Trigun Fan Fiction ❯ Children of the Pebble ❯ A Day on the Farm ( Chapter 13 )

Children of the Pebble

 

By “Clinesterton Beademung”, with all of love.

 

 

Disclaimer: “Trigun” © its respective creators and owners. I do this for fun, not profit. So there.

 

 

Comments and criticism welcome.

 

 

Chapter Thirteen - A Day on the Farm

 

 

Author's Foreword

 

Beta-reader: Dee-chan. All remaining errors of style and substance are the exclusive property of the author.

 

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Not for the first time, Milly awoke to the touch of varnished wood. Mr. Fletcher must've irrigated the soybeans in the southwest quarter overnight, and the moisture-laden winds had found their way inside, turning the otherwise glass hard floor into flypaper that pulled on her bare skin when she tried to move.

 

 

Best to be done with it all at once. With a courageous shove, she forced her naked body up from its sticky trap. She wobbled on her feet, grateful for the tears that moistened her gummed eyelids, but her gratitude was forgotten when she moved toward the bedroom door and barked her shin on something hard.

 

 

Milly said a dirty word, stepped over the offending object and fumbled her way to the bathroom, two doors down on the right. Or was it the first door on the left? Silly. Nothing on the left but the stone rail that divided the hallway from the stairwell. She'd have a nice long fall if she tried to go that way.

 

 

The lingering primrose scent of Gwen's favorite soap reassured her. Her middle big sister Gwendolyn had shared this bathroom with their eldest sister Beatrice. Any port in a sandstorm, Milly thought, and let her hand crawl over the wall like a blind spider until she felt porcelain under her fingertips. She wrenched open the taps. Under the triple assault of steam, water, and fingers the crust on her eyes dissolved, and Milly blinked at the bright morning, glad to be free of the dark at last. She wiped fog from the mirror and frowned at the face she saw.

 

 

She turned her frown upside down. This was no time to fret. Her best friend in the whole world was coming to see her today.

 

 

After a long shower that had her half-listening for Gwen's impatient pounding on the bathroom door, Milly dried herself, applied a bandage to her injured leg, wrapped a towel around her body and padded to her room, intent on picking an appropriate outfit. The suit she'd worn to her first Bernardelli interview might still fit, but she'd have to wear opaque stockings to cover her shin, which wouldn't coordinate well with the—

 

 

Milly stopped. On her bed lay a complete outfit—and a little old fashioned, at that. No one in December wore opal tie slips anymore, and the long skirt and petticoat were better for square dancing than for company, but they would do. The clunky ankle-high boots, however, would have to go.

 

 

The wind fanned the curtains in front of the tall window at the foot of Milly's bed. Even at this early hour, the air carried a hint of midday heat, and another hot breath left the edge of her bath towel dry to the touch. She let it fall. The temptation to give scandal and stand naked on the alcove vanished when the shriek of Grandpa Thompson's table saw ripped through the morning silence. Mr. Fletcher was in the workshop.

 

 

What a hard worker he is. Milly dressed, and wondered when she'd opened the window.

 

 

In the kitchen, Milly snatched an apron from its peg. Breakfast, of course, was the first order of business, but her guests might wish to enjoy a light lunch, and she hadn't cooked for anyone besides herself in ages. She opened a cabinet and examined the cookware. Maybe Mr. Fletcher would care to join—

 

 

As she reached for the frying pan, Milly caught a scent that made her mouth water. At the end of the dining table, a place had been set for her. Condensation rolled down a glass full of geo-Plant orange juice, perfectly centered in a bowl of crushed ice. A covered dish dominated the placemat, and when Milly lifted the silver dome the hunger-inducing scent of ham steak and scrambled eggs billowed around her face. On a smaller plate, three slices of wheat toast awaited neatly juxtaposed pats of fresh butter.

 

 

Milly sat down, tucked a cotton napkin into the collar of her blouse and spread another across her lap. She cut a piece of ham and forked it into her mouth. Delicious. Mrs. Turnipseed sure knew how to cook.

 

 

After breakfast, Milly carried her dishes to the sink, only to be met by the slender figure of and benign smile of Mrs. Turnipseed, who insisted on washing the dishes herself.

 

 

“Can't have you wilting those fine starched cuffs, Miss Millicent,” she said. “Mrs. Ramanujan would never let me hear the end of it.”

 

 

In the living room Milly sat on the sofa, slipped a finger between her neck and the stiff collar of her blouse. Even a corpseweed would wilt in this heat, and at the moment the idea flitted through her mind, air began to rush down from the activated ceiling fans. Milly lifted her face to the flowing air. She'd had her whole childhood to become accustomed to the hot and pungent smell of the rubber drive belts, but today the stench left her tongue and throat dry as the bones in a thomas graveyard.

 

 

Milly rose to go to the refrigerator. Maybe Mom was feeling generous and let Mrs. Turnipseed buy some of that cream soda she liked—

 

 

Mrs. Turnipseed met her at the kitchen doorway. She held a glass of iced barley tea in one hand and a sandstone coaster in the other. The moisture on her curly black bangs betrayed her hard work, and the morning was not yet old.

 

 

Darn. No cream soda today. Milly, grateful nevertheless, accepted the offered refreshment. She drained half the glass in a gulp, and when she was done Mrs. Turnipseed was waiting with a pitcher. She refilled Milly's glass.

 

 

“Thank you, ma'am,” Milly said. The cook Mom had insisted on hiring smiled, curtsied, and went back to her kitchen duties.

 

 

Milly returned to the living room and the sofa. Meryl would be here soon, and that would make it all better. She hadn't seen her old friend since last Harvest Festival, when Meryl and her parents had come to the house for dinner. Afterward, she and Meryl snuck a bottle of wine up to her bedroom, and soon they were talking and laughing as if their first night on the town together had never ended.

 

 

Milly scowled at the sunlit mantel over the propane fireplace. She stood and examined the polished granite. Ah-hah! There it was, a mote of dust that thought it could hide from her.

 

 

Full of purpose, Milly strode into the hallway to her parents' room. Her skirt slapped her wounded leg but she ignored the pain, intent on banishing that dust speck interloper before it invited friends. In the utility closet she found a feather duster, and was halfway back to the living room when a voice broke her stride.

 

 

“Miss Millicent, what on earth do you think you're doing?”

 

 

Milly turned to face Mrs. Ramanujan, the housekeeper. A striking contrast to Mrs. Turnipseed's quiet, lissome grace, Mrs. Ramanujan was a noisy, pudgy ball of pure energy who never seemed to stop moving, even when standing still.

 

 

“Um, I was just going to dust the mantel, ma'am,” Milly said.

 

 

“You'll do no such thing,” Mrs. Ramanujan said, and snatched the duster away. “Your dear mother would have my hide if she found out. Now off with you, young mistress, and don't you dare besmirch your fine clothes.”

 

 

“Yes, ma'am.” Milly needed some fresh air, and went out to the front porch and sat in the long swing. She flexed her toes, lifted them off the whitewashed boards. The chains from which the swing hung creaked as she swung forward, back, forward, back. The noise was bearable but she considered having Mr. Fletcher oil the links, maybe take a break and have a glass of iced tea with her. He didn't talk much, he was so busy, but she liked the way he smiled at her after a day's work, liked the way he said her name, even if he still called her “Miss Thompson”, but—no. There was no sense in ordering Mr. Fletcher around just for a chance at friendly conversation.

 

 

Milly folded her hands in her lap, looked north into the wastes beyond the property access road, and waited. The wind chime sang, and as the crystal notes faded she heard what sounded like the purr of an enormous cat. The purring grew louder, followed by the subsonic rumble of an even larger, and hungrier, feline.

 

 

Mom's sunflower garden obscured her view of the Old North Road, but it couldn't hide the white cloud of dust that rose from it when vehicles passed. The first cat emerged from the cloud in the form of a silver gray convertible that turned up the access road and into the driveway. The second, a ten-wheel truck pulling a tarp-covered trailer, pulled to the roadside in front of the drive.

 

 

The convertible's driver untied her headscarf, swept her hand through her blue-black hair. She got out of the car and brushed her trim dress suit with her hands. She removed her sunglasses, ran up the porch steps and into Milly's open arms.

 

 

“You look terrific, Milly,” Meryl said.

 

 

“So do you,” Milly said. Meryl twisted out of her arms and pointed at the truck. Two men leaned against the driver's side door.

 

 

“We should get started right away,” Meryl said. “I have to be back at the office by three.”

 

 

---

 

 

“This model's just a test bed,” Meryl said. She tapped tea from her spoon. “The important thing at this stage is to establish a speed and height for the thresher blades that maximizes efficiency while minimizing damage to the harvested crop.” Meryl stopped to take a long sip from her cup. “Once our engineers know that, they'll know the correct gearing ratios and choose the best engine to drive it…”

 

 

Milly nodded, doing her best to appear attentive. The dining room was as hot as the living room, and listening to her old boss was like attending a stuffy lecture by a stuffy teacher. That's how it had been almost from the beginning of their Bernardelli careers. Meryl's job to lecture, hers to listen.

 

 

Probably my fault, Milly thought. She never did have the heart to tell Meryl she'd memorized the employee manual her first day on the job, just as she couldn't bear to tell Meryl she was seeing the entire current series of the harvester blueprints in her mind as if they were laid out before her on a drafting table, right down to the initials “MCS” signed on the bottom right hand corners.

 

 

“The ultimate aim,” Meryl was saying, “is to decrease harvesting time to allow more frequent growing seasons. If we can design a saleable production model, we estimate agricultural production will increase by fifty to seventy-five percent over the next five years…”

 

 

Milly nodded again, on the verge of losing her struggle with boredom. Dad had explained all this to her before he and Mom left for their long vacation. Her parents had returned last week in a heavy truck Dad had purchased in September. Within an hour he and Mom had moved their belongings from their bedroom on the first floor, and an hour after that they were gone again, anxious to get back to their new spread, whatever that meant.

 

 

A rhythmic noise, wet and metallic, interrupted her thoughts. The whapwhapwhap of the thresher blades grew louder until the beat slowed, then stopped.

 

 

“Sounds like the men are back,” Meryl said.

 

 

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When the thresher was loaded on the trailer, Milly met Meryl on the front porch. She knelt to offer, and accept, a tight hug and a soft kiss to the cheek, tottering a bit as she stood, overwhelmed by a feeling of déjà vu.

 

 

Meryl flicked a finger over her eyes and put on her sunglasses. “Oh, before I forget,” she said, and drew a card from her purse. “As of today this project is under my supervision, so have your father contact my office directly from now on.”

 

 

“Really? Wow.” Milly accepted the card. Meryl C. Stryfe, Asst. VP of Operations, Stryfe Consultants it said, with a December phone number underneath. “By the way, you haven't talked much about—you know who. Your husband, I mean. How's he doing?”

 

 

“Him? He's fine,” Meryl said, smiling. “He's been out of town a lot, but—we all have a lot of work to do, don't we?”

 

 

“Yeah, I guess we do. Hey, when are you going to answer my question?”

 

 

Meryl's eyebrow twitched. “Ten minutes after I'm dead, Milly. Don't hold your breath.”

 

 

“That's against the rules!”

 

 

“Like hell it is. You talked me into that stupid game, remember?”

 

 

Milly held her chin. “Hmm, I seem to remember things differently. It's not my fault you can't hold your liquor.”

 

 

“It was a nice synthetic chardonnay, and I can too hold it.”

 

 

“But—”

 

 

“Good-bye, Milly,” Meryl said, turning and giving her a dismissive wave. The engineers were ready, and drew their trailer from the irrigation path onto the main road. Meryl tied on her headscarf, got into her convertible, started it and backed down the driveway. At the end, she gave a final wave, turned onto the Old North Road and vanished behind the sunflowers. When the truck and its burden followed, all was quiet again. No wind stirred the chimes.

 

 

Back in her room, Milly found a plain cotton shirt and a pair of blue jeans on her bed. She changed clothes, hung her outfit in the closet beside the evening dress she'd worn that night she and Meryl had gone out together. She stroked the fine silk with one hand, brushed her lips with the other.

 

 

At dinner, Milly picked at her food until Mrs. Turnipseed offered to prepare something lighter, a bowl of soup, perhaps. Milly told her she didn't want such a fine meal to go to waste.

 

 

“Not to worry, Miss Millicent,” Mrs. Turnipseed said, taking her all but full plate. “The hogs will make short work of it.”

 

 

Milly winced at the frost in Mrs. Turnipseed's voice, and when the soup was ready she attacked it with more enthusiasm than she felt. She made no offer to help with the dishes.

 

 

The evening passed without amusement or incident, and after her tenth stifled yawn Milly went up to her room. Her pajamas were laid out for her. She looked out the window, but neither Mr. Fletcher nor his dented wreck of a pickup truck could be seen.

 

 

He's from a good family, Mom had said, the youngest son of a prominent thomas rancher. Trustworthy and hardworking, a man of solid reputation. One could hire far worse. Or marry, Mom had said.

 

 

Milly removed her clothes. She opened the window, embraced the warm and pregnant wind coming off the fallow field beyond the thomas corral. The curls and currents of the air circled her waist, caressed her breasts, and stroked her belly, flicking the scar tissue of emptiness within. She pursed her lips and, as if sensing her intentions, the wind kissed her back in a blunt, aggressive burst that forced her lips apart and filled her mouth with fine, dry dust.

 

 

Milly licked her lips. Out in the wasteland one was never completely free of its taste or smell, even after bathing, and one learned to accept the gritty crunch that often accompanied a bite of salmon sandwich, to appreciate the desert aftertaste of a sip of coffee, to enjoy the silica scent behind a breath of cigarette smoke, to delight in the subtle mortar of sand and sweat on a lover's skin.

 

 

Things were bad between Meryl and Vash, and getting worse. For all her authoritarian bluster Meryl wore her emotions the way a lady of the evening wore makeup, revealing her whole heart with this certain look or that certain turn of her mouth, and always shocked to find her true feelings so deeply and clearly discerned. But no one with eyes to see and a heart to feel needed magic to see that Meryl worked long hours, didn't always eat properly and sometimes cried herself to sleep, alone.

 

 

It was all his fault. And it might only have been the maimed and bloody eye of the rising Fifth Moon that made Milly see red, or it might've been the anger she'd known after watching him kill two innocent young people in cold blood, only to discover it was a cruel ruse to save their lives. Or maybe it was the wrath that always rose like a sun in her breast at seeing another human being in pain.

 

 

Jerk, she thought. Selfish jerk. Selfish cruel bastard. You don't deserve her. You don't deserve anything. I hate you. I hate you and your brother. I wish you were both DEAD—

 

 

And as this unspeakable vileness bunched and slid, bunched and slid through her mind like a maggot hungry for necrotic dreams, Milly gasped for breath and opened her eyes to a night-gray world. No Fifth Moon peered over the horizon.

 

 

Milly backed away from the balcony and shut the window, rattling the glass in its square frames. With trembling hands she felt her way to her bed, slipped under covers that, compared to the wind, rubbed her skin like dry canvas.

 

 

I don't want to marry anyone, she thought. I never did. Not before I met him—please. Please, I just want to forget, just let me forget—

 

 

You can't forget me, Milly.

 

 

“Yes I can,” she whispered.

 

 

You can't forget me, Milly. You can't forget, and you can't forgive.

 

 

“Yes I can…I have to…I have to…”

 

 

Who says?

 

 

“You did, Nicholas…you did…” Milly opens her eyes, and the gnawing horror begins again when the apparition at the window raises his hand, and the embers of his mangled cigarette make his death-pale cheek glow red.

 

 

Till death do us part, Milly…remember that…

 

 

“No…”

 

 

Till death

 

 

“No…no…”

 

 

do us

 

 

“NO!”

 

 

Milly throws the covers aside, swings her legs over the edge of her bed. A nightmare. A bad bad sad nightmare.

 

 

Milly pulls the sheet from her bed, wraps it around her. She bounces on her tiptoes down the hall to Beatrice's room, past Patricia who is starting to like boys, past the gate Mommy and Daddy put over the stairs to keep her safe, past Eleanor who works for a blacksmith after school and gets home late, past Gwendolyn who sneaks out after bedtime to see her boyfriend, right down to Beatrice who wants to be a doctor and doesn't mind being woke up in the dead of night by a spoiled bratty needy clumsy baby sister.

 

 

“Bea,” she says, and reaches out to touch her. “Bea, wake up. I had a bad dream, Bea. I had a bad dream…”

 

 

Bea is silent, which would not seem strange to Milly were she awake, given that Beatrice left home eight years ago to study medicine and finally moved out the last of her things after the harvest, but to sleeping Milly it only means that Beatrice is very tired and can't wake up. And though it would seem to Milly awake as if she were climbing naked into the empty frame of Bea's bed, Milly asleep curls like a child within her big big sister's arms, and sleeps to the touch of varnished wood, not for the last time.

 

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Author's Afterword

 

Next: Rain falls on the righteous and unrighteous alike. See you then!