Read Online Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlin R. Kiernan (Volume One) by Caitlin R. Kiernan - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Caitlin R. Kiernan
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Tom’s, for the whores in Lizzie Thompson’s sporting house on Frankstown Hill. George and Mathilde Heiser, closing up for the night, paused in the mercantile clutter of their store to watch the downpour, and inside St. Joseph’s parsonage, Reverend Chapman, who’d been having bad dreams lately, was awakened by his wife, Agnes, and they lay together and listened to the rain pounding Franklin Street.
Unsatisfied, insatiable, the storm had continued east, engulfing the narrow valley, Mineral Point and the high arch of the Pennsylvania Railroad viaduct, and, at last, sleeping South Fork.
As alive as anything it touched.
The girl on the dam doesn’t know that he’s watching, of that much he’s certain. He sits by open windows, and the early morning air smells like the lake, like fish and mud, and something sharper. He’s been drunk more than he’s been sober since the night down in Johnstown, the night he sat in the balcony of the Washington Street Opera House, Zozo the Magic Queen on stage, and some other fellows from the club talking amongst themselves more than watching the actors.
The girl from the dam is walking on the water.
He leans forward, head and shoulders out the window because he can’t hear, Irwin braying like a goddamned mule from the seat behind, and he can’t hear the words, the players’ lines, can only hear Irwin repeating the idiotic joke over and over again. Beneath the window of his room, the audience is seated, and he stares down at men’s heads and the ladies’ feathered hats, row after row on the front lawn of the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club.
The storm still somewhere far away, but rushing like locomotive wheels, like thunder, like applause and laughter, and the footlights are like light ning frozen on her face.
“Ask Tom,” the usher says. “Tom saw the whole damnable affair,” and Irwin howls.
And then the girl’s gone, if she were ever really there, and the crowd is on its feet, flesh smacking flesh in frenzied approval; if she were ever there. Lake Conemaugh is as smooth as varnished wood, and he knows it’s all done with trapdoors and mirrors, and that, in a moment, she’ll rise straight up from the stage planks to take her bows. But the roses fall on the flat water and lie undisturbed, and now the curtains are sweeping closed, velvet the color of rain rippling across the sky.
“…saw the whole affair,” Irwin echoes, so funny he wants to say it over and over, and they’re all laughing, every one, when Tom gets up to go, when it’s obvious that the show’s over and everyone else is leaving their seats, the theater emptying onto the front porch of the clubhouse.
Sidewalk boards creak loudly beneath his shoes, thunk and mold-rotten creak; after the evening rain showers, the air smells cleaner at least, coal dust and factory soot washed from the angry industrial sky into black gutters, but the low clouds hold in the blast-furnace glow from Cambria City and so the sky is bloodier than ever.
Spring buggies and lacquered wagon wheels, satin skirts and petticoats held above the muddy street. The pungent musk of wet horse.
And he knows that he’s only stepped out of his room, that he stands in the second floor hall, that if he walks straight on he’ll pass three rooms, three numbered doors, and come to the stairs, the oak banister, winding downward. But it’s dark, the sputtering white-arc streetlights not reaching this narrow slit of inverted alley spine between Washington and Union streets. The carpet feels more like muck and gravel, and he turns, starts to turn, when thunder rumbles like animal whispers and cloth tearing and
Why, Tom here saw her. Saw the whole damnable affair.
the shadow things are hunched here, claws and grunts and breath exhaled from snot-wet nostrils. She turns her head, hair mired in the filth and standing water, face minstrel-smudged, but eyes bright, and she sees him, and he knows she’s begging him to help, to stop this, to
Unsatisfied, insatiable, the storm had continued east, engulfing the narrow valley, Mineral Point and the high arch of the Pennsylvania Railroad viaduct, and, at last, sleeping South Fork.
As alive as anything it touched.
The girl on the dam doesn’t know that he’s watching, of that much he’s certain. He sits by open windows, and the early morning air smells like the lake, like fish and mud, and something sharper. He’s been drunk more than he’s been sober since the night down in Johnstown, the night he sat in the balcony of the Washington Street Opera House, Zozo the Magic Queen on stage, and some other fellows from the club talking amongst themselves more than watching the actors.
The girl from the dam is walking on the water.
He leans forward, head and shoulders out the window because he can’t hear, Irwin braying like a goddamned mule from the seat behind, and he can’t hear the words, the players’ lines, can only hear Irwin repeating the idiotic joke over and over again. Beneath the window of his room, the audience is seated, and he stares down at men’s heads and the ladies’ feathered hats, row after row on the front lawn of the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club.
The storm still somewhere far away, but rushing like locomotive wheels, like thunder, like applause and laughter, and the footlights are like light ning frozen on her face.
“Ask Tom,” the usher says. “Tom saw the whole damnable affair,” and Irwin howls.
And then the girl’s gone, if she were ever really there, and the crowd is on its feet, flesh smacking flesh in frenzied approval; if she were ever there. Lake Conemaugh is as smooth as varnished wood, and he knows it’s all done with trapdoors and mirrors, and that, in a moment, she’ll rise straight up from the stage planks to take her bows. But the roses fall on the flat water and lie undisturbed, and now the curtains are sweeping closed, velvet the color of rain rippling across the sky.
“…saw the whole affair,” Irwin echoes, so funny he wants to say it over and over, and they’re all laughing, every one, when Tom gets up to go, when it’s obvious that the show’s over and everyone else is leaving their seats, the theater emptying onto the front porch of the clubhouse.
Sidewalk boards creak loudly beneath his shoes, thunk and mold-rotten creak; after the evening rain showers, the air smells cleaner at least, coal dust and factory soot washed from the angry industrial sky into black gutters, but the low clouds hold in the blast-furnace glow from Cambria City and so the sky is bloodier than ever.
Spring buggies and lacquered wagon wheels, satin skirts and petticoats held above the muddy street. The pungent musk of wet horse.
And he knows that he’s only stepped out of his room, that he stands in the second floor hall, that if he walks straight on he’ll pass three rooms, three numbered doors, and come to the stairs, the oak banister, winding downward. But it’s dark, the sputtering white-arc streetlights not reaching this narrow slit of inverted alley spine between Washington and Union streets. The carpet feels more like muck and gravel, and he turns, starts to turn, when thunder rumbles like animal whispers and cloth tearing and
Why, Tom here saw her. Saw the whole damnable affair.
the shadow things are hunched here, claws and grunts and breath exhaled from snot-wet nostrils. She turns her head, hair mired in the filth and standing water, face minstrel-smudged, but eyes bright, and she sees him, and he knows she’s begging him to help, to stop this, to
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