by Tim Powers
After some length of time the blurriness passed and she uncramped her hands, and she remembered how mean Barbara could get when she dawdled around like this, so she scrambled hastily back down the old iron ladders to the street, and then walked quickly in the direction opposite to the course of the pocalocas until she came to Barbara’s donut wagon.
Barbara must have been watching for her, for when Urania was two strides away from the wagon she opened the rear door and reached down a hand to help her in.
“Thanks, Sister Windch—” Urania began.
“It’s Barbara now,” the other woman said when Urania had climbed inside and shut the door. “You’ve got to remember that. Did you take ’em far?”
“Three, four blocks,” said Urania, leaning against the wall across from the occupied bunk and blinking in the sudden dimness.
“In which direction?”
Urania shook her head tiredly. “I don’t know about directions, I—”
“West is behind us,” interrupted Barbara. “East is forward. North is toward the canal and south is toward the grocery shop.”
“I thought north was always straight ahead.”
Barbara closed her eyes for a moment. She opened them and repeated, “In which direction?”
“Uh… behind us… toward the ocean.”
“That’s lucky, anyway.” Barbara glanced at the unconscious bandaged head of Rivas, then frowned and crossed to the bunk he was lying in.
Urania had begun to drift toward the sugar-powdery churros that Barbara had cooked this morning, but paused to see what she was doing. “Is he dead?”
“I thought he moved,” said Barbara. “Get me a damp cloth.”
“Okay, in a minute. Ow! Okay! Jeez, you don’t have to…” She lost the thought, looked around blankly, and then started toward the churros again.
“Damp cloth! Now!”
“Jeez, you just got to ask.” Urania dipped a towel in a bucket, wrung it out and brought it over to the bunk. “Here, Sis—I mean, Barbara.” She smiled happily at having got the name right.
“Thank you.” Windchime wiped the parts of Rivas’s face not covered by the bandage.
Urania got her donut at last, then watched. “You ever figure out whether it’s him that keeps drawing the pocalocas, or that?” She pointed to the shelf where stood the half-full bottle of tequila with the crystal suspended in it.
“I’m not sure. I think it’s the thing in the bottle. I think they can sense where it is.”
“Well, why don’t we throw it away?”
“Because,” said Barbara, obviously tired of repeating this, “he saved it. It may be important. We’ve got to hold it for him until he wakes up.”
Urania swallowed some donut. “He’s real sick. Shouldn’t we just leave him and the bottle with a doctor? We can’t take care of him as well as a doctor. He’d thank us for leaving him with one, I bet.”
“The doctor we took him to told us everything that needs to be done. He said that he actually has a better chance under our care than he would in that awful hospital.”
“But taking care of sick people isn’t our job! Jeez, it’s been two days he just lays there and needs cleaning up like a damn baby.”
Barbara rounded on her. “He saved your life! He’s trashed himself—starved, sick, fingers missing, split head—to save you. He wound up saving me, too, and maybe himself, maybe to some extent himself… but he did it for you. He—” She looked down at Rivas with an unreadable expression and added in a whisper, “he killed God for you.”
“Well excuse me for living,” said Urania indignantly.
“You knew him?” asked Barbara after a pause. “From what he said at the dinner I gathered you knew each other once.”
Urania nodded. “A long time ago.”
“Arf barf,” said Rivas.
Windchime turned back to him and crouched beside the bunk. “Rivas?” she asked urgently. “Can you hear me?”
Rivas muttered indistinctly and seemed to laugh.
Barbara turned to Urania. “Why don’t you try talking to him.”
Urania took her place. “Hi, Greg. This is Uri, remember?”
There was such a long pause that she was about to speak again, but finally he said, “Yeah.” He opened his eyes, narrowly, as if the wagon’s interior was very brightly lit. “Long time,” he croaked. His voice was rusty, but there seemed to be contempt in it. “Thirteen years. I’ve been unconscious thirteen years.”
“Oh, naw, Greg,” said Urania. “It’s just been two days.”
“Jaybush,” he said softly. “And I thought I left him behind when I was twenty-one. Ten years ago. But I’ve just been sort of a… what, wandering disciple or something.” He subsided, then suddenly opened his eyes and tried to sit up. “Jesus,” he choked, nearly passing out, “where’s his crystal, where is he? That can’t—”
Barbara touched his shoulder and pointed at the bottle on the shelf. “There.”
“Ah.” He relaxed, sweating with relief. “Good. Don’t uncork it.”
“What is it?” Urania asked. “You said ‘he’? Is that the Lord, in that tequila bottle?”
Rivas glanced from Urania to Barbara. “How birdy are you ladies?” he asked.
Barbara frowned deeply. “Coming out of it,” she said. “Now I…know he w-w-wasn’t really God. I mean, I know it, but…”
Urania shook her head sadly, staring at the tequila bottle. “So I have to go home and marry Joe Montecruz.”
“You’re what, Uri,” said Rivas, “thirty? You can do what you want. You don’t have to marry this guy if you don’t want to.”
Urania shook her head dubiously.
“I remember some of the dinner, Sister Windchime,” said Rivas. “But how did we get out of there? And… what happened to me?” He touched his bandaged head.
“You’re supposed to call her Barbara,” said Urania virtuously.
“People might remember the, uh, birdy name,” Barbara explained. “Well, the place started collapsing as soon as you threw that squid thing at him, and then bullets were flying so thick you’d get hit if you moved. Sister Sue moved, tried to pull the thing off the L—off Jaybush. Then after you… cut him up, a rock hit you in the head. I was sure you were dead, or dying anyway, but I got you into the boat and then just headed for one of the arches. I thought one of those bridges was going to come right down on us and mash us all—that was happening to most of the people on the rafts, it looked like—but I figured why not keep moving. Anyway, I got us through the arch into a little tunnel and then it wasn’t so bad, the tunnel roof was just dropping pebbles and sand, and the waves from the pool in the big room helped move us along.”
She shook her head. “Do you remember when h-he told all those people they were going to die? Well, even though he seemed to be dead, they didn’t want any change in plans. Some had wound up in under the arch with us, but they didn’t try to get into our boat, or swim out—they were trying to drown, and getting mad when they’d come up and take a breath in spite of themselves.
“I paddled us along the tunnel, and when we came outside we were in one of the canals, so I just kept going. After a while I found an old pier hidden under a big pepper tree, so I left the two of you there and went back.”
Urania was listening avidly, and Rivas wondered if this could be the first time she’d heard the story. Could she have been too incurious to ask?
“The building had mostly fallen down by that time,” Barbara went on, “and I could hear sounds something like seals barking, or honking geese, from the big pool inside the crumbled walls, but it was like they were speaking with mouths and throats that weren’t any good for speaking with. It seemed like they kept trying to say, ‘Where are you, Lord?’ And some of the voices were coming from the sky, where things were flying around; they sounded so awful, just the noise of them flying, I mean, like big wet wings slapping, that I was glad it was dark and I couldn’t see them. Anyway, a lot of bodies had floated out of the tunn
el into the canal, and I went through the pockets of three or four of the better-dressed ones.” Her voice was still matter of fact, but Rivas could see tears in her eyes and her hands were clenched on his blanket, pulling a section of it drumhead taut. “A couple of them had quite a lot of money. I took it and came back to where you two were.” The blanket tore with a sound like a spitting cat, startling all three of them. “Urania was still crying. You still looked like every breath was your last. We all waited there until morning, then I got us a room and got a doctor for you. And then I used nearly all the rest of the money to buy this donut wagon and two horses, and we’ve been doing well enough since.” Staring down at the torn blanket, she added, “My f-father owns a bakery, so I… know how to…”
“Except we have to move around a lot,” put in Urania.
“The pocalocas keep zeroing in on us,” Barbara explained. “I’ve tried to keep moving east, figuring to get to Ellay, but those damned women make us backtrack a lot of the time. They’ll march past quickly, then back again not so quick, and then if we don’t rouse the horses and get the wagon out of there they start just milling around, looking everywhere, like they’re not even sure what they’re looking for. I’ve been having Urania decoy them away by singing in a street in the other direction—they hate music—but lately they haven’t been as easy to deflect. I think they want what’s left of… their god,” she said, looking at the tequila bottle, “or the guy that killed him,” she said, looking at Rivas. “Or, more likely, both.”
Rivas shivered. He raised his right hand and tried to make a fist; he could, but he couldn’t have crushed a sponge in it. God, I’m weak, he thought. A single pocaloca could kill me right now, easy as killing a bug. I’m going to have to get some exercise… and some food.
With the thought of food came an awareness of ravenous hunger—and of the smell that filled the wagon. “Could I have some of your donuts?” he asked.
“Of course,” Barbara said. “But there’s some soup, if you’d rather. Bean and onion, and the guy I bought it from thins it with sherry.” She said this a bit primly, as if she still couldn’t bring herself to approve of alcohol.
“Oh, yes, please,” said Rivas fervently.
Barbara went to the front part of the wagon, which was evidently a tiny kitchen, clattered around for a minute, and then returned with a steaming bowl and a spoon. “I’d better feed you,” she said.
“My God, I’m not a baby,” Rivas said. “I can feed myself. Here, give me the spoon, I’ll show you.”
She did, and he could hold it, but his hand shook so badly that most of the soup spilled out of the spoon, and then he dropped the spoon in. It sank out of sight.
“God damn it,” he grated, afraid for a moment that he might cry at this defeat.
Barbara fished it out, wiped it off, dipped up some soup and held it to his mouth. “It’s no disgrace,” she whispered. “Eat, dummy.”
He did, and it was delicious, and in a few minutes she’d scraped the last spoonful out of the bowl.
“Would you like something to drink?” she asked him as she stood up.
“Sure, thanks,” he said. “What have you got?”
“Nothing, but there’s a market a block away, and the donuts made some money this morning.”
“Okay, I’ll, uh, pay you back,” he ventured.
“Don’t be silly. What would you like?”
“Beer?”
She pressed her lips together, but said, “Okay. Back in five. Uri, anybody knocks, make sure it’s me before you open up, right?”
“Sure, sure.”
“See you.” Barbara left, drawing the door closed behind her.
Rivas turned and stared at Uri. She did look much better now than she had at the Regroup Tent and the disastrous dinner; her hair was clean and she seemed to have got enough sleep lately. He didn’t need a mirror to know that she must look ten years younger than he did. But she wasn’t Uri, the girl he’d dreamed of and written songs to for thirteen years, the girl that had made all other girls seem coarse and insensitive and stupid by comparison. And he realized at last that what had made her so enduring an obsession was his deprivation of her. If her father hadn’t separated them after that birthday party, she’d simply have been his first girlfriend. It was the drama of frustrated love—and the safety of it, too, of course, for frustrated love is never subjected to the daily patch-and-make-do reality of a marriage—that had made him base his life on it.
He remembered, suddenly, what he’d been dreaming of, just before he woke up. Probably prompted by hearing Uri’s voice, he’d been dreaming of the birthday party. It was a dream he’d had before, but always before in it he’d been young Rivas, winding up barking in drunken apprehension behind the bushes. This time he’d been the present day thirty-one-year-old Rivas, somehow transported back through time to be an observer of that traumatic evening thirteen years ago.
He’d seen the kid who was his younger self come lurching out of the Barrows house, pale and sweaty and unhappy-looking, and go reeling toward the road—then stop, slap a hand across his mouth and go lunging into the bushes. There had followed the inelegant racket of someone being violently ill.
An elderly couple had strolled out of the house, and registered startlement at these sounds. “What on earth is that, Henry?” the woman asked.
“Oh,” said the man, smiling tolerantly, “it sounds like a dog, behind the bushes there. Nothing we need concern ourselves with.” They’d started to wander away then.
But a moment later a strange new sound arose from behind the bushes. “Rowf. Rowf. Art barf. Owooo—Oh, God, gaaak—oh, rowf, rowf…”
Urania, who had fetched herself another donut, looked up and caught Rivas’s eye just as he began laughing. He was too weak to laugh very hard, but he did it for quite a while.
“You laughing at me?” Urania asked when he’d subsided somewhat.
He sniffed and weakly wiped tears away from his eyes. “No, Uri. Me.” He looked at her fondly. “It’s been thirteen years, Uri. Did you think about me much?”
“Some,” she said. “Of course I’ve been busy. Uh… did you think about me much?”
He shrugged. “I thought so.”
“Would you like one of these donuts?”
“I guess not, thank you.”
Abruptly there was a hard knock at the wagon’s door, and, overlapping that noise, Barbara’s voice, quiet but tense: “Lemme in, quick. That last gang of pocalocas is back.”
Urania let her in, and Barbara hurried forward and crouched by Rivas. “Can we let them have that?” she asked, pointing at the bottle with the crystal in it.
Starkly aware of his own helplessness, Rivas shook his head. “No. That’s Jaybush dormant in there, that crystal. It they can get it, he’ll be alive again.”
“Okay, we run.” She turned to Urania. “Uri, they’re coming from behind us. Do you remember how to drain the deep fryer?”
“Well, you only showed me once. You turn the—”
“You’ve got to do it. And then take the broom, hop down and quickly sweep the oil off to both sides of the street. Go!”
“But why do—”
“Now, damn it!”
Uri went, grumbling, to the front of the wagon.
“Can I help at all?” asked Rivas.
Barbara dropped the bar across the flimsy door. “Of course not,” she said with the briefest backward glance. She peered through a narrow hole in the door, sunlight making a luminous slash across her smooth cheek. Without feeling the least bit less useless, Rivas found himself growing excited by the sight of her.
Brilliantly appropriate response to peril, you idiot, he told himself.
Urania came puffing back in through the kitchen. “There, it’s all—”
“Bring me the broom,” snapped Barbara.
Rolling her eyes like a martyr, Urania went back to the kitchen. Rivas could hear a sort of unsynchronized marching outside, getting louder. Urania returned with the broom,
which was dripping and reeked of cooking oil.
Barbara straightened and snatched it from her. “Now when I say go,” she said quickly to Urania, “you fling the back door open—lift the bar first—and then instantly run forward and whip up the horses and get us out of here fast, it doesn’t matter where. Got it?”
“Yes,” said Urania, moving forward and taking hold of the bar.
“Go.”
The bar clanked back, the door was flung open, and Rivas, raising his head in the bunk, was sure he glimpsed the pain-gaunt face of Sister Sue in the moment when Barbara held the broom head to the candle and the oil-soaked straw brush blazed into flame. Then the wagon lurched forward and Barbara blocked his view as she leaned out the door to toss the burning broom to the pavement.
Over the rattling of the wheels and his own pounding heartbeat he didn’t hear any whoosh of sudden ignition, but he did hear screams of surprise and pain and rage. Barbara lost her balance and had to grab the door frame, and Rivas watched her swing out and around, her white teeth bared with effort, and then he saw muscles flex in her brown arms and legs as she dragged herself back inside. She gave him a taut grin as she pushed the door shut.
“We’re away from ’em,” she said, “but now we don’t dare stop. They’ll remember this wagon.”
“And I’ll bet one of them recognized you, and probably me too,” Rivas told her, letting his head fall back onto the pillow. “I think their leader was Sister Sue.”
“Oh. Yes.” She grabbed the bunk to brace herself, and a pan fell in the kitchen, as Urania took a fast turn. “Are you sure? I didn’t look at any of them closely.”
“I’m afraid I’m sure.”
“Huh. Well, I hope we all—including the horses—like donuts, because I think we’re going to have to just make one long burn straight to Ellay. Objections?”
He spread his hands. “It’s your show.” The wagon took another sharp turn and this time there were angry yells from outside as well as pans falling in the kitchen, and Barbara started forward but stopped when Rivas said, “Oh, one thing…”