Devils Unto Dust
Emma Berquist
Dedication
For Mike
For all the reasons
PART ONE:
THE
TOWN
Texas, 1877
The desert is white as a blind man’s eye,
Comfortless as salt.
—Sylvia Plath
1.
Life out here is hard, my mother used to say, so you have to be harder. Even she wasn’t strong enough to fight off the sickness. By the end she was just a shell of herself, her skull showing through the skin on her face, talking nonsense when the delirium took her. Sometimes she didn’t know who I was or what was happening. And then she remembered, and it was even worse.
She lasted longer than most do. It doesn’t really matter, it didn’t make a difference, but I like to think it means something. That she was fighting to stay with us. That her life wasn’t wasted, digging into this patch of nowhere.
I love the desert, love the hidden beauty of it. When the light falls just so and the heat shimmers off the ground, the desert is as graceful and endless as the sky. I love the way the ground cracks open under my feet, the fissures spreading out like veins in a shattered mirror. The air so hot it burns your lungs, the dust collecting in the corners of your eyes, the sand whipping against your skin until it’s raw; this is my home, and it is beautiful. If I could, I would turn my back on this town and start walking, leaving behind the unbearable weight. But I know better than that; the desert may have my heart, but this town will take my bones.
Glory, our town is called, for no other reason than irony. People here are bad at naming things, even my own parents. Daisies don’t grow here, not in this hardscrabble dirt. Not that anyone calls me Daisy, not since I was old enough to know better. The name does not suit me; it is bright and yellow and sweet, and I am none of those things. And Glory is dead as sun-bleached bone and twice as cursed. Maybe it was different when people first settled here, before the sickness started to spread; maybe it wasn’t always a sandy hole of a town, but that’s all I’ve ever known it to be. Those who could afford to got out quickly, leaving the rest of us to whatever fate we deserve. There’s nothing standing between us and the desert shakes but some barbed wire and the men who hunt the sick. It’s only a matter of time before this town crumbles into dust. When the sick finally outnumber the healthy, we’ll all be as dead as my mother. Or worse.
Today I wake up the way I always do, gasping for breath. It’s the panic that I shove down all through the day, but I can’t hide from it at night. The dreams gnaw at me like dogs worrying old bones, the pressure on my chest tightening until I force myself awake, into the real and unending nightmare. It’s still dark out, though dawn can’t be far off. I wait for a minute, trying to swallow the fear away, breathing in the smell of the mattress: hay and old sweat. I can just make out the shapes of my youngest brother and sister a few feet from me, both curled up on their sides. They are identical in almost every way, down to the way they sleep; I hold my breath until I’m sure I did not wake them. Still, I am tense, tenser than usual; something else is wrong. I wait, and wait, and then I finally hear it: a scratching sound, faint but distinct. A new jolt of panic surges through me, and I am instantly wide awake, sitting up and straining to see through the dark. Shakes don’t usually get through the fence, but it’s been known to happen. When the guards are young or drunk they don’t always walk the entire perimeter, and our house is about as far from the gate as you can get. My mind fills with images of blood splashed against the walls and I tell myself to calm down; even if one made it through the fence, there’s no way a shake could get in the house, not when our door is locked tight and bolted. Still, to be safe, I make my way to the door, my bare feet knowing exactly where to step to avoid the creaking boards. Our house is nothing more than a large wooden box with the barest suggestion of walls. We have a stove and some furniture, but the bedsheets need airing and I can’t keep the dust out.
My father built this house, laid the wood and did the chinking and daubing, and it is just like him: ragged and aging poorly. The sand and the heat are hard on everything. Pa did his best, I suppose, but he spent more time picking out flat stones for the foundation than he did building the roof, and it sags in places. I blindly feel along the wall until my hand closes around the butt of my revolver, hanging from a peg in its holster. One chamber in my six-shooter is always loaded; sometimes seconds can make all the difference. I put my ear to the door and listen. The soft scratching in the dirt and whisper of wood scraping could be a dog or a coyote, even a healthy one that was too quick for a shake to catch, but I am not willing to take any chances.
We strung up bits of broken glass all around the porch, and I strain to hear any tinkling. There’s no wind tonight; the air lies warm and stagnant, trapping heavy smells and smoke close to the ground. I lie down on the wooden floor, revolver in hand, trying to peer through the crack between the door and the floor. But it is too dark and the space is too small. I bite the inside of my cheek, considering; it sounds too quiet for a shake, though I wouldn’t bet my life on that. Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be moving, which means I’ll have to deal with it sooner or later. Might as well be now.
I get to my feet, my back protesting, and reach for the small barn lantern hanging by the doorjamb. I jiggle it and hear a faint splashing, so there’s still some oil left. Surprising, since I haven’t refilled it in weeks, but oil is more costly than candles and it’s easy enough to go without. I light the lamp and turn the flame up, throwing the doorway into sharp relief. I fumble a bit to get the bolts open with my gun in one hand and the lantern hanging off the other. The last lock sticks and I have to force it back before easing the door open a sliver, bracing my body against it.