Midnight at the Electric Read online

  “For the next four weeks this fair is in your town, I’m offering you a chance at immortality. And all I ask is a small donation to cover travel costs and food for me and my assistants, so we can afford to reach people everywhere. The question is, are you willing to donate ten dollars in exchange for the most priceless thing imaginable?”

  There on the spot, people began to line up. It seemed the professor would go on, but, looking down at them, he cut himself short and stepped down the stairs. He slid through a flap into the tent.

  A murmur went through the crowd. Some who weren’t in line already walked away, others stayed and milled around. The man next to me muttered that it was all nonsense and stalked off.

  But I wanted to be inside the tent so badly I could taste it.

  Have to go. Someone’s coming up the drive.

  LATER, SAME DAY

  I’ve moved out to the mud pond. Beezie’s just come to sit beside me, and she’s playing in the dirt, coughing into a handkerchief so every once in a while I put my pen down and slap her on the back as hard as I can to help her get it out. I didn’t know it was possible to hate anything as much as I hate the mud coming out of her lungs. (She’s a mud pie all over. Dirt in her hair and on her bare arms and legs that we can never wipe off because there’s always more settling on us.)

  The doctor from the Red Cross says that yes, it’s the dust, and to regum the windows.

  Our visitor was a complete surprise. It was Lyla, who’s never come out to the farm.

  “I’ve been wanting to check on you all,” she said, grinning brightly as I walked down the drive to meet her. “See how you’re getting along out here.”

  “Thanks.” I was flattered, then I began to notice she was looking over my shoulder more than into my eyes, and then it sank in and I felt like a fool.

  “Would you like to see Ellis?” I asked.

  Her face lit up even more if that’s possible. I wondered to myself how Lyla does not seem to sweat.

  “I’ll get him,” I offered, still liking her despite seeing through her. But as we turned I saw Ellis was already on his way out of the bunkhouse, rubbing the hay and dust out of his hair.

  He didn’t meet my eyes as we three stood there talking, mostly about meaningless things, and some things that are hard to write. I left them as soon as I could without being rude.

  And now here I am with Galapagos again, and Beezie is beside me marching her only doll—ugly and eyeless—through the dust.

  “She’s trying to steal him away from you,” she whispered to me a few minutes ago.

  “Beeziegirl,” I whispered back, “he’s not mine to steal.”

  I’ve been sitting here looking out over the landscape, trying to convince myself that I love our land more than I love Ellis anyway.

  Anyway, the news from town occupies my mind.

  Lyla said that this week she saw two people shake hands and knock each other over from the static electricity that passed between them.

  The other thing she told us is something I can barely stomach to think about: a man who goes to our church was found under the dirt two days ago, dead. He’d gotten caught up in a duster while driving to Wichita and tried to run to safety from his car. He got buried alive.

  JUNE 24, 1934

  Storms every day this week. We sit in the living room wearing the masks the Red Cross gave us and pray for the winds to stop. Only Sheepie refuses to take shelter—she stays out by the pond trying to herd Galapagos into her little house. Mama keeps saying we ought to move the tortoise inside, but—tucked inside her dust-crusted shell—she weathers the storms better than anyone.

  This morning, when all was finally calm, Mama sent me to check on the Chiltons. The dust was up to my knees in places and getting across the pasture that separates our properties was like trudging through snow.

  I knew right away that something was off. Maybe it was the quiet, or that the windows were dim on a dark day, or maybe I felt the absence of them.

  My feet echoed as I climbed up onto the porch. I knocked, then opened the door and called inside, but no one answered. Going farther in, I found utensils scattered on the floor, jars overturned, hardly any belongings gone. It was like they’d just walked out the front door, knocking a few things over in their hurry, and kept going.

  I can’t remember a time I didn’t know them.

  A husk of jackrabbits darted out of a low trough in front of me as I made my way home and made me leap with surprise. My heart was pounding. Reluctant to tell Mama and see the sadness on her face, I turned for Ellis’s bunkhouse instead.

  By the time I reached his door I was so preoccupied that I walked right in without knocking and then came up short.

  He was standing beside Lyla, very close to her. They were talking in low tones and looking at something on his dresser, and both turned to look at me like I’d burst in on a secret.

  “Sorry,” I said, mortified, and turned to hurry out. I could feel Ellis’s eyes on my back all the way up to the house.

  Mama took the news stoically. She didn’t say a word.

  “Mama, don’t you worry about Beezie?” I asked softly, feeling the hard knot of fear in my throat. My hair stood like duck fuzz on my arms. It’s a thing she and I don’t talk about, but we hear it everywhere: children fare the worst. “Shouldn’t we go too?” We can go east or west, south or north, I don’t care which, as long as we go.

  Mama sat with the tips of the fingers against her lips, staring distantly out the window. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. She impersonated a stone.

  I’ve been sitting here thinking about how the Chiltons have had the courage to save themselves. As for the rest of us, I believe more than ever we will be chewed up until there’s nothing left of us. Starting with the smallest first.

  JUNE 27, 1934

  I can’t stop sinning. It’s the same every night.

  I get in my bed meaning to stay, but I lie here in the heat, wide-eyed. Sometimes I actually think I can hear the Ragbag music drifting out from town, and my feet slide out of the covers and onto the floor like I’m a puppet being dangled along by the moon. I get dressed and walk the starlit distance with a single thought in my head—getting to see the Electric again.

  I watch the people—those with more money than we have or more reckless with what they have, or the ones too desperate to care—step up and take their chance, disappearing into the tent.

  I don’t know why I need so badly to watch them. I think that after each day making me a little smaller inside, those night hours walking into town and knowing I will see people emerge from the professor’s tent saying they’re healed—makes me feel like I’ve escaped something. I feel like I’ve gone beyond these tiny outlines of myself.

  I know I’ll never see England or China and never have Ellis and never be rich. So I want to hold that ball of lightning in my hands. I want my chance at living too, and this is as close as I can get.

  This morning, just before dawn, I woke to Ellis throwing pebbles up at my window.

  “What?” I whispered out to him once I got the window up. Of course, I thought he may have come to confess his secret love for me.

  He held his hands out to the sides as if I should take him in in all his glory.

  “I’ve got the money,” he said simply, and then walked off toward his morning chores.

  JUNE 28, 1934

  Yesterday I was hollow-eyed and hungry washing clothes (we do it rarely and pour the used water onto the garden), when a man came to get our last cow, who’s been too starved to make milk. I don’t like to think what he plans to do with her.

  In the afternoon Ellis caught up with me on the porch and pulled a wad of wide green bills out of his pocket with a flourish, crisp and folded once.

  “Where’d you get it?” I asked, staring.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

  I shoved the money back at him. “If you stole it I . . .”

  He shook his head. “Of course I didn’t steal it. Have
a little faith.”

  I waited. He could see I was digging in my heels, waiting for an explanation.

  “Where do you go at night?” he asked. “Tell me your secret, and I’ll tell you mine.”

  I shoved the money into my apron pocket, turned back to sweeping, and said breezily, “What are you talking about?”

  “I saw you, Cathy. Trailing in close to dawn.”

  I felt my skin heating up. I leaned back on my heels.

  “Are you meeting someone? A boy?” he asked. I tried to detect a glimmer of jealousy on his face, but his look was only stern.

  “Of course not.” For a moment, we stood at an impasse.

  I knew he wouldn’t approve of the foolishness of it. But I also knew he’d never take the money back, so what did I have to lose? What should it matter what Ellis thinks of me?

  “I’ll take you when I go,” I finally said, surprising myself. After all, I owed him. “Tonight. Eleven o’clock.”

  Ellis blew a breath through his teeth and put his hands behind his head, grinning. And now I’m in bed watching the moon rise outside the window, waiting for time to pass.

  JUNE 29, EARLY MORNING

  I should have noticed right away: walking to Ellis’s bunkhouse last night, it was so dark I nearly walked right past it . . . and it’s never that dark anymore.

  I was too excited. I felt my way to the door, tiptoed into his room, and knelt by his bed to shake him awake.

  “Cathy,” he whispered, his eyes fluttering.

  “Do you want to go or not?” I asked, breathless to be so close and alone, leaning back on my heels. His room, the whole world with me included, was an oven.

  He shook off sleep, sat up, and turned on the lamp.

  “Turn around,” he said, and I faced the wall while he got dressed.

  The lamp shed a dim glow onto Ellis’s few belongings. I never go into his room, but now I saw the few things he has on his simple dresser: a framed photo of me, Beezie, and Mama, a book I gave him that he never read, a bracelet I wove for him out of straw once. These were the things he and Lyla Pearl had been looking at. I was taking it all in when I heard the sound. At first, sickened, I thought it was footsteps—Mama catching us. But it was too fast and light. The sound was strange and exotic but also achingly familiar. Ellis and I looked at each other in confusion.

  I stepped to the door and squinted into the darkness outside and let out a cry.

  I’ve been sitting here thinking how to write about it. Words keep flitting in and out of my mind, none of them right or enough.

  We were outside before we could catch our breaths again, standing with our hands up. Then it made sense, the darkness of the night, the absence of the moon: clouds had blotted out the light. We stood there with our faces up to them, mystified and amazed; if they’d been dragons we wouldn’t have been any less in awe of them. We opened our mouths to catch the rain.

  It came down harder and harder, and all I could think was, Don’t stop. The ground at our feet swallowed the moisture like a sponge.

  Static crackled along the fence. Thunder rumbled loudly, and lightning flared somewhere in the distance. Ellis and I ducked back inside, slid to the wall beside the door. His hand on my elbow was shaking, and I wondered why.

  “Stop shaking,” I said nonsensically. Ellis laughed as if it were the most ludicrous request in the world, which it was.

  “I’m nervous,” he said.

  It was only lightning, I thought. But his hands had moved to the bottom of my rib cage. His fingers sparked against the fabric of my clothes.

  I’ll try to record it as clearly as I can, because God knows I’ve relived the moment a hundred times in my mind already: Ellis was lightly brushing the edges of his hands along the tops of my arms. Even then I thought I was misunderstanding, as silly as that seems. The room seemed to get smaller, and I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know for sure until his lips were against me—first the side of my cheek and then quickly after, my lips.

  “Sorry, kid,” he said, which made no sense because he kissed me again.

  He leaned back. We stood there for a moment close together, and I looked everywhere but at him, until a noise came from the direction of the house, a kind of whoop! Ellis cocked his head and whispered, “We better go.” He reached for my hand and tugged me gently outside into the rain. A light had gone on upstairs, and a moment later Beezie and Mama appeared on the porch. Beezie launched into furious circles around the yard, screaming with glee as she got drenched. Mama hurried to my side, hugged me around my neck, her face lit up like a little girl’s—happier than I’d ever seen her.

  “Rain!” she whispered.

  It wasn’t long before the drops began to flag. We held out our hands to prove it wasn’t true, but the rain was slowing down. And then, only a few minutes after it had begun, it stopped altogether.

  Still, we couldn’t stop smiling, though I was shaking from what had happened.

  “See?” Mama said. “We just have to believe. Everything’s gonna be all right.”

  We waited a while longer for it to come back until, reluctantly, Mama and Beezie and I headed toward the house and Ellis toward the bunkhouse. I couldn’t bring myself to look back.

  I’ve just woken up, and every single cloud was gone from the sky. Three thoughts circled around my mind all night and wouldn’t let me sleep:

  Did he mean it?

  Does he regret it?

  Will it happen again?

  JUNE 30, 1934

  I was heading down the stairs this morning, just after I last wrote, when I heard a scream in the front yard. It was a kind of wailing. I thought it was an animal at first.

  I rushed outside in confusion to find Beezie in the front yard, staring at the ground, with Mama kneeling beside her.

  Sheepie lay on the dirt at her knees, dead.

  Mama was doing something strange that I couldn’t make sense of. She had a knife at Sheepie’s chest.

  “Don’t do that! Don’t do that!” Beezie pleaded, but Mama, her face dark and sad and determined, ignored her.

  I stepped up and covered Beezie’s eyes, suddenly understanding. I knew why, horrifying as it was to see our beloved Sheepie like that, it needed to be done.

  We needed to know for sure what she’d died of.

  But of course we all knew before Mama was even finished, before all the dark muck poured out of the slit in her skin Mama had made.

  Her lungs were full of mud.

  All this time, she’s been slowly suffocating.

  A moment later, Ellis emerged from the bunkhouse in a daze, and as we exchanged a look, Beezie ripped out of my arms and ran to the edge of the mud pond, where Galapagos stood craning her neck to watch us. Beezie started throwing rocks at her. “I wish it was you,” she yelled, as Galapagos hissed and ducked into her shell. I picked her up and carried her inside, kicking and screaming and coughing the whole way.

  JULY 2, 1934

  It’s been two days since Sheepie died, and the house has been dark and sad. Beezie won’t come out of her room and has dressed herself all in black, her pale, grieving face peeking out from under Mama’s black church hat. Not that we all aren’t mourning Sheepie, but seeing Beezie mourn him hurts worse.

  I have been thinking about the Ragbag fair. I’ve been trying to accept what entered my mind the moment I saw Sheepie dead, and what it means I need to do.

  Ellis and I weren’t alone until this morning. I’d found a quiet spot in the barn to sit and hide, and he came walking up beside me.

  I didn’t look at him. He sat down next to me, folded his hands between his knees.

  Despite what had happened, the moment was comfortable between us, I guess because Ellis has always been a good listener to my silences. I never feel like I have to say something to him to be heard, and it’s been like that since we were kids. But after a while, I needed to ask him.

  “Do you think Beezie’s lungs look like that inside?”

  “No.” He shook his head
.

  I studied his face. I didn’t have to say that I knew he was lying. After a while, he looked up at me gravely.

  “I made a mistake, kissing you,” he said. “I think I was just so happy about the rain.”

  I nodded vigorously and falsely. “I know,” I said. “Me too.”

  “You’re like a sister to me.”

  “I know. Me too,” I lied. I didn’t want him to feel guilty. I didn’t want to look like a fool.

  He seemed to be trying to read my face. He rose onto his knees to get up, and I looked at my hands and tried to swallow the sting of it.

  “I told myself I’d be brave about it and tell you the truth.”

  “Yes.” I nodded, withering up.

  He hesitated, started to move away, but stopped himself. Then again he was doing things I couldn’t make sense of. He put one hand on either side of me in a way that was not brotherly, leaned over top of me and looked at me uncertainly, hopefully, and then kissed me again. Then he said something that made my heart pound more.

  “I’ve loved you so much, Cathy,” he whispered, as his hands raced up the sides of my rib cage. “For so long. That’s the truth.”

  I’d gone watchful and still without meaning to, a statue like Mama. Ellis sank back and looked at me miserably. “You don’t feel the same way about me,” he said softly.

  I slowly put my hands on his chest then on his shoulders, getting a feel for it, for being allowed.

  Ellis laughed a nervous laugh.

  We kissed again and again and again until my lips hurt, and all I wanted was for them to hurt more.

  It’s been an hour since then and I can see in the mirror that my lips are still too red from all the kissing.

  JULY 5, 1934

  Even the letters of the words I’m trying to write feel thrilling—the curves of the e’s and the t’s that spell out the speck of a beauty mark under his eye, the imperfect curve of his collarbone (once broken on one side, before we knew him), the way his smile between kisses is a half smile and half unhappy wish for more.

  We piece together the story between kisses.