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"Tell me about it!" she exclaimed. That startled a smile out of him. But fair
was fair. She had to give Justin his due: "It wasn't just luck. Justin kind
of, uh, tackled me and got us both under the table."
"That was smart of him," Mr. Snodgrass said. Had he served in the army? Had
he fought in one ofVirginia 's little wars? Beckie realized she didn't know.
He nodded to himself. "That was right smart, matter of fact. Best he could've
done with the two of you where you were, I reckon."
"It scared me when he did it," Beckie said. "Then things started blowing up,
and I got scared worse."
"Yeah."Mr. Snodgrass' voice was dry."Almost needed a new diaper myself."
Beckie started to laugh, then cut it off when she realized he wasn't kidding.
And she'd been about that scared, too, when shells crashed down all around.
For a little while, she'd had nothing to do with whether she lived or died. If
that wasn't enough to scare somebody, she couldn't think what would be.
"What are we going to do?" she said, not so much because she thought Mr.
Snodgrass had the answer as because she had to let it out or burst.
"Well, I'll tell you one thing I aim to do pretty darnquick ," he said.
Beckie made a questioning noise. He went on, "I'm going to get the spade out
of the garage and dig me a good trench in the back yard.Maybe another one in
the front yard. Cover over part of it with some corrugated sheet iron I've got
and it'll make a tolerable shelter. Better'n ducking under the kitchen table,
that's for sure."
"Sounds like a good idea," Beckie said, and then, "Can I help?"
He started to say no. She could tell. But she also watched him change his
mind. "Well, maybe you can," he said. "I'm not as spry as I used to be. You
don't mind getting dirty and sweaty, you don't mind blisters on your hands,I
expect you'll do all right."
Beckie looked down at her palms. They were soft and smooth. Why not? What had
she ever done that would toughen them up? She hadn't thought she would get
stuck in the middle of or even on the edges of a war, though. "I don't care,"
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she said firmly. "Better my hands than my neck."
"Now that's a sensible thing to say." Mr. Snodgrass looked around to make
sure Gran was out of earshot. He didn't see her, but lowered his voice anyway:
"You've come out with a good many sensible things lately, you have. Makes it
hard for me to believe you're really Myrtle's granddaughter, no offense."
"I'm not mad I know what you mean," Beckie said. They traded conspirator's
grins. She went on, "Maybe I got it from my dad's side of the family I don't
know. But I'll tell you something: my mom doesn't get along with Gran,
either."
"Can't say I'm surprised."Mr. Snodgrass looked around again. "Back when
Myrtle lived here, nobody got along with her."
"Some things don't change, do they?" Beckie said.
"I reckon not," he answered. "Come on, then. Let's get to work."
It was just as hard as he said it would be. Digging a long, deep slit in the
ground was no fun at all, not when the temperature and the humidity were both
in the nineties. That was how Mr. Snodgrass put it, anyway. To Beckie, who was
used to Celsius instead of Fahrenheit, it seemed about thirty-five. It was hot
and sticky either way. One of them would dig for a while, then stop and pass
the shovel to the other. Beckie didn't let Mr. Snodgrass be a hero she didn't
want him keeling over.
And she didn't feel much like a hero, either. Sweat made her clothes stick to
her like glue. She figured she would have to wring out her blouse after she
finally took it off.Antiperspirant or no antiperspirant, before long she could
smell herself. She did get blisters. They stung. She could go on working in
spite of them. She could, and she did.
Mr. Snodgrass got blisters, too. "Haven't tried anything like this in a
while," he said while Beckie took a turn with the spade.
"It's tearing your lawn to pieces," she said.
"Well, I can set it to rights one of these days," he answered. "That'll give
me something to do. And you notice we aren't the only folks digging in."
Beckie let fly with another shovelful of dirt. She had noticed. Several other
people up and downPrunty Street were making shelters. One house had taken a
direct hit. That made as good an argument for digging in as any she could
think of.
Then Mr. Snodgrass said, "Don't know what we'll do if they start throwing
poison gas at us. I couldn't begin to tell you where the gas masks're at. Have
to dig 'em out, wherever they are."
"Why do you have gas masks?" Beckie asked.
He paused to wipe sweat off his forehead before answering, "Well, you never
can tell." He seemed to think that was reason enough. In a place like this,
not far from the border between two states that didn't like each other, maybe
it was.
Travel was supposed to broaden you. It sure was teaching Beckie things she'd
never known before. The main thing it was teaching her was how lucky she was
to live inLos Angeles , a city far from any border, and inCalifornia , a state
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too strong for any of its neighbors to bother much. Before she left for this
trip with Gran, she took all that for granted. As she started to dig again,
she knew she never would again.
Most of the time, Justin and Mr. Brooks had been the only guests inElizabeth
's only motel. They weren't any more. Virginian soldiers filled the other
rooms. They played the TVs in the rooms loud. They played what sounded to
Justin like bluegrass music even louder. Being soldiers, they got up too early
in the morning and made all kinds of ungodly noise right outside the window.
When Justin grumbled, Mr. Brooks gave him a crooked smile. "Go ahead," he
said. "Bang on the walls. Go to their captain and complain."
Justin thought about that for a good microsecond, maybe even a microsecond
and a half. "Yeah, right," he said sweetly.
Mr. Brooks laughed. "When I was your age, we said, 'Andthen you wake up.'Same
thing either way."
"We say that, too, but it's not quite the same," Justin answered. The coin
and stamp dealer raised an eyebrow. "We are waking up that's the problem,"
Justin explained.
"Oh. Well, you're not wrong. But I don't know what we can do about it," Mr.
Brooks said. "Besides complain, I mean."
The last four words took away what Justin was about to say. Instead of giving
the automatic answer, he had to think about what came out next. "The real
problem isn't the soldiers," he said after a few seconds. "The real problem is
that we're stuck in this miserable little place when we really need to be down
inCharleston ."
"That's a problem, all right," Mr. Brooks agreed. "I don't know what we can
do about it right this minute, though. Sometimes you've got to sit tight and
wait."
"I'm sick of doing that!" Justin said. "It's driving me up the wall."
"Have you got any better ideas?" the older man asked pointedly.
"If I did, I'd be using them, believe me," Justin said.
"Okay. That's fair enough. Just don't do anything dumb, that's all," Mr.
Brooks said.
Big, growling trucks carried more soldiers west. Maybe the Negro revolt
wasn't going as well as the white Virginians feared it would at first. Or
maybe the powers that be inRichmond remembered they had a war on their hands,
too. Justin thought leaving the first garrison west ofElizabeth would have
been smarter, but he wasn't running things, which was bound to be just as [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]