The Tambinder Engine (part eighteen)

The Tambinder Engine 

(part eighteen)

She woke in the trailer. The last home she would ever have, Deenie began to believe it. Her story had kept them past time for driving the cracking asphalt, and Rory with Tirza was under a blanket, on the small square of floor. You woke on this hillside in a smoky dew, not warm until you’d stood, shuffled to the crate step down, started the camp stove. Filled the coffee pot from the jug, put buttered bread in the skillet.

“Did you get them out for the foundation?” Tirza yawned at the door.

“I’m sorry, toast is what I’ve got.”

“Toast for three,” Rory said. “We’ll drive in for bacon and eggs.”

Deenie carried in the pot and plate; answered, then: “The foundation has to be good, it’s old stone. I don’t think I need to wait for inspection. Only for miracles.”

“There,” Rory said, “we will obtain funds. How? Gaia will bless. But you’ll have to come and be with us again.”

Deenie nudged peanut butter to them, and the jam jar. “Did I end up telling you I’ve been seeing Dustin?”

“You did at the start. You see him sunsets.”

“But now I want to ask,” Tirza said, “if you see your son in the way you saw Matthew Gilgan?”

“No. I know his face for Dustin’s…but it’s a drowned face, not one whose eyes could be met… How can I not think he was taken by the engine?”

“How would Dustin be here, in such case? His apparition, if we’re saying so. Did you write him when you made the arrangement with Gilgan?”

“Do you mean,” Tirza asked her husband, “that we will think of Deenie’s son as a ghost? Accept fictional conventions, have Dustin properly haunt along the Bitterroot River, on the other side of the world?”

“As opposed to thinking Deenie’s lost her mind?” Deenie said.

“They had drawn the supernatural?”

“From the depths. And finally they slowed the engine…”

“And, yes. The drownings slowed too.” Tirza said this.

“There are laws of physics that govern the supernatural, but they have functioned behind a barrier. We have not been made to deal with their shaping of our lives. I find this sound enough,” Rory said. “The world was dying, crashing, before Victor Tambinder built his engine. But the engine has ripped the barrier. We deal now with what we must learn to understand.”

“Tell me how it’s been for you to see Dustin. Are you afraid to go to him?”

“I want to. I want you with me.”

“Then what are you afraid of leaving, and what will you bring?” Tirza said. “Are you feeling safe about Ondine?”

“Not at all, but not for Dustin. I just haven’t got a stall for her. She’s so good, she won’t wander, she isn’t spooky… I want Jyff and Bobbo away. I have nothing precious, only my babies.”

27

The Tambinder Engine

The Tambinder Engine (part one)

(2025, Stephanie Foster)