A gust of wind whipped his hair into a frenzy and tugged at his ker. Conner turned away from the view and saw Gloralai heading up with her own sagging haulpole. He gave her a hand dumping the buckets.
“Thanks,” she said, wiping her forehead. “You done for the day?”
He nodded. “You?”
Gloralai laughed. Her hair hung down over her freckled face in sweaty clumps. She untied what was left of her ponytail, gathered the loose strands off her face, and began tying it back up. “I probably got two more hauls. Depending how much I spill. Don’t know how you haul as fast as you do.”
“It’s ’cause I don’t want to be here.” He hoped the here didn’t sound as general as he meant it. It was more than school or the pump-pit. It was all of Shantytown. He picked up his pole and adjusted one of the buckets in its notch so it wouldn’t slide out. “C’mon. We’ll haul one load each, and you can be done for the day.”
Gloralai smiled and finished knotting her hair. She was seventeen, a year younger than Conner, bronze-skinned and pretty with dark freckles across her nose. Conner didn’t want to admit it, even to himself, but part of him didn’t want to leave the pump right then. And hauling one more load didn’t feel like hell when it wasn’t mandatory, when he could choose.
Over Gloralai’s shoulder, he spotted Ryder trudging up the slope. The boy seemed to catch this moment between his two classmates. He turned his haulpole sideways, the buckets heavy and swaying dangerously, and Conner had to dodge out of the way. He danced down the loose sand and nearly lost his footing.
“Watch it,” Gloralai said.
“Fuck off,” Ryder told her.
Gloralai caught up with Conner and the two of them marched down with their empty buckets. Out across the jumbled rooftops of Shantytown, a hammer beat a rhythmic tune and a gull cried out. Conner tried to soak it all up, the sights and sounds of home, as he followed Gloralai back into the tunnel.
“You were serious,” she said, eyeing him. “I thought you were eager to get out of here.”
“Hey, I figure you’re itching to go as well. Maybe if I haul a load for you, you’ll buy me a beer at the Dive Bar.”
“You think so?” she asked, smiling.
Conner shrugged. At the bottom of the zigzag of warped planks, the groaning monster nodded its sad head and pumped water from the earth. It bobbed up and down while Conner and Gloralai stood in line to get their buckets filled. As the sand heaped in and spilled over, Conner watched a diver emerge near the pump and hand tools up to an assistant. Must be down there repairing a connector rod or part of the pipeline. That’s the life Conner should’ve had. If he’d made it into dive school, things would’ve been different. A diver, not a sissyfoot. Just like his brother and sister, out there scavenging and finding the spoils that cities were made of. Maybe then he wouldn’t have gotten worn down, would’ve spent more time out of the wind, wouldn’t be thinking of leaving.
“Get ’er going,” the foreman barked, and Conner saw that his buckets were full. Gloralai already had hers shouldered, was trudging up the planks. She yelled for him to hurry or she’d drink both their beers.
11 • A Date?
Conner and Gloralai dumped their buckets and turned toward town. From the top of the ridge, they had a commanding view of the Shantytown slums. Conner could pick out the corrugated metal roof of the small shack he shared with his brother. The dune behind their shack had been creeping; the back half was already buried. Another month, and the sand would tumble over the roof and pile up around the front door. They could dig their way in for a while, but then it’d be time to cut their losses and move. Unless Rob was on his own. The dive school would have to take him in, as much promise as he’d shown. Or Graham would make him an apprentice. Or Palmer would have to settle down and stop running around with that asshole Hap. Something would have to change.
Beyond his home and the scattering of roofs and half-buried shops sat Springston with its rows of sandscrapers jutting up into the wind. Conner could just barely make out the outline of the great wall beyond the scrapers. The wall disappeared as he and Gloralai made their way off the ridge and behind the dunes. Soon it was just the tops of the tallest structures, those misshapen and disjointed stacks of cubes—little hovels and homes and shops built one atop the other with no plan and no coordination. Wisps of sand streamed from their roofs and the wind howled through their eaves. And then the last of the city vanished, and only the location of the dump could be determined, flocks of crows hanging majestically in the air, blacks wings unbeating, riding that rolling zephyr that marched in from No Man’s Land and carried with it the thunder of the gods and the sand that was the bane of all their existences.
Conner listened beyond the wind and the crunch of sand beneath his boots and could just make out the distant and beating drums. These were the thundering booms that built and built in men’s chests. These were the echoes of rebel bombs that brought back the horrors of loved ones blown to bits. It was the sound that would not stop, the noise that pervaded men’s dreams and haunted their waking hours, the torture that drove them mad and madder until they could take no more of it. Until they fled to the mountains and were never heard from again. Or until they staggered into No Man’s Land to find the source of this abuse, to beg it to stop. This was why men packed up their families and left for another life elsewhere. Or abandoned them in a shoddy tent.
“You ever dream of getting out of here?” Conner asked.
Gloralai nodded. “All the time.” She shook the ker around her neck, dumping out the grit.[4] “I’ve got a brother in Low-Pub who says he can get me a job in a bar down there. He’s a bouncer. But I gotta wait until I’m eighteen.”
“Which bar?” Conner knew what sorts of jobs had age requirements. He tried to imagine Gloralai doing what his mother did, and a rage built up inside him.
“Lucky Luke’s. It’s a dive bar.”
“Oh, yeah.” Conner ran his fingers through his hair, shaking out the matte.[5]
“You know it?”
“I know of it. My sister used to work there. Bartending. You didn’t have to be eighteen to bartend back then.”
“You don’t have to be eighteen to bartend now.” Gloralai led him to the right of a dune and onto a path. A group of kids sledded past on sheets of tin, screaming and laughing. “You gotta be eighteen to work in the brothel upstairs,” she said.
Conner choked on sand. He fumbled for his canteen, even though he knew it held the barest of splashes.
“I’m only kidding,” she said, laughing. “My dad just says until I’m grown I have to live with them and obey their rules. Typical parental bullshit.”
“Yeah, typical,” Conner said. But what he thought was how great it would be to have someone else setting the rules. All he and his little brother had were each other. Palmer and Vic had gone off to make their fortunes diving, leaving the two of them to fend for themselves. When their father disappeared, he had left the entire family destitute when once they’d had everything. And their mom—Conner didn’t know where to start with her. He sometimes wished he didn’t have a mom.
He pushed this out of mind. Just as he pushed tomorrow's camping trip back to some dark corner. He concentrated on Gloralai there at his side—tried to live in the moment while he could. Together, they angled toward a half-buried strip of shacks jutting out of a low dune. A generator rattled and smoked on the roof of one. Inside, there was a glow of light, and hanging from the sand-dusted roof was a neon Coors sign with the jagged shape of the westward peaks lit above. Conner nearly pointed out that his sister had salvaged that sign, as he often did when he saw something she’d found and had rescued from the sand.