"Sure I would. I know what my own mother's like," Mom said. That might not be very nice, which didn't mean it wasn't so.
"Mr. Snodgrass showed me his coin collection," Beckie said. "That's the kind of thing people do for fun around here." She did lower her voice when she said that, because she didn't want Mr. Snodgrass hearing her. He was nice enough to put up with having Gran in the house for a lot longer than he'd planned on. He was also nice enough to put up with having Beckie there, but that didn't cross her mind.
"Oh, boy. Such excitement." Mom yawned into the telephone.
Beckie laughed, but she said, "It was kind of interesting, actually. More than I thought it would be, anyway. He turns out to know a lot about history. I guess you have to, to understand why the coins are the way they are."
"Well, how else would they be?" Mom said.
"I don't know. I suppose there'd be different ones if Deseret had lost the Rocky Mountain War—things like that," Beckie said. "And he has to know which ones are real and which ones are counterfeit, too, so he doesn't get cheated."
"If you say so." Mom didn't yawn again. If she had, she wouldn't have been joking this time. She really did sound bored.
"Anyway, though, I'm fine, and there's nothing to worry about," Beckie said. "If we get a chance to come home that seems safer than staying here, we'll do that, I guess. But sitting tight looks best right now."
"All right." By the way Mom said it, it wasn't even close to all right. But she couldn't do anything about it. She was on the wrong side of the continent even to try. "I always did think you acted older than you really were," she said. "Now's your chance to prove it."
"Shall I act like Gran, then?" Beckie said. "They roll up the sidewalks at six o'clock. The food is funny. Hah0 the time, I can't understand them when they talk. The computer net is stupid." She did her best to grumble like her grandmother.
Her best was good enough to set Mom giggling helplessly. "I ought to spank you, but I'm too far away and I'm laughing too hard," Mom said. "Be careful, that's all. I love you."
"Love you, too," Beckie said. A lot of the time, those were just words. Maybe separation made her feel them more than usual. " 'Bye," she added reluctantly, and broke the connection.
She went back into the Snodgrasses' house. Mr. Snodgrass wore a handlebar mustache that had been red once upon a time—pictures of him in his younger days were all over the house. Now it was the color of vanilla ice cream with a little strawberry mixed in. Beckie thought it made him look like a hick no matter what color it was. Nobody in California wore a handlebar mustache. Nobody in Ohio did, either, not even someone like Uncle Luke.
But if he was a hick, he was a nice hick. He nodded and said, "Mornin', Rebecca." He didn't call her Beckie, the way almost everybody did. She'd almost told him to a couple of times, but she always held back. This was a more formal kind of place than California. She didn't hate her full name or anything. She just didn't use it very often.
"Good morning, Mr. Snodgrass," she said. Even though his name sounded funny to her, she didn't feel comfortable calling him Ted. He was old enough to be her grandfather, after all. "You've got your coin stuff out."
He nodded again. "Got a dealer fella comin' up from the city." In Elizabeth, Charleston was the city. It wasn't anything next to Los Angeles. Compared to this little place, though, it had to seem like L.A., New York City, and Riverton all rolled into one. He went on, "He's got a goldpiece I want to buy if I like it when I see it with my own eyes and not just online. If he wants cash money for it, I'll pull out my credit card. But if he wants to work a swap—well, that's part of the fun of this."
"It is?" Beckie couldn't see why.
He plainly meant it, though. "He's got somethin' I want—or I expect he does, 'cause he plays straight about his coins. Seeing what I've got that'd interest him . . . It's not all what the catalogues say a piece is worth. It's what he's interested in, and what he reckons he can sell down there, and stuff like that."
"Okay." Beckie had a friend who collected stuffed animals, but they were almost like pets to her. She didn't care about what they were worth.
Mr. Snodgrass smiled over the tops of his glasses. "Some card games—hearts, for instance—are fun just to play. But poker's not interesting without money on the table."
"I don't know anybody who plays poker," Beckie confessed.
He blinked. His glasses magnified his eyes, which made his expressions look strange sometimes. "What do they do to pass the time out there?" he murmured. For a second, he made Beckie feel as if she were the hick. That was ridiculous, but it happened anyway. Then he poked a thumb at his own chest. "You do so know somebody like that—me."
"Sure." She laughed. "I didn't till now, though."
"That's a different story." Mr. Snodgrass looked at his watch. "He ought to be here any minute now."
Justin Monroe had his driver's license. All the same, he wasn't sorry Mr. Brooks was behind the wheel. "I know why they build the roads like this," he said as the car went around another hairpin bend. There was no guard rail on the curve. There wasn't anything off the road but a lot of straight down.
"Why's that?" Mr. Brooks asked, hauling the Mercedes into another turn, just as tight, that went left instead of right.
"Because of wars, that's why," Justin said, glad he wasn't the sort who got carsick easily. "If anybody tried to invade, he'd have about three tanks and six soldiers left by the time he made it down to Charleston."
He waited for the older man to laugh, but Mr. Brooks nodded instead. "Wouldn't be surprised if you're right. Pretty rugged country around here."
"Oh, just a little." Justin tried to stay cool about how rugged it was. Watching the vultures circle overhead didn't help.
"Buzzards," Mr. Brooks said when he remarked on them.
"They mostly call 'em buzzards here. Black buzzards and turkey buzzards."
"Buzzards. Right." Justin hoped he would remember that. People would understand him if he said vultures instead. They would understand, yes, but they would decide he wasn't from around these parts. He wasn't, of course, but he was supposed to be.
"Besides, things could be worse," Mr. Brooks went on. "We could have headed east instead of north. We're coming down into the lowlands here—well, the lower lands, anyhow. If we were going up into the mountains ..."
Justin didn't want to think about that. Because he didn't want to, he didn't—much. They left the state highway at a little town called Ripley. Believe it or not, Justin thought. The cartoonist was a century and a half dead, but his name and the phrase stayed tied together—in the home timeline. Here, if Rip-ley had lived, he never got famous. Forgetting believe it or not was as important as remembering buzzards. More important, probably: some people in this alternate did say vultures, but there was no connection here at all between Ripley and the phrase.
The road that went east to Elizabeth was barely wide enough for two cars. That didn't keep the few people who used it from driving like maniacs. Justin saw some wrecked cars by the side of the road. He wasn't surprised—the only surprise was that he didn't see more.
"Here we are," Mr. Brooks said when they drove into Elizabeth.
"Oh, boy." Justin could hardly hide his enthusiasm. It looked like the same sort of little town as Ripley. It also looked as if the twenty-first century, and a good deal of the twentieth, had passed it by. Even the bricks seemed old and faded. Nothing had gone up anytime lately—that was plain enough. Justin wondered if there was a fasarta in the whole town. They had them down in Charleston—not the fancy suhflexive kind people used in the home timeline, but fasartas even so. Here? He wouldn't have bet on it.
When he said as much, the coin and stamp dealer looked surprised. "You know, I never noticed one way or the other. Maybe you'll get the chance to see for yourself."