“Jacob has a bad sunburn,” she tells him. “Stayed in the fields too long last week.”
“The tonic will help with the pain and inflammation.” Pa’s voice settles into an easy rhythm, words he knows by heart—remedies and old methods to cure and ease and heal. “But you’ll need to draw the heat out from the skin with cold cloths, if you can.”
The woman nods and places a silver coin in Pa’s hand. He, in turn, hands her one of the jars, and she gives him an easy smile before striding back up the road through town, the child waving a chubby hand back at me.
Not a moment later, several children sprint up to the wagon, their fingers gripping the back hatch, eyes round and dewy, marveling at the assortment of jars. But two of them, a small girl with black hair cut just below her ears, and a boy with long arms and knobby, dirt-crusted knees, have eyes that sway toward gray—clouded, mottled.Sick.
“Have you brought coins?” Pa asks the children, and several smile, holding up silver pieces in their sticky fingers. It’s clear the townspeople have been awaiting Pa’s arrival, and they bring not only coins but also empty jars from the last time they bought his cure-all—which I imagine Pa will refill with more tonic later on.
But sometimes, instead of coins, they hand Pa bags of wheat or packaged cheese or other strange items in trade. I count the coins and empty jars, keeping a tally in my mind, while my eyes admire the strangeness and beauty of those who come to the wagon—the shades of their skin, some with hair cropped short at the neck, others long and coiled, nearly reaching the ground. Some have twine and feathers and seeds woven into the braids atop their heads, and their clothes have been dyed the many hues of the earth: bright poppy yellow and rich grass-green. My own muted clothes—dark pants and a ragged sweater—seem dull and colorless in comparison.
But after an hour, through the waves of heat, I notice three men standing in the shade of the nearby barn with theBLACKSMITHsign hanging above their heads. They weren’t there when we first arrived in town, and I can’t be sure when they appeared, but their hats are pulled low against their brows, eyes hawklike and watchful, and unlike the other townspeople, they do not wander up the street to the wagon. They are uninterested in Pa’s tonic. Instead they simply watch, smoking rolled cigarettes—like I’ve sometimes seen Pa do back in the valley.
But there’s something in their sidelong gazes, in the casual way they lean against the wood-framed building, as if they’re waiting—in no great hurry—that makes the pulse rise at my neck.
“Did you hear me?” Pa says, louder this time. “One more jar.”
I blink up at him, bringing my focus back, then quickly grab a jar from one of the crates. He places it into the hands of a man with bloodshot eyes, not much older than Pa, who unscrews the lid from the jar and immediately takes a long, slow gulp, eyes tipped back. Desperate for it. Before he turns and staggers away into the blinding heat.
But not everyone is able to make the walk up the street to the wagon. Some sit on sagging porches, their eyes shallow and unfocused. Others cough, their wheezing exhales heard even behind doorways, from their beds somewhere inside.
Many of the townspeople are sick.
Consumption. Just like Mom.
It sneaks into the body, causing fever and blindness and a deep, ragged cough. It hollows out the ears, stripping away all sound. And eventually it takes everything else. Blood on the lips, a sputtering breath, and then a body being buried in the dark riverbank soil.
I didn’t know how bad it was—that nearly an entire town could be sick. And I feel helpless and anxious all at once. The world is not how I imagined.
The wind stirs up the dust on the road, spitting it against doorways and into the back of the wagon, and I cover my eyes. These people are saturated not only with sickness but with dust—it lives in every crevice of this town. But it doesn’t stop a girl from skipping up the road in a yellow dress with white flowers stitched at the collar,then stopping to stand on tiptoes at the back of the wagon. She’s a few years younger than me, and utterly unfazed by the wind and dirt. One of her eyes is a paled gray—lost of its sight—and she uncoils her fingers to reveal a coin in her palm, but it looks melted down, half the size it should be. “My brother is sick,” she mutters, unable to look Pa in the eyes.
But he hands a jar of tonic down to her, and she takes it cautiously, holding it to her small chest. I think Pa is going to retrieve the half coin, but instead he folds the girl’s fingers over it—a gesture for her to keep it—and she jogs back up the street, then ducks into a narrow passage between two dust-scarred homes.
The people here are sun-cracked and weary. You can see the hard-fought existence cut into the deep lines of their faces; living off this land doesn’t come easy. There iswantin their eyes, pain and even desperation. They aren’t how I thought they’d be—and I feel a bite of sadness in my chest, realizing that this land has taken something from them. Season by season, it strips them of hope, and eventually it also takes their lives.
The midday sun burns an arc through the sky, a blazing orb, hours and minutes lost to the heat, making beads of sweat rise against my neck. Time is slipping away,tick, tick, tick.
I glance up the street, to the blacksmith’s shop, but the three men who once stood beside the large doors have slunk away, out of sight. Even the townspeople seem to have settled back into their homes, out of the heat, and I think we will begin the work of closing up the wagon and start out of town, when I see a man making his way up the road, his left leg dragging through the dirt, his creased face bent forward, while a cough rises up from deep withinhis gut. Pa retrieves a jar and meets the man halfway up the road.
“Afternoon, Liam,” Pa remarks, and they shake hands like old friends, speaking quietly while the sun bears down. The man wears no ring, but I wonder,Could he know where to find the Architect? Could anyone in this town know?I haven’t had a moment away from Pa, where I could dare to ask.
My whole body feels stiff, a dryness in my throat, and I hold a hand over my eyes—a soft ringing in my ears—when a woman appears from the edge of my vision, skulking up to the wagon. Her too-long skirt is dragging through the dirt, the hem frayed, threads unspooling behind her, and with every angled, stiff step, the sound of tiny bells can be heardtink, tink, tinking, as if she has them tucked in her hidden pockets.
She braces a bony, shuddering hand against the back edge of the wagon—no silver signet ring on her fingers—and peers in at me with a sharp pinch between her gray, thornlike eyebrows. Instinctively I sink back away from her—her gaze reminds me of the lone coyote, suspicious, distrustful.
“Do you need to buy a jar?” I ask cautiously.
Her white-gray hair, cut shoulder-length, slides back from her face, eyes like dark clouds, and I wonder if her vision is just as stormy—blurs of silt and gray, like looking through muddy water.
Her head cocks to one side. “Who are you?” she asks pointedly, voice a croak, dust living inside her lungs.
My eyes flash to Pa, several yards away, still talking to the man. I swallow, looking back to the old woman. “Vega,” I tell her, my own voice hardly more than a squeak.
“Where have you come from?”
“The valley.” Maybe I shouldn’t say these things, reveal my name or where I’m from, but the twitchy glint of her eyes, leaning close to see me better, forces the truth from my lips. As if no lie could be uttered to her.
She clicks her tongue, wrinkles puckering at the corners of her jaw, as if she’s trying to place me—some memory stored away she’s having a hard time locating. “I don’t recall the tonic man having a daughter in his wagon before.”
