In a Handful of Dust (14 page)

Lynn slid from her horse and nearly tumbled into the shade of a tree. Lucy followed suit, not bothering to loop Spatter’s reins around a branch like she usually did. She wiped her face with her shirt and sank beside Lynn, whose eyes were closed against the unending glare of the sun. Her lips were cracking slightly.

“You need to drink more,” Lucy said, uncapping her own water bottle.

“I’m fine,” Lynn said, her eyelids not even fluttering. “Right now I’m wishing I could take my own skin off and wring it out.”

“I know it,” Lucy agreed, wiping more sweat from her brow.

“I’m thinking we might consider traveling at night,” Lynn said, eyes still closed. “We’d make better time, and it’d be less work on the horses.”

Lucy pulled from her water bottle. “Could we even sleep in this heat? Not to mention anybody could see us.”

“True enough. There’s nowhere to hide out here.”

It was impossible to leave the road without creating a trail behind them. Anytime they allowed the horses to wander into the grass, a perfect line of broken stalks followed them. Lucy pictured a group of men much like the ones from Indiana veering off course to follow the curious path of crushed grass, and finding Lynn and Lucy peacefully asleep at the end of it. Even in the heat, she had goose bumps.

“I think we should stick to what we’re doing, for now,” she said. “The heat has to break sometime.”

“You’re talking about Ohio weather,” Lynn reminded her. “We’ve got no idea if Iowa follows the same rules.”

Lucy took another tug of her water and held it out to Lynn. “You need a drink.”

“I’ve got my own.” Lynn waved her off and dug her bottle out of her pack, checking the water level inside before drinking.

“That your last bottle?”

“I got another.” She took a sparing sip and shaded her eyes against the glare of the sun. “We’ll be out of Iowa in a few days. Farther west we go, all these little springs the horses keep finding will be drying up.”

“Right,” Lucy said, eyeing Spatter as he cropped off grass with his teeth, flicking velvety ears when flies landed on him. “We won’t be able to keep the horses forever.”

“No, we won’t. But beyond that, since Joss took some of our bottles, we’ll be needing to replace them sooner rather than later. We can’t walk into the desert with four bottles between us.”

“We still all right on food?”

“We’re okay,” Lynn said. “This heat has been good and bad in that we’re not very hungry, so we’re not eating. But we’re not eating, so we’re wore out.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to get to Nebraska, find a nice out-of-the-way house that hasn’t been raided of everything useful, and rest for a few days.”

Lucy shot Lynn a sideways glance. “That sounds awfully optimistic of you.”

Lynn allowed a rare smile. “Well, that’s the happy version of what I want.”

“What’s the other one?”

“Get to Nebraska without dying or having to kill anybody.”

The heat refused to break, and the miles passed slowly. Spatter’s head sank lower as they moved westward, his interest piqued only by the smell of water. They filled their bottles at every chance, drank sparingly in between streams, and watched Iowa slip past them as they kicked up dust on unpaved roads. Lucy’s fine hair was coated with dirt, her scalp itching as layers of grime and sweat dried on it. Lynn’s own heavy mane was so thickly filled with dirt she would shake it out at the end of the day, creating her own dust storm.

It was too hot to talk, and the only thing to talk about was how hot they were, so Lucy kept her mouth shut and her hands busy putting tiny braids in Spatter’s mane as he followed Black Horse’s lead. The intricate braids held her attention, a convenient excuse to not look up at the all-encompassing nothing that surrounded them. The Mississippi was behind her, but it had been traded for the vastness of the prairie, a river of grass that seemed to have no end.

Looking at the endless road under the vast sky drove a spike into Lucy’s heart. She didn’t matter out here. At home she’d been loved by a few, and known by many. Away from there she could easily drown in a river, or lie down to die quietly in the waving grass, and no one would care. She’d be swallowed by the earth as easily as the rain.

Lynn stopped early one evening when they reached a stream. Her legs buckled from underneath her as she slid from the saddle.

“Lynn,” Lucy croaked, her voice dry in her throat. She jumped from Spatter to Lynn’s side, but the older woman was already waving her off.

“I’m fine, just tired and hot’s all.”

“We’re done for today,” Lucy decided.

Too tired to argue, Lynn only nodded. “Too hot,” she said weakly. Her face was pale underneath her tan.

“You need to cool off, right now,” Lucy said, masking her fear.

“I’ll rest here in the shade,” Lynn said. “You get the horses unsaddled.”

Lucy went to work, glad to have jobs that would distract her from the unfocused look of Lynn’s eyes and the pallor of her skin. The horses gathered around her, patiently waiting to be unburdened. She pulled the packs off Brown Horse and glanced at Lynn, whose eyes had slid shut.

She opened Lynn’s pack. It didn’t look like she’d touched her jerky since Indiana. The dried peas and corn were barely depleted, and the granola container was full. They’d been taking most of their meals on horseback, and it would’ve been easy for Lynn to look like she was eating, even if she wasn’t.

Lucy jammed everything back inside the pack and walked over to where Lynn was resting. She kicked Lynn’s foot. “You haven’t been eating.”

“I’m fine,” Lynn growled, without opening her eyes.

“You’re not,” Lucy argued. “You can’t get down off your horse without falling over.”

Lynn opened one eye and looked at Lucy, then closed it again.

“What’s your plan then?” Lucy felt her anger rising, all the heat her skin had absorbed coming back out of her in a rush. “Die of starvation halfway through so I’ve got plenty to eat?”

“The second part, mostly.”

“That’s stupid, Lynn! Plain, flat stupid!” Lucy sputtered, ignoring the tears that rose in her eyes at the thought of Lynn putting empty handfuls to her mouth, pretending to eat so there would be more for Lucy later. “I can’t make it alone, even if I had all the food in the world. I’d lay down and die right now if I were alone. I thought I could do it, for a while, you know? It was like I was going on an adventure, and I could jam all the scared parts down inside me and look forward to the end of the road. But now I’ve seen new things and most of them bad. Horses bleeding out on the road and Joss’s bone sticking into the air when it’s supposed to be under her skin. I can’t unsee it, and I don’t want to see any more.”

Even as she said it, she knew it was true. She wasn’t like Lynn; she didn’t have the courage to face the long, empty roads and the cloudless sky without someone beside her. The loneliness of the country they traveled through had penetrated her, opening up a well of fear she’d managed to keep covered at home. The blank fields, the vast sky, all spoke of nothingness.

“God, Lynn.” She choked on her fear as she admitted it. “There’s nobody out here.”

Lynn lifted one hand and rested it on Lucy’s shaking shoulder. “I know,” she said. “Here you are terrified we haven’t seen anybody, and I’m thrilled to death.”

Lucy pulled her handkerchief free from her neck and wiped her face, leaving dirty tracks behind. “I can’t stand it,” she said. “I can’t stand thinking that if something happened and we died, it wouldn’t matter. No one would ever find us, no one would ever know. And we’d lie out here and rot and maybe no one would ever even find our bones. It’d be like we never
were
.”

Lynn’s hand tightened on her shoulder. “But we
are
, little one. And that makes all the difference, whether people know you’re here or not.

           
“I exist as I am, that is enough
.

           
If no other in the world be aware I sit content
,

           
And if each and all be aware I sit content.”

Lucy felt a smile tug at the corner of her mouth. “That’s downright cheery, compared to the stuff you usually throw at me.”

Lynn shrugged. “I didn’t write it.”

“Who did?”

“Walt Whitman. You’d know that, and a few things more, if you could’ve been bothered to listen to me when you were little.”

The extent of everything she didn’t know washed over Lucy, as deep as the cold waters of the Mississippi. “I feel so small,” she said, her voice cracking. “At home I mattered, but out here—you and I both—we’re nothing, and we matter to no one.”

Lynn pulled herself up to look at Lucy, gripping her face in her hands. “You matter to me, and even if I were gone, you would still matter to yourself. All that time I spent alone before meeting Stebbs? All I mattered to was myself, and I got by.”

“I’m not like that. I need people.” Lucy took one last swipe at her face with the handkerchief. “So stop thinking you’re doing me a favor by not eating.”

Lynn settled back against the tree. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll promise you that, if you promise me something too. If something should happen, you got to keep going without me. Joss wasn’t a good person, but that didn’t mean all she had to say was wrong. She’s dead-on right when she says you got to
want
something in your life. Me, all I ever wanted was rain and water, wood to get by, and food for the winter. That way of living is so ingrained in me it’s hard to see anything else. But you, little one, you’re meant for more and you know it. You want to get to California, but wishing alone won’t do it. It’s going to be hard—everything worth doing is.”

Lucy brushed a tear away but didn’t try to deny the truth of Lynn’s words. “Why couldn’t I want something easy?”

“Because that’s not like you. You’ve always been fond of the difficult.”

“True enough. I like you, after all.”

Lynn gave her a halfhearted kick and they settled against the tree together, sipping water and watching the birds fly overhead.

Days later, Lucy pulled Spatter up beside Black Horse, no longer content with riding in silence. “How close are we?”

“To Nebraska? Close. But we’ll be crossing another river to get there, the Missouri.”

“Is it big, like the last one?”

“No”—Lynn shook her head—“doesn’t look to be nearly as big. I think the horses could swim it. The closest bridge to our route goes into a city, and I don’t like the look of it. What you said earlier is right, there’s nobody out here, so where’d they all go?”

“You think everyone is in the cities? But why would they do that, when there’s plenty of streams out here?”

“I don’t know, but the more I think on it, the more it worries me. We’ve had no problem finding water, which isn’t surprising. But nobody’s giving us any trouble about taking it, either, and that’s downright weird.”

Lucy thought of Entargo, and the rotted emptiness of its streets. “What if there was an illness like back home and there isn’t anybody left in the whole state?”

“Then I’m not anxious to hang around and get sick.”

Lucy fiddled with Spatter’s mane, her fingers burning off the nervousness that rippled through her body. “This river, you think it’ll have a strong current?”

“Doubt it, there’s not been much rain.” Lynn glanced over at Lucy and her busy hands. “It’s not as big, kiddo. It won’t make you feel so small.”

Lucy looked at her fine-boned fingers, as she picked a knot from Spatter’s mane. “Doesn’t take much,” she said.

Black Horse picked up his pace, and Spatter jogged to keep up, making her drop his mane for the reins. “The horses smell it.”

They rode on, until the Missouri was spread before them like a silver ribbon coursing through the land. It was not nearly the size of the Mississippi, and Lucy’s breath left her in a wave of relief. They let the horses drink first and rest in the shade of the trees growing by the bank. The women filled their bottles as well, dousing their hair and drenching their shoulders before refilling for the road.

“C’mere, Mister,” Lynn said gruffly, pulling on Black Horse’s reins.

“Mister?” Lucy teased. “Your great affection for him is showing.”

Lynn surprised her by rubbing him between the ears after swinging up into the saddle. “He’s not a bad animal,” she said brusquely, and urged him out into the water.

Spatter followed, and the cold water filled Lucy’s boots, sliding wet fingers up through her pants and soaking her legs in seconds. Her teeth chattered, despite the heat. When Spatter’s legs left the river bottom her stomach churned, lurching along with the current that pulled him southward. She closed her eyes and clenched one fist around the pommel, the other tightly woven in Spatter’s mane. The water flowed over her, much colder than the pond at home.

She didn’t open her eyes until his forelegs hit dry ground. Lynn was astride the newly christened Mister, her pride in him overflowing into a neck rub.

“Welcome to Nebraska, little one.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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W
hat Lucy would remember most about Nebraska was the graveyards. Some had stood before the Shortage, others were newer. The grass had succumbed to the heat and lack of rain, falling over on brittle stalks and leaving tombstones visible across the flat plains for miles. The few houses they saw Lynn did not trust, and they sought out graveyards for rest, the hulking stones offering more cover from roving eyes than the solitary trees that stood alone on the plains.

Lynn did not rest easy, and although Lucy watched her fastidiously to be sure she was eating and drinking, there was no way to force her to sleep. They kept their guns at the ready, not daring to use them to hunt, as there was nothing to stop the crack of their rifles from rolling across the empty land, into the ears of whoever might be out there.

The emptiness pulled at Lucy, as it had in Iowa. The dark fear that they were the only two people left on earth niggled at her brain, teasing her with the idea that when they reached California it would be no different; the desal plants they were so desperate to find would stand empty, Lucy and Lynn clueless as to their operation.