Nick Gevers - Other Earths

As Potter fumbled with the latch of the cabin door, von Steigerwald wondered whether it would be necessary to shoot Potter as well.

Necessary or not, it would certainly be pleasant.

Em and her brother were wrestling an alligator, and nobody was even watching.

“Hey, Em, did ya see the paper this morning? The Garden’s giving away a piece of the True Cross.”

Judd had a habit of saying outrageous things at the most inconvenient moments. Just now, he was lying atop Ike, a five-footer bred right here on the farm, while Em tried to seal its jaws with tape.

Ike was struggling, Em’s bangs were getting in her eyes, and the tape was sticking to itself. “That’s nuts,” she snarled. “You don’t give away a piece of the Cross.”

Judd bore down on Ike’s head and neck with his elbows. “Well, they’re not giving it away, exactly. It’s a raffle. Spend $50 on the Temple slots, and they’ll deign to let you in the same room with it. Spend $100, and you get entered for a chance to win the splinter.”

The alligator finally secured, Em stood up to catch her breath and tried to gauge if her older brother was ribbing her. He had a stupid grin on his face, which meant he was probably being serious.

“Garden’s been in trouble for years,” he said, trying to sound as if he knew what he was talking about. “Not enough high rollers, I guess, so they’re doing whatever they can to get some attention.”

“Raffling off a piece of the Cross? So some retired pilgrim from Florida can hide it in his attic? It ain’t right.” Em wiped her hands on her apron while Judd used a pole to prod Ike out of the turtle yard he’d escaped to and back to the pond, where he belonged. She looked around the two and a half acres of trees and ponds where she’d spent all fourteen years of her life, thinking that the place had never looked worse. The pumps needed repair, the grass needed resodding, the trees needed a surgeon. Without pilgrims bringing their pilgrim dollars, there was no money for any of it. Except for Judd, and Daddy, still sleeping it off near on noon, it was just her and the critters, as Daddy liked to call the collection of crocs, gators, caymans, turtles and tortoises, rattlesnakes, Bobsey, the two-headed king snake, and Betty, the albino boa.

For years the reptile farm had been a convenient stop in the desert for pilgrims on their way to the Holy City. Here, they could fill their tanks with gas and their stomachs with burgers and slake their thirst with orange soda and milkshakes, and once they were here, they couldn’t resist touring the critters, and a lot of the pilgrims would also buy a T-shirt or a shot glass or a postcard with a picture of Bobsey or Betty on it.

Things were different now, since the Templars had built Via-40, bypassing Trail 66 and leaving so many motels and gas stations and roadside attractions, like the Oasis Town Reptile Farm, dying on an obsolete vine.

Most people thought Em was short for Emma or Emily, but Daddy had named her Em for the Mother Road, Steinbeck’s name for Trail 66, and she took its loss somewhat personally.

Inside the Snake House, a sagging, chipped-paint barn lined with terrariums, Em dropped a white mouse into Bobsey’s tank. The king snake—a pair of Siamese twins, actually, joined two inches below their heads—came out from behind their heated rock and curled toward the terrified mouse.

“Poor Right-e-o,” Em cooed. No matter how eagerly he flicked his forked tongue, Right-e-o always lost out to the more aggressive Lefty. Today, even more than usual, Em empathized with the weaker twin.

Inside the house, Daddy was up and stationed before a sea of paper at the kitchen table. With a pencil nub, he scribbled figures in columns, adding and subtracting. He’d been doing this for months.

“You had breakfast yet, Daddy?”

He looked up and smiled at her, but his smile couldn’t conceal the stoop of his shoulders. She knew as well as he did that his pencil couldn’t hold off the bank from foreclosing.

“Wouldn’t say no to a cup of coffee.”

The hell with that. He’d eat a proper breakfast. Eggs, and ham, and biscuits, and fried potatoes. But rooting around in the kitchen, she realized it’d have to be just eggs and biscuits. Funds were low, and Ocotillo Grocery, eleven miles down the road, had shut down last month.

She poured flour and water in a bowl and got down to mixing. When she thought about what Judd had told her, about the Garden raffle, her spoon got a little violent.

Giving away a piece of the Cross. She supposed that was sacrilegious. Even worse, it was unfair that some folks had so much while others had so little. It would be like her giving Bobsey away as a door prize because she had a whole crate of six-headed snakes in the attic.

It wasn’t right. The Holy City’s temples grew fat and fatter while the smaller stations along the traditional pilgrimage route faded away. The least they could do was send some of their spare relics their way.

The mixing spoon flew out of her hand and clanked against the sink.

Daddy called, “You okay in there?”

“Fine,” Em said. “I’m fine.”

Just struck by a bit of inspiration, was all. Though possibly not divine inspiration.

She came into the Holy City from the desert, sunburned, dehydrated, and nauseated. She’d walked the last mile, the van—full of pilgrims she’d hitched a ride with—having suffered a burst water pump, and Em had been too impatient to wait with them for repair. In retrospect, walking had been a mistake.

She’d been on the Strip for an hour, stumbling along on the verge of delirium. At least she assumed it was delirium, for what else could explain the obscenely lit spectacle around her? The lesser temples stretched into the distance ahead and behind her, flashing and dancing with neon lights so bright they turned the night sky a dusty orange. She staggered past the neon palm trees and Crosses and fish and halos that fronted the temples of worship and gambling. Her head pounded from the bright lights and from thirst, but as something of a professional in the business of drawing pilgrims, she could only admire the audacity of the Strip.

Her admiration was tinged with envy, for there were more pilgrims in her field of vision than would visit Oasis Town in a year, even before Via-40: parades of flagellants, retirees with white legs and sunburned faces, cripples looking for miracles, pilgrims looking for buffets.

The thirst, the noise, the midnight heat—Em realized with alarm that she was going to faint. And what then? She’d be trampled to death by pilgrims and freaks, right here on the sidewalk. She wished she’d left Daddy and Judd a note before she’d left or had managed to send them a postcard from the road. At least then they might take some comfort knowing she’d died in the Holy City. Though Daddy didn’t really go in for that sort of thing.

The world went gray.

There were steel bars digging into her back, and her flesh was burning on a griddle, just like Saladin during the Sixty-fourth English Crusade to take back the Holy Land. Em remembered learning those stories in Sunday school, and she wished she were back in Oasis Town now, with her crayons, coloring Saladin’s skin Indian Red.

Cold water splashed on her lips. She sputtered and opened her eyes to find herself staring up at a crinkly brown face.

“Now try drinking some,” the man said, putting a bottle of water in her hand. The glass felt deliciously cold, and the water felt even better when she took a good, long swallow.

She wasn’t being tortured like Saladin. The bars at her back were the railings of the gate she was leaning against, in front of one of the temples. The griddle was just the sidewalk, hot on her skin, even through her clothes.