In a Handful of Dust (Not a Drop to Drink #2)
Mindy McGinnis
Part One
POND
One
Maddy died hard.
The polio that had hobbled her hours before swept through her torso and stilled her movements. Only her pupils could convey the panic as her lungs collapsed. Her chest stopped rising and falling, but Maddy’s eyes rolled from Lucy’s face to the ceiling and back again for a few minutes after, clouding with confusion. Finally they were still. A rattle chased Maddy’s last breath out of her throat as Lucy held her friend’s hand.
Vera leaned across the bed to loosen her granddaughter’s grip. “She’s gone, sweetheart. You can let go now.”
“Are you sure?”
Vera’s capable fingers closed around Maddy’s wrist, but she nodded before checking for a pulse. “You need to go wash up.”
“Use the boiled water,” Lynn said. She was standing at the foot of the bed, her arms crossed in front of her.
“I know,” Lucy said tightly, her throat still slick with tears. Lynn’s eyes flicked away from Maddy to touch on Lucy, and they softened slightly.
“Knowing and doing are two different things. Use the boiled water, then come back here.” Her eyes went back to the corpse, and her brow furrowed. “We need to talk.”
Lucy walked out of the stifling cabin and then down to the creek, grateful for the blast of fresh night air. She knelt by the flowing water and splashed her face free of tear tracks. A strong hand pulled her away from the water and she yelped, landing on her backside on the muddy bank.
“What’d Lynn say to you?” A stern voice came out of the darkness. “She told you to use the boiled water and first thing you do is come down here and stick your face in the crick.”
“Scaring me onto my ass is a hell of a way to remind me,” Lucy said, drying her hands on her pants. “You were outside?”
“Don’t have much else of a place to go. When your grandma’s tending the sick, I like to be nearby to help, what little I can do.” He put his hand out, helping her from the ground. “I didn’t mean to be so rough with you. Not an easy night for the living.”
Lucy leaned into him, inhaling his comforting smell, familiar all these years. Clean air and fresh dirt lingered around him, and she felt stray tears slip down her cheeks.
“Not easy for the dead either,” she said. “She was looking at me, those big eyes of hers full of fear like nothing I’ve ever seen before, and all I could do was sit there, Stebbs, and . . .” The spreading stillness that had clamped onto Maddy’s body seemed to have found Lucy’s tongue. “I heard the rattle, like Lynn always says you do. Then she passed, and everything was quiet.”
Stebbs tucked her head into his chest, and they walked back toward the cabin he shared with Vera. “True enough, there’s those that go that way. But in the silence you know they’ve gone. Something is missing.”
Lucy nodded her understanding. Though she’d asked Vera if she was sure, the wrongness of Maddy’s eyes had already answered the question. “I imagine you’ll be needing another mattress,” Lucy said, wiping her nose.
Vera’s reputation as a healer had spread beyond the boundaries of the small community; people traveled hundreds of miles to bring their sick to her door. Too often they died inside her walls, in her bed. Then anything the dead touched was condemned to flame.
The door to the cabin opened and Lynn stepped out, Maddy’s body shrouded in a sheet and curled in her strong arms. She spotted Lucy and Stebbs. “You want me to wait for you?”
Lucy nodded, and Stebbs gave her a quick squeeze on the shoulder before releasing her. “Don’t let her know I used the stream,” she whispered into his ear. “I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“I’ll keep quiet on that count,” he said. “But from now on out, you mind her.”
A breeze kicked through the tree branches above them, heavy with budding leaves. Lucy crossed her arms against the chill, grateful when Stebbs took off his jacket and handed it to her.
“You go on,” he said. “She’ll be in a hurry to get rid of the body.”
Vera came to the door of the cabin, her silhouette backlit from the candles within. “Stebbs,” she called into the darkness, “I’m going to need you in here.”
“Other people have come here to die. We’ve burned and buried plenty,” Lucy said, as he zipped the coat up for her, flipping up the collar against her neck. “But this is bad, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, little one,” he sighed. “I’m afraid this one will be different.”
Maddy had never been a large girl, but the deep blackness of the pit Lynn tossed her in made a mockery of the white sheet, reducing it to a pale smudge in the lingering light.