Read Online Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlin R. Kiernan (Volume One) by Caitlin R. Kiernan - Free Book Online
Authors: Caitlin R. Kiernan
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their crutches and faded Union blues; twenty-four years past Appomattox, and Grant was dead, and Lee was dead, and those old men, marching clear from Main to Bedford Street despite the drizzling sky. He’d sat apart from the others, staring out across the darkening lake, the docks and the club fleet, the canoes and sailboats and Mr. Clarke’s electric catamaran moored safe against the threat of a stormy night.
And then someone, maybe Mr. D. W. C. Bidwell, had brought up the matter of the girl, and faces, smoke-shrouded, brandy-flushed, had turned towards him, curious, and
Oh, yes, didn’t you know? Why, Tom here saw her, saw the whole damnable affair…
and so he’d politely excused himself. Had left them mum bling before the crackle and glow of the big sandstone fireplace. By the time he’d reached the landing and the lush path of burgundy carpet that would carry him back to his room, the conversation had turned, inevitably, to iron and coke, the new Navy ironclads for which Carnegie, Phipps, and Co. had been contracted to produce the steel plating. Another triumph for Pittsburgh, another blow to the Chicago competition.
Now, Tom shut the door behind him, and so the only light was dim grey through the windows; for a moment, he stood in the dark before reaching for the lamp chain. Above the lake, the clouds were breaking apart, hints of stars and moonshine in the rifts. The lake almost glimmered, seeming to ripple and swirl out towards in the middle.
It’s only wind on the water, Tom Givens told himself as he pulled the lamp chain hard and warm yellow drenched the room, drove the blackness outside, and he could see nothing in the windows except the room mirrored and himself, tall and very much in need of a shave. By the clock on his dresser, it was just past nine. At least, he thought, maybe there’ll be no storms tonight. But the wind still battered itself against the clubhouse, and he sat down in a chair, back to the lake, and poured amber whiskey. He drank it quickly and quickly refilled the glass, trying not to hear the gusting wind, the shutter rattle, the brush of pine boughs like old women wringing their bony hands.
By ten, the bottle was empty, and Tom Givens was asleep in the chair, his stocking feet propped on the bed.
An hour later, the rain began.
The storm was as alive as anything else, as alive as the ancient shale and sandstone mountains and alive as the wind; as alive as the scorch and burn of the huge Bessemer converters and the slag-scabbed molten iron that rolled like God’s own blood across the slippery steel floors of the Cambria mills. And also as perfectly mindless, as passion ately indifferent. It had been born somewhere over Nebraska two days before, had swept across the plains and in Kansas spawned twister children who danced along the winding Cottonwood River and wiped away roads and farms. It had seduced Arctic air spilling off the Great Lakes and sired blizzards across Michigan and Indiana, had spoken its throaty poetry of gale and thunder throughout the Ohio River Valley, and finally, with violent arms, would embrace the entire mid-Atlantic seaboard.
As Tom Givens had listened distractedly to the pomp and chatter of the gentlemen of the club, the storm had already claimed western Pennsylvania, had snubbed the sprawling scar of Pittsburgh for greener lovers farther east. As he’d slept, it had stroked bare ridges and stream-threaded valleys, rain-shrouding Blairsville and Bolivar, New Florence and Ninevah, had followed the snaky railroad through Conemaugh Gap into the deep and weathered folds of Sang Hollow.
And then, Johnstown, with its patchwork cluster of boroughs crowded into the dark hole carved in the confluence of two rivers. The seething Cambria yards and the office buildings, the fine and handsome homes along Main Street. The storm drummed tin- and slate-shingled roofs, played for the handful of mill workers and miners drinking late inside California
And then someone, maybe Mr. D. W. C. Bidwell, had brought up the matter of the girl, and faces, smoke-shrouded, brandy-flushed, had turned towards him, curious, and
Oh, yes, didn’t you know? Why, Tom here saw her, saw the whole damnable affair…
and so he’d politely excused himself. Had left them mum bling before the crackle and glow of the big sandstone fireplace. By the time he’d reached the landing and the lush path of burgundy carpet that would carry him back to his room, the conversation had turned, inevitably, to iron and coke, the new Navy ironclads for which Carnegie, Phipps, and Co. had been contracted to produce the steel plating. Another triumph for Pittsburgh, another blow to the Chicago competition.
Now, Tom shut the door behind him, and so the only light was dim grey through the windows; for a moment, he stood in the dark before reaching for the lamp chain. Above the lake, the clouds were breaking apart, hints of stars and moonshine in the rifts. The lake almost glimmered, seeming to ripple and swirl out towards in the middle.
It’s only wind on the water, Tom Givens told himself as he pulled the lamp chain hard and warm yellow drenched the room, drove the blackness outside, and he could see nothing in the windows except the room mirrored and himself, tall and very much in need of a shave. By the clock on his dresser, it was just past nine. At least, he thought, maybe there’ll be no storms tonight. But the wind still battered itself against the clubhouse, and he sat down in a chair, back to the lake, and poured amber whiskey. He drank it quickly and quickly refilled the glass, trying not to hear the gusting wind, the shutter rattle, the brush of pine boughs like old women wringing their bony hands.
By ten, the bottle was empty, and Tom Givens was asleep in the chair, his stocking feet propped on the bed.
An hour later, the rain began.
The storm was as alive as anything else, as alive as the ancient shale and sandstone mountains and alive as the wind; as alive as the scorch and burn of the huge Bessemer converters and the slag-scabbed molten iron that rolled like God’s own blood across the slippery steel floors of the Cambria mills. And also as perfectly mindless, as passion ately indifferent. It had been born somewhere over Nebraska two days before, had swept across the plains and in Kansas spawned twister children who danced along the winding Cottonwood River and wiped away roads and farms. It had seduced Arctic air spilling off the Great Lakes and sired blizzards across Michigan and Indiana, had spoken its throaty poetry of gale and thunder throughout the Ohio River Valley, and finally, with violent arms, would embrace the entire mid-Atlantic seaboard.
As Tom Givens had listened distractedly to the pomp and chatter of the gentlemen of the club, the storm had already claimed western Pennsylvania, had snubbed the sprawling scar of Pittsburgh for greener lovers farther east. As he’d slept, it had stroked bare ridges and stream-threaded valleys, rain-shrouding Blairsville and Bolivar, New Florence and Ninevah, had followed the snaky railroad through Conemaugh Gap into the deep and weathered folds of Sang Hollow.
And then, Johnstown, with its patchwork cluster of boroughs crowded into the dark hole carved in the confluence of two rivers. The seething Cambria yards and the office buildings, the fine and handsome homes along Main Street. The storm drummed tin- and slate-shingled roofs, played for the handful of mill workers and miners drinking late inside California
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