Mindy McGinnis: In a Handful of Dust

Lucy sat on the bank, quiet. Carter’s reasoning explained why Lynn had been scared. As usual, she’d realized what something meant in the long run, like how this year’s garden would affect the next, and why a sickness moving through the deer meant she should avoid killing the young ones, so they could repopulate. It wasn’t only people who were being crippled, but their entire way of life. Without healthy adults, they could not defend themselves. Even though outside threats were not nearly as common as they had been a decade earlier, there were still passing bands of people who wanted what they had—water.

And now it would be easier to take it from them.

The next day a fresh wave of patients came in. Siblings lay on blankets their brothers and sisters had vacated, either by going home or to the pits Lynn kept burning.

“I don’t understand it,” Vera muttered, her head resting in her hands while her blank eyes coursed over her notes: jumbled, mismatched scraps of paper torn from whatever had been handy as she questioned the sick. So far, nothing had led her back to the beginning, to Maddy.

“You need to rest, Grandma,” Lucy said from her seat on the floor. Her own body was worn out from long hours tending the patients, her emotions worn so flat she no longer flinched when even the smallest bundles headed for the fires. Lynn looked no better, her hair covered with a fine powdering of soot from the dead.

“I can’t rest,” Vera said. “Not until we know where this came from. All we’re doing is treating the symptoms, not stopping the sickness.”

“Maybe so.” Stebbs moved behind her, his strong hands working to ease the tension in her shoulders. “But you’re not going to make any sense out of those scribbles in the state you’re in. You’ve not slept longer than a few hours since this started.”

“I wouldn’t even call it sleeping, what you do,” Lynn agreed. “You just kinda sit real still and doze.”

“It’s an old doctor’s habit, and good to know I’ve still got the knack.”

“Knack or not, you’re going to bed, Doc,” Stebbs said sternly, and Lynn motioned to Lucy to follow her outside.

“She might be immune to polio, but that don’t mean this epidemic won’t kill her,” Lynn said as they walked down to the stream. “Vera says polio thrives when it gets hot. This outbreak is just a taste of what could be coming, if we don’t figure out the source. She won’t sleep sound ’til that happens.”

Lucy found a spot in the tall grass that was well beaten down and took a seat. Heat lightning flickered across dark thunderheads that had formed on the evening horizon. “Not a good sign,” she said, gesturing toward the pink bolts.

Lynn glanced up. “Nope. No rain, no cool air.” A moan rose from the rows of the sick, out of sight beyond the tall grass, but not out of hearing range.

“You doing okay?”

“Mostly,” Lucy said. “It’s just all the harder because I thought it was through.” The sight of Adam, one leg dangling limp and useless at his father’s side as he was carried away, had been bittersweet. He had lived, but what kind of life he would have in their world was yet to be seen.

“I thought it was done too. I even thought about putting out the fires.”

“That was downright hopeful of you.”

Lynn grunted, as she always did when Lucy teased her, but the hard lines of her mouth softened. “Stupid too.”

“You sleeping here again tonight?”

Lynn glanced at the chimney of their shared home, barely visible in the distance in the dying light. She sighed. “We’re needed here.” She stomped her own area of grass and lay down. “Get some sleep,” she said brusquely, and rolled over, her braid dark with grime.

Lucy tossed a clod of dirt at her back. “You need a bath.”

“You need to go the hell to sleep,” Lynn shot back, but even in the dark, Lucy could hear the smile.

Adam’s father never got up the hill to their home. A rider found Devon, collapsed and weakened, when he heard Adam yelling for help, his voice hoarse from calling. Adam rode back to Vera’s in front of the stranger, his father crumpled against the man’s back. Stebbs pulled Devon off the horse as Lucy helped Adam from the saddle on the other side.

“What happened?”

Adam’s lower lip quivered, but he kept the tears from falling. “Daddy got real tired, carrying me up the hill—said he needed to stop and rest a bit. I got sleepy, and when I woke up he was sitting all funny, and he couldn’t get himself up. I yelled and yelled, but no one came.”

“I found ’em,” the stranger in the saddle said. “Heard the boy calling. Sounded more like an injured animal than anything else. I was awful surprised when I came upon the two of them.”

“We thank you for it,” Stebbs said. “There’s plenty that woulda left ’em.”

“Left ’em or done worse,” the rider admitted.

“Can we give you something for your trouble? A drink?”

Lucy stiffened at the words. Water was like gold, and never offered freely to strangers. The man looked from Stebbs to Devon. “Don’t believe I’ll be drinking any of your water, no offense.”

“None taken.” Stebbs nodded curtly, and the stranger rode off, anxious to put miles between himself and them.

“Can you put him somewhere?” Stebbs nodded to Adam, who was still in Lucy’s arms. “I’ll take Devon.”

“What do you think, mister?” Lucy said to Adam, forcing fake cheer into her voice. “Want to camp out tonight?”

“Can I go to the healer lady’s house?”

“My grandma, you mean?” Lucy headed for the cabin, Adam’s body light in her arms. “Why you wanna go there for?”

“She fixed me before. I thought maybe she could finish it up now and make my leg better.”

Lucy swallowed hard before speaking. “Sweetie, didn’t anybody tell you that you won’t ever be using that leg again? It’s ruined.”

Adam shrugged. “Dad says it never hurts to ask. Worst anybody can say is no.”

Vera glanced up when Lucy walked through the door with her burden.

“Devon fell ill taking him home,” Lucy said as she laid Adam on the bed.

“Where’s Devon?” Vera had been at the table, poring over her notes again. A fresh patient meant new information, and she was on her feet in a second.

“Stebbs has him down with the sick.”

“How’d he get back here on foot with Adam?”

Lucy began tucking pillows under Adam’s shoulders to prop him up. “A man on a horse found them, brought them back here.”

“And where is this man?”

“Took off when he saw what we were dealing with.”

“Stebbs let him leave ?”

The shock in her grandma’s voice got Lucy’s attention. She looked up to see that Vera had gone white, her fists clenched.

“Yeah, why?”

“If he picked it up from Devon, he’ll infect everyone he meets. Or die alone in the wilderness.”

Lucy glanced back at the little boy in the bed, his frightened eyes bouncing between the two women. “Let’s hope he didn’t catch it then.”

“Quick as this is moving, it’s a better bet to hope he dies alone.”

It fell to Carter and Lucy to deliver the news to Devon’s wife. The family lived on a remote hill, because Abigail’s mistrust of people ran deep, even more so than Lynn’s. She preferred to take her chances on the hillside, somewhere her family had a good view of everything around them, their own well, and no other houses in sight.

Lucy trudged up the incline, her calf muscles burning. “I don’t know how Devon could’ve made this climb carrying Adam even if he were healthy,” she said.

Carter wiped the sweat off his forehead. “I know she’s got her reasons, but damn, this is inconvenient for the rest of us.”