Page 77 of Spring's Arcana
You could see the weather coming a long way away out here. You could seeanythingapproach, but the prairie wasn’t completely flat. It undulated, especially as they drove west, and even though she wasn’t hungry Nat still had a bag full of road-trip munchies sitting in the back seat.
At her tentative suggestion that maybe they could stop for snacks after all, the gangster even produced a few bills at another brightly lit gas station to pay for a load of road-food, and nobody had died.
Dima said barely anything, which was a mercy all its own. The car didn’t use that strange floating speed again; was he really so afraid of Friendly following? The cop had peeled out of the Iowarest stopaheadof them, but would that really matter when dealing with a divinity?
A rough brush of wind traveling across miles of empty openness licked towns made of huddling-close hearts and sprawling limbs. Even the cities, their downtowns full of skyscrapers to match Nat’s home, only sent their tentacles out along pavement ribbons.
Then there were the smaller human accretions in river valleys, barely raising their heads to look at the vast outside sweep. Sometimes collections of trailers flickered on the other side of a forlorn ditch and gravel shoulder, held back by everpresent three-strand barb-wire fence keeping the freeway from escaping its appointed path.
The rumble strips surprised her too, their edges filling with ice. At first she thought the divots were damage from chained-up vehicles, but they were too regular.
Dmitri drifted the right-side tires across them, a feral smile lighting his sharp face when she flinched. “Keep you awake, driving at night,” he said, with no mocking edge to the words for once. “Get me Mountain Dew from back, eh?”
The storm lingered behind them, gloomy clouds with grasping westward feathers, but soon enough it was penned by a steady headwind. Signs cropped up for the Black Hills, but Dmitri kept them on more northerly roads as Nat tried to remember school history classes and documentaries.
The sun fell towards a distant purple smear on the horizon, and Nat should have known better than to enjoy herself even the slightest bit. Like everything else she’d ever found pleasant, the drive was over far too soon. They coasted off freeway onto two-lane highway, and from there onto another even smaller road parallel to a thin river that lunged for the road to shy away at the last moment, miserable scrub clinging to its uneven sides.
Dmitri pointed, a brief economical movement, at the first sign for Hardesty.
A small town, as advertised, with its back turned to the north wind and its downtown just a strip of storefronts crowding anxiouslyaround a single stoplight. It looked deserted, though electric light shone through store windows—two gas stations, an auto mechanic with ancient, probably dry gas pumps outside as well, a quilting shop, a supermarket with a lone string of gap-toothed Christmas lights across its front, a laundromat, and a diner with faded gold lettering whisperingCIGARS.
“He said I’d know it when I saw it,” Nat repeated. “A bar. That’s all he told me.” The Knife was safe in her backpack. Maybe she should get it out, and it would point the way like a compass?
“Somethinghere, that for sure.” Dmitri sniffed, one of his cigarettes burning between two fingers as he clasped the yoke loosely with his other hand. He leaned forward a little, his face in the stream of cold air from his cracked-open window, and inhaled deeply again. “Yeah. Beer and horseshit.”
I haven’t seen a single horse. But what animal would be out in this weather? Maybe only bison, but those were dead, weren’t they? All killed so the tribes depending on them could be starved out. She remembered that much from history class, at least, and also the faint worm of disquiet in her ribcage when the history teacher said it was a good thing, because everyone had to be civilized.
Asking questions—pointed or merely honest—about things like that got you labeled a troublemaker. Child-Nat had all the trouble she could handle, so she did her best not to look at the slides with mountains of buffalo skulls or other bones piled next to grinning, mustachioed white men in old-timey clothes. Now she was a grown-up, and couldn’t look away ever again.
What were the divinities out here? Did they remember those days?
There wasn’t a single vehicle moving on the street. Dmitri slowed down anyway, his eyes half-closed, taking deep sniffing breaths over and over. His snuffling would have been funny, except for the chill down Nat’s back.
She’d never been to the zoo, since Mom hated seeing animals in cages. Nat had only ever seen wolves in pictures or on television; being trapped in a small space with a divine gangster who reminded her so forcibly of one wasn’t comforting.
A lonely listing stop sign two miles from the tiny downtown brought them to a halt, and the black car grumbled softly. “Which way?” The gangster’s tone was another surprise, quiet and businesslike, as if he expected her to know.
Nat opened her mouth to say she didn’t. And heard herself say, “Left. About a mile.”
He didn’t argue or question. The car turned on a dime, leaping forward. She couldn’t remember anyone believing her so immediately before, and hoped she wasn’t wrong.
Another old-fashioned roadhouse came into sight, set in a wide graveled parking lot. The sign on its rusting pole was too faded to make out any sort of name; the building itself, under a steeply pitched roof, bore a kissing-cousin resemblance to the oil-drum-and-plywood bar in Waterloo. Neon buzzed in a darkened window, the bright redOPENsign a beacon in monochrome landscape. Pickup trucks, old gas-guzzling sedans, and one or two shiny SUVs parked in neat rows as close to the long, brooding shack as possible.
It looked, in short, like a real old-timey honkytonk. Its other ration of neon was blue, and simply stutter-blaredBEERat anyone passing by, twice as large as the open sign. A few strings of multicolored Christmas lights clung to the gutter-edges, and the front doorway was lined with their cheerful multicolored sparkle.
You’ll know it when you see it. The feeling of rightness was just like finding a cat who would speak to her, a stray dog needing to be led home, a wounded squirrel, a ring of softly singing out-of-season mushrooms, or a weed forcing its way through cracks in forgotten sidewalk. An electric thrill shot down her arms and legs as if she was in Baba’s wooden chair again, struggling against an invisible weight.
Would she learn how to invisibly hold someone pinned like a butterfly, too? Just how old was Baba? Had evenshebeen a young divinity once? How had a Russian winter poured into bodily form arrived in America, anyway?
Probably on a ship, like many other European immigrants. There was no way to ask without risking more of Dmitri’s uncertain temper. Nat studied the roadhouse instead, her hands clenched inher lap. The structure grew bigger and bigger as the black car slid towards it.
There wasn’t much snow with the wind sweeping everything clean; still, plenty of gleaming frost lay in the building’s shadow. “There’s supposed to be a man inside.”Another divinity. Probably one you’ll pick a fight with.
“Oh,da,someone’s in there.” Dima’s teeth gleamed in the failing dusk. “Don’t worry,devotchka. Dima keep you safe and sound.”
Until you’ve got what you want, sure. It was just like Mama calling her “dumpling” when she wanted Nat to perform a particularly dirty or unpleasant task. Everyone was nice when they wanted something from you—was it a divinity thing, or just a basic natural fact?
When Dima cut the engine, a faint tinny thumping drifted through the sliver of open window on his side. “Fucking shitkickers,” he muttered.
