Starfist: FlashFire (27 page)

The ramshackle collection of homes that made up the village of Cuylerville straggled up both sides of a narrow valley through which ran a sluggish river. The Caloons lived high up along the east side of the valley along a steep road from the lowlands. The fields they passed by were freshly harvested, so Charlette couldn’t tell what crops had been grown there. Long warehouses lined each field and there hung about the pastures an odor she couldn’t place immediately. “Donnie, that smell. It smells like— like—” she glanced questioningly at Donnie.

“Yep. That’s thule you smell,” Donnie whispered back. “They store the harvest in them warehouses temporarily ’fore shipping the crops off. Daddy and the other folks hereabouts used to grow grains but the work was hard and there’s more money in thule, and it’s lots easier to grow. All we got to do is harvest the plants and buyers come out from Bibbsville, the county seat, where they got processing plants and a system to distribute the stuff.”

“But, Donnie, it’s illegal to grow the stuff without a license. Do you have a license?”

“Nope. Somebody smuggled some of them plants off Wanderjahr and they grow real good in our climate here. In fact they grow better. I been told the two-delta-ten quadrahydrothuminol isomer in our plants is twicet as strong, more ’n six percent, as in them plants they grow on Wanderjahr,” he said proudly. “Them cigarettes we smoked back in Ashburtonville and on the
Figaro
? They was manufactured right here in Bibbsville. Why, hell, you import that stuff from Wanderjahr, and the price of a pack is ten times what it cost me in Ashburtonville and here we smoke the stuff for nuttin’. So . . .” he shrugged.

“Quadra—?” Donnie had pronounced that long chemical name like he’d grown up with it. He grinned at her, as if to say, There’s more to me than you suspected. Charlette glanced back at Donnie’s father, who’d heard every word, but all he did was smile and nod his head. Not only was she an army deserter but she was now in among a den of smugglers and God only knew what else.

“Geez, Donnie, you ever think maybe one reason people don’t like you folks so much is because you break the laws all the time and cheat people out of their profits?”

“We all gotta make a living, hon.” Donnie grinned. “Ennyway, you was there when they shot all those people at Fort Seymour. The penalty for a little pirating and smuggling ain’t death, don’t ya know?”

As they passed houses on the way to the Caloon home, people came out into their yards and porches and hollered greetings at them. “Thas a mighty good-lookin’ girl ya got there, Aceta,” one crone cackled as they passed by. Aceta, still far ahead of them, grimaced but Timor gave the woman a grin and a friendly wave.

“Hey, Donnie!” a young man about Donnie’s age shouted, “ya look like a city man!” Donnie’s face reddened.

“Git them two married, Aceta,” a big man sitting on his porch yelled down at them, “we cain’t have young folks livin’ in sin around here!” he roared with laughter. Charlette’s face reddened at the remark but she seriously doubted that the concept of sin was well-known among these people.

“Don’t people work around here?” Charlette asked Donnie.

“In the season,” he answered, “but this ain’t the season. The harvest is in, it was a good crop, and folks got money in their pockets. You come at a good time of the year, honeybun.”

The wedding was a strange affair conducted by a man named Bud Clabber, a sort of mayor, justice of the peace, postmaster, and newspaper publisher all rolled into one. He was the latter by default because he was the only person in Cuylerville who owned a radio, so he was the first to receive news from the outside world. He posted the news, printed in big capital letters on plain sheets of paper that he tacked to the wall inside the rundown wooden structure that served as the Cuylerville community center. It looked to Charlette to have been a church a very long time ago. The “service” was civil, short, and to the point.

“Sign these here papers,” Clabber ordered. Perspiration stood out on his inflamed forehead. He hadn’t shaved in days and there were enormous perspiration stains under the armpits of his dirty shirt, which was missing two of its buttons. His hands were dirty but not from manual labor. He had Donnie and Charlette sign four sets of elaborately printed marriage certificates. Then he signed. Then two witnesses were called up from the fifty or so people who’d found the time and energy to attend the ceremony, and they signed. “Okay, you two are legally hitched,” Clabber grunted. “Now, Donnie, kiss yer new wife then get home and do what married folks do, which I know you been doin’ all along anyway.” Everyone present broke into raucous laughter. “You each get a copy of this here certificate,” Clabber shouted above the noise of the laughter and congratulations. “I keep one, and the fourth one goes to the county seat, next time I get up there.” It occurred to Charlette that Clabber was probably the go-between with the people who bought their thule crop.

“We’ll have us a little party tonight, hon, up at the house,” Donnie muttered as he escorted Charlette outside, “but it’s too damn hot to have a shindig right now.”

Outside in the broiling sun people gathered around the couple and offered their best wishes. Nobody offered them any presents, but everyone promised to gather at the Caloon house that night with special dishes for the reception.

“Hold on there!” Clabber shouted, elbowing his way through the crowd. He waved a sheet of paper in his hand. “You, there, Charlette, look here! I was gonna post this on the wall but forgot in all the wedding business. I want you to read this.” He handed her the paper on which was written in large capital letters:

“BIG BATTLES IN ORBIT. CASUALTIES HEAVY. ENEMY FLEET LANDS LARGE REINFORCEMENTS AT FT. SEYMOUR. PRESIDENT CONFIDENT OF OLTIMATE VICTORY.” She noted he’d misspelled “ultimate,” but instead of pointing it out to Mr. Clabber, her heart sank and she let the paper dangle in her hand. The expression on her face made her distress obvious to everyone who crowded around to gape at the news.

“Donnie tol’ us you was an offworlder. Why in hell did you folks start this goddamned war in the first place, girl?” Clabber shouted.

“We . . .” Charlette began.

“Aw, hell, Bud, lay off!” an older man in the crowd said, “this war ain’t no business of ours!” and several other men murmured their agreement.

“Come on, Charlette,” Timor Caloon said, putting his arm around his new daughter-in-law, “let us go home.” As they trudged back up the road, Timor turned to yell back at Clabber, “Bud, you gonna be our newspaper man, ya oughter learn how to spell.”

“You gotta start pullin’ yer own weight around here, girl,” Aceta Caloon told Charlette one day. “You said you worked in a laundry? Well, girl, yew kin start by helpin’ me do my washin’ today.”

“Mother,” Charlette answered, “my name is ‘Charlette.’ How’d you like it if I went around here calling you ‘woman’ all day long?”

Aceta was not used to anyone talking back to her and for a moment she was speechless. “I kin see by those hands o’ yers that you never did a bit of housework in yer life. That ‘laundry’ yew worked in musta had all them machines, ’cause you ain’t never had yer hands in a washtub.”

“I’m not washing anyone’s dirty clothes,” Charlette answered. “You dirtied them, you clean them.”

At first Aceta said nothing, just regarded Charlette speculatively, as if she were deciding whether to hit her or let the insubordination go. Then she took Charlette by the elbow and gently guided her toward the back of the house, saying, “First time through I’ll show you how it’s done ’n we kin do the clothes together. But Charlette, you live in my house, you gotta help me with the work, until you get too big. After the baby you ’n Donnie gonna go off to live by yourselfs ’n you gotta know by then how to run a house proper. I’ll teach you somethin’ about cookin’ too. Donnie will need feeding.”

Charlette discovered that the housework kept her occupied and her mind off what was really beginning to worry her more and more with each passing day. And her nails chipped and her hands got red and cracked.

Charlette also found that the people of Cuylerville were a gregarious, hospitable community. Each family had its own garden and livestock, which provided plenty of nourishment for everyone. Apparently the thule harvest that season had been very good because there was plenty of money to buy amenities, such as alcohol to fuel the continuous parties and gatherings that were life in the village between harvest and planting times, and fuel for running the generators and machinery and other things the people wanted to improve the quality of their simple lives. They accepted Charlette with friendly curiosity. They seemed not to care there was a war on or that their government had declared its independence from the Confederation of Human Worlds or for anything else that took place outside the limits of Cuylerville. No one held it against Charlette that she was an off-worlder and a member of the Confederation army. No one, that is, except Bud Clabber.

One day Clabber visited the Caloons. His face was red and he was perspiring heavily from the walk up the valley. He sat panting on the veranda of their house as the four Caloons—Charlette counted as one of them by then—took chairs out there with him. Sitting on their porches, drinking, smoking thule, and gossiping were the favorite pastimes in Cuylerville after the harvest.

“Harvest was pretty good this year,” Clabber remarked, accepting a cool drink from Aceta as he took a chair next to Timor.

“I’m thinkin’ of goin’ back to growin’ grains, Bud,” Timor said, matter-of-factly.

Clabber started in surprise. “You cain’t do that, Timor!”

“Why cain’t I?” he winked at Charlette. Apparently Timor had threatened to do it more than once, just to nettle Clabber in his prosperous self-confidence.

“Well, well . . .”

“ ’Cause ol’ Bud’ll lose his commissions,” Aceta volunteered.

“Well, Aceta, that ain’t the only reason!” Clabber protested. “We all depend on the money we’re gettin’ for growin’ thule. Besides, they won’t be happy about it, Timor,” he cast a dark look at Timor Caloon.

“Who’re ‘they’?” Charlette asked innocently.

Nobody answered for a long moment and finally Donnie said, “The men in the county seat who make the real money off our crops. Mr. Clabber set the deal up with them so he gets a good commission, but what we get is the leavings. It’s like I tol’ Daddy, and it’s the reason I left here and went to Ashburtonville. You get in bed with them people and they own you.”

“We’re all prospering from those crops, Donnie!” Clabber’s voice rose. It was obvious to Charlette that the joke had gone too far. “Them fellas won’t take too kindly, you do somethin’ stupid like this, Timor!”

“Ah,” Timor shrugged, “I was in the army and now we got Charlette who was a soldier, ’n Donnie, he’s always bin pretty good with a rifle. We kin take care of ourselves, Bud. Yep, I might just switch this year.”

Clabber snorted and shook his head and was silent for a while. Once he’d gotten control of himself he changed the subject. “Donnie tol’ us, Missus Charlette, that you was a soldier in the Confederation Army. Thet true?”

Aceta Caloon shot an angry glare at her son. “Everybody knows that, Bud. Why you puttin’ the mouth on my Donnie?” she said.

Clabber smiled and nodded his head. “But is it true? ’Cause if it is, I should report you to the authorities up at the county seat. You is an ‘enemy alien,’ I think it’s called. Donnie sez,” he glanced apologetically at Aceta, “that you worked in the quartermaster laundry at Fort Seymour. Thet true? See, folks, since I’m the gov’mint official in Cuylerville, I got certain responsibilities for the security of the folks in this village and havin’ an enemy soldier—no offense, Missus Charlette—livin’ here should be reported.”

“Yew know damn well, Bud, that girl ain’t no threat to nobody in Cuylerville,” Timor snorted.

“Well—”

“Yessir, I did work there,” Charlette answered quickly, very relieved that Donnie hadn’t been able to tell anyone what she was really doing in Ashburtonville. She gave him the cover story they had devised. Aceta, who knew very well the part about Charlette being a laundress was not true, kept silent. “So you see, Mr. Clabber, I’m actually a deserter from the army,” she concluded. That word was bitter in her mouth but she spit it out anyway.

“Well. Well, I see,” Clabber said. He was silent for a moment, nodding his head. Then he slapped the arm of his chair with a hand and said, “But I gotta report you, Missus Charlette, yew unnerstand?”

“Well, report away, then,” Aceta said.

“O’ course,” Clabber waved a hand, “we might work sumptin’ out, jist between the five o’ us.”

“ ’N what might that be?” Timor asked, his voice tinged with suspicion. He knew what was coming.

“Well,” Clabber sat forward in his chair and rested his hands on his knees, “you did very good this last harvest, Timor. We all did. We did ’cause I got the connections to get y’all good prices on your thule. Now suppose you jist give me two percent more of what I’m a gonna git you fer next season’s harvest —”

So that was the reason he’d come visiting. Timor Caloon shot to his feet. “Bud Clabber, I known you all yer goddamned miserable life, but if yew don’t get yer goddamned ass off this here porch right goddamned now, I am gonna kick it all the way back down the valley! ’N you send any goddamned ‘report’ on my daughter-in-law to those goddamn crooks up at the seat, this here village is gonna get a new middle-man right goddamned quick! And I am gonna switch crops this year! You tell them people if they want grains they kin get ’em from me direct, otherwise they better keep their asses up at the seat! Now git outta here!”