Robert Wilson - The Harvest

Maybe the rage she felt had been inside her all along, and maybe it wasn’t even Joey she was mad at. But, oh, Christ, after a long and fucked-up day when somebody had died, for God’s sake, to have Joey Commoner call her a slut, to be sneered at by him—it erased everything she had pretended to achieve; it was unspeakable, and she hated him for it.

She blinked back tears. Joey was watching her, was maddeningly attentive, his face calm and slack in the starlight, and suddenly Beth recalled a dream she had once had:

Joey as a wild horse. Beth the rider. She rides him to the top of some high cliff. He balks, and she spurs him. And he jumps.

Shut up, Beth. Just close your mouth. Don make it worse.

She felt light-headed, utterly weightless.

This cliff, she thought. This desert.

“Bastard,” she said. “You don’t know everything that goes on in this camp.”

“Try me,” Joey said.

Matt was not quite asleep when the knock came at the door of his camper.

He sat up and peered out the window at prairie night. The stars were the color of ice and there was a milky glow on the eastern horizon where the moon was about to rise.

Beth? he wondered. But it was late even for Beth.

And it hadn’t sounded like her knock. Not that reckless. Three discreet taps. Dear God, he thought wearily, what now?

He pulled on a T-shirt and briefs and stumbled to the door.

Tap tap tap.

“All right! Christ’s sake! Hold on!”

He opened the door and stood mute in a river of night air.

“Matthew,” Tom Kindle said. “Lemme in before I freeze my balls off.”

Kindle didn’t look good. He wasn’t hurt, but he looked chastened. Matt tried to remember where he had seen that look on Tom Kindle before.

Of course: it was when he came into the hospital with his broken leg, raving about monsters. About a thousand years ago.

Matt kept the light low and poured his friend a cup of lukewarm coffee from a thermos. “You didn’t get too damn far, did you? Not much farther than Laramie, I’ll bet.”

Kindle put aside his rifle and shrugged. His eyes were lost among wrinkles like crevices. “I took a little trip south. Toward that, uh, that thing—”

“The new Artifact.”

“I admit I was curious about it. Aren’t you? Even sitting on the horizon, it’s big enough to fill half a sky.” He took a long, noisy sip of coffee. “And it’s strange, Matthew. It draws the attention. You ever been down to Moab? The canyonlands around there? Same kind of strangeness. Red rock, blue sky, and everything’s too big. Maybe a person loses some judgment. I looked at that thing a long time, and then I started to wonder if I could get up close to it.”

“Did you?”

“Get close? No, not very.” He shook his head. “Close enough, though. The air gets foul. It smells like sulphur and it burns your lungs. The ground isn’t too steady, either. Matthew—the thing is rooted to the earth! Literally, it looks like it put down roots, roots made of some kind of stone. Black sandstone or maybe pumice. Miles wide. And, Matthew, in the shadow of those roots, there were certain things moving around.…”

“Things?”

“Machines. I guess. Or animals. Or both, somehow. But they were big enough to see from miles away. Hazy in the distance, the way you might see a city from across a lake—they were as big as that. Big as a city and taller than they were wide, and different shapes, like giraffes, or gantries, or spiders, or cranes.” He shuddered. “They must have built that entire thing since last August—have you thought about that? A thing the size of a mountain in half a year? God Almighty! And, Matthew… while I was watching those creatures move around, a thought occurred to me. They must be about finished their work, I thought. It doesn’t look like a half-made thing. And it’s a spaceship, right? When it’s ready, it goes into orbit. Spaceship the size of Delaware. And here we are sitting practically on its tail. I came back north this morning and found you folks still parked here, and I don’t think that’s too intelligent.”

“It’s Tyler,” Matt said. “He claims there was a radio message. Some bad weather east of here. So we’re staying put.”

“There was a vote on this?”

“One of the Colonel’s votes.”

“Bullshit and gerrymander.”

“Yeah, basically.”

“He claims there was a radio message?”

“Well—the radio blew up.”

“While he was using it?”

“Supposedly.”

“Any witnesses?”

“Nope.”

“You put up with this horseshit?”

“He’s not a stupid man, Tom. He had the Committee rolled up like a carpet. Made me look paranoid.”

“A little paranoia’s not a bad thing. I was careful coming toward camp. Left my camper in back of a billboard and hiked away from the road. I spent most of the afternoon hidden behind a rise south of here watching folks mill around. Am I crazy, or is Joey Commoner standing guard on Abby’s trailer?”

Matt told him about the insect woman, about William’s death and Abby’s altercation with the Colonel.

Kindle listened carefully, eyes wide. “She had wings?”

“I saw her in the air,” Matt said. “Yes, she had wings. They looked like butterfly wings.”

“Oh, Matt… too many fuckin’ miracles,” Kindle said.

“Uh-huh.” That about summed it up.

Kindle held his rifle in his lap. “The question is, what are you planning to do about it?”

“He can’t keep Abby in her trailer indefinitely. Weather or no weather, we’ll have to move on soon.”

“Might not be time. I don’t know why Tyler’s stalling, but I don’t think it matters. That mountain on the horizon isn’t going to wait for us. It’s not just Tyler’s risk. There’s Abby—and that old lady, Miriam—”

And Beth, Matt thought. “But Tyler’s still got the Committee wrapped up.” ^ ^

“I’m not talking about a vote, I’m talking about haying. Bugging out. Soon. Say, tonight.”

“ You just got back.”

“I mean everybody. Everybody who isn’t playing handmaiden to Colonel Tyler. I saw Tim Belanger headed east by himself. Obviously he’s got the right idea. So we round up Abby, we get Miriam—”

“Beth,” Matt said.

“And Beth, and we take one of these big RVs and leave before the Colonel gets his act together.”

“It would have to be this camper. I don’t want to leave my medical supplies behind.”

“Okay, this camper. There’s room for everybody until we can find more transportation. We’re only a couple of days from Ohio if we keep moving.”

“I thought you didn’t want to go to Ohio. I thought you wanted to see the Wind River Range.”

“Maybe I just want to see the last of Tyler. Maybe I don’t like the fact that he locked up Abby Cushman.” Kindle lifted his rifle and sighted down the length of it. “Or maybe some asshole talked me into thinking of this fuckin’ trailer camp as a town.”

Beth was ashamed of what she had told Joey… but tantalized by it, too.

He had reacted with an enraged denial, and here was the scary part: she liked it.

She had always liked her ability to rouse Joey from his slumberous complacency—to make him horny; to make him mad. Poke the tiger and see if he bites. Even if it was her he bit. Maybe especially if it was her.

She had left Joey by the dead fire in back of the house, had left him stewing in his own anger, and it was only fair, Beth told herself; not nice, but fair; now they were even.