Greenglass House (43 page)

Natalie reached for a bicycle tire hanging on the wall and used it to pull herself up onto one of his workbenches. “How far's the trip?”

“About a hundred and ten miles.” Her father sucked in a breath. “Natalie, be—”

A socket wrench on the bench launched itself from under her foot and skittered across the floor—no wonder her dad was always tripping over things in here. Natalie grabbed the tire again to keep from stepping on her father's collection of radio parts, only to have it spring away from the wall in her hand. Her arms windmilled.

Her father sprinted to catch her and took the most obstacle-laden route to do it, filling the shop with unmistakable sounds of destruction. Natalie caught her balance just in time to keep from landing on her backside on the shop floor, trampling any radio tubes, or, worse, stepping on the little clockwork flyer she and her father were building together.

“Careful,” she said as her father skidded uselessly to a halt beside where she stood on the workbench. “I know.”

He gave her a severe look and picked his way back across the shop to return to what he'd been working on.

She wouldn't have cared much about a bruise, but the flyer, which she and her dad called the
Wilbur
after the Wright brother who'd died only last year, was a mechanical labor of love. It was an automaton (the word itself was one of Natalie's newest and most favorite acquisitions), a small machine that would eventually move on its own when wound with a key. She set it aside gently, careful not to upset the gears inside it that controlled the tiny propellers and wings.

On tiptoe she could just see out the little window high on the wall above the workbench. She wiped a few years' worth of grime off the glass and stared at the crowd on the street. Of course, they were trying not to look like a crowd, but on any other Wednesday morning, half the town of Arcane would've had better things to do than try to look busy outside Minks's Bicycle Shop.

“You got an audience.” Natalie stretched a little farther and saw a clutch of boys from school playing halfheartedly with a board balanced on a big tin can. A few girls nearby pretended to watch them. It was the first day of the summer holiday. For sure the kids had better things to do. “A big audience,” Natalie said smugly.

A noise like a circus animal passing gas erupted from the hulk of machinery crouching at the center of the shop. It didn't sound healthy.

“Dad?”

Only her dad's lower half was visible; the top half was hidden in the boxy front of the machine. Natalie waited patiently until the thing was puttering rhythmically and asked again, louder, “
Dad.
It's going to run,
right?
”

“Sure.” His voice sounded like it was coming from inside a tin can. When he emerged he gave her a sooty smile. “It'll work. I promise.”

 

When Natalie ventured outside an hour later, the crowd on the street had doubled in size. No point in trying to melt into it; they were all watching her. She climbed up to sit on the edge of a rain barrel and nonchalantly shined an apple on her overalls.

The first person to give up pretending he wasn't waiting for the big barn doors of Ted Minks's shop to open was a kid called George Sills. He sauntered over and gave Natalie a gap-toothed sneer. “My dad says Doc Fitzwater's motorcar couldn't make it across town, let alone all the way to Pinnacle.”

Natalie chewed her apple and made a point of watching Old Tom Guyot shuffle across the street with his crutch and tin guitar instead of acknowledging George Sills. Tom was more interesting anyway.

George was fourteen and didn't like being ignored. He kicked the barrel she was sitting on hard enough to make Natalie grab the rim for balance. She gave him a withering glare.

“It's not just a
motorcar,
it's a
Winton
.” A lot of motorcars came through Arcane, and they weren't all the same. There were little runabouts and bigger touring cars, Stanhope-style and high-wheeler-style autos. Some of the older ones had tillers to steer with; the newer ones had steering wheels. Most had radiators to keep their engines cooled with water (although Natalie had seen a Franklin once that was air-cooled and looked a little odd without a big radiator sticking up in front). Doc's car, like most of them, had to be wound with a crank to start up, but the new Cadillacs started electrically, and they came with electric lamps.

Natalie had seen nearly all the Fords, except the Model A, and could even tell the difference between the N, S, and T models. She had seen a few kinds of Bakers, a Moon, and a Speedwell—even a Fiat from Italy and an Oldsmobile Limited limousine earlier this year.
That
was a pretty motorcar. The Winton, though . . . the Winton was
beautiful.

But explaining the difference to George Sills would be like trying to teach the alphabet to a puppy.

“Who cares what kind it is? It's ten years old! Dad says Doc could drive it over to the soda fountain, maybe, but only 'cause it's downhill all the way.”

“Sure, if it was up to your dad. If it was up to
your
dad, Doc's motorcar wouldn't make it ten feet.” Natalie spat a seed to the ground. “
Your
dad couldn't change a bicycle tire.”

George's hands curled instantly into fists. Natalie jumped down, shoved her bangs out of her face, and brought up her knuckles the way Jack Johnson did in boxing pictures. If George was stupid enough to try anything in front of the whole town, she'd abandon all scruples and go straight for the knee he was still favoring after their last fight, her third—no, fourth—thrashing from George this month.

But before either of them could make a move at the other, the lumpy head of an alligator landed on George Sills's shoulder. He took one look, made a sound like a creaky window being shoved up, and jumped back about four feet.

The leathery shrunken head was little, brown, and attached to the end of a cane in the hand of a man as tall and thin and pale as a birch tree. His white hair stood up in windblown shocks all over his head, and his face had more lines than space between. “I'll have you know a fellow drove a motorcar like mine all the way from California to New York before there were proper roads across the country, Master Sills.”

“Hi, Dr. Fitzwater.” George tried to look as though he hadn't just screamed like a little girl.

Doc wore a monocle in one eye. The look he gave George through the little gold-rimmed lens made the boy turn tail and flee across the street. Then he took the monocle out and began to shine it with his handkerchief. The look he gave Natalie without it was much kinder.

“I understand you were in charge of polishing, Miss Minks. I expect the old beast will blind us all when it comes into the sun.” His voice didn't match his creased and pitted face. It was more like the way new tires ran over smooth dirt roads: a steady, low sound like a purr. She opened her mouth to tell Doc how pretty the motorcar looked now, but the metallic whine of rusty hinges interrupted her. Every head in the street turned.

The shop doors were opening.

Ted Minks, sooty-faced and grinning, appeared in the dark gap between the big barn doors. He pushed one wide, then the other, and disappeared back into the shadows. A moment later, the broad nose of the Winton emerged.

It was a dark red motorcar with two high, tufted leather seats open to the air, and wheels with spokes, just like bicycle tires. Two of its headlamps were like eyes set back on either side, wide like a frog's, and the third was a single, Cyclopean eyeball in a brass casing, fixed right to the middle of the radiator. It had a steering wheel stuck up in front of the seat on the right-hand side. The brass fittings and trim that Natalie had polished so obsessively glowed.

She caught George Sills's eye across the street and stuck out her tongue.

“Hey, Doc!” her father called, wiping the sweat off his forehead and leaving broad, grimy fingerprints there instead. “How about a drive?”

Doc made a show of considering. “Wouldn't want to disappoint all the good folks who happened by to see me off.”

“Guess we'd better see if your car works after all.” Mr. Minks spotted Natalie leaning on her barrel. “Mind giving me a little help, Nattie?”

Mind? She was in the driver's seat almost before he finished talking, fingers wrapped securely around the wheel, just in case.

Her father turned the crank with both hands. “Ready?”

“Ready!”

It sputtered to life, just as he promised it would, and the street around them erupted into applause.

“Listen to the old beast growl.” Doc Fitzwater put a gnarled palm on the steering wheel. “I can't believe you did all this in just three days.” Natalie resisted the urge to smirk at George again. Anyway, her dad could've fixed the Winton up even faster if he'd wanted to. She had spent more time pestering him to let her help than he'd spent on the motorcar itself, until the three of them—Natalie, her brother, Charlie, and her father—had had to work through the night to get it ready for today.

Now Doc turned to Mr. Minks and spoke quietly, his back to the crowd. “I'm going as far as the Pearys' farm today, then by tomorrow afternoon I'll be in Pinnacle and you can ring the central exchange if you need me. Maybe sooner, if Maggie Peary doesn't insist on having a giant brunch before I leave.” Natalie's father nodded, smiled tightly, and held out his hand to shake Doc's. “Nothing to worry about,” Doc said.

Natalie climbed reluctantly out of the driver's seat while Charlie put Doc's old Gladstone medical bag and his pebbly leather suitcase in the back of the motorcar. Doc turned to face the people on the street and shouted over the puttering engine.

“If I didn't know better, I'd think you all came out for the old Winton, not for me.” He climbed into the seat and propped up his alligator-head cane beside him. “As soon as the epidemic in Pinnacle's under control, I'll chug straight back. In the meantime, Lester's ready to step in if anyone gets a headache while I'm gone.”

Actually, red-faced Lester Finch looked pretty nervous to Natalie as he waved from the doorway of the pharmacy a little ways down the street. Then again, when had she seen him looking any other way?

Natalie looked around at the assembled town. There was her little gang of friends, a pair of boys and one prissy-looking girl; there was George Sills, giving them all the evil eye; her teacher, Miss Tillerman; Mr. Maliverny, who ran the saloon; and a drifter with a carpetbag and an old lantern at his feet. The drifter had the delighted look of a kid who'd stumbled on a sporting event. He caught Natalie's glance and winked one pale green eye.

There was Mr. Swifte, the smith from Ogle's stables; the woman Natalie privately thought of as the town hag, Mrs. Byron, who was (as usual) scowling disapprovingly at her; Simon Coffrett, the man who lived in Arcane's only mansion, flipping his pocket watch over and over in his fingers as he watched the scene over the rims of his glasses; and tiny, bent, old Chester Teufels in his shabby, threadbare suit being studiously ignored by everyone around him as he stood in an unobtrusive corner chewing on a fingernail. Nothing out of the ordinary here.

Her gaze passed over all the excited or doubtful or curious folks watching Doc and his motorcar until her eyes fell on Old Tom Guyot's face, black and craggy and sharp-planed as a nugget of coal, and his ancient tin guitar slung over one shoulder.

Old Tom was watching her.

Natalie tilted her head. Was that so odd? After all, a minute ago she'd been the center of attention, sitting up in the driver's seat. But Tom wasn't just looking at her, he was
watching
her. All the while his head nodded slightly, as if to say
Yes, You're right; yes . . .

She looked away quickly, blushing a little as if she'd been the one caught staring. Her gaze landed on Simon Coffrett, and she flinched. There was no mistaking it.

Mr. Coffrett was watching her, too.

It came out of nowhere—one minute she was just another part of the excitement of Doc's departure, the next she was part of something else entirely. Something was happening here that had nothing to do with Doc's motorcar. Something was happening here that she didn't understand.

Or something was
going to happen . . .

A grinding pop drew her attention: Doc releasing the brake. Once again Natalie was just a thirteen-year-old girl standing with her curious neighbors, watching an old man drive an old motorcar out of town on an ordinary June morning.

They followed him down Bard Street, the main road through Arcane, then watched him go as far as the crossroads, where he became a dark little speck heading east. Soon he was out of sight.

 

“What's an epidemic?”