“I think we need to look alive this morning!” Hephaestus announced.
“Farruh, stop saying that,” Lloyd pleaded. “You sound like the Clutters. Where’s our list?”
Hephaestus froze in his tracks and slapped his forehead. “Jimminy!” he barked. “I left it back at the bone tailor’s. After all that!”
“Well, we’re not going back,” Lloyd insisted. “C’mon. We’ll all try to think of things as we go. It’ll clear our—your heads.”
The last remark conjured a new specter of doubt in his mind. What if he had also been affected by the music box? And why would he not have been? The reasoning was inescapable, which raised the issue of how much of what had happened the night before had been influenced by whatever it was he had heard. His thoughts seemed sharp and clear to him, but perhaps the Clutters’ did to them, too. He had had nightmares in the past, but they had always had the aura of an external experience enveloping him for a time and then disintegrating when he awoke. This new unease was more intimate and, if less fanciful in its effects, far more disquieting. “I am going to have to keep my eyes wide, wide open,” Lloyd told himself. “For anything—anything that might suggest that what I am perceiving is not right, not real.”
He half wished they would run into some of the Quists. Then he could confirm, at least intuitively, the events of last night. But this, of course, was folly. He would give himself away in front of his parents and perhaps to others who might be watching. And the Quists would just put themselves more in danger’s path. If his memory was at all correct, he could only wonder at the impact of the night crisis on their future plans. And he would have to stay wondering—and watching.
The stark open sky of sunup had begun to show signs of clouding over, and the hint of more rain later in the day invigorated the flow of traffic along the streets and boardwalks. Even the stragglers appeared to be loafing and straggling with vehemence. Horses and carts clattered and squished through the mud, saws ripped and shimmied, hammers pounded nails and clanging horseshoes, stick fires brought cauldrons of laundry to a dirty boil. But in between the heat of cooking and cleaning, and the clash of metal and wood, there was a noticeable edge to the air, as if the softness of the Indian summer had turned overnight, reminding the Sitturds of perhaps the biggest and most pressing problem they faced: the lateness of the season.
All of the westbound settlers who had any chance of surviving and reaching their intended destination had long since headed out—most at the first signs of spring growth on the prairie, the vital food source for their oxen and horses. As the Sitturds plunked across the planks or dodged the mud puddles, hundreds of other families who had arrived out West marveled at the Columbia River, the austere forests, or the clashing of the waves of the Pacific. Some people had died along the way, and many had left precious belongings behind when the going got tough. Many other groups had paused out in the desert or on semi-fertile mesas and made provisional camps, with the goal of hunting and foraging, and making it through the winter, to assault the fortress of giant mountains come the next spring. Some had run afoul of bandits or Indian war parties, or drowned in streams. Others had buried children and grandparents owing to influenza or grievous injury. The Sitturds were out of step with all of them, running late and not headed west at all but south, into the brewing turmoil of the conflict with Mexico over the fate of Texas, the forced migration of angry displaced Indian tribes, and the persistent rumors of unheard-of diseases and rum occurrences. Spirits. Unknown beasts. No wonder we feel unsettled, Lloyd thought. We are.
“I think we better look—why do I keep saying that?” Hephaestus groused.
His son’s face brightened somewhat at this. Whatever it was that had fogged his father’s mind, it appeared to be lifting. It either had a trigger release or a set duration of influence. His mother, too, seemed to be recovering her wits and usual good sense, which was a profound relief to him, given all the wagging tongues and peering faces.
All the local news seemed to be ominous. A farming family outside town had been found dead of unknown causes (a poisoned well, the word