Sand: Omnibus Edition by Hugh Howey Read Free Book Online Page B

while Vic told them both about Father when he was younger still, the great sand diver who shunned tanks of air for the sickness they caused, who could go down for ten minutes at a time and bring back wonders from impossible depths, who saved the water pump of Low-Pub and discovered the hills that became the western gardens. Father when he was young and reckless and bold.
    But Conner remembered a different man. His last memory of their dad was of a man gray and weathered, like a piece of wood exposed to the wind and sun. He remembered his father that night in the tent, kissing them all on their foreheads, whispering that he loved them and to be safe. He remembered that terrible year as they were forced to leave the great wall and began a slow drift westward, with the wind, through the best and then the worst parts of Springston and out to Shantytown. He remembered thinking they would never use the family tent again.
    And yet they had. Every year since, while the family dwindled and promises were unkept. There was that first fatherless year when their mother had come along and had helped them figure out how to erect the tent, the last year she would ever come. That night, she had told them of their father when he was a boy, the oldest stories of him any of them had heard, how he was forever in trouble, wrangling goats and taming snakes, and burying sarfers in the dunes, mast-first.
    Conner had woken early that year before the sun was up, had found his mother gone, had thought she’d left them like their father had, but there she was outside in the starlight, rocking and weeping beyond the tent, her feet dangling in the Bull’s gash, clutching baby Rob to her chest and moaning in tune to the drums of the east.
    Conner remembered all of this, but these were not the stories he told. “This is what I remember of our father,” he said. And he whispered memories of memories, only the best ones, because after that night they would be for his brother to recall and no one else.

10 • Sissyfoot
    THE DAY BEFORE
     
    The monster squealed and bucked its head beneath the canvas shroud. With a hideous screech, muffled by the tattered burlap, it bent its long neck down, driving its steel beak deep into the sand. It did this over and over, like a thirst-mad hummingbird probing the same dry desert flower for what little nectar it held.
    Conner watched these gyrations while his buckets were filled with sand. The wind lifted a loose corner of the protective shroud, and he caught a glimpse of the mighty water pump beneath, the heavy plated head with its rusty rivets rising and falling, the grease-streaked piston pushing in and out, water flowing through pipes like coins pouring into pockets.
    “Whatcha waitin’ on, boy? You’re topped and ready. Get to it!”
    Conner turned his gaze to Foreman Bligh, who leaned on his shovel and slid the long splinter between his lips from one corner of his mouth to the other. Conner knew better than to say anything and get another mandatory load. Besides, this was his fortieth haul of the day, enough to fulfill his after-school requirement, and quite possibly the last bucket he would haul for the rest of his life.
    “Sir, yessir,” he barked, and Foreman Bligh showed him the gaps between his teeth. Conner stooped to collect his buckets. The fine sand was piled up in flowing and shifting cones, precious veils of it cascading over the sides. Balancing his haulpole across his shoulders—the two buckets swaying from notches at either end—he forced his sore legs to straighten, turned to face the outhaul tunnel, and staggered up the long sloping walk out of there. It was programs like these new work requirements that made him itch to leave, even if he never came back. It was programs like these that made him feel less than sorry for the Lords when rebel bombs clapped over in Springston and someone was violently voted from office.
    Above him—farther up the gentle slope of sand that rose on all sides from