Harry Turtledove - Supervolcano :Eruption

Marshall wondered how Vanessa would like driving this monster to Colorado. Even without Pickles and his editorials, she would have needed a special trucker’s license to get behind the wheel of anything bigger. God, and the gas it would burn through! And…

“Who are you gonna get to move you in?” he asked her. “Will, uh, Hagop help?” He knew a guy who said that helping somebody move was a proof of true love. He’d met Vanessa’s new squeeze a couple of times, but he wasn’t convinced the rug merchant had a whole lot.

“He’s got a bad back,” she answered.

“So do I-now,” Marshall said as he eased the table down. Lemuel covered it with a dropcloth, then shoved it into a corner of the cargo bed and stacked boxes on top of it. That made good sense. Marshall wouldn’t have guessed Lemuel had it in him.

“Funny. I’m laughing my ass off,” Vanessa said. “You don’t have to be here, you know. If you want to go back to Santa Barbara and your bong, be my guest.”

He almost flipped her the bird, hopped into his car, and roared up the Harbor Freeway to the 101. Pissing her off didn’t bother him one bit. But Dad wouldn’t be happy, which was putting it mildly. And his father already had too many reasons to be unhappy at him and at most of the world.

“Anyway,” Vanessa went on, “from what I hear, there are almost as many wetbacks in Denver as there are in L.A. Getting unloaded’ll cost me a few bucks, but not that much.”

“If you say so.” Marshall turned back to Lemuel. “Ready for the next exciting episode?”

“If you say so,” Lemuel replied. Not a bad imitation of Marshall. Maybe he was less of a dud than Marshall recalled. Or maybe he’d grown up some since. Who the hell knew?

Just after noon, Vanessa made a food run. She came back with enough Burger King burgers and fries-and, to her credit, onion rings, too-to sink a battleship, and enough Cokes to float it again. The moving crew plowed through the chow like Sherman plowing through Georgia, and left little more behind. “Grease, sugar, and caffeine,” Marshall’s father said, engulfing a Double Whopper with cheese in a couple of chomps. “Can’t go far wrong like that.”

“Amen, Dad,” Marshall agreed. His Double Whopper was lasting a little longer, because he was scarfing onion rings between bites. He patted his stomach. “I feel like I swallowed a bowling ball.”

“Yup.” His father nodded and sucked up Coke through a straw. “I’m really gonna feel it in my back and shoulders tomorrow. I’m getting too damn old to play stevedore.”

Marshall was half his dad’s age. He knew he’d be sore come morning, too. Who wouldn’t, except somebody who really was a mover? He was also amused to watch Dad look around to make sure Vanessa couldn’t hear before he cussed. Who was Dad kidding? Himself, most likely. Vanessa swore whenever she felt like it, and she didn’t care who was in range when she let fly.

Dad looked around again. Then he swiped a couple of Marshall’s onion rings. “Grand theft!” Marshall said. “You’re busted, dude.”

“No evidence,” his father said with his mouth full, and chewed harder to make sure he’d got rid of it all. After a heroic swallow, he changed the subject: “I wish like hell your sister wasn’t doing this. I’ve told her so, too, but she’s kinda hard of listening.” One of his patented dry chuckles followed. “You may have noticed.”

“Who, me?” Marshall’s wide-eyed innocence made Dad chuckle again. He went on, “You really have no use f the rug merchant, have you?” Now he glanced around warily and kept his voice down. When it came to critiques of her love life, Vanessa wasn’t sweet reason personified.

“As a matter of fact, no. DMV records say he’s two years older than I am.” Dad had the grace to look faintly embarrassed. “I mean, I’m seeing a younger woman, too, but nowhere near that much younger.” His eyes slid toward Marshall’s sack of onion rings again. Too late-they were gone. He sighed and ate French fries instead. Marshall thought he’d said everything he was going to for a while, but turned out to be wrong: “But Hagop isn’t what I’m worried about.”

“Huh?” Marshall said. Then he remembered what Dad’s new girlfriend (who, from one brief meeting, seemed nice enough-he sure liked her better than Teo) did for a living, or wanted to do for a living, or however the hell that worked. He clapped a greasy hand to his forehead. “Oh, for God’s sake! Don’t do the sky-is-falling dance again! Like Vanessa will pay attention to that. Tell me another one!”

“Well… she didn’t,” his father admitted. “But the sky isn’t falling. The ground’s getting ready to blow up. That’s worse. You have no idea how much worse. Nobody has any idea how much worse.”

Marshall cocked his head to one side. “Only you, huh? Only you and Kelly, I mean?”

To his surprise-no, to his astonishment-Dad walked right into it. “That’s right.” His father stuck out his chin and looked stubborn. Heredity, Rob thought. Anybody could see where Vanessa-and Rob, too-got it. He didn’t see it in himself the same way. But then, who ever does?

That was beside the point, though. He rubbed his father’s nose in it the way you rub a puppy’s nose right after it pisses on the rug: “You know what you sound like? You sound like you’re ready for a rubber room-or else for a really rancid TV movie, one. Only you and your sweetheart know The Truth”-he made the capital letters painfully obvious-“and you can’t get anybody to pay attention to you. Give me a break!”

Dad winced. “It’s not like you make it sound,” he mumbled.

“I understand, Lieutenant Ferguson. Please tell me how it is, then.” Now Marshall did his best to impersonate a shrink.

His best must have been good enough. He wasn’t made to be able to do what his father suggested. Dad was laughing when he made the suggestion, though. A good thing he was, too. Marshall didn’t want to mess with him. It wasn’t just training, though Dad had it and Marshall didn’t. Marshall didn’t want to hurt anybody. There were times when Dad did.

Once again, Vanessa got it from him. Marshall might be no threat to make Phi Beta Kappa at UCSB-not as long as the weed held out, anyway-but he was plenty smart enough to keep his big mouth shut on that particular pearl of wisdom.

“Come on, you lazy bums! Get busy!” Damned if Vanessa didn’t make as if to crack the whip.

She had lots of boxes of clothes, which weren’t bad to carry, and of books, which were. Paper seemed to defy the laws of physics. A 1 x 1 x 2 box definitely weighed more than twice as much as a 1 x 1 x 1. Lemuel played macho and carried a 1 x 1 x 1 box of books in each arm-once. After that, he used two arms for one box.

They finished loading about three. Vanessa hugged them all and kissed everybody on the cheek. “Thanks, kiddo,” she told Marshall. Pickles squalled mournfully in the background.

“It’s okay. That’s why you’ve got brothers and other beasts of burden.”

“Yeah, you’re beastly, all right.” She pressed an engraved portrait of Ben Franklin into his hand. “I want to get going. You guys can use this for dinner.”

He started to say they wouldn’t be hungry for a week after all the fast food they’d killed at lunch. He started to, yeah, but he sure didn’t finish. He’d been working hard enough that his appetite was already coming back to life. By dinnertime, he’d be ready to make a pig of himself. A C-note wouldn’t buy prime rib for the crew, but they could do better than Burger King.

He did ask, “Will you have enough to keep you going till you land something in Colorado?”

“One way or another, I’ll make it,” she answered. She went over to their father. He also got a hug and a kiss. He said something, too low for Marshall to catch. Then Vanessa tossed her head, the way Marshall had watched Mom do a million times. That meant Dad had come out with something dumb-again. Was the toss heredity, too, or had Vanessa just watched Mom till she imitated her without even knowing she was doing it?