Nightmare Country Read Free Page A

then away. Her blond hair frazzled in that heavily permanented but no-set style, and she looked as if she wore last week’s eye makeup. “When you want heat, the thermostat’s on the wall by the bathroom door.”
    â€œBut who furnished this … this place?”
    â€œI gotta get back. The baby’s got the croupies.” Deloris Hope smiled reassuringly and left in a hurry.
    That evening, as Tamara selected a linen tablecloth from the maple buffet stuck up against the extra front door, a fire siren ripped the stillness of Iron Mountain for a half-minute and stopped. She and Adrian rushed to the window and pulled aside gritty golden sheers. A screech of tires, a blast of a horn, and four pickup trucks and some cars careened past, laying a cloud of white dust so thick it obliterated the schoolhouse across the road.
    â€œWorkers from the mine going home.” Tamara wished she could go too. “I didn’t think they could all live here.”
    They dined on fine china and drank from crystal goblets and by candlelight, trying to ignore the horrid barnlike room these treasures inhabited. A thin pretense at celebration. Veal patties, rice with parsley, steamed broccoli, and a tossed salad dressed in lemon juice and herbs.
    â€œWhat’s for dessert?” Adrian’s dinner, except for the broccoli, was gone before her mother had finished dishing up.
    â€œChilled white grapes.”
    â€œI’ll have ice cream.”
    â€œThere isn’t any. And that broccoli is better warm.”
    â€œI know why we’re out in this forsaken hole. So you can starve me to death.”
    â€œAdrian, the doctor told you if you don’t learn to control your weight now, you’ll be an obese adult.”
    â€œI like being fat.”
    â€œNo, you don’t.” The silence grew long and nasty.
    â€œHave you noticed the stains on that wall?” Adrian said finally over the grapes, and pointed to the partition between apartments. “Looks like someone tried to wash off blood and left smears.”
    â€œProbably just a moisture stain like we used to get in Columbus.”
    â€œWhat moisture? Bet it hasn’t rained here in ten years. My throat’s sore from just breathing.”
    There was no television. Their books were on a train presumably headed for Cheyenne. And none of the mysterious inhabitants of Iron Mountain bothered to pay a call. No hint of sound from the Fistlers on the other side of the stained partition. Tamara thought fondly of the house they’d left in Columbus, and even of their crowded quarters in Iowa City, where they’d lived the last two years with her mother and ancient grandmother while she’d studied to renew a lapsed teaching certificate.
    Too tired and dispirited to begin dusting the powdered limestone off everything, they showered and went to bed early. The bathroom had no tub, only a shower and stool and a cabinet stuffed with gorgeous thick towels. They had to brush their teeth in the rusting metal sink in the kitchen.
    Tamara crawled into a walnut bedstead that would have brought a fortune in an antique store. There was just room for it and a matching dresser and a rocking chair. The dresser’s mate was in Adrian’s room, with a valuable iron bedstead. Why would B & H furnish the place so extravagantly and not spend a penny or so on floors, walls, kitchen, and bath?
    Tamara went to sleep worrying about how they would survive Iron Mountain even for a school year. But her dreams were of another place, a place she had never seen. She dreamt of a beach that glistened white with moonlight, the sand rumpled with footprints. And of a small dog who crouched in the shadow of a broken block of concrete.

2
    Thad Alexander laid scraps of last night’s dinner on a stone burial chamber sunk almost flush with the beach. But the dog waited until he stooped at the water’s edge to rinse his fingers before she crept toward the food. He