A Town Called Dust: The Territory 1 (2 page)

The sun was angry. The sun was always angry. Squid wiped his hand over his forehead, clearing away the sweat and dust and lifting his thick black hair from his eyes. He shook his hands in front of him, clenching and unclenching his fists. Fourteen times he’d hit this log with the axe, fourteen attempts to split it into a size suitable for the fireplace, and each time nothing had happened, nothing except his palms were left throbbing just a little bit more. He knew what he had to do. There were twenty-eight concentric rings in the log and one broad crack, deeper and darker than the rest that ran out from the center. That should be the weak spot—if he hit the log there it should split apart easily. He knew what he had to do. He just couldn’t do it.

Squid picked up the axe again. He’d give it one more try. He squared his feet, lifted the axe over his head, aimed for the crack, and swung. This time the axe glanced off the edge of the log, sending a few splinters of wood flying before it went spearing into the ground with a heavy thud. The weight of the axe pulled Squid sideways. He lost his balance, pirouetted, and landed face down in the dirt.

“Squid!”

Squid lifted himself to his knees and gave his arms a cursory brush over, not that it did much; out here red dust coated everything. Whenever the wind blew the entire farm received another coat of red tinge. As Squid rose he scooped up a handful of dirt and let it run through his fingers. It was dry. This place wasn’t called Dust for no reason. It hadn’t rained here in years. There had been that light shower two winters ago, enough to turn the sunburned earth darker in spots, but it had done little more than that. Squid watched the fine grains, almost all of them a different color, fall through his fingers until the trickle slowed to a stop. He turned his hand over, dislodging the small peaks that had formed, and brushed his palms together.

“Squid!”

Squid stared out past the fence of his uncle’s farm. The world was red as far as he could see and here, in the Central Territory, that was a long way. The land was flat, flat all the way to the horizon, flat in the way that makes you laugh at people who say the world is round. Squid looked at the rusting iron gate that marked the border between the world of the farm and the world out there. It was leaning outward, so crooked on its hinges that it looked back at Squid like a mocking smile. The gate’s faded black bars with their covering of copper-brown rust were set in what had once been a symmetrical pattern, taller at the center and getting shorter toward the hinges. Squid didn’t like the way some of the bars were missing or broken; it made him nervous. He liked it much better when things were complete and organized. Instinctively he felt for the small key that hung around his neck. Holding it, even just gripping the shape of it through his shirt, always made him feel calmer.

Squid had thought about running away. He’d thought about it even more since Uncle had stopped him going to school. Three days a week he would be picked up by wagon, or the town’s bio-truck if it happened to be working, and ride into town with the thirty or so other children growing up on farms around Dust. There they would go to the schoolhouse run by the Sisters of Glorious God the Redeemer and learn reading, writing, religion and numbers. Squid didn’t like being around the Sisters, or the other students much, but he liked numbers. That was what he was best at. That was what made him happy. Uncle had never been keen on Squid going to school but Aunt had insisted. “I don’t want to raise no illiterate,” she had said. Eventually though, Uncle had got his way and Squid wasn’t allowed to go to school anymore.

“There’s too much work on the farm,” Uncle had said. “You can read and write now, what else do you need?”

But Squid knew there were lots of things he didn’t know yet and he wanted to learn them, like why were some numbers clean like four divide two and why were some messy like four divide three? How did people know how big to make the legs of a water tower so that they were strong enough? Could you really keep walking in a straight line and end up where you started from? He wanted to run away and go somewhere that would teach these things. He’d even got as far as packing a small sack with food from the kitchen and sneaking away in the middle of the night, but when he’d reached the front gate he’d just stood and stared at it for three hours. Uncle was right when he told him he didn’t have anywhere else to go. Besides, his uncle and aunt had been good to him, taking him in like they had done, raising him like their own son.

“Squid!” 

Squid’s shoulders sank at the sound of Uncle’s repeated calling.

“Dammit, boy!” Uncle called again, a short snap cracking with irritation. “Stop your daydreamin’ and come on. We got a whole paddock to turn!”

That tone of voice meant Uncle was angry, although that went without saying. Uncle, like the sun, was always angry.

“Sorry, Uncle,” Squid said as he hurried back toward the farmhouse, moving his uncoordinated body as fast as he could. He was a boy who certainly didn’t look his fifteen years. His arms and legs were too thin, his head was too big and his torso too small. The hessian bag shirt he wore hung heavily from his pointed shoulders, barely touching him again until it brushed the tops of his legs. He did have one redeeming feature, though. He was blessed with thick waves of black hair that shone with an almost blue luster. Usually his hair clung to his scalp with grease and sweat, but last night had been monthly bath night and now that it was freshly washed his hair flopped lazily across his forehead.

Uncle stood on the front step of the farmhouse watching Squid approach. Uncle was a small man too, but not in the way of his nephew. He was short and stocky, a wine barrel with arms and legs. He wore a loose cotton shirt and pants. They were old and worn but still airy and soft compared with Squid’s rough hessian. His face was round beneath his balding brown hair, a dinner plate with the features crammed too close together in the center.

“You deserve a bloody hidin’, boy,” Uncle said when Squid reached him. “We got market tomorrow.”

Squid knew this.

“And a whole paddock to turn before then.”

Squid also knew this.

“You’ve got no idea, do you, boy? All these years I raised you and you don’t know the first damned thing about dirt farmin’.”

Squid had heard this more times than he could remember. As it happened, he knew an awful lot about dirt farming. His uncle never tired of reminding him that it was the most important job in the Territory. If the dirt farmers didn’t provide fertile soil, there would be no food. Dirt farmers were the only thing keeping people living out here. It was as simple as that. Squid mostly knew when Uncle was wrong, but in this he was right. It was no secret that nothing of value would grow in the red dust that spread away from them in every direction. Dirt farmers turned their fields, digging up the darker soil beneath, treating it with fertilizer, and selling it on to the farmers who grew crops. All this so they could survive out here in the middle of the endless red dirt beneath the blisteringly hot sun. It seemed to Squid that if it was so difficult to live out here then maybe they weren’t supposed to be here in the first place.

The Sisters of Glorious God the Redeemer said the ground had been cursed during the time of the Reckoning, made infertile by God as punishment for the sins of mankind. People were forced to survive on cursed land because of whatever the Ancestors had done, as if the ghouls weren’t sufficient punishment. Squid had never actually seen a ghoul, but he’d heard the stories and sometimes stories were enough.

“We’ve only got this afternoon to turn the field because you took so long on the wood,” Uncle said.

“Yes, Uncle,” Squid answered, wondering what his uncle had been doing all morning, though he’d learned long ago that it was best not to ask these sorts of questions.

“We’ll have to turn the field light now. That’s all we got time for.”

“But if we turn it light it won’t be very good,” Squid said. “The farmers will complain.”

“Let ’em complain,” Uncle said. “They can have it hard for a while.”

“But isn’t that where we get our food from?” Squid asked.

“Enough, I’ve told you how it’s gonna be.”

“We could do another treatment of the soil in storage,” Squid said. “We could make it really good quality.”

“Since when do you run this farm?” Uncle glared at Squid through beady brown eyes. His face seemed to swallow them up like two thumbtacks pressed into the round dough of his face. 

Squid was silent.

“That’s what I thought,” Uncle said. “I want quantity, not quality. Now go get the horse.”

The farm had three horses but Squid knew which one Uncle meant. He meant The Horse. Squid hated The Horse and The Horse hated him. He wasn’t really sure why this was, it was just the way it had always been, ever since the day Uncle had led the enormous animal through the farm’s front gate and it had stopped, snorted brutishly and stared at Squid with unwavering eyes.

“I … um …” Squid started, grabbing at the key around his neck, using his fingers to push it into his palm.

“Scared of a bloody horse,” Uncle said to no one in particular, and then turned his attention back to Squid. “I should feed you to the ghouls!”

Uncle used to tell Squid stories of the ghouls. He would say that if Squid didn’t behave he was happy to take him all the way to the ghoul-proof fence, toss him over and leave him to be eaten. If a ghoul bit a person, the person became one of them, a snarling monster without a name. Considering his name was about the only thing Squid had, he didn’t want to lose it.

Squid rounded the back of the stable behind the farmhouse, ducked under the fence and moved to the large open door. He slipped his head slowly around the corner, peering into the dimness of the stable, and let out a small squeak as he fell backward, landing in the dirt for the second time that afternoon. The Horse was there, right there, as if it had known Squid was coming. The animal looked at him through big brown eyes rimmed with white and snorted loudly, almost as if it were laughing.

Squid stood, not taking his eyes off the giant beast of burden. He stepped sideways, inching toward where the halter and rope hung from a nail on the wall. He grabbed at them, and when they didn’t come down he hesitantly turned away to unhook them. When he looked back, The Horse was gone.

Squid looked from side to side. There was only one thing Squid hated more than being face to face with The Horse, and that was not being face to face with The Horse. He walked out of the stable and was, in some small way, relieved to see The Horse standing just around the corner staring at him. Squid took a step toward it. It took one back. Squid stepped again. So did The Horse. This little game continued for fifteen steps.

“What are you doing?!” Uncle called. “Just get the bloody thing!”

Squid realized that, as was so often the case, it was either face Uncle or face The Horse. There was no contest. Squid chased The Horse around the dusty paddock for ten minutes before Uncle came over, snatched the rope from Squid’s hand and stalked toward The Horse. He grabbed the animal roughly by the mane and pulled its head down to his level, where he buckled the halter, attached the rope and led it out of the yard.

“Useless,” he said as he passed Squid.

Soon Squid and Uncle stood in the second of the farm’s three paddocks under the scorching afternoon sun. Squid dragged the turning plow over, ready to harness it to The Horse. Even though he could feel himself sweating, the sun, hot as a branding iron, lifted the sweat away instantly. The Horse watched Squid as Uncle attached the harness to the plow. The Horse was blaming him for this, Squid could tell. He looked down, afraid of catching the dark stare of The Horse, when a bag of fertilizer hit him in the face. He looked at Uncle.

“Follow behind,” Uncle said. “I’ll plow and you fertilize.”

That’s how it went for the remainder of the afternoon. They worked their way up and down the paddock in the same pattern they always used. Up and back. Up and back. Uncle sat on the plow, whipping The Horse with the long reins, while Squid walked along behind, scattering the small round balls of fertilizer into the half-turned red dirt. He coughed intermittently as the plow lifted the top layer of dust into the air. His hands, coated with the black fertilizer, smelled like a blocked outhouse. He made the mistake more than once of wiping the red dust from his face, leaving the smell lingering under his nose for at least one trip up the paddock. Squid counted the steps: two hundred and twelve up, two hundred and thirty-six back. Uncle wasn’t plowing straight.

Even as Squid worked, he knew it was pointless. They weren’t turning the field deep enough to get decent soil. You could fertilize the topsoil with all the toilet-smelling black powder you wanted and still nothing would grow in it.

*

Uncle was driving the plow over the last unturned dust in the field when the final glimpse of the sun dropped into retirement for the day. Squid could feel the fingers of the night air working their way into his hessian sack. Winter had definitely come early this year; the nights were fast becoming cold. He shivered, goose bumps covering his skin. Here, in the land of permanent suntan, a cold they hadn’t felt in a long time was coming.

The Horse, after many long hours of work, looked accusingly at Squid as if he had been the one constantly whipping down on the reins. Squid pulled the drawstring closed on the last bag of fertilizer and tossed it on the ground as Uncle dismounted from the plow. Uncle arched his back and let out a long groan, rubbing his backside. 

“Tough afternoon,” he said.

Squid’s legs ached, but he said nothing.

“I want to get to market early in the mornin’, Squid,” Uncle said to him, “so we can get a good spot.”

“We’ll need some advantage,” Squid said.

“And what are you meaning by that, boy?” 

Uncle pulled his chubby fingers into a fist and Squid slunk back from an anticipated blow. 

“I … I just meant that it’s best to get an advantage over the other sellers. Like you always say,” Squid blurted out. “You’re always right.”