by Isla Morley
Marcus calls out, “How you doing, Lexie?”
The two dogs circle each other, exchange smells. The patchwork dog approaches Marcus, sniffs his shoes and pants, and sits up on its back paws.
“What makes you think I have something to eat?” He pets the dog’s grotesque head and tells us Lexie’s a friend, then rustles around in his pack and comes out with a wedge of cheese. He hands the dog a piece and then turns around and gives some to Oracle, too.
“She don’t bite,” Marcus says, when the mongrel begs off Adam.
Adam digs out the Twinkie and gets a slobbered hand for his troubles.
“Now, stay close,” Marcus whispers. “Lexie’s owner can be a spooky sonofabitch, but he keeps out the riff-raff. No headhunter’s going to come down here with Blade around. He tries talking to you, you just keep your head down. Let me do the talking.”
We’ve not gone a dozen paces farther when a jagged voice rips the darkness. The sound is distorted, as though it has traveled through a stretched-out coil. “Abandon all hope!” Coming off the phantom is a foul smell. “Through me you enter into the city of woes!”
I reach for Adam’s hand.
“Blade’s got a thing for Dante,” Marcus whispers, putting a protective arm around me. Obviously got a thing for vinegar, too. The odor burns my nose. Marcus keeps the beam of light focused ahead and not to the side where the voice is hissing more warnings.
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!”
“Hey there, Blade. How you doing? We’re making our way to camp; be outta your hair in just a minute.” Because Marcus takes to humming an overly cheerful tune, I worry even more.
“The city of woes!”
“Just passin’ through, Blade; just passin’ through.”
“Abandon all hope!” He’s standing close enough that I can smell his vile breath. I don’t turn my head, not even when a rawboned hand grazes my shoulder.
“Mom!” Adam whispers, trying to wriggle free of my grasp. I realize I have dug my nails into his palm.
* * *
After walking through a maze of tunnels, Marcus steers us through a tight gulch that opens to an antechamber about the size of a bowling alley. A string of bulbs light only part of the space. Groups of people are gathered around fiery drums. One group is singing. Lit by the orange glow, the figures don’t resemble castaway people, vagrants like those at the train, but more like bronze statues come to life.
But for a loincloth, the man in front of us is naked. Stringy white hair hangs in long strands from the sides of his head and chin. Whiskers spring from his nose, and his eyebrows are so overgrown, he has to squint to keep from being poked in the eye. Where his cheeks are supposed to be are deep crevices, and instead of a row of teeth, there is a single incisor sharpened to a point.
“I was wondering when you were going to show up. We got word on the CB. These are your fellow bandits, I take it.”
Adam can’t stop staring at the man. He has grown up being told that people Above don’t live to be old, that they are taken out by radiation or disease or wild animals, but here is one surely as ancient as God.
“Adam, Blythe, I’d like you to meet Pops.”
The old man shakes my hand and peers at Adam. “Adam, huh? So you’re the one causing all the fuss?”
I wink at Adam, but he looks at his feet.
Marcus comments on the singing, which is now even louder and not exactly on key, and Pops explains that we have arrived during rehearsals and that it is going to be a madhouse until opening night of the musical. The Wizard of Oz, we are told. To me and Adam he gives this warning: “Unless you want to be put in a ridiculous outfit, I suggest you tell the director in unequivocal terms when he comes and pesters you to audition that you are not interested in a part.”
No sooner are we warned when someone with a long red cloak waves frantically at us from one of the drums to come on over.
Pops makes shooing gestures. “Stark-raving mad, the lot of them, and he’s the ringleader.” To Marcus, he asks, “Are we to assume your guests will be staying awhile?”
As Marcus pulls Pops into a tight huddle off to the side, I nudge Adam. “You okay?”
“I didn’t mean to cause ‘a fuss.’ ”
“The man was teasing, Adam.” How to explain teasing?
“Above is not how I thought it would be.”
If he’d let me, I’d take him in my arms and hug him.
When you’ve lived your whole life with elaborate fantasies, how can reality stand a chance? You think if only you can see with your own two eyes, taste with your own lips, you will know the truth. You think if you can kiss the soil and breathe the fresh air, you’ll be free. Freedom has always been a matter of getting out, of being Above. And here we are, discovering what a flash in the pan it can be.
“If it weren’t for me,” Adam continues, “you wouldn’t be in all this trouble.”
I take a breath. I hold him by the shoulders so he knows that what’s coming is big. “If I could go back in time to that moment when Dobbs stopped the car where I was walking, do you know what I would do? Do you? I’d get in. I’d go through it all over again just so I could have you.”
I make him say okay before I let him go.
“Marcus is going to help build a new city someplace south of here. I want us to go with him.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to go to Eudora. I want to go where the people are.”
It would have been better if my son punched me in the gut. I am the people, I want to scream. If I could breathe.
“Your mom and dad aren’t there. Nobody’s there, Mom.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Mom, the odds are—”
“You know nothing about odds, Adam. Nothing!”
Having concluded their discussion, presumably about us, Pops interjects, “Why don’t we let these good folk sit down and have something to eat? The lady over here looks like she’s about ready to pass out.” From out of thin air, the old man conjures a bench.
I sit down hard.
Marcus announces that he is going to sort out a place for us to sleep. Not until he walks toward the far wall do I notice a long row of tents and lean-tos.
“Marcus has shared a little of your and Adam’s remarkable history. The world must appear very different from what you imagined; disappointing, I daresay.”
Adam bends to pet his dog. I suspect it is to keep from showing just how disappointed he is.
“You must know the allegory of Plato’s cave?” Pops asks.
I shake my head.
He looks like a hobo, but he talks like someone with an education, like he might have been somebody important before. He tells the story of people chained since infancy by their hands and necks in a cave. Rather than facing the light from the entrance, they have been forced to spend their lives watching shadows on the dark wall in front of them, unaware that the images are cast by puppeteers behind them. A prisoner who is released from the cave ventures outside only to find he has great trouble believing the objects he finds there are more real than the illusions they cast on the cave wall.
“According to Plato, the released captive will at first see only the shadows best, then the reflections of objects in the water, and then, as he adjusts, the objects themselves. Eventually, he will see himself as he truly is and will discover his proper place in the world.” He gestures to our surroundings. “If we rely only on our senses, what we see can imprison us. To Plato, in order to be free, one must journey above to the realm of knowledge, where we must strain our eyes for what is last to appear.”
“What is last to appear?” Adam asks as two plates hover toward us.
Pops is obviously pleased to be asked. “The idea of good. When we behold the idea of good, Plato teaches, then all that is right and beautiful is possible.”
Adam looks up to see his plate being offered by a girl, a girl with huge brown eyes, a wide smile and wheat-colored hair woven into many l
ong braids. Talk about right and beautiful, is his expression.
“Chili?” she says. “It’s really good.”
He’s seen pictures. Dobbs once brought down a magazine of women without clothes, and men, too, with their whatsits out. I could have scalped him when I found it in Adam’s room. Here now is a real girl—a young woman, actually. Nothing at all like a shadow or a picture. Yet, she is every bit as pretty as make-believe.
Adam takes the plate and watches the girl with the same kind of blinkered concentration usually set aside for mechanical devices as she walks to a row of tables and pours water from a pitcher. When she brings him the glass, you’d think she was showing him how to split atoms.
“My name’s Bea—not in the buzz-buzz kind, but short for Beatrice. But nobody calls me Beatrice.” There’s a musical lilt to the way she speaks.
Adam has yet to take a bite of food.
She upends a bucket and sits next to him, fluffing out a skirt that seems to be made out of neckties. Her shirt appears to be woven out of shoelaces. “Pete’s a really good cook; you should try it.” She points to Adam’s plate and lifts an invisible spoon to her mouth.
Adam takes a mouthful.
Bea nods and smiles. “Your dog friendly?” She bends to pet Oracle’s head. I have the urge to tell her not to get too close, that the dog has a thing for throats. It’s Adam I’m mad at, but she’s to blame, too. She and all the other Outsiders who are exerting their collective pull on my son, people who are not my people.
“I like dogs. Birds, too. I had a crow for a while. It could sing. We like to sing around here. Are those real binoculars?” Adam takes them off and lets her look through them. She points them straight at him and giggles, and I wonder if the girl is not a bit loopy. After giving them back, she flits over to a basket and comes back with two sticks crossed together at the middle. She weaves yarn around them. “You’re not one for talking, are you? It’s okay. Ask anyone here and they’ll tell you I talk enough for everyone put together. Except for Pops, maybe.” For a brief moment, we all look at the old man, who holds up his hands as if to say, Guilty as charged.
“It’s just that there’s so much to talk about,” Bea continues. “You put words to your life and tell it like a story, and, ta-da! you’re a main character. Now, people say there are things that shouldn’t be spoken of—bad things. But I think those ought to be spoken of first. Get them out of the way. Make room for all the good things, don’t you think?”
Does she have an OFF button?
Her handiwork produces an intricate pattern of greens, reds, and yellows. She tells him it’s called a God’s eye.
“My mom likes crafts,” Adam finally manages.
Yes, she’s especially good with a crochet needle.
The girl looks over at me as though I just materialized. “Oh, hello.”
“Hello.”
Returning, Marcus claps Adam on the shoulder. “You and your mom can have my tent. I’m going to room with my buddy, Dyno. Remember, I told you about him? He’s still got a Buick from his dealership days, near-mint condition, too. Maybe tomorrow we’ll go take a look at it.”
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” I pull Marcus out of earshot. “You need to make it clear to Adam that we are not to come with you to wherever it is you’re planning on going.”
“Osage Indian Reservation, Oklahoma. In a few years, there’s going to be a city out there.”
“We’re going to Eudora. First there, and then we’ll see.”
“I hear you.”
I look over at Adam and the girl, at the old man who speaks of shadows and ideas. “How long do we have to stay here?”
“Pops pretty much stays glued to the CB. As soon as we know interest has petered out, we’ll get you home. Couple, three days is all. Any longer than that, a headhunter’s going to think you’ve been snapped up by someone else or else, joined a caravan or . . . you know . . .”
We watch the two youngsters. The girl is showing Adam how to wind yarn around the sticks.
“Nothing wrong with his eyes.” Marcus grins.
“Who is she?”
“Bea can be a bit—you know . . .” He makes a quacking gesture with his hand. “But she’s a good girl. Heart of gold.”
“She looks—”
“Normal. Yup. Just like your boy, she’s uncontaminated.” Marcus winks, as though I am being let in on a big secret. “Folks keep waiting for science to come up with a solution, but I’ve been saying all along, it’s going to happen the good old-fashioned way: boy meets girl.”
Before I can protest this line of thinking, he dashes off to the food table.
I return to my seat only to find the girl has performed a very neat trick in the few moments I’ve been gone. She has made off with Adam’s heart.
SHOULD SOMEONE ASK, I’ll say I’m trying to figure out how they run electricity down here. Or maybe I’ll come right out and say it: I have a hard time letting Adam out of my sight for very long. Bea said she was taking Adam on a tour, and they ended up here, at what looks like a shantytown. I watched the girl enter the tent and then come back out with a lamp. She practically dragged Adam inside.
Most of the dwellings are tents, but some are constructed from cardboard, corrugated iron, and bricks. Up close, it’s clear how much care has gone into each home. Some even have tiny porches with rails and shingled overhangs. Bea’s tent is shaped like a wigwam and is made from animal skins. It is decorated with colorful scarves and hundreds of ribbons. At the opening of the tent is a mat that reads, WIPE YOUR PAWS, and next to it, in a pot of real dirt, a silk geranium. Coming from the tent is the pungent smell of incense and the sound of her giggling.
I take another step closer. She’s saying something about cinnamon. She’s having him touch something.
Then she asks, “Are you guys in trouble?”
“I don’t know. Maybe,” comes Adam’s reply.
“You didn’t rob a bank, or anything, did you?” She laughs again. “It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me; I’m just being a busybody.”
There’s a brief pause, and she says, “It’s toenail polish, silly.”
Instead of going in and asking that they return to the common area, I hold back. Being drawn to this pretty girl has come naturally to Adam. He is behaving like any teenage boy would, not like someone who has lived his entire life in isolation. Why should I now interrupt something that I feared would never happen to Adam? Why should I let my own fears ruin a perfectly good experience for him?
I sneak around the other side. As luck would have it, there is a tiny mesh window on the other side of the tent. I peek through. Candles in little colored jars and an oil lamp light the space surprisingly well. It’s like looking into a kaleidoscope. Carpet scraps cover the floor. Pinned to the inside walls are pictures of birds and flowers and a sun with sleepy eyes, and dangling by threads from the center post are paper doves and butterflies and lollipops. A narrow cot is piled with pink and red blankets, a fluffy purple pillow, and a herd of stuffed toy animals. Instead of chairs, yellow cushions are scattered on the floor. Adam is seated on one of them next to a white Buddha statue. Bea, cross-legged opposite him, is showing him a scrapbook.
“How long have you lived here?” he asks, flustered when she catches him staring at her freckled chest.
She shrugs and flicks several braided strands off her shoulder. “I don’t know. I really don’t keep track of time. I know I probably should and all, but clocks are just so mechanical. I don’t care for them at all.”
Instead of telling her he loves mechanical things, that if he had his way, he’d make things that tick and turn all day long, he announces that he doesn’t care much for clocks, either.
She grins, then springs up. She hurries over to a plastic tub and comes back with a box of cookies. “Dessert!”
Adam’s got the look of craving written all over his face, except not for food.
She takes a cookie apart and licks the center. Adam about chokes on
his.
“Why do you live here and not outside?”
“I like it here,” she answers. “It’s peaceful. Nobody bothers you.”
“It’s dark.”
“You can be in the dark and still have light in your life.” The girl makes her point by flicking her braids. The effect has Adam bewitched. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, living out there. You’d be surprised what people are capable of doing in broad daylight. Sometimes, I think all that sunshine blinds them.”
Adam takes a bite of his cookie.
“I’m not saying all of them are like that.” She pauses. “You’re not like that.”
“I’m not from out there.”
She stops chewing. “You’re not? Where are you from?”
The question has him stumped. “Nowhere,” he finally answers.
“No one’s from nowhere. Where are your people from?”
Why doesn’t she drop it?
I have to strain to hear Adam’s answer. “I don’t have any people, except for my mom.”
Yes, and what a disappointment she has turned out to be. The freed captive will eventually see herself as she really is—isn’t that what Pops said about the allegory? I am Adam’s mother, but I am also the puppeteer who has given him shadows to name.
The girl says, “Marcus is one of your people.”
Adam half nods, half shrugs.
“I’ll be one of your people.”
Adam goes from looking like someone who doesn’t have much to show for himself to a kid who has suddenly struck it rich. As he takes in his good fortune, Bea leans across the space between them and just as quickly flits back again. Adam appears dazed, like he can’t believe what just happened. Kissed, right on the lips.
OUR SECOND DAY in the tunnel and we are off to day care—Marcus, Adam, Pops, Bea, and me. A crowd. I’m not sure I’m ever going to get used to one. In some sense, the more people around, the more isolated I feel. No one knows me—the me from before—and no one asks after her. She might as well never have existed. To Mama she mattered, to Daddy, to little Theo, to Grandpa and Grandma. Any one of them would’ve helped me find my way back to her. And I was so hoping to find her. The more Outsiders I meet, the more a stranger I am to myself.