He made his thumb and forefinger into a pretend gun and aimed it at her. "If you come up with the one true answer, I'll have to kill you," he said, doing his best to sound like a spy.
His best must have been good enough, because she giggled. "You really are out of your mind, aren't you?"
"I try," he said modestly.
"Well, good, because it's working," she told him.
There was a low, deep rumble, like thunder far away. That was a pretty good comparison, because this part of the continent got some ferocious thunderstorms. Only one trouble: the sun blazed down out of a bright blue sky. Not a cloud anywhere to be seen. But there was a cloud on Justin's hopes as he said, "What's that?" because he feared he knew the answer. Beckie said the same thing at the same time, and he thought he heard the same fear in her voice.
Then she said, "That was something blowing up, wasn't it?" Sometimes naming your fear could drive it away. Other times, naming it made it worse. This felt like one of those.
Justin breathed in a big lungful of warm, muggy air and then sighed it out. "I don't know of anything else it's likely to be."
Her hands folded into fists, so tight that her knuckles turned pale under her California tan. "These people are crazy. What is there to fight about?"
That was a pretty good question in most wars, and a really good question in this one. Justin had to remind himself that he was supposed to come from Virginia, which meant he was supposed to be a Virginia patriot. "Ohio wants to hurt our coal business," he said, which was true. "Ohio wants to stir up trouble between our whites and Negroes, too, to keep us hopping." That was also true. "We can't just let them get away with it." Was that true? Anybody from Virginia would naturally think so. Someone from Ohio? That was likely to be a different story.
"It's all stupid, if you ask me," Beckie said. "Isn't there enough coal business for Ohio and Virginia to share it?"
"There's Pennsylvania, too, and Boone," Justin said. "They think Virginia and Ohio both have too big a share already." If he were a real Virginian, he would know that. Coming from the other side of the continent, Beckie might not.
She said something rude about Pennsylvania and Boone— and about Ohio and Virginia, too. A Virginia girl wouldn't have said it the same way, but people from California seemed less restrained. Some things didn't change much across timelines. Then she added, "Don't get mad, but it seems to me that your Negroes could use somebody on their side, even if it is somebody foreign."
It seemed that way to Justin, too. And people from Ohio really were foreigners in this alternate's Virginia. People from California were more foreign still—otherwise, she never would have said such a thing. Justin picked his words with care: "Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if Ohio were on the Negroes' side because they're getting a raw deal here. But that's not how it works. People—white people—in Ohio don't like blacks any better than Virginians do. You don't see them letting Negroes immigrate into their state or anything. They just want to use ours to hurt us."
He watched her chew on that. Finally, even though he could tell she didn't like it, she nodded. "Okay. You're right. I was in Ohio before I came here, and I saw some of what you're talking about. But it doesn't make what you're doing here any better."
"I didn't say it did," Justin answered.
A robin hopping on the grass cocked its head to one side and looked at him and Beckie. It was only three meters away— ten feet, people said here. Once it decided they didn't want robin stew, it plunged its beak into the ground and pulled out a fat worm. The worm wriggled, but not for long.
If worms could talk, they would make angry speeches about robins. And talking robins would complain that worms didn't play fair when they hid. But neither side there knew any better. Virginians and Ohioans . . . were supposed to, anyhow.
"Your mother's in Charleston, isn't she?" Beckie said. "Is everything all right there?"
"So far." Instead of knocking on wood, Justin banged his knuckles off the side of his head. Beckie must have understood what he meant, because she smiled. He went on, "I guess we're lucky we came west, because there sure are cases of this thing back in Fredericksburg."
"Some luck," Beckie said. "When do you suppose Virginia will start a plague in Ohio?"
If he were a good state patriot, he would have said something like, Well, Ohio has it coming after what she did to us. He knew that, but he couldn't make himself bring the words out. Instead, he said, "I wish they'd find some way to end the war before it comes to that."
Beckie didn't answer for most of a minute. She was studying him as if he were a rare animal in the zoo, one she might not see again for a long time. At last, she said, "You're all right, Justin."
He couldn't have felt prouder if... he didn't know what. He couldn't have felt prouder, period. Exclamation point, even.
Disaster crews fought fires in the center of Parkersburg. Buildings were flattened for blocks around. Ambulance crews raced to get injured people to hospitals. "A fuel-air explosive is the next most powerful weapon after a nuclear bomb," the announcer said indignantly. "That the barbarians in Ohio would use this device against us shows what vicious, unscrupulous enemies they are. The consul has vowed to take revenge once more."
Mr. Snodgrass sighed. "That's what we heard earlier today, all right. If we lived in the big city, we could've wound up in one of those ambulances."
Beckie didn't show what she was thinking. Only somebody who lived in Elizabeth or someplace like it could imagine that Parkersburg was a big city. But he wasn't altogether wrong, either. Parkersburg was big enough to be worth bombing. She couldn't see anyone wasting a fuel-air explosive on this tiny place.
Gran, meanwhile, was mad about something else. "They didn't want to let us go shopping in Palestine," she said irately. "They didn't want to let us, do you hear? They thought we might have a disease, just on account of we came down from Elizabeth. Can you believe such a thing?"
Since Beckie could, she didn't say anything. The no-travel order, along with everything else that was going on, was plenty to make anybody nervous. She might have pointed that out if she thought her grandmother would listen. Fat chance, she thought. Gran wasn't too hard of hearing, not for somebody her age, but that didn't mean she'd pay any attention.
Mrs. Snodgrass had her nose out of joint, too. "The nerve of those Palestine people," she said. "The nerve! They're nothing but trash down there, not like the good stock that lives here. Well, they'll get what's coming to them—see if they don't."
"I should hope so," Gran said.
"I'm going to put a flea in Hank Meadows' ear, I am," Mrs. Snodgrass said. "You see if I don't. When those people come up here looking for lamps, they'll get what's coming to them."
"I hope we don't have another feud like the one thirty years ago," Mr. Snodgrass said. "That was more trouble than it was worth."
"Oh, I don't know," his wife said. "They learned their place, didn't they?"
"A couple miles south of here, right?" he said.
"Now don't you be difficult, Ted," Mrs. Snodgrass said. "I hate it when you're difficult." By that, she seemed to mean doing or saying anything she didn't approve of.
"Well, you've put up with me this long," he replied. "I reckon we'll last a bit longer."
Mrs. Snodgrass gave him a kind of indulgent smile. She might have been saying she put up with him even when he didn't deserve it. She probably was saying just that. Gran looked from one of them to the other as if they'd stopped speaking English, or even what passed for English in this western corner of Virginia. Her own marriage hadn't lasted. Her husband, a sailor who drank, lit out for parts unknown not long after her daughter—Beckie's mother—was born. Having put up with Gran for going on three months herself now, in a certain sense Beckie had no trouble blaming him.