The Elementals (3 page)

Thumping across the porch, Julian dropped his crutches and slid them out of the way. Then he leaned against the rail, tucking his withered leg behind the strong one. Sunlight filtered through his blond hair, and when he turned to look toward the Kidwells’ farm, it illuminated the long curve of his lashes.

He was built beautifully, with Zora’s eyes and Emerson’s strong jaw. Golden from working in the sun, he had a dusting of freckles on his nose, and a whole constellation of them on his shoulders.

“Thank you,” he said, taking the colander out of the basket. “I’m all set.”

Instead of taking the hint, Zora folded her hands and looked up at him innocently. “Now, you know you have to snap the long ones in fourths.”

Julian stared at her. “Yes, ma’am, I know.”

“And to save the strings and stems for the compost.”

“Mom!”

With a wicked smile, Zora licked her thumb and reached up to smudge imaginary dirt from his face. When he recoiled, she laughed and went back inside. Her voice floated out behind her, before the screened door slammed closed on its own. “That’s my baby sunflower.”

Cheeks hot, Julian snapped beans with a vengeance and called after her. “I’m seventeen!”

“Not ’til tomorrow, cootie,” Sam said from below. He yanked the hem of Julian’s trousers, then darted out of reach. Two years older, he was the only other brother who still lived in the big Indiana farmhouse. The other two had a cottage out by the river and acted like they were grown men on their own.

Throwing his arms out, Sam cooed from a safe distance. “Baby sunflower. Bitty baby sunflower, teensy tiny sunflower.”

Pointing at him, Julian said, “Don’t make me knock you on your back seam.”

“Is Elise coming over?” Sam took a few steps back. “Think she’ll wear her war crinolines?”

Julian tossed aside a stem and reached for a new handful of beans. “No.”

“I could stand to get a gander at her ankles again.”

Though he kept his expression still, Julian simmered inside. There were plenty of girls in town for Sam; girls he’d gone to high school with, girls from church. Every year on the Fourth of July, he hopped from picnic blanket to picnic blanket. He came home stuffed with homemade rhubarb pie and, last year, with lipstick on his cheek. Julian cut him a black look; Sam didn’t need to go gawking at Elise, too.

“Maybe she’ll”—Sam wiggled his fingers suggestively— “do the hoochee coochee for you. Maybe she’ll do it for
me
.”

The fact was, Sam couldn’t have cared less about Elise Kidwell. But Julian didn’t know that for sure, which was why he grabbed his crutches and came off the porch like a bullet. There wasn’t much room to run behind the house. Too far to the east, and they’d trample their mother’s house garden. Too far to the west, and they’d end up in the chicken coops.

So Sam twisted like a dervish, just out of reach because Julian couldn’t angle as quickly. Fresh with sweat and swinging himself around, Julian suddenly grinned. He didn’t have to find more speed. Stopping dead in place, he stroked his fingers against the smooth curve of his crutch.

“Giving up already?” Sam taunted.

Julian grinned. “Too tired to keep up?”

Sam’s high-pitched laughter rang out. He stopped, then lunged toward Julian. Each time, he threw up his hands, trying to get his baby brother to flinch. His hazel eyes danced when he got closer, and then he made his fatal mistake. He leaned too far forward.

Wielding a crutch like a crook, Julian knocked Sam’s feet from under him. Then, before he could get up, Julian hopped over and pressed the crutch’s cotton-wrapped foot against Sam’s breastbone. Not hard, not to hurt him. Enough to make the point that this skirmish was over, though.

“Uncle?”

“We don’t have one,” Sam said, refusing to surrender.

Pressing a little harder, Julian leaned over. “Say it.”

“Uncle,” Sam whispered, then grabbed the crutch with both hands and pulled. He paid for his cleverness when Julian fell on top of him, with an unintentional elbow to the ribs. They both lay there and groaned. Beans weren’t being snapped, and no one was watching the side gate to see Elise let herself in.

The screen door snapped shut. Julian sat up, shoving Sam for being Sam. “Thanks a lot.”

“Hey, you’re welcome.” Sam sprawled in the grass, tucking his hands behind his head. Careless and soaking up the sun, he waited for Julian to stand. Snaking a foot over, he poked the back of his knee with his toe.

Julian bobbled, but revenge would have to wait. Elise appeared in the frame of the screen door, and she wasn’t wearing war crinolines. Instead, it was her usual dungarees and blouse—working clothes. The girls in town could go around in glad rags every day. They wouldn’t be called on to deliver a calf or rewire a stretch of fence.

Raising a hand, Julian waited ’til she stepped onto the porch. “Afternoon, Elise.”

“Afternoon, Elise,” Sam echoed.

Elise bounded down the steps, brushing stray tendrils off her forehead. “Happy early birthday, Julian.”

Warming from the inside out, Julian smiled. “Thanks.”

“Know what you’re going to wish for?”

“I have a couple things in mind,” Julian said. His smile stiffened slightly when Sam nudged him again. “You’re coming to the barbecue, aren’t you?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

“Me either,” Sam said.

Since his crutches lay on the ground, Julian couldn’t kick Sam for interfering. Instead, he fixed his gaze on Elise and pretended his obnoxious brother didn’t exist. It wasn’t hard, looking at her. The freckles in her hazel eyes entranced him. She cast spells with the curve of her lips.

“I’m glad. I’m looking forward to it.”

“I hope you like your present,” Elise said.

“You didn’t have to get me anything.”

A breeze stirred, tugging their hair and trailing the sweet scent of wild roses between them. Casting her eyes down, Elise was quiet a moment. When she looked up again, her expression was softer. So were her words. “I wanted to.”

Sam pushed up on his elbows. “
My
birthday’s next month.”

The moment broken, Elise rolled her eyes and said, “How nice for you.” She tugged Julian’s collar, then backed off. “See you tomorrow.”

Julian wanted to stay her. His bones and blood begged him to. He knew poetry, all sorts, romantic and classic. And songs; he could take his father’s fiddle and sit beneath her window, make the night weep with a ballad for her. Instead, he waved, watching until she disappeared past the corn.

Sam rolled to his feet. Reaching over to chuck Julian’s chin, he said, “Better shut your trap, baby sunflower. You’re catching flies.”

Still dazed, Julian brushed his hand away. “’Bout time for you to shut up, Sam.”

“You kill me, kid. It’s just Elise.”

Julian didn’t mean for the words to slip out; maybe if he’d been talking to Charlie. Charlie understood him better than anyone and never felt like he had to rattle his cage. But it was Sam standing there, so he’s the one Julian told, “I’m going to marry her.”

Picking up the crutches, Sam thrust them into Julian’s hands and clapped him on the back. “You should try kissing her first.”

It wasn’t bad advice.

***

The trouble with stealing her father’s clothes, Kate decided, was that she had to keep hemming them.

Leaning against the bedroom door, she listened as her parents’ friends laughed and talked in the next room. In all the rooms, really; they spilled into the backyard, and some of them were no doubt wading in the bay.

Basting quick stitches, Kate bit the thread to cut it off. Pinning the needle into her cuff, she pulled the trousers on quickly. Stuffing linen shirttails into them, she glanced at the light spilling through the crack in the door. Her fingers flew along the buttons, then she cinched everything with a fine leather belt.

Heart pounding, she listened again. She had to figure out where her parents were so she could slip out around them. Tinny music bleated from the Victrola, which blended perfectly with glasses clinking. Knotting a tie at her throat, Kate squinted, as if that might help her hear a little better.

“Always sorry to see the fair close,” a woman said.

Another woman replied with a snort, “Well, there’s the
War
Exposition.”

A burst of laughter from the room drowned those voices out. Pulling on a jacket, Kate smoothed herself out and then reached for her hat. She’d already tied her hair in a loose knot on top of her head, and the hat fit neatly over it.

That was the perfect touch; she was transformed. A quick look in the mirror confirmed it: lovely Kate Witherspoon had become a nattily dressed young man.

Slipping her big, boxy camera into a satchel, she took care to fold the crank down and to cover the lens. Then she walked into the party as if she belonged there.

Technically, she did. She was her parents’ crowning achievement: a worldly girl who spoke English with an unnamable accent. Her dark eyes and full lips had already inspired any number of paintings, and once, a stained glass window. She could debate the relative merits of the Italian Masters versus the Dutch Masters, grind pigments in her sleep, and had very rarely had the same address for more than a year or two.

Her schooling had been in traveling, learning to read with authors, studying geography by walking it. All of it, always, within arm’s reach of her parents. Her sickeningly almost-famous parents, known in “the right circles” and absolutely anonymous out of them. To that wide and limited world, she wasn’t Kate Witherspoon. She was
Nathaniel and Amelia’s daughter.

It’s not that Kate wanted an ordinary life. She wanted a life of her
own.

Walking purposefully, she made straight for the door. A certain thrill quivered in her belly as she moved unrecognized among familiar faces. She had a far better method of escape at the ready, but traipsing out before their very eyes delighted her.

Someone dropped the needle on a new record, and everyone shivered with the racing beat. In the corner, Amelia threw her head back in laugher; that sound carried over the noise of the party. Hurrying, Kate darted around a clutch of painters arguing about gouache.

Music trailed after her, even after she slipped outside and down the drive.

The night smelled of jasmine and motor oil as Kate hopped a streetcar at the corner. Paying her fare, she hung off the back rail like the other boys did, careful to hold on to her hat and satchel. Tipping her face to the wind, she savored the rattle of the car beneath her feet and the vastness of the city at night.

If only her camera could capture the stars. Or moonlight on the waves. Images blossomed in her mind: a lone boat on the horizon, swallowed by the night as constellations drifted in endless loops overhead. At least that idea came in black and white. If she could figure out how to shoot the dark, her father couldn’t argue that she wasn’t capturing the truth.

When the car slowed near San Diego’s Balboa Park, Kate leapt from the platform. The Palais de Danse stood in the distance. Lights gleamed on its whitewashed entrance; its plaster spires curled toward the sky. It looked vaguely Moroccan as long as you’d never been to Marrakesh.

Music poured from the crowded front door. The bright tease of a cornet cut the air, a clarinet squealing along with a piano. Drums and trombone competed in the luscious low notes. The syncopated beat slipped across Kate’s skin, tightening her flesh with anticipation.

“One thin dime, fella,” the doorman said. “Ladies for free; you got a girl with ya?”

“Not tonight,” Kate said, fishing change from her pocket. With a wink, she gave up the dime and elbowed the doorman as she passed. “Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

He laughed. “That’s the spirit!”

Inside, bare bulbs hung from the rafters, a field of man-made stars lighting the dancehall. Humid air pressed all around, ripe with the scent of sweat and perfume. Boys in uniform swirled by, mixed with the ones not yet old enough to head
over there
. Girls with giddy smiles and thin skirts that clung to their thighs danced together, waiting to catch someone’s eye.

Kate crammed herself into a corner table, then pulled her camera from the bag. She needed the table to stay steady, since it was impossible to sneak anywhere with a tripod. Tilting the lens toward the ceiling, she counted along with the “Dixie Jass Band One Step” and started to crank.

Jazz and ragtime were perfect for making movies. She had to turn the film at a steady rate or everyone on the reel would look like mad hornets. Speeding up suddenly, dripping down slow like molasses—there was an
art
to capturing moving pictures, no matter what Daddy said.

Taking in the lights first, Kate slowly lowered the camera to capture the people around her. A knot of boys in the corner looked like skinned rabbits in their brand-new military cuts. They passed a wrinkled stub of a cigarette around as they watched the girls moving on the floor.

One of them leaned against his buddy. He gestured subtly, smoke ringing the tips of his fingers. He wasn’t looking at the fresh, pretty faces blooming around him. His eyes canted significantly lower; the curve of his smile was dark and a little wild.

Careful to keep her count, Kate filmed every bit of it, even the way he smoothed a sweet mask over his face when a girl would look his way. Kate was capturing magic: the moment between bad intent and good behavior. Moving a bit closer, she reveled; this was perfect for her one-reel.

Threading through the bank of tables, she shifted to catch the other half of that equation. Two girls with their backs to the room threw furtive glances as they shared a pot of lip rouge. Animated as they spoke, one girl was all sharp angles and emphasis. The other nodded, brows rounded earnestly as she listened.

Then the music shifted to a rag, and the girls transformed. Sharp put on a doe-eyed expression, and Rounded turned into something smoky-eyed and assured. Daringly, they arranged themselves right at the edge of the dance floor, and they didn’t pretend to be dainty. They caught the soldiers’ eyes and danced away in their arms.

“Perfect,” Kate murmured to herself, then yelped when someone touched her sleeve.