The Chevy had been used when Dad bought it, back in 1955. The old truck had died, and they couldn't afford anything new, so he'd traded a couple of head to Old Man Lewis. He'd still gotten the worst of the deal; it was only a few months old, but Old Man Lewis's kid had rode it hard and put a hell of a lot more wear on it than he'd let on. Dad had to trade another head to one of his drinking buddies who knew a thing or two about trucks, to get it running with any degree of reliability. Cyrus had done what he could for the electrical parts, swapping out the starter and wires that Brett Lewis had somehow managed to turn into a spaghetti snarl of twisted copper, but at the end of the day it had still cost a good chunk of money to fix up. Dad would have been better off buying a new one.
That said, being there and involved with getting her fixed up, had allowed him to make a few necessary adjustments.
Cyrus was in the middle of adjusting the seat, when he heard the pattering of small feet behind him. He didn't look up until Beth spoke.
“It's about time!”
“Don't blame me, blame Mom and Dad,” Cyrus said. “She needed to do her rounds and drop off the sewing, and he needed to... well, he needed to get away from Mom.”
“Why? Did he think she was gonna make him work?” Beth asked.
Cyrus paused and gave her a long look over his spectacles. She wasn't smiling in the least, but there was a twinkle in her eye.
“You've almost got that deadpan down.” he said, offering a small grin. “Keep it up and grandpa would be proud.”
“I miss him,” Beth said. “He was fun. But he wouldn't be proud it took us a whole week to get on this!”
Cyrus sighed, and turned back to the seat, wiggling it until he could socket the auxiliary stalk in place. “It is what it is, and there's no going back to change the past. Besides, if he knew I was going over to Bunktown, he'd... wait. Us? No no no. I'M going. YOU'RE staying here until I get back. And that's final!”
Beth looked up at him, folded her arms, and squinted.
Cyrus knew that squint well. Mom wore it daily, and he had a sinking feeling as to how this was going to go down.
Five minutes later, with a big scowl on his face, and a triumphant smile on hers, he guided the pickup onto the southern road, and eased the vehicle into a stable thirty miles an hour. It could go faster, yeah, but he wasn't sure it could do that without losing a few bits along the way.
A few miles down the road, Beth stirred and pointed at the auxiliary stalk. “How does that work?”
Cyrus flicked his eyes to her, back to the road. Yeah, it was open and there was nobody around for miles if you didn't count the coyotes, but old habits died hard. “Clumsily,” he said. “But it gets the job done. The plate covers the pedals so my feet can't touch them, and I have to do everything by hand. I turn the grip this way, the rods and depress the gas pedal.” The truck coughed and sped up. “I turn it the other way, it gradually eases up on the gas, and depresses the brake. It's all really depressing.”
“That joke's depressing,” But Beth's smile grew a bit.
“Honestly I could do better, but it's a rare day I get the truck for a while. It's still a pain in the ass...butt, to shift, because that ties up both of my hands. I don't trust my legs to brace the wheel if things get too tight.”
“Does it hurt your legs to drive without it?” Beth asked.
“Yeah, some. There isn't as much muscle as there used to be. But the main problem is that my nerves are fried. They get spasms sometimes, especially if I put too much strain on them for too long.”
Beth nodded, her smile fading. “Lacey told me not to ask about what happened to you. Over in the war, I mean.”
Cyrus kept his eyes fixed forward. Easier to talk when he wasn't looking at her. “Did she, now?”
“Said it might hurt you to remember it.”
Cyrus stared out the window, at the sandy, rocky mess of Texas they were passing through. “Nah. Not anymore. You can ask if you're curious.”
“Are you lying to me?”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Cyrus glanced over to see her face screwed up with worry. It was comical, in its way. Ten minutes ago she'd been giving him the fifth degree and refusing to be left behind, to the point of standing in front of the truck and refusing to budge. Now she was horrified at the thought he might feel bad over stuff that was long past.
Thing was, she wasn't entirely wrong. And while Cyrus wasn't lying, exactly, he wasn't telling the full truth. There were nights where he couldn't risk going to sleep, because he knew the dreams were just waiting to take him back to that secluded ridge, that little patch of green where he'd broken in body and mind.
But he looked at her, took his hand off the wheel for a few seconds to straighten his spectacles as he thought, let her see him thinking. Then he nodded, and shifted his gaze back to the road, and his hand back to the wheel. “No. It's fine. If you got questions, ask'em. I won't get riled up.”
“Um.” Beth fell silent for a bit. Probably getting her thoughts in order. After a bit, she spoke up again. “Why did you join the army?”
That hadn't been the question that he was expecting. His sister was surprising him a lot, lately. But then, he'd never really interacted much with her before. She'd been five when he left, and once he got back, Mom had pretty much started the girls on their own path, keeping them away from their brothers and isolating them upstairs when they weren't doing chores or being hauled out to church or the store. Only Susan had come and checked in on him, kept him company and helped him with small things, and that was only early once he'd got back. The last few years she hadn't visited much. She'd been husband hunting, he knew. Trying to land someone good, so she could get away from home and stop being under Mom's thumb.
“Why did I join the army,” he said, dragging his mind back to Beth's question. “I guess it was because if I didn't, then Dad and I would get into it. And the best case outcome there is that I get stuck running the farm. And I could do it... could have done it, back before I got busted up, I mean. But I wouldn't 'a been happy doing it.”
“You think it would have gone that smooth?” Beth said. “Mom keeps going on about how we need God to turn things around for us or we're sunk.”
“Well, back when I joined, it was before the drought. Things were a little easier then,” he said, remembering the sound of Mom's laughter. Remembering her and Dad turning up the old radio in the later parts of the night, when they wanted some family time without disturbing the kids too much. “Now? Now I don't know how the farm's going to go. I couldn't handle it now. My body couldn't take the stress, and there's too much debt. Best I could do is buy y'all some time.”
“You joined the army because you didn't want the farm? What did you want?”
Cyrus rattled his fingers on the steering wheel. “I guess I wanted to get away from a place where generatios of Colfaxes grew up, lived, and died without leaving the county. I guess I thought there was more out there, and I wanted to go and see it. And I was right. It's a big world outside. And some of the things people do out there are pretty good, and gives me hope that maybe we'll do those things too someday, and make our home stompin' grounds a little better. And some of the things that happen in different parts of the world are just plain awful, and it's good to see it and know that where you came from isn't actually as bad as you worry it is. And the army was a way for me to go out and see all that, be in all that, and get paid at the same time.”
“So it isn't because you wanted to shoot people?” Beth sounded concerned.
“Fu— fudge, no,” Cyrus amended. “I knew that part was going to be horrible. Some people need shooting, though, and I made my peace with having to do it if it came down to it. And it did. And it was horrible and I don't think it helped anything. But it turns out there's a lot to do in the military that doesn't involve shooting at people. I ended up driving a truck, hauling grunts and supplies around behind the lines, mostly. Met a lot of people from the allied forces that way, too. Got to ferry them around. Best part of that job was that I had plenty of time to read, while I was waiting for other people to get their thumbs out of... to get their stuff in order, so I could load and unload my cargo. Books got me through some bad times over there.”
“Mom doesn't like us reading,” Beth said. “We get around that some. Lacey found an old bible in the back storage shed where the pages got all wormed up. Susan cut the cover off, and we wrap it around books so it looks like they're the bible. Mom hasn't figured it out yet.”
“I'm more impressed that you got books into the house to read, I thought I was the only one.”
There was an odd patch of quiet, and Cyrus looked over to see her staring out the window just a little too innocently.
“Are you the reason some of my books have gone missing?”
“Um...”
“Well, you little twerp!”
“It isn't me! We pay... I mean, I'M not the one who borrows them.”
“I want my Jules Verne back! Both volumes!”
“You finished those half a year ago!”
“First read, yeah, but I want to read them again!”
“...fine. But, can we have that one with the little guys on the quest and the elves and stuff? We try to give a grace period to let you forget about things, but that one's really good...”
“Jesus.” Cyrus rolled his eyes. “All right. You're doing me a solid here. Just bring back stuff when it's done, no need to sneak around.”
“You don't want Mom throwing it in the garbage, we got to sneak around.”
“Besides her, right.” In retrospect, it wasn't too strange. The girls were stuck upstairs almost every night, with little to do. Of course they'd jump at the chance to get something to break the monotony. And the fact that it was just a little bit rebellious against Mom, well, that was icing on the cake to the ones who were old enough to start feeling like they had to act up every now and then.
The rest of the trip revolved around book negotiations, and trying to figure out what to trade to get back the novels he'd noticed missing. It was a pretty good run, and he was almost sorry to see the looming presence of the transformer station in the distance.
They had arrived at Bunktown.