by Isla Morley
“She says it’s too early for swarms. C’mon, Mom, it’s beautiful out.”
“He’ll be okay,” Marcus says, handing me a slice of buttered bread. I join Ginny outside so I can keep an eye on Adam. “Thank you for the clothes. I haven’t worn a skirt in ages.”
She smiles.
I watch Adam break out into a run with the dog at his side. The scene could be taken straight from the catalog of fantasies I kept Below. What is new for him might as well be new for me, because I, too, am stunned by the countless shades of green, by goose bumps and sunburn and the many other ways skin reacts to open air. Still, I don’t trust what I see. New clothes, loose hair, guard still very much up. “I don’t know how I’m going to take care of him out here. I worry that I might only be any good at my job in a controlled environment. This”—I sweep my hand across the expanse—“this terrifies me. How do people do it, let their children make their own decisions?” How do I make my own decisions? Are we to take up the life of gypsies or become homesteaders? Should Adam be allowed to interact freely with others or should I shelter him, hide him, even? Without Dobbs deciding for me, I can’t seem to get my bearings. I must have assumed someone would do all the deciding for us.
A look of understanding crosses her face.
Adam is attempting a cartwheel, and the dog is barking excitedly at him. He doesn’t have enough muscle tone, so he goes butt over applecart and lands flat on his back. The dog is licking his face. Germs! I almost shriek.
“I don’t know why I thought everything was still going to be the same. He kept telling me it was different, but I never believed him, not a single word. Now, I’m the crazy one.” Crazy for thinking it would be exactly how I left it. Crazy for thinking my family and friends would all fall into one long receiving line. Crazy for thinking that my son would need me more, not less.
Ginny lays the baby tummy-down on the mat and nods. It is some kind of rare talent, this ability of hers to turn an otherwise private person into a magpie.
“You know what the strangest thing about being back is?” Besides the hostile takeover of trees, the sinister enterprise at Sunflower, the frequency with which the hairs on the back of my neck are raised—what Grandma would attribute to a haunting. “Not having any children around.”
By way of protest, Ginny rests her hand on the baby’s head.
“But I mean, regular children.” As soon as the words leave my lips, I regret them. Quickly, I backtrack, but Ginny turns her head to watch Adam as if to say, Regular children, indeed.
There wells up between us a polite silence until Marcus and Bill bail us out with steaming coffee and banter.
“Electricity’s on,” Bill says, handing his wife a mug and kissing the top of her head. He sees his wife look at her watch and says, “That’s right, an hour earlier than yesterday.” Bill explains the reason he and Ginny, along with many others, moved here from other parts of the country was because Douglas County had one of the few geothermal power stations still operable. He points out the power lines hooked to the roof. “Labor’s the issue. If we can get enough volunteers to run the operation, we can go back to having electricity twenty-four/seven. God, can you imagine the possibilities?”
“Commercial television,” Marcus pipes up.
“Kill me now.”
“What’d you give me for a PlayStation, still in the box?”
“How about a five-thousand-watt generator?” Bill takes a peek at each baby. “But never mind the virtual world when we have the heavenly host for company.”
There’s what I should have said.
The Bowerses retreat to the kitchen, and Marcus takes Ginny’s seat. He smiles at the babies. I tell him about my remark, and he assures me Ginny’s not one to keep grudges, that she used to be quick to shoot off her mouth back in the day before her vocal cords got damaged from the operation.
He watches Adam, who now appears to be inspecting grass. The dog finds it equally fascinating. “I think that hound is here to stay.”
After the longest time, he says, “It ain’t all bad. What you saw back there at Sunflower, that’s the worst of it. There are enough of us trying to do right. It’ll add up. Maybe not to the point where we’ll have all the luxuries like before, but it’ll be one of God’s sweet mercies if we don’t get back no cable television.
“You’ll see.” He pats my knee. “You’ll see.”
All this, and I didn’t even have to ask, What hope is there for us?
* * *
Bill is giving Adam and me a tour of his workshop. The barn smells of sawdust and green wood and furniture polish. Timber is stacked in neat piles and there is a heap of shavings off to one side. Adam runs his fingers through it, asks if he might keep a handful. He says he didn’t realize how every solitary thing would have its own special feel. Texture, dimensions, how no two voices sound the same, how no two things weigh the same. It seems every time I look at Adam, he has something in each hand, acting the part of a scale. I weigh stuff, too: my grief against Adam’s delight; the insufferable predictability of our lives in the silo against the fear of an unknowable future; the hospitality of strangers against the instinct for flight.
Showing us furniture in various stages of completion, Bill explains that he became a carpenter only after he and Ginny moved out here eight years ago. Acacia, he tells us, is his favorite wood to work with, that hickory can be a bitch, and that milling alder is like trying to throttle a snake. He holds up his hand so we can see where two fingers end at the middle knuckle. The cradle and the set of dining room chairs are to be sold later in the month at the swap meet. Swap meets, we learn, are the new shopping plazas. Everyone from doctors to barbers sets up business at swap meets. Cash is in circulation again, he says, but people are leery of it. Trading goods and services is still the choice of most settlers. A dining table can fetch enough homemade baby formula to feed six infants for two months, a liter of wine will fetch a tooth filling. Nothing is more valuable than gasoline. Bill tells us the biggest pitfall to skillful trading is nostalgia. He shows us his office where shelves are crammed with memorabilia.
Adam studies each item—a corkscrew, a coffeemaker, the SIM card Bill says holds a thousand photographs. Adam screws up his eyes to make sure tiny images are not printed on the piece of plastic, then looks at Bill and nods slowly like all adults really are dippy. Bill hands him a tin box and gestures for Adam to turn the lever. He does as he’s told, humoring our host. Just as he’s about to put it back on the shelf, the top flies off and a scruffy clown launches at him. Adam recoils, loses his balance, and lands flat on his backside. Bill is very apologetic. Adam turns bright red. He dusts himself off. Instead of returning it to its place, he picks up the tin box again and repeats the process. The next time the clown pops up, Adam is almost as startled as the first time. He is positively shiny with delight.
“I get scolded every time I bring stuff like this home, but I have no restraint.” Bill powers up a row of lava lamps. “Now, you tell me that’s not American ingenuity at its finest.”
“Wow.” Adam exhales. For someone who’s grown up with a father like Dobbs, you’d think Adam would shy away from men, but already he is forming strong alliances, first with Marcus, now Bill. That they treat him nothing like an artifact to be preserved might have something to do with it. To them, he is but an ordinary boy who must graze his knee and face his fears and let go of his mother’s apron strings if he hopes to become a man.
Adam examines a pair of binoculars, looks through the large exit lenses. “You’re so small, Mom.”
I have him turn it around, then point him toward the open door. Adam gasps, takes a step back, and quickly lowers the binoculars. He looks through them again. “Who are those guys?”
I snatch the binoculars from Adam. Securing the vineyard are half a dozen scarecrows. I heave a sigh of relief. No need to run, I tell Bill, who, now armed with a blowtorch, has taken up a defensive position.
Adam thinks there ought to be better ways of
scaring off birds other than wasting a perfectly good set of clothes on a bunch of straw. “Why don’t you just chase them away yourself?” As if people have nothing better to do all day than to watch for birds. He puts the binoculars back on the shelf, but Bill tells him to keep them. Adam insists it be a trade and hands Bill the only thing of value he has, another one of Dobbs’s keys. Having hung the binoculars around his neck, he returns his attention to the shelf. He thumbs a small metal ring of spikes that whirrs as it spins.
“Spurs,” explains Bill.
When Adam hears how cowboys used to attach them to their boots, his eyes light up. He asks if he might go with Bill to a swap meet sometime.
“You have something to trade?”
“I’ve got stuff.”
I see straightaway where Adam is going with this. “No, you don’t.”
“It’s ours now,” he argues. “Mister’s got no use for it.” That he speaks of Dobbs in nothing but a passing manner concerns me. The man’s voice has to be in Adam’s head just as it is in mine, his moods and theories and explanations exerting the same kind of push and pull. If we’d talk about him, we could decide together what to make of the man. Instead of waging our own personal battles, we could figure out the new battle lines, because somehow, being Above still feels like a fight to be free. But whenever I bring up Dobbs, Adam clams up.
“We’re not going back there, and that’s final.”
“You have supplies?” Bill asks.
Though I wish he’d drop it, I nod.
Adam is eager to fill him in. “We’ve got tons of supplies. Food, diesel, tools.”
Bill interrupts him and says to me, “Have you told anyone this?”
I shake my head at Bill.
“Good. How secure is the place?”
Adam tells him the locks to the main doors can only be opened with codes and that a bunch of the supplies inside are kept under lock and key.
Bill pulls out the key Adam gave him.
“That one opens the filing cabinet where the microfiche is kept. Mom says Abraham Lincoln’s speech is probably the finest thing ever written, but I like the diagrams of Benjamin Franklin’s inventions best.”
This gets Bill’s attention. “You have documents? Historical documents?”
“The Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights and one page with a bunch of signatures. We’ve got tons of stuff in those cabinets.”
Bill’s mouth opens, closes, and opens again. “No one thought to safeguard our nation’s archives, or at least anyone that we’ve come across until now. The founding documents went the way of everything else combustible in museums and libraries. You going to preserve a book or are you going to build a fire to keep warm? And all those digital copies are lost in the ether, never to be retrieved. So, we’re left with this.” Bill Bowers taps his temple. “Less than one percent of the US population survived, and now we’re down to fifty thousand, maybe a little more—how many of them do you think were scholars and teachers of history? Not enough, is how many. We’ve all just assumed that when the last of us died off, there wouldn’t be anything of an oral history, either. Legends and fables are what the future generations were going to inherit, but this”—Bill holds up Adam’s key—“this changes everything. This is the key to who we once were, and to what greatness we are capable of.” Bill turns his gaze of wonderment to me. “You, my dear, have the keys to a gold mine. Have you considered how this resource might be utilized?”
Gold mine? Below has been nothing but a dungeon. Returning, even if it is to collect the commodities that will help me and Adam and be of some use to the survivors, fills me with dread.
“Perhaps we can have this discussion another time.”
Bill hands Adam the key. “Son, you hang on to this, and when you and your mother are ready to share those documents, you let me know.” And because he is a kind man, he changes the subject. “You mentioned diagrams of inventions. Do you like to make things?”
Adam nods.
“Tell him about that car you made, Adam.”
“Mom, it was a toy.”
I tell Bill about how Adam constructed a vehicle out of this and that.
Bill looks at Adam intently. “Very few folks can earn or trade enough for a car, son, so if you can build even a go-kart, you can do very nicely indeed.”
Bill is teaching Adam how to attach a piece of wood to a spindle on a lathe. He suggests I might want to visit with Ginny. I take the hint.
She is in the kitchen, filling up two baby bottles. She seems pleased to see me. She offers me a bottle and gives me the choice of which baby to feed. I lift Molly out of the bassinet and situate her in the crook of my arm. She is eager for her meal and seems to hold no grudge against me for my earlier remarks. Babies are a forgiving lot.
“Adam’s taken quite a liking to Bill.”
Ginny presses her throat, and a husky whisper comes out. “Lava . . . lamps.”
I laugh. “Yes. I expect I’m not going to hear the end of it until Adam gets himself one.
“Do you find families for all the children who come here?”
She shakes her head. Her smile slips ever so slightly.
“What happens to them?”
“I take ’em.” Marcus enters the kitchen with a bouquet of wildflowers. He fills an enamel pitcher with water and puts the flowers in it. He peers at each baby face. “How my girls doing? Can you say hi to Uncle Marcus? No? Too busy eating, I guess.”
“Take them where?”
Marcus doesn’t answer me but asks Ginny if she has any idea who they might recruit to rescue babies from Sunflower now that he’s no longer working there. She brings him a big leather book and leafs through the pages until she comes to a name. She copies the details onto a slip of paper while Marcus explains that the book lists all the people who’ve adopted children. “Any number of these folks will step forward. It’s just a matter of asking.”
He hands me the book. There are dozens of entries. In the box designated for address, many people have written “East Prefecture,” or “Maynard Caravan,” or “NPA.” No permanent abode, Marcus says. Only in two spaces have people written “Eudora.” One is written in a hand too illegible to make out the name. The other, printed in tiny capitals, is a name I recognize. I bend down close to make sure it is not the fault of weak eyes. Mercy Coleman. She has given her address as 41 Terrace Street, Eudora. Out near the river. I scoot the journal over to Ginny and tap on the entry dated only months ago. It must surely be an error. In the name, in the date. “Do you remember this person?”
Ginny examines the book and, without hesitation, nods. She rubs her fingers over her arm, the same sign she uses to refer to baby Molly.
“An albino, yes!”
Ginny and Marcus are both taken aback. “You know this person?” asks Marcus.
I can’t possibly know her. It’s been seventeen years since I last saw her. The person I know who shares the same name surely exists only in my head. And yet I say, “Know her? She’s my best friend!”
We are all standing and cheering and hugging and saying things like what a small world it is, when three people hurry into the kitchen—the owner of the car from last night and the oddest pair of prospective parents I have ever clapped eyes on. They are both bald and dressed in long, tunic-type garments cinched with cord belts. It is impossible to tell whether we have a father and a mother, or two fathers, or two mothers, whether they are eighteen years old or eighty. Their faces are wrinkled and marred with warts the size of grapes, yet their postures are upright and their eyes undimmed.
The driver, Anton, is in some sort of huff and beckons to speak to Marcus privately. When Marcus swings his head my direction, I don’t have to be told that I am the subject of their fevered discussion. My gut tightens, a belt with no more notches. Ginny quickly leads the couple to Molly’s crib, and I approach Marcus. “They know where we are, don’t they?”
“Get Adam.”
I run out to the barn. By the time
we return, Ginny is stuffing provisions in a bag, the couple with their new baby are already headed for the car, and Marcus has retrieved our belongings from upstairs. It occurs to me that for this man we’ve just become a burden.
“Where are we going?”
“To my place. Lawrence.”
Bill is shaking his head. “Let me guess: Sheldon.”
Marcus nods. “Called in to Republic Radio this morning to announce that if the Grand Council had any sense at all, they’d be supplying their breeding programs with untainted stock like the kid here instead of candidates who were practically defectives themselves.”
The sound Bill makes is the same as a teakettle about to boil. “I don’t know why I didn’t send them home when you arrived.”
Adam has picked up Angel and seems to be ignoring all this. He adjusts her knitted cap, then takes her tiny hand in his and gives it a shake. Ginny comes up beside him, but he does not pass her the baby. In fact, he holds her even closer.
Ginny makes some gesture to Bill.
He answers her. “It’s not Sunflower I’m worried about. If anything, they’re going to deny it and save themselves the embarrassment of having let Adam slip through their fingers.”
Ginny’s face darkens.
“Why do we need to run, then?” I ask.
Nobody wants to look at me. They prefer to watch Adam and the baby, who have locked eyes. The baby pumps her little legs.
“Tell me!”
“It’s open season,” Marcus says. “For the next few days, every trader, bounty hunter, and crackpot out there is going to be trying to make a score with Adam.”
Adam presses his lips against Angel’s forehead, then hands the baby to Ginny as if he might change his mind. He picks up his suitcase. It’s the resigned way he walks to the front door that breaks my heart.
When it comes to saying good-bye, Adam and I are both at a loss. Bill slips Adam a baseball card. “Shoeless Joe Jackson. That’s gold at the swap meet.” He also gives Adam the spurs. Ginny hands Marcus the bag of provisions, which gives the impression we’re about to hit the Appalachian Trail, not drive twelve miles to Lawrence. She gives me a hug, hands me the tube of sunscreen, and tucks an envelope in my shirt pocket.