“Aye.” Tian made a visible effort to do just that. “What do’ee think of my field, gunslinger? I’m going to plant it with madrigal next year. The yellow stuff ye saw out front.”
What Eddie thought was that the field looked like a heart-break waiting to happen. He suspected that down deep Tian thought about the same; you didn’t call your only unplanted field Son of a Bitch because you expected good things to happen there. But he knew the look on Tian’s face. It was the one Henry used to get when the two of them were setting off to score. It was always going to be the best stuff this time, the best stuff ever. China White and never mind that Mexican Brown that made your head ache and your bowels run.
They’d get high for a week, the best high ever, mellow, and then quit the junk for good. That was Henry’s scripture, and it could have been Henry here beside him, telling Eddie what a fine cash crop madrigal was, and how the people who’d told him you couldn’t grow it this far north would be laughing on the other side of their faces come next reap. And then he’d buy Hugh Anselm’s field over on the far side of yon ridge… hire a couple of extra men come reap, for the land’d be gold for as far as you could see… why, he might even quit the rice altogether and become a madrigal monarch.
Eddie nodded toward the field, which was hardly half-turned. “Looks like slow plowing, though. You must have to be damned careful with the mules.”
Tian gave a short laugh. “I’d not risk a mule out here, Eddie.”
“Then what—?”
“I plow my sister.”
Eddie’s jaw dropped. “You’re shitting me!”
“Not at all. I’d plow Zal, too—he’s bigger, as ye saw, and even stronger—but not as bright. More trouble than it’s worth. I’ve tried.”
Eddie shook his head, feeling dazed. Their shadows ran out long over the lumpy earth, with its crop of weed and thistle. “But… man… she’s your sister!”
“Aye, and what else would she do all day? Sit outside the barn door and watch the chickens? Sleep more and more hours, and only get up for her taters and gravy? This is better, believe me. She don’t mind it. It’s tur’ble hard to get her to plow straight, even when there ain’t a plow-buster of a rock or a hole every eight or ten steps, but she pulls like the devil and laughs like a loon.”
What convinced Eddie was the man’s earnestness. There was no defensiveness in it, not that he could detect.
“Sides, she’ll likely be dead in another ten year, anyway. Let her help while she can, I say. And Zalia feels the same.”
“Okay, but why don’t you get Andy to do at least some of the plowing? I bet it’d go faster if you did. All you guys with the smallhold farms could share him, ever think of that? He could plow your fields, dig your wells, raise a barn roofbeam all by himself. And you’d save on taters and gravy.” He clapped Tian on the shoulder again. “That’s got to do ya fine.”
Tian’s mouth quirked. “It’s a lovely dream, all right.”
“Doesn’t work, huh? Or rather, he doesn’t work.”
“Some things he’ll do, but plowing fields and digging wells ain’t among em. You ask him, and he’ll ask you for your password. When you have no password to give him, he’ll ask you if you’d like to retry. And then—”
“Then he tells you you’re shit out of luck. Because of Directive Nineteen.”
“If you knew, why did you ask?”
“I knew he was that way about the Wolves, because I asked him. I didn’t know it extended to all this other stuff.”
Tian nodded. “He’s really not much help, and he can be tiresome—if’ee don’t ken that now, ye will if’ee stay long—but he does tell us when the Wolves are on their way, and for that we all say thankya.”
Eddie actually had to bite off the question that came to his lips. Why did they thank him when his news was good for nothing except making them miserable? Of course this time there might be more to it; this time Andy’s news might actually lead to a change. Was that what Mr. You-Will-Meet-An-Interesting-Stranger had been angling for all along? Getting the folken to stand up on their hind legs and fight? Eddie recalled Andy’s decidedly smarmy smile and found such altruism hard to swallow. It wasn’t fair to judge people (or even robots, maybe) by the way they smiled or talked, and yet everybody did it.
Now that I think about it, what about his voice? What about that smug little I-know-and-you-don’t thing he’s got going on ? Or am I imagining that, too?
The hell of it was, he didn’t know.
THREE
The sound of Susannah’s singing voice accompanied by the giggles of the children—all children great and small—drew Eddie and Tian back around to the other side of the house.
Zalman was holding one end of what looked like a stock-rope. Tia had the other. They were turning it in lazy loops with large, delighted grins on their faces while Susannah, sitting propped on the ground, recited a skip-rope rhyme Eddie vaguely remembered. Zalia and her four older children were jumping in unison, their hair rising and falling. Baby Aaron stood by, his diaper now sagging almost to his knees. On his face was a huge, delighted grin. He made rope-twirling motions with one chubby fist.
” ‘Pinky Pauper came a-calling! Into sin that boy be falling! I caught him creeping, one-two-three, he’s as wicked as can be!’ Faster, Zalman! Faster, Tia! Come on, make em really jump to it!”
Tia spun her end of the rope faster at once, and a moment later Zalman caught up with her. This was apparently something he could do. Laughing, Susannah chanted faster.
” ‘Pinky Pauper took her measure! That bad boy done took her treasure! Four-five-six, we’re up to seven, that bad boy won’t go to heaven!’ Yow, Zalia, I see your knees, girl! Faster, you guys! Faster!”
The four twins jumped like shuttlecocks, Heddon tucking his fists into his armpits and doing a buck and wing. Now that they had gotten over the awe which had made them clumsy, the two younger kids jumped in limber spooky harmony. Even their hair seemed to fly up in the same clumps. Eddie found himself remembering the Tavery twins, whose very freckles had looked the same.
” ‘Pinky… Pinky Pauper…’ ” Then she stopped. “Shoo-fly, Eddie! I can’t remember any more!”
“Faster, you guys,” Eddie said to the giants turning the skip-rope. They did as he said, Tia hee-hawing up at the fading sky. Eddie measured the spin of the rope with his eyes, moving backward and forward at the knees, timing it. He put his hand on the butt of Roland’s gun to make sure it wouldn’t fly free.
“Eddie Dean, you cain’t never!” Susannah cried, laughing.
But the next time the rope flew up he did, jumping in between Hedda and Hedda’s mother. He faced Zalia, whose face was flushed and sweating, jumping with her in perfect harmony, Eddie chanted the one verse that survived in his memory. To keep it in time, he had to go almost as fast as a county fair auctioneer. He didn’t realize until later that he had changed the bad boy’s name, giving it a twist that was pure Brooklyn.
” ‘Piggy Pecker pick my pocket, took my baby’s silver locket, caught im sleepin eightnineten, stole that locket back again!’ Go, you guys! Spin it!”
They did, twirling the rope so fast it was almost a blur. In a world that now appeared to be going up and down on an invisible pogo-stick, he saw an old man with fly-away hair and grizzled sideburns come out on the porch like a hedgehog out of its hole, thumping along on an ironwood cane. Hello, Gran-pere, he thought, then dismissed the old man for the time being. All he wanted to do right now was keep his footing and not be the one who fucked the spin. As a little kid, he’d always loved jumping rope and always hated the idea that he had to give it over to the girls once he went to Roosevelt Elementary or be damned forever as a sissy. Later, in high school phys ed, he had briefly rediscovered the joys of jump-rope. But never had there been anything like this. It was as if he had discovered (or rediscovered) some practical magic that bound his and Susannah’s New York lives to this other life in a way that required no magic doors or magic balls, no todash state. He laughed deliriously and began to scissor his feet back and forth. A moment later Zalia Jaffords was doing the same, mimicking him step for step. It was as good as the rice-dance. Maybe better, because they were all doing it in unison.