on his way down from dumping his buckets, as his pole was held casually across one shoulder. “Where you been, man?”

The two boys clasped hands, and Conner lowered his ker. They had to strain to see each other in the flicker of torchlight. The moon would not be up for hours yet.

“Been helping my mom,” Conner said, not wanting to explain any further. “Hey, have you seen … is everyone else here? Everyone okay?”

“Yeah, except for the kids who didn’t show up for class. But most of them weren’t around yesterday either. Off diving for Danvar. So I’m sure they’re fine. I just passed Gloralai on the way down. She was taking a haul up to the ridge.”

“Uh … yeah … thanks.” Conner tripped over his words. He hadn’t mentioned looking for her, didn’t think anyone knew he liked her, not even Gloralai herself. He thanked Ashek again and headed up the ridge. Dark shapes blotted the stars on the path up, and Conner felt naked without his haulpole and buckets. A large figure ahead, a familiar voice. Conner saw Ryder huffing his way down the sand path. The two boys stopped and looked at each other. Ryder tugged his ker off his mouth.

“You okay?” he asked.

Conner nodded. “You?”

“Fuck no. I should be out diving, not doing this shit.”

“This is just as important,” Conner said. He kept himself square to Ryder and hoped the boy didn’t see the tank on his back.

“Yeah, whatever.”

But there was something different as Ryder went past him and strode down the sloping sand. More of what had seemed significant falling away from yesterday’s cares. The things at the center of Conner’s universe no longer were. The world had wobbled; its axis had shifted; the core was now at the periphery and vice versa. But there, higher up the ridge, a slimmer hole stood out in the dense constellations, a familiar form, the memory of a beer and a bowl of stew, of thinking that running away might not be the answer. Conner joined Gloralai on the top of the ridge just as she dumped the last of her sand into the wind. When she turned and saw him, there was a gasp. She dropped her pole. Arms around his neck, nearly knocking him over, the feel of her sweat on his skin and not caring. Enjoying it. A sign of her toil. The embrace letting him know she cared. That he wasn’t alone.

“I’ve been so worried,” she said. And Conner realized why Ashek had told him where she was.
She had been looking for him
. She pulled away and brushed the hair off her face. Everywhere she had pressed against him cooled in the breeze. The sand in the air stuck to the sweat she’d left on his skin, and Conner didn’t mind. “Someone said you pulled Daisy’s kids out of the courthouse. Is that true?”

Conner wasn’t sure. There’d been dozens of people. They’d all looked the same in his red dive light. “I remember the courthouse,” he said.

Gloralai placed a hand on his arm and turned him, looked at the dive gear on his back. “You went camping. You didn’t come back. I thought—”

Conner reached out and placed a hand on the back of Gloralai’s neck. He pulled her close and kissed her, staunching her worry and his as well. She kissed him back. The tank fell to the sand, arms snaking around one another, her lips on his neck, a classmate dumping his buckets in the nearby dark and saying, “Get a fucking room.”

Laughter against his neck. Her exhalations. Conner kissed her cheek and tasted salt. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” he said. But what he wanted to apologize for was thinking of leaving. For taking the wrong chance. The wrong chance. “And now I’ve gotta leave town for a while. My sister needs me.”

“Your sister.” Gloralai studied his face in the starlight. Buckets rattled on a haulpole as a silhouette left them alone again on the ridge.

“Yeah. The same people who attacked here might be heading to Low-Pub. I don’t want her going alone.”

“You’re gonna sail there? Tonight?”

“We go at first light.”

“When will you be back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then I’ll come with you. I have a brother in Low-Pub—”

“No,” Conner said. “I’m sorry. But no.”

Her hands fell away from his arms. “I understand.”

“I’ll find you when I get back,” he promised. And it suddenly became very important that he got back.

“What about your hauls?” she asked.

Conner looked down at her pole and the two buckets. “I’ve carried all I can today,” he said. “They’ll have to understand.”

“You staying at your place tonight? Can I come see you?”

Conner thought of the family in his home. “No,” he said. “I’m camping with my sister on her sarfer.”

“And you leave at first light.”

“Yeah.”

Gloralai took his hand. “Then stay with me tonight.”

52 • A Pillar of Smoke

“I didn’t think you were gonna make it,” Vic said. She stood by the mast, arranging sheets and halyards by the red glow of her dive lamp. Conner loaded his gear into the haul rack.

“You said first light,” he told her.

Vic nodded toward the horizon where a bare glow could be seen. Maybe.

“Aw, c’mon.”

“Man the jib,” she told him. “But first, get your suit plugged in so it can build a charge. You probably drained it yesterday. And make sure that gear is lashed down. It’s gonna be windy today.”

Conner studied the sand hissing softly against the sarfer’s hull. “How can you tell?”

“I just can. Let’s go.”

He pulled the dive suit she’d given him the day before out of the gear bag. There were two power leads trailing down from the wind turbine, which was
thwump, thwump, thumping
in the morning breeze. Her suit was lashed to the base and plugged in. He did the same with his, double-knotted the arms and legs around the pole. Then he made his way up the sarfer’s starboard hull and across the netting between the two bows. He checked the jib sheets to make sure they wouldn’t get fouled and knocked the sand out of the furling drum. He could see what he was doing without turning his dive light on, so he supposed maybe she was right about the first light.

“You get a good night’s rest?” Vic asked. She worked the main halyard free, and it clanged rhythmically against the tall aluminum mast.

“Yeah,” Conner lied. A smile stole across his lips as he thought—without remorse—of how little sleep he’d gotten.

He helped his sister raise the mainsail, cranking on the winch as she guided the battened canvas up through the jacks. As he muscled the sail up those last few laborious meters, he thought about Gloralai and her lips and her promises and her talk of the future, and he felt an armor form across his skin, some invisible force field like a dive suit puts out, and the sand striking him was no longer a nuisance. It was just a sensation. As was the wind in his hair and the shudder in the sarfer’s deck as his sister moved to the helm and the mainsheet was tightened, the canvas gathering the breeze. The sadness of so much tragedy was still everywhere around him, but Conner felt a new awareness that he would persevere. He felt alive. The sarfer hissed across the dunes, and he felt madly alive.