No, not quite. Vic had heard about it from someone even worse than the boys. A client. A young man who made a flippant comparison, who thought it might be taken as a compliment, who had said in the heat of passion that the daughter was more expert than the mother.
Vic had already stopped coming around the Honey Hole, wouldn’t even approach the place. And after this, she wouldn’t agree to see Rose anywhere. Not for three long years. And so her children began to wither like the roof gardens did when showers and beer water took precedence. They began to die to her and she to them. Even as the small voice she carried deep within her soul relented now and then and dispensed with hard-fought coin. Even though some part of her left her pillow wet in the morning as it leaked out in quiet sobs. Leaked out, but never emptied.
All this and more, her husband had taken the day he’d run off. All this and more he had stolen. But she would survive. Rose told herself this as she studied the column of numbers where more was subtracted than added. There was a knock at the door. She checked her watch. It was her six o’clock.
Oh yes, she would survive.
38 ? No Place for a Girl
Conner
The sun was up by the time the boys entered Springston and swung around the edge of the great wall. There was still shade in that part of town where people could afford to delay the rising sun and be sheltered from the creep of sand. And though it was early and a Sunday, Conner felt something was amiss. There was that nervous buzz about town like after a bomb had gone off—but bombs rarely went off so early in the day. The young men who caused violence were as lazy as any youth when it came to getting out of bed. And besides, there were no columns of smoke. No wailing mothers. Instead, there were the sails of sarfers spread out to the horizon. There was an empty marina with bare hitching posts jutting out of the ground and only the wind passing through. There were people in front of their homes, talking with neighbors, out and about, even though the markets had not yet opened.
“Head left here,” Conner told his brother. There was a doctor on the edge of Springston that sometimes took people in from Shantytown. He might help them. He might be trusted if he found out where the girl came from.
Where the girl came from. Conner chanced a look over his shoulder. She could be sleeping or dead. She could be someone who wandered into No Man’s Land with her family and turned back after two days of hiking. But she had spoken his name. Had mentioned his father. If she died, would anyone believe their account of things? Or would he become Old Man Joseph, standing at the intersection of the great dunes, holding a sign, screaming to frightened kids about No Man’s Land?
These were the thoughts swirling in his mind long before the sun came up. Conner couldn’t stop thinking of all the girl might know, might say, if she survived. Their father might still be alive. Twelve years of camping on the edge of No Man’s Land, twelve years of listening to the wind moan across the Bull’s gash, twelve years of Shantytown, of their mother selling herself, and their father might still be out there.
Conner outpulled Rob, his legs pumping as his thoughts raced. They rounded the corner and stopped outside Doc Welsh’s place—
“Closed,” Rob said.
There was a sign on the door. Half the stalls they had passed were closed, but a glance at the sun told him it was after nine. They’d been hiking for almost five hours. “What in the world is going on?” he asked. He dropped the line and went back to the girl on the tent. Rob was right about the wear on the canvas. Conner could see where it was tearing. He pulled his canteen out of his pack and knelt by the girl to give her more water.
“Is it a special Sunday?” Rob asked.
“Not that I know of.” Conner poured a capful there in the shade of the doctor’s office. “Bang on the door,” he said.
His brother did. A woman with a load balanced on her head hurried past. “Hey,” Conner called to her.
She slowed. The load wobbled as she turned her head.
“You know if Doc is out on a call?”
The lady looked at them both like they were from the northern wastes. She gave the girl lying still on the folded canvas a brief glance. “Probably out looking for Danvar,” she said. “Haven’t you heard?”
“Danvar?” Conner asked, quite certain he’d heard wrong.
The lady didn’t dare nod. “They found it,” she said. “Half the town’s out there now. The other half is scrambling for their coin. I’ve gotta go.”
She and her load turned and headed off.
“Wait!” Conner called out. “This girl needs help!”
“Good luck,” the lady called.