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And yet they had. Every year since, while the family dwindled and promises were unkept. There was that first fatherless year when their mother had come along and had helped them figure out how to erect the tent, the last year she would ever come. That night, she had told them of their father when he was a boy, the oldest stories of him any of them had heard, how he was forever in trouble, wrangling goats and taming snakes, and burying sarfers in the dunes, mast-first.
Conner had woken early that year before the sun was up, had found his mother gone, had thought she’d left them like their father had, but there she was outside in the starlight, rocking and weeping beyond the tent, her feet dangling in the Bull’s gash, clutching baby Rob to her chest and moaning in tune to the drums of the east.
Conner remembered all of this, but these were not the stories he told. “This is what I remember of our father,” he said. And he whispered memories of memories, only the best ones, because after that night they would be for his brother to recall and no one else.
10 • Sissyfoot
THE DAY BEFORE
The monster squealed and bucked its head beneath the canvas shroud. With a hideous screech, muffled by the tattered burlap, it bent its long neck down, driving its steel beak deep into the sand. It did this over and over, like a thirst-mad hummingbird probing the same dry desert flower for what little nectar it held.
Conner watched these gyrations while his buckets were filled with sand. The wind lifted a loose corner of the protective shroud, and he caught a glimpse of the mighty water pump beneath, the heavy plated head with its rusty rivets rising and falling, the grease-streaked piston pushing in and out, water flowing through pipes like coins pouring into pockets.
“Whatcha waitin’ on, boy? You’re topped and ready. Get to it!”
Conner turned his gaze to Foreman Bligh, who leaned on his shovel and slid the long splinter between his lips from one corner of his mouth to the other. Conner knew better than to say anything and get another mandatory load. Besides, this was his fortieth haul of the day, enough to fulfill his after-school requirement, and quite possibly the last bucket he would haul for the rest of his life.
“Sir, yessir,” he barked, and Foreman Bligh showed him the gaps between his teeth. Conner stooped to collect his buckets. The fine sand was piled up in flowing and shifting cones, precious veils of it cascading over the sides. Balancing his haulpole across his shoulders—the two buckets swaying from notches at either end—he forced his sore legs to straighten, turned to face the outhaul tunnel, and staggered up the long sloping walk out of there. It was programs like these new work requirements that made him itch to leave, even if he never came back. It was programs like these that made him feel less than sorry for the Lords when rebel bombs clapped over in Springston and someone was violently voted from office.
Above him—farther up the gentle slope of sand that rose on all sides from Shantytown’s lone water pump—he could see tomorrow’s work blowing over the lip and drifting down on the winds. What he carried up in his buckets was replenished by the minute, the grains rolling over each other like marbles, all seeming to seek the pump like thirsty little brigands rushing down for a sip.
Conner passed several other sissyfoots on his way up the ramp. Empty buckets swung on the ends of their haulpoles, and sweaty grime coated them just as it did Conner. A girl from his class, Gloralai, smiled as she passed with her buckets. Conner returned the smile and nodded, but too late realized she was laughing at something Ryder had said. The older boy followed behind, his haulpole and buckets balanced on one of his broad shoulders. He laughed and flirted and acted like it was a day at the dome, but still took the time to bump Conner’s bucket as he passed, spilling a handful of sand from one and sending the imbalanced haulpole teetering.
Conner shifted the pole and recovered. He watched the precious sand from his bucket drift back down to where it came from. Probably not enough to keep him from his quota. And not worth telling Ryder to fuck off. It was Friday, the day before his camping trip, and none of this bullshit mattered.
He continued his climb up the string of wood planks that zigzagged up the slope of shifting sand. A couple of young pluckers from the lower grades stomped up and down on either side of the planks, pulling them out of the sand by their ropes when no one was on them, to prevent them from getting buried. The after-school program was meant to provide a respite for the two shifts of full-time pluckers and sissyfoots who worked mornings and nights. The wind and sand never took a day off—and so neither did anyone else. They all toiled in that pit, working to keep the well from being buried, when everyone up and down the slope knew it would happen eventually.
But not today, they told themselves as they hauled their sand and shook their planks. Not today, they said. And the pump beneath the shroud bowed its head in agreement.
Conner neared the outhaul tunnel that burrowed through the bowl’s lip and out to the other side. It was a public works project from a decade prior, a visible admission that the sand would one day win, that they could only dig so much, that the way out was too steep. Laughter echoed inside the tunnel as several of Conner’s peers returned for another load. Most of them worked slowly, shuffling their feet until dusk. Conner preferred to grind it out and get it over with.
He entered the cool shade of the tunnel and passed his friends without a word. He chewed on the grit in his mouth, the sand that had frustrated him when he was younger, that he’d wasted time scraping his tongue after and wasted precious fluids spitting from his mouth, but that he’d finally learned to grind to nothing between his teeth and swallow down. It was the sand that was trying to bury his town, the sand that wanted to work its way into pistons and gears until things fell apart, the sand that paid for his day’s water if he lugged enough of it out of the pit and into the dunes where tomorrow it would blow west. It would blow west while new sand flew in from the east to take its place. One grain for every grain. An even trade.
Out of the tunnel, Conner entered the weigh station and bent his knees until his haulpole caught in the crook of the scales. The assayer flicked weights down a long rod. “Don’t lean on the pole,” he ordered.
“I’m not,” Conner protested, showing his hands.
The assayer frowned and made a note in his ledger. “That’s your quota. ” He almost sounded disappointed. Conner nearly sagged in relief. He lifted the pole again, was glad to be done for the day, and hiked off toward the edge of the steep rise known as Waterpump Ridge. It was a new dune they were building here, a man-made dune downwind of the pump, which itself stood on the leeward side of Springston’s Shantytown. Conner reached the lip, dumped his sand, and watched plumes of his hard work spiral toward the distant mountains beyond the dunes. Go, he urged the sand. Go and never come back.
As he watched his last load swirl on the wind, he considered what sand and man had in common. Both were forever disappearing over the horizon. Sand to the west and man to the east. More and more of the latter in recent years. Entire families. He’d seen them from the ridge heading off toward No Man’s Land with their belongings piled up on their backs, fleeing the bombs and the violence, the wars between neighbors, the uncertainty. It was the uncertainty that drove men away. Conner knew that now. He used to see the beyond as some great unknown, but the fickle tortures of life among the dunes were worse. What could be certain was that elsewhere was different. This was a fact. A compelling one. It drew souls to the east as fast as Springston could birth them.
A gust of wind whipped his hair into a frenzy and tugged at his ker. Conner turned away from the view and saw Gloralai heading up with her own sagging haulpole. He gave her a hand dumping the buckets.
“Thanks,” she said, wiping her forehead. “You done for the day?”
He nodded. “You?”
Gloralai laughed. Her hair hung down over her freckled face in sweaty clumps. She untied what was left of her ponytail, gathered the loose stra
nds off her face, and began tying it back up. “I probably got two more hauls. Depending how much I spill. Don’t know how you haul as fast as you do. ”
“It’s ’cause I don’t want to be here. ” He hoped the here didn’t sound as general as he meant it. It was more than school or the pump-pit. It was all of Shantytown. He picked up his pole and adjusted one of the buckets in its notch so it wouldn’t slide out. “C’mon. We’ll haul one load each, and you can be done for the day. ”
Gloralai smiled and finished knotting her hair. She was seventeen, a year younger than Conner, bronze-skinned and pretty with dark freckles across her nose. Conner didn’t want to admit it, even to himself, but part of him didn’t want to leave the pump right then. And hauling one more load didn’t feel like hell when it wasn’t mandatory, when he could choose.
Over Gloralai’s shoulder, he spotted Ryder trudging up the slope. The boy seemed to catch this moment between his two classmates. He turned his haulpole sideways, the buckets heavy and swaying dangerously, and Conner had to dodge out of the way. He danced down the loose sand and nearly lost his footing.
“Watch it,” Gloralai said.
“Fuck off,” Ryder told her.
Gloralai caught up with Conner and the two of them marched down with their empty buckets. Out across the jumbled rooftops of Shantytown, a hammer beat a rhythmic tune and a gull cried out. Conner tried to soak it all up, the sights and sounds of home, as he followed Gloralai back into the tunnel.
“You were serious,” she said, eyeing him. “I thought you were eager to get out of here. ”
“Hey, I figure you’re itching to go as well. Maybe if I haul a load for you, you’ll buy me a beer at the Dive Bar. ”
“You think so?” she asked, smiling.
Conner shrugged. At the bottom of the zigzag of warped planks, the groaning monster nodded its sad head and pumped water from the earth. It bobbed up and down while Conner and Gloralai stood in line to get their buckets filled. As the sand heaped in and spilled over, Conner watched a diver emerge near the pump and hand tools up to an assistant. Must be down there repairing a connector rod or part of the pipeline. That’s the life Conner should’ve had. If he’d made it into dive school, things would’ve been different. A diver, not a sissyfoot. Just like his brother and sister, out there scavenging and finding the spoils that cities were made of. Maybe then he wouldn’t have gotten worn down, would’ve spent more time out of the wind, wouldn’t be thinking of leaving.
“Get ’er going,” the foreman barked, and Conner saw that his buckets were full. Gloralai already had hers shouldered, was trudging up the planks. She yelled for him to hurry or she’d drink both their beers.
11 • A Date?
Conner and Gloralai dumped their buckets and turned toward town. From the top of the ridge, they had a commanding view of the Shantytown slums. Conner could pick out the corrugated metal roof of the small shack he shared with his brother. The dune behind their shack had been creeping; the back half was already buried. Another month, and the sand would tumble over the roof and pile up around the front door. They could dig their way in for a while, but then it’d be time to cut their losses and move. Unless Rob was on his own. The dive school would have to take him in, as much promise as he’d shown. Or Graham would make him an apprentice. Or Palmer would have to settle down and stop running around with that asshole Hap. Something would have to change.
Beyond his home and the scattering of roofs and half-buried shops sat Springston with its rows of sandscrapers jutting up into the wind. Conner could just barely make out the outline of the great wall beyond the scrapers. The wall disappeared as he and Gloralai made their way off the ridge and behind the dunes. Soon it was just the tops of the tallest structures, those misshapen and disjointed stacks of cubes—little hovels and homes and shops built one atop the other with no plan and no coordination. Wisps of sand streamed from their roofs and the wind howled through their eaves. And then the last of the city vanished, and only the location of the dump could be determined, flocks of crows hanging majestically in the air, blacks wings unbeating, riding that rolling zephyr that marched in from No Man’s Land and carried with it the thunder of the gods and the sand that was the bane of all their existences.
Conner listened beyond the wind and the crunch of sand beneath his boots and could just make out the distant and beating drums. These were the thundering booms that built and built in men’s chests. These were the echoes of rebel bombs that brought back the horrors of loved ones blown to bits. It was the sound that would not stop, the noise that pervaded men’s dreams and haunted their waking hours, the torture that drove them mad and madder until they could take no more of it. Until they fled to the mountains and were never heard from again. Or until they staggered into No Man’s Land to find the source of this abuse, to beg it to stop. This was why men packed up their families and left for another life elsewhere. Or abandoned them in a shoddy tent.
“You ever dream of getting out of here?” Conner asked.
Gloralai nodded. “All the time. ” She shook the ker around her neck, dumping out the grit4. “I’ve got a brother in Low-Pub who says he can get me a job in a bar down there. He’s a bouncer. But I gotta wait until I’m eighteen. ”
“Which bar?” Conner knew what sorts of jobs had age requirements. He tried to imagine Gloralai doing what his mother did, and a rage built up inside him.
“Lucky Luke’s. It’s a dive bar. ”
“Oh, yeah. ” Conner ran his fingers through his hair, shaking out the matte5.
“You know it?”
“I know of it. My sister used to work there. Bartending. You didn’t have to be eighteen to bartend back then. ”