satisfaction brought him back. You know?'
'Whole lot of satisfaction,' Curt said automatically. Thebusiness about curiosity and the cat was a part of Troop D life, not quite an in-joke, just something that had crept into the day-to-day diction of the job. Ennis and Curt watched the old man go. 'Anything else you want to pass on before we talk to Sergeant Schoondist?' Ennis asked.
'Yeah,' Curds said. 'It's earthquake country in there.'
'Earthquake country? Just what in the hell does that mean?'
So Curds told Ennis about a show he'd seen on the PBS station out of Pittsburgh just the week before. By then a number of people had drifted over. Among them were Phil Candleton, Arky Arkanian, Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Sandy Dearborn, and Sergeant Schoondist himself.
The program had been about predicting earthquakes. Scientists were a long way from developing a sure-fire way of doing that, Curds said, but most of them believed it could be done, in time. Because there were forewarnings. Animals felt them, and quite often people did, too. Dogs got restless and barked to be let outside. Cattle ran around in their stalls or knocked down the fences of their pastures. Caged chickens sometimes flapped so frantically they broke their wings. Some people claimed to hear a high humming sound from the earth fifteen or twenty minutes before a big temblor (and if some people could hear that sound, it stood to reason that most animals would hear it even more clearly). Also, it got cold. Not everyone felt these odd pre-earthquake cold pockets, but a great many people did. There was even some meteorological data to support the subjective reports.
'Are you shitting me?' Tony Schoondist asked.
No indeed, Curt replied. Two hours before the big quake of 1906, temperatures in San Francisco had dropped a full seven degrees; that was a recorded fact. This although all other weather conditions had remained constant.
'Fascinating,' Ennis said, 'but what's it got to do with the Buick?'
By then there were enough Troopers present to form a little circle of listeners. Curtis looked around at them, knowing he might spend the next six months or so tagged the Earthquake Kid on radio calls, but too jazzed to care. He said that while Ennis was in the gas station office questioning Bradley Roach, he himself had been sitting behind that strange oversized steering wheel, still being careful not to touch anything except with the sides of his hands. And as he sat there, he started to hear a humming sound, very high. He told them he had felt it, as well.
'It came out of nowhere, this high steady hum. I could feel it buzzing in my fillings. I think if it had been much stronger, it would've actually jingled the change in my pocket. There's a word for that, we learned it in physics, I think, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is.'
'A harmonic,' Tony said. 'That's when two things start to vibrate together, like tuning-forks or wine-glasses.'
Curtis was nodding. 'Yeah, that's it. I don't know what could be causing it, but it's very powerful. It seemed to settle right in the middle of my head, the way the sound of the powerlines up on the Bluff does when you're stand-ing right underneath them. This is going to sound crazy, but after a minute or so, that hum almost sounded like talking.'
'I laid a girl up dere on d'Bluffs once,' Arky said senti-mentally, sounding more like Lawrence Welk than ever. 'And it was pretty harmonic, all right. Buzz, buzz, buzz.'
'Save it for your memoirs, bub,' Tony said. 'Go on, Curtis.'
'I thought at first it was the radio,' Curt said, 'because it sounded a little bit like that, too: an old vacuum-tube radio that's on and tuned to music coming from a long way off. So I took my hanky and reached over to kill the power. That's when I found out the knobs don't move, either of them. It's no more a real radio than . . . well, than Phil Candleton's a real State Trooper.'
'That's
'Whole lot of satisfaction,' Curt said automatically. Thebusiness about curiosity and the cat was a part of Troop D life, not quite an in-joke, just something that had crept into the day-to-day diction of the job. Ennis and Curt watched the old man go. 'Anything else you want to pass on before we talk to Sergeant Schoondist?' Ennis asked.
'Yeah,' Curds said. 'It's earthquake country in there.'
'Earthquake country? Just what in the hell does that mean?'
So Curds told Ennis about a show he'd seen on the PBS station out of Pittsburgh just the week before. By then a number of people had drifted over. Among them were Phil Candleton, Arky Arkanian, Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Sandy Dearborn, and Sergeant Schoondist himself.
The program had been about predicting earthquakes. Scientists were a long way from developing a sure-fire way of doing that, Curds said, but most of them believed it could be done, in time. Because there were forewarnings. Animals felt them, and quite often people did, too. Dogs got restless and barked to be let outside. Cattle ran around in their stalls or knocked down the fences of their pastures. Caged chickens sometimes flapped so frantically they broke their wings. Some people claimed to hear a high humming sound from the earth fifteen or twenty minutes before a big temblor (and if some people could hear that sound, it stood to reason that most animals would hear it even more clearly). Also, it got cold. Not everyone felt these odd pre-earthquake cold pockets, but a great many people did. There was even some meteorological data to support the subjective reports.
'Are you shitting me?' Tony Schoondist asked.
No indeed, Curt replied. Two hours before the big quake of 1906, temperatures in San Francisco had dropped a full seven degrees; that was a recorded fact. This although all other weather conditions had remained constant.
'Fascinating,' Ennis said, 'but what's it got to do with the Buick?'
By then there were enough Troopers present to form a little circle of listeners. Curtis looked around at them, knowing he might spend the next six months or so tagged the Earthquake Kid on radio calls, but too jazzed to care. He said that while Ennis was in the gas station office questioning Bradley Roach, he himself had been sitting behind that strange oversized steering wheel, still being careful not to touch anything except with the sides of his hands. And as he sat there, he started to hear a humming sound, very high. He told them he had felt it, as well.
'It came out of nowhere, this high steady hum. I could feel it buzzing in my fillings. I think if it had been much stronger, it would've actually jingled the change in my pocket. There's a word for that, we learned it in physics, I think, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is.'
'A harmonic,' Tony said. 'That's when two things start to vibrate together, like tuning-forks or wine-glasses.'
Curtis was nodding. 'Yeah, that's it. I don't know what could be causing it, but it's very powerful. It seemed to settle right in the middle of my head, the way the sound of the powerlines up on the Bluff does when you're stand-ing right underneath them. This is going to sound crazy, but after a minute or so, that hum almost sounded like talking.'
'I laid a girl up dere on d'Bluffs once,' Arky said senti-mentally, sounding more like Lawrence Welk than ever. 'And it was pretty harmonic, all right. Buzz, buzz, buzz.'
'Save it for your memoirs, bub,' Tony said. 'Go on, Curtis.'
'I thought at first it was the radio,' Curt said, 'because it sounded a little bit like that, too: an old vacuum-tube radio that's on and tuned to music coming from a long way off. So I took my hanky and reached over to kill the power. That's when I found out the knobs don't move, either of them. It's no more a real radio than . . . well, than Phil Candleton's a real State Trooper.'
'That's
Similar Books
![Four-Alarm Blaze [Southern Heat 4]](https://fs.dianahicksbooks.com/546059/thumbs/152x264/four-alarm-blaze-southern-heat-4.jpg)
