Dandelion Iron Book One (13 page)

The Sino-American War ended on Easter Sunday, 2045, but it wasn’t until the Eterna batteries were perfected that we could bring home all the soldiers. Ladies in Waiting, that’s what we called the women trapped in those horrid internment camps ’cause the world had warred itself out of all its fuel and left the shipping industry in shambles. It took ten long years to bring all our American soldiers home.

Thanks to the Vatican, Pilate was able to get out of China a year after the war ended. Maybe he felt guilty about leaving Petal behind, but he still hadn’t answered my question about the medicine. Then again, it really wasn’t any of my business.

He smiled cheerily. “And as you can see, she hates Wren. But then, your sister has a short list of admirers. Me, you, Sharlotte, and who was that guy you were seeing in the circus, Wren? I can never remember his name.”

My sister stood up. “Only you like me, Pilate. Maybe Cavvy did once, but prolly not anymore. As for Sharlotte, well, she hates me far worse than Petal ever could.”

I didn’t say a word. She was right on all accounts.

Wren went to the bar and returned with a bottle of Pains whiskey, locally-distilled and guaranteed to kill any bacteria or brain cell it touched.

“Glad you’re not just going to drink beer,” Pilate said. “What fun would that be?”

The way he said it, as a challenge for her to destroy herself, bothered me. Had Pilate changed? Or had I?

“So, Cavatica,” Pilate said with a smile, “let’s talk about happier things. Tell me about your trip home. I hope it went well.”

And there I was, all confused and tore up, but Pilate’s smile made me smile as well. For some reason, he could always make me feel better. “No,” I said, “it didn’t go well at all. I had to use a stunner on Wren to get away from the Ohio police.”

That made Pilate laugh. “Okay, now I have to hear the whole story! Tell me every little thing.”

I talked while Wren got drunk and Pilate laughed at her. All the while, Betsy watched us. What did she want?

When I told Pilate about freezing up when Wren needed my help, I winced, afraid of what he would say.

Pilate sipped his coffee, smoked a bit on his stogie, and then said, “Well, sounds like when you had to make the shot, you did. You used the Torrent 6 to free the zeppelin. I still can’t believe you survived that. I bet you’re the first airship ever to escape June Mai Angel’s evil clutches.”

“But with Wren and that outlaw, I froze up. Couldn’t even fire a single shot to help her …” My voice fell away.

“Prolly wanted to see me dead.” Wren slurred the words.

Pilate ignored that. He slid his hand into mine and shook his head and got real sad. “You hesitated because there’s a goodness in you, Cavatica. Right then, you couldn’t believe how horrible the world could be, or what horrible things we’re forced to do to survive in it. That doesn’t make you weak, it makes you good.”

“Makes her weak,” Wren muttered.

“And getting loaded makes you strong? If anything, it makes her untrained.”

Wren threw back another shot of Pains. “I ain’t never been trained.”

“You’ve been trained, all right,” Pilate said. “I’ve known Navy Seals who’ve seen less combat than you. Between me, your mother, and this cruel world, you’re about as battle-grizzled and PTSD’d as you can get.”

“Here’s to my PTSD!” Wren toasted him and sucked down another shot.

At the time, I didn’t know what PTSD was, so I looked questioningly at Pilate, who answered, “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It’s a mental illness. Like religion and television, only with more sweat and tremors.”

That’s when I first started to understand how traumatized I was. Most people know about the severe cases of PTSD, but we all walk around with trauma. Life is hard. Growing up in the Juniper, life cut hard into brutal.

I was about to ask Pilate about Sharlotte’s mysterious plan when Wren slipped off her chair and under the table. She’d drunk herself out cold.

Pilate breathed out cigar smoke. “And there you have it. However weak you think you are, Cavatica Weller, there are a variety of examples around you that might challenge that notion. Weakness, like bravery, comes in all different shapes, sizes, and flavors.”

Suffice to say, we didn’t walk home that night. I was kind of relieved, kind of frustrated. I wanted to get home, but I wanted Mama to be there. Couldn’t have both.

Old Man Singh gave us a room and Pilate helped me haul Wren into bed. The room was nice, with paintings on the wall, curtains on the window, and some plastic flowers. I was closing the door when Betsy McNamara came up the steps talking to Pilate.

I shouldn’t have spied, but I couldn’t help myself. Betsy twisted her bonnet in discomfort. Her face glowed with sweat. Why was she so nervous? It was only Pilate.

Betsy spoke in a hushed voice. “I was saving money to go into Hays, to visit the ARK clinic there, but then I needed antibiotics for my headcount. I used up all my money, so I couldn’t buy any …” She didn’t say the last word. The “S” word. Male Product. Her eyes were on the floor, hidden.

ARK, as in Noah’s boat. Ironic.

Hays, Kansas, had the closest ARK clinic, but other border towns had them as well, like Buzzkill, Nebraska, and the OKC. The main corporate headquarters of the ARK was in New York City, most expensive real estate in the world, but then Tibbs Hoyt could afford it.

He and the ARK, like most of the World, ignored the Juniper, so if one of our women needed Male Product, she’d have to travel. But like we’ve seen, traveling was expensive and dangerous.

Then it dawned on me why Betsy was so sweaty and nervous. And how she had gotten pregnant with her son.

My heart fell into my stomach like a stone.

“You want to try again?” Pilate whispered the question with such kindness and compassion in his voice, it brought tears to my eyes. At the same time, it made my throat close up.

I shut the door without making a sound. Pilate was a Roman Catholic priest with a collar and everything. What he was doing was a sin. Or was it? Betsy couldn’t afford the ARK and there weren’t a lot of men around who were viable. Most likely, Betsy wanted a big family to help work her ranch, but then if she popped out a viable boy, she’d be set. A few trips to the ARK clinic in Hays and she’d be rich.

I understood Betsy’s motives, but how could Pilate justify his actions? He’d taken an oath of celibacy. And if he was sleeping with women to give them babies, why keep Petal around? Was she really just a war buddy? It didn’t seem like it to me.

Even with my troubled mind, I was tired enough to fall right asleep in the flouncy bed next to my sister who slept as silent as the dead. The smell wasn’t too bad. Like a perfumed distillery.

(iv)

The next morning, we got up, and I couldn’t look Pilate in the eye. I wondered if Betsy had taken him up on his offer, but it was too hard a thing to ponder. I’d grown up thinking Pilate was half-saint, half-magician, but right then he seemed more like the prince of sinners.

Wren and I borrowed horses from Aggie Garcia’s ranch, which was near town. Pilate and Petal had horses of their own. We all rode up a crushed plastic stretch of I-70 until we saw our blue house on the hill.

Wren stopped, gazing up at our homestead, with that nothing look on her face.

We all stopped with her. The quiet felt so uncomfortable, I had to say something. “Well, Wren, you got us home in time. You did it.”

She ignored me. More quiet. Just a breeze blowing over our faces.

“It won’t be as bad as you think,” Pilate said to her.

“No,” Wren said. “It’ll be worse.”

I looked closely at her face. On it was an expression I’d rarely seen.

My sister was afraid to go home.

Chapter Nine

I’ve given the Juniper my children. Some made it, some didn’t. I’ve given the Juniper my blood and buckets full of my sweat. In return, she gave me wind, riches, and wonder. I couldn’t leave the Juniper. I’d land in Cleveland and fall over. No wind there. At least not the kind of wind I’m used to.

—Abigail Weller
Colorado Courier
Interview
June 6, 2057

(i)

The four of us, Pilate, Petal, Wren, and I, rode up our driveway. Gravel crunched under the hooves of our horses.

Wren reined her pony to a stop. She sat in the saddle, eyes closed. Petal glared at her.

We heard the barking before we saw our three new dogs, Edward, Jacob, and Bella. Edward and Jacob were big German Shepherds, but Bella was a Norwegian Elkhound. Even though she was smaller, Bella ruled over them both, and the boys pretty much followed her everywhere.

Kind of unfair, that Bella had two boys and I’d prolly never even get one. But the Sterility Epidemic affected only humans.

I got off my horse to play with the dogs. They were big, wet, and frisky. For a minute, it made me forget the sadness I was coming home to. Then I got a big lick on my cheek, and my heart twinged, missing Brownie and Lady, the dogs from my childhood.

But then I just had to smile when a cowbell clanged in the distance. Our best Angus steer, Charles Goodnight, stood on the hillside, sniffing the air. I could hardly believe I was seeing him again.

Wren saw him, too. “That goddamn steer is gonna outlive us all.”

Charles Goodnight was the smartest bovine you could ever meet. More than once, Aunt Bea said that Charles Goodnight was better than ninety percent of men who had all their parts and walked on two legs. Every year, he led our headcount to Hays, and came back to do it again and again. Other bulls were bigger and meaner, but even they would follow Charles Goodnight anywhere.

Tenisha Keys and Nikki Breeze, two of our employees, must have heard the dogs bark. On horses, they rode over a ridge to check, saw us, and waved. Both were petite, pretty African-American women and more like family than employees. Nikki Breeze had her hair all up in cornrows, unlike Keys, whose dreadlocks tangled down her back. Keys was a quiet one. From the little I’d heard, she’d had a rough time of it in East St. Louis, and things got so awful she came west. Must have been real bad if the Juniper was the better alternative.

Keys was new, but Nikki Breeze had been with us even before the Queenie attack. She was middle-aged, but looked as young as Keys, who was only a little older than Sharlotte.

Breeze and Keys charged over, both in New Morality dresses with thick leggings and dusters. “Welcome home, girls!” Breeze called. Both she and Keys dismounted, and I shook their hands.

“Sharlotte’s in the house,” Breeze said. “We’re getting things ready for the funeral.” She tripped on that last word, her throat clogged up with tears. “Your mama went quick, Cavvy, I was there.”

I looked away before I started bawling. “Thanks, Nikki. Thanks for being with her at the end.”

Pilate, Petal, and Wren got off their horses to shake hands, though both Keys and Breeze were cool toward them. No one liked Wren in Burlington, Petal was odd, and Pilate, well, Sharlotte hated Pilate enough for it to turn everyone against him.

Breeze and Keys took our horses and put them in the stable. Then they finished working on their ranch chores, so they could work on the funeral. The three dogs followed after, as did Charles Goodnight, swishing his tail.

We continued on foot up the gravel path and across the little bridge that covered the trench we’d dug for protection. Grass filled it, since June Mai Angel hadn’t taken to raiding farms, only cattle drives. Still, up a hill, with that trench, our house was a good place to make a stand. When Queenie attacked, all of our neighbors had clustered there with us.

Right then, it was as if such violence had never happened there. The morning air was heavy with ranch smells: three thousand head of cattle, fifty horses, pigs, chickens all created quite a bouquet. A gust of wind brought the smell of dry, winter grass and drying mud—the perfume of my homeland.

I knew I had to look in on Mama, but part of me didn’t want to. Being home, smelling the ranch, it made me feel like a kid again, and I just knew Mama would come bursting out of the back door, coming to hug me, and, of course, put me to work.

I dawdled away from Pilate, Petal, and Wren, taking in the ranch, taking my time, ’cause it was easier than facing the hard truth.

Our spread was so pretty. The house was a nice cotton-candy blue Victorian that perched on a little hill sticking out of the yellowed plains like a winsome smile on an ugly girl. The original house had been a ramshackle wreck, the wood too old for salvage, and the insides equally worthless. But after the territory government in Lamar gave land to squatters, Mama hired the best builders around to tear it down and rebuild it, keeping the house old-fashioned, as was the style. Yet Mama added some modern touches as well. Every window in the place could be locked tight with Neofiber shutters, turning our house into a fortress. You couldn’t tell that though, not even if you looked hard.

A wide, wrap-around porch hugged the building. Fancy lace curtains showed through white-trimmed windows ’cause the defensive shutters were open wide. Three big stoves kept the place tolerable in the winter. Lots of nice rooms on ten thousand acres of fine grazing land, fertile after the Knockout and more rain than usual. Near the house, to the west, stood our big red barn and a bunkhouse where most of our employees lived—Breeze, Keys, Annabeth Burton, and Aunt Bea.

Yeah, Aunt Bea, but not like that black-and-white video with the old lady and the sheriff. Our Aunt Bea was Beatrice Maria Mercedes Gonzales, Mexican down to her tortillas. She sure felt like an aunt. Mama and Bea had hooked up early in the Juniper, both recognizing a tireless, bloody-fingered worker in each other. Workers, sisters to the grave, that was Mama and Bea.

Annabeth was new. I heard all about her from Sharlotte’s letters. Annabeth came south from Mavis Meetchum’s outfit and joined us to be closer to her aging mother in Burlington. Our new hire was experienced, but old, with a face like a work glove.

We had a fifth employee on the Weller ranch, and though Lucretia Macaby had only been with us a short time, Crete was young enough for Mama to feel motherly over her. She got a room in the house up in the attic. I knew Crete from elementary school, and she was too blonde, too flirty, and too silly to make it in the Juniper. Eventually, like her sisters, the family would get enough money and they’d send her into the World where she’d trick some boy into marrying her.