The asphalt had been already shimmering when Gary Reid left the dirt trails and eased onto High Street. As his pickup truck gained speed in the foothills at the north end of the town, the wind rushing through the open window had been a welcome relief. The uneven road sang under the worn off-road tires, farms and houses whizzing by as the truck climbed toward fifty miles per hour. It would be impossible to fall asleep on this road- between the low hills, the pavement which probably had been new when Reid's father was a boy, and the concrete bridges over narrow brooks which seemed to occupy every valley, the tires could barely settle into one tune before the fickle road demanded another.
The sun still blazed over the trees to the west. Reid judged it to be four or five in the afternoon. A few children skipped along the other side of the road as he passed- the wrong side for the direction in which they were going. Gary considered pointing this out to them, but decided against it. His objective was to get back to town quickly, as funding for his work was running low, and he would not be able to make a call at this rate.
Of the people he passed, there seemed to be two categories: those waving and those shaking their fists in anger. He ignored all of them- none looked familiar, and it was fairly difficult to discern those hailing him from those who wanted him to slow down. Three weeks into almost five months of mapping had not brought him into very much contact with the locals, since he had started in a virtually uninhabited region of the northern woods. Reid had his few necessary contacts in the town, but otherwise generally met these people once and did not see them again.
The pickup truck sailed over the final ridge, then came to a screeching halt. A line of cars ten or fifteen long stretched back from the first paved intersection in what would be considered the town proper. All were stopped dead. Gary leaned his head out the window, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was holding up traffic. "Of all the days..."
As the words left his mouth, the cars suddenly started moving. As he passed the intersection, Gary could not avoid noticing a green truck which was now inching down the other road, off to the east. The back was covered by canvas which bulged out at the center, causing the cover to be taut in places and ripple in others. Reid wondered why such a truck was in town- it did not appear to belong to any of the residents. True, some owned trucks, even ones that resembled the one which had been delaying traffic, but this one seemed oddly out of place. Reid pushed the truck and his speculations out of his mind.
Almost every street in the center of town was a two-lane street wide enough to have been a four-lane road in most towns. These roads dated back to the days when a Conestoga wagon was a common sight, even if the buildings that lined them didn't. Much of the town had sprung up forty years or so prior, when a now-dead mayor had decided to enforce the town's claim to the loose collection of hamlets and farms that made up much of its land area. He paved the roads with a federal grant, and the population promptly doubled. While Reid was treated as an outsider, there were few families living in the town center who could claim three generations in the area.
In any event, it does not take long to pass through a town that is only a few blocks across. The pickup truck bounced over the low speed bump at the entrance to the parking lot of Tempel's Boardinghouse, as it had at least twice a day for the past twenty. As Gary turned the key to withdraw it from the ignition, the radio sprang to life. Reid scowled and punched the heel of his hand into the dashboard, silencing a less-than-spectacular singer mid-shout. "Damn thing..." He slammed the truck's door shut and picked up a bundle of equipment from the bed. Carrying the bundle in his arms, he almost did not see Ezekiel Tempel III come barreling along the side of the boardinghouse. Gary stopped short of the door to allow the owner's five-year-old son to pass unimpeded, on his way to some game or another.
The door opened into a common room which Ezekiel Tempel Jr., a massive, red-haired man hammering something in the corner, was attempting to convert into a bar. Tempel stopped pounding long enough to greet his newest boarder. "Gary! You must be cooked! They don't let you work in a T-shirt?"
Reid glanced down at his long-sleeved tan field shirt, the Pennsylvania Geological Survey patch slipping forward from his shoulder. "If I'm wearing this and anything goes wrong, it's the state's problem. It's hot in anything out there, anyway."
"Fair enough." Tempel grunted. "See anything interesting today? Any trouble with the Hungarians?" Reid had quickly learned that while the region may have been all legally within the same town, there was effectively a second community within its borders. An arc of houses and farms that roughly covered the northeastern third of the town's area was virtually entirely populated by Hungarians. While the consolidation of the town in the preceding decades had brought more interaction, Reid had already encountered elderly Magyars who could speak almost no English- but were able to emphatically express their desire that he leave their property. These people were almost invariably armed and probably had not seen anyone other than Hungarians in years.
"Not today. They're not all bad, you know." Gary began slowly moving toward the stairs. If he kept talking, the department office would shut down before Tempel let him leave. The man could talk forever if he was allowed.
The boardinghouse's owner took the hint, though. "Yeah, we've got one living here. You met John, right?"
"He calls himself Janos." Gary's boots creaked on most of the wooden steps. As he reached the second floor, the hammering started again. Reid walked to the end of the hallway, made a left turn at the end, and tossed the bundle of equipment on his bed. He tapped his foot impatiently as he dialed the department office's number. Thankfully, there was a response after the fourth ring. Penn State agreed to send him his next payment on Monday with a punctuality that can only be achieved at four-thirty P.M. on a sunny Friday. It was less than ten minutes before Gary was able to hang up the phone and sprawl on the bed next to his mapping supplies, eyes mildly glazed over. He hadn't eaten in about ten hours, and hadn't had time for a break. Reid didn't notice when a middle-aged woman left the room across the hall and peered in his still-open door, silently observing the oblivious graduate student.
"Oh, Gary! Are you all right?" A hint of life returned to Reid's eyes as he lifted his head to bring the woman into his field of view. "You look like you've had a rough day!"
Reid smiled. "Not really. Just a little tired."
"I'll look like that in a few weeks. It's hard to believe the summer goes so fast..." The woman turned to her right and passed out of Gary's field of view, her footsteps audible over the hammering in some type of high-heeled shoes. Reid reluctantly heaved himself off the bed and began searching about for a towel. It would do no good to have sweat, or worse, poison ivy, all over the sheets.
The search brought him into contact with his perpetual antagonist, the mirror above the dresser. The man staring back at him from the glass was, in his opinion, completely nondescript. The baggy shirt hid Reid's average-thin frame, and his brown eyes sat in a listless face framed by medium-length dirty blond hair. Lack of shaving recently had left him with some faint stubble which would shortly be disposed of. A particularly acidic thought passed through his mind- he made a perfect surveyor for a dull town in the middle of nowhere. The sole reason he had come here was his master's degree. One good mapping project, another semester or two of classes, and the oil companies would welcome him with open arms.
Gary found the towel draped on the doorknob, threw it over his shoulder, and headed out the door, absorbed in his thoughts.
***
It was approximately six o'clock when Reid ventured downstairs again. Ezekiel Tempel Jr. had brought his elderly, mostly bedridden father down, and the old man was now sitting on the couch in the common room, glaring at his son. The younger Tempel had completely devoted his attention to the boards he was now sawing over the partially completed bar framework, and was blissfully unaware of his father's disapproval. Nevertheless, he was able to greet his boarder. "Gary! Off to steal the ladies' hearts, are we?"
"No more likely that I will than that we will together." Reid grinned sheepishly, eliciting a peal of laughter from his host. Tempel Sr. merely scowled at both of them. The old man was not known for being especially talkative.
"Well, have fun doing whatever it is you geologists do when you're not working." A plank fell off the crude frame and Tempel stooped to retrieve it. When he drew himself back up to his usual towering height, another resident was entering the building. "John!"
"Hey, Janos." Gary muttered as he passed the mousy-looking Hungarian boarder, who nodded in greeting. Gary could tell what would happen next as he walked out the door; Ezekiel would engage the tired bank clerk in conversation until another boarder arrived or Janos refused to continue talking, and all the while the father would glare at the Hungarian he didn't want in what had been until recently his boardinghouse. Reid passed the parking lot, where a group of small children was playing on and around a car he didn't recognize. At least it wasn't the truck.
There were always more people on the streets on a Friday night, but today there seemed to be even more than normal. In addition to the townsfolk walking along the sides of the street, or on the few sidewalks in town, there seemed to be a steady flow of vehicles from the poorer farms and outlying houses to the south. Reid followed the flow of traffic to its convergence point at the west end of the town center. A small crowd of people had gathered around what had been until today a vacant lot. In the narrow gravel lot, the green truck which had been stalling traffic earlier had parked on a slight diagonal. A pile of canvas in the corner of the lot appeared to have come off the back, and some metal pipes jutted out from it at various angles. At the rear of the truck, a short man with a dark complexion was arguing with a man easily identifiable as the minister of the one English-language church in town.
"I beseech you, do not bring this turmoil to our town." Reid circled around the edge of the crowd to better hear the minister, a middle-aged man with a receding hairline. He could now see the mayor and the owner of the lone bank in town standing together a short distance from the minister at the crowd's edge. Gary maneuvered himself behind the two men, attracting no attention from either. The minister, keeping to the stereotype, seemed to be visibly uncomfortable in this stranger's presence. "Please, there are larger towns in the area."
"They do not have a harvest festival." The stranger's voice had an odd clip to it- different from the speech of the Hungarians, but not quite Arabic. Gary knew enough Arabs to recognize that particular accent. "And furthermore, I have already paid and received a permit." He brandished a document at the minister, who stepped backward slightly from the paper.
The crowd seemed to have realized the minister had lost- the far end of the crescent of people was beginning to dissipate into the evening. The minister had realized it too. "Y-you're sure we can't convince you otherwise?"
"You say 'we', but I think you are alone." The squat man folded his meaty arms across his chest. "I sell things other than fireworks, anyway. I am a traveling salesman of all types of goods."
"Please, stay within the limits of the law." The minister hastily turned and retreated toward Reid's position. He left conversing in muffled tones with the banker and the mayor, none of the three noticing the young geologist.
Reid ambled over to the self-proclaimed salesman, moving against the thinning crowd. "Well done."
The man folded his paper and stuffed it into the pocket of his sweat-stained shirt. "Thank you. Are you seeking to buy something? I'm not open yet, as you can see."
"Oh, not right now." Reid raised his hands, palms displayed. "Just a greeting from one visitor to another. What are you selling, anyway?"
"Mostly fireworks." The salesman fumbled with two metal poles, and Reid jumped forward and caught one just as it fell from the man's grasp. "Thank you. I am a dealer of exotic goods as well, though. This truck contains a one-man flea market, but without the useless things. No rotting fruit or plastic fans." He extended his hand to Reid. "I am Idris Turan. And you are?"
Reid shook the outstretched hand. "Gary Reid, Pennsylvania Geological Survey. I'm mapping this area." He paused briefly, savoring one of the few chances he had to proclaim his position. "Idris, huh? That's not a name you hear around here usually. Where is it from?"
"From the same place as me. Istanbul, Turkey." He began hammering a small, wider section of pipe into the gravel, leaving Gary holding the longer pipe. "Thank you. If you come by tomorrow, I'll have the good stuff out."
"Rest assured, I'll be back." Gary waited another minute or so before Idris took the pipe from him. He wandered to the east, toward another fruitless Friday night.
His dreams that night were the highlight of the day. Gary didn't usually remember his dreams, much less have them in such vivid detail. The next morning, he decided that it had been life's way of compensating him.
ns 172.71.254.36da2
and then Add to home screen.