Out of the Ruins

by Preston Grassmann

  A massive eradication campaign was launched to kill freshets within the Wall and anything that had gotten into the sewer system. The subway was sealed, the vent covers replaced by cement plugs.

  There was maximum publicity for effort and minimum information of results. Then media stopped, as there was thought to be no further public benefit to be gained from it. The orms kept coming for a while and then as far as we heard, died off. Julio says they never died off, which is why we and anyone else of wealth isn’t connected anymore to the sewer or to any other municipal system (if, indeed, there’s anything left).

  In one respect we feel secure. Now neither people nor orms can climb our walls, nor gain entry through our two doors (our genius designed that protection).

  “Be prepared” —our motto for when we do have to leave the Brevant. Each of us has to on a rostered basis, for at least a little time. George (the health nut) makes us. “You need the air,” he says. He doesn’t add, You need gut-building, but he could. Both muscles in the gut like George, and some of the guts that gave him the courage to fortify our building. Each of us has to deal with the dealers. That spreads the load. And sometimes, one of us doesn’t return. We all mourn the loss of the corps member and whatever it was that was lost as pay to the dealer. The most valuable pay is, of course, seeds. Dealers being who they are, there are those who think only of a shot of energy—and they want meat.

  Next to seeds, the next most valuable commodity for forward-thinkers is dirt. The dirtboys are just that—boys, and dirty. They are the second fastest natural things in the city. They are the only ones who know where dirt is. Mibs kill them if they can corner them because dirtboys dig holes in the Wall to go outside to get dirt. That’s what’s said. I don’t know, but they carry the dirt in their clothes. They strip and you’ve got to put the dirt into your clothes. Tied-off pants and shirt arms are a giveaway, so there’s many ingenious ways that dirtboys hide their load. If we’re caught with dirt, we don’t get killed, but we do get drafted to volunteer. I’ve never known a volunteer. Part of Julio’s job is to keep us from being volunteers, and so far, the Brevant has been left alone. What we have that is valuable to the mib besides our seeds, I never know but Julio does. He usually asks us for old electricals—a shaver, some extension cords, a bread-making machine—and we always give the him the stuff. Someday maybe we won’t have the means to pay, but so far we do. Why the mib don’t just take what they want, I don’t know. Maybe they are designed to serve.

  Lately I’ve been thinking of other things. Like these craters Julio told us about. Every crater open to the sky is a breeding ground, he says, and he also says it is a matter of time. Since the orms adapted to the electrification of the wall, the electricity had to be disconnected and sharp spikes mounted porcupine-style all over the wall. And this means that with rain, danger is increased, as the streets are slick and every pothole is a pool. An orm and you and water—and as soon as the orm feels your presence, your body will spit like a frozen freedom fry dropped into boiling oil.

  The craters are the most recent crisis in our age. I’ve never seen a crater, but Julio has, blocks of them on the Grand Concourse in a stripe that is so fat it took away the Jerome Avenue El. Poe Park, he said, is now a much bigger park (and he laughed in a spine-crawling way), and that little house is gone, he said, which is too bad, but the El being gone makes a much nicer vista, he said. How a whole elevated “subway” could disappear, along with all the buildings, we were trying to comprehend when he said it all made the neighborhood look much better, and he laughed again, even with the craters where all those stubby brick apartment houses had been. Alexander’s final closing down sale finally finalized, he chuckled, and then he nearly choked himself pointing to us and cracking up, doubled over like some comedy antique. It was rude of him to make a joke that only he understood. But then his happiness is infectious and we all ended up laughing anyway. Julio has a way that can bring you out of your cares! He always looks on things in his own way. I wish I could, as I had nightmares for a week from that trip of his to the Bronx, especially the where did everything go part.

  George saw a cleared area in Queens with lots of holes where basements were; and oddly, so did Fey, who once traveled farther than anyone. Must have been his daydreaming that let him get that far, and luck that brought him home.

  I could worry during my waking hours, but where would that get me? That sounds heroic, stoic maybe, but I can only worry about so much, and at the moment what I worry about—what keeps our whole corps awake at night—is this: Does anyone know about our sunflower?

  The corps celebrated when this sunflower took—the only one of five precious seeds from George’s last (strictly illegal) seed expedition. (The only trade that is legal is to work for “food” as a volunteer. I can’t eat that “food” from what I hear of it, and I don’t want to sacrifice myself to the Wall any more than anyone with a smitter of choice left.) Perhaps these seeds came from the botanical gardens in the early days of the Transition. George assures us that, as he was assured, this sunflower plant will grow to have a flower with real, fertile seeds. Regardless of the pictures in books in the Brevant collection, we have to see those seeds to believe them, and then we have to see them make new seedlings. Our books are all old, bought way back when because they were old, even then, when seeds were seeds for the generations, and books with pictures were for collecting and not trying to get some information, any crumb of useful information to live by.

  Mrs. Wilberforce’s ancient poodle paid for the sunflower seeds, and we were lucky that that dealer was crazy with hunger, or he would have asked for the poodle and seeds in return.

  Orm. You’d think it would have a nightmarish name, but it doesn’t need to. That horse-shaped head. The mane, its congealed, tangled mass; the gasping mouth, as wide as a garbage bin and fringed with triangular, razor teeth. The eyes of a shark, pitiless. A voracious appetite for flesh. Just to see it move is terrifying. The humping fleetness of it over walls, up brick, galloping across intersections once so clogged with people, buses, cars, honking yellow taxis. That was in the early days when there were pictures of them in the news. I’ve never seen an orm in real life.

  But back to the sunflower. Our future relies on this plant—our fortune and salvation. Few people have the water, the dirt, and the power to grow indoors, and also, have the social organization to not destroy their riches. We have all that, which makes us very rich, potentially. Seed dealers are low-quality thinkers. They think only of the present. Meat gives them a present. We want a future.

  We are not alone. There are a select few who think as we do. Which is why there are dealers, thank goodness. We paid our last meat for these sunflower seeds, if no one is brave enough to hunt orm. Even Julio and George aren’t that brave. “Yet,” says Julio.

  Our cucumbers failed again. Sterile seeds again. Or maybe fake. The mushroom spawn won’t take. That was a terrible (and costly) blow.

  None of us have gone sidewalk-harvesting. Too much danger for too little reward. The little shoots of grass that spring up are so small by the time they get picked. The other weeds disappeared years ago. Didn’t get to bud stage. As for the parks, they disappeared early, their danger recognized and paved over. We’d read that we could eat bark, but all the street trees were burnt that first winter.

  Everyone has responsibilities. Old Mr. Vesilios has the dwarf apple tree, as he was allowed to keep it. It was his to begin with. He loves it. He calls it “my wife.” And what would you expect someone with the name Luthera Treat to have? And by the way, she looks like her name. I thought “prunes” but it was chickpeas and something she calls black salsify. How would she have gotten chickpeas, ones that weren’t sterile, let alone salsify, you ask? She grew them in her window box back when we kept window boxes. She says she got the chickpeas from a trip to Egypt when she was young, and had kept them for luck. She says luck, but I am positive: romance. She says she planted them because she couldn’t stand the look of any more flow
ers, but if that’s true, then I’m the Easter Bunny of Times Past. The chickpeas are nutritious, but they’re beautiful, and she turns red if anyone asks her about their origin. I can’t complain about Luth, though. By the way, she hates being called that, she says, but we call her that because George says she secretly likes it. Actually, I’m sure she hates it, and furthermore, wishes she were a Genevieve or Helena and a beauty—her outside matching her inner soul, which is truly beautiful. I would say that even if there were still beautiful women left here, because it’s true. Luthera’s manner fits Luth, though. With her looks, it wouldn’t do for her to show romantic notions, thus her embarrassment over the chickpeas (and their carved, exotic window box). She hardly needed to be interested in food crops on a personal level, even if she was big in the funding of some food-donating NGO, as Julio once said.

  As for the rest of us, we’ve had to learn to like to eat “purple pillow” and “espresso” geraniums (tasting like a pillow of mothballs and nothing much respectively (certainly not coffee)), clove-tasting carnations, revoltingly sweet violets, fartish marigolds, tulips that look like candy canes and almost taste like food, almost—all that flowerbox stuff that distinguished the Brevant. It was once recreational to eat ornamentals, Luthera said, and when she did, I remembered a time when philanthropy dinners stunk from what looked like soggy, forgotten corsages dropped into every course. At that time Luthera “in revolt” threw out her tulips and lobelia, and planted her window box with salsify and those chickpeas. More than any other person’s efforts in our corps, her revolution has kept flesh on our bones. The salsify we particularly have grown to enjoy, though the yachties used to complain that it tastes too much like oysters—“oysters dying over the beach fire, and the juice running down salty arms, bottles of beer, and sun.” The yachties are all gone now, thank god, having left in a group. Luth’s sourness is more popular than the yachties’ reminiscences any day.

  There are other crops now, also. We have never been able to get potatoes that would grow. We tried, even though the dirt cost was phenomenal. We haven’t been successful with any of our so-called organic wheat grains, brown rice, lentils, or any other of the healthy stores that most of us had in our pantries, mostly untouched before they were recruited as crop seeds. We grin and bear other ornamentals, and they haven’t killed us, like when Kate in 4C gorged herself on her own impatiens, rather than give it up to the corps.

  For generosity, the prize if we had one would go to that gray-skinned shaking relic of a rocker, Fey Klaxon. Real name John Smith really, he told us the day that our corps got down to its present number, eight.

  At the end of our first corps meeting (twenty-five present) to set up the new order, he told us to please wait, which was unusually polite for him. We were so shocked, we did. He soon appeared staggering under a huge potted bush. Its leaves are only plucked on special occasions (and then, only a precious few), such as when anyone leaves the building, and when we are all huddled in the drypit listening to those sounds. We tried to propagate more with cuttings, and failed. Our attempts to grow from seed have failed also. For my money, this is the most valuable possession of our corps, though Fey’s food store would be more sensibly considered the biggest valuable, now almost vanished.

  It seems that all of us have, in our own ways, liked good buys. The Moores on the first floor collected Ming but what they paid for each piece was their biggest joy. It wasn’t how much. It was how little. Unusual in the art world, but then Mr. Moore’s business was smell-alike name brands. For Cordell Wainer, it was shoes. For Mr. Vesilio, it was olive oil. He used his wine room to store olive oil, and hated wine. For me, it was canned goods. Not having any guests, I had lots of room. I shopped sensibly. Delivery was a problem, so I stocked the spare room and the bath in one delivery. When the first intimations of a new age began, I decided that the dining room could again be put to use, and filled it, too. It was a comforting sight—all my cans. It was crowded again, like when I was a child and my parents filled the rooms with guests and laughter.

  I received my last can from the corps about a year ago, but it made me feel good thinking how long my can supply lasted everyone with good management (my own, as I have been from the first in charge of the food stores).

  Fey did better than I, though. He had become chronically shy. I would be, too, if I looked like he, and had looked like he had looked. His health was a constant worry to him. He had been on Dr. Etker’s mucusless diet for years, and that didn’t do any good. His colon troubled him. Crystals didn’t work. He worried about fungus. He didn’t trust practitioners anymore, so he devised his own regime. He stocked up and then planned not to leave the building ever again. What he bought was canned English-style custard powder “with pure vanilla and pure cornstarch.” At the time of our first coop meeting, he had lived on that as a pure food, just adding water, for six months. His apartment is larger than mine, being two joined together for rampageous entertaining. One, he had filled with his provisions. The custard ran out last month.

  We are all still healthy relatively speaking, though no one carries excess fat, and you can count everyone’s ribs and vertebrae, a little more delineated each day. We still have a varied diet, though it needs to improve pretty fast now, as nothing miraculous has turned up. Everyone but Fey admits to craving meat. I know I do. None of us has tried orm. We don’t talk about what other people outside the Brevant eat, although we know that rat is traded practically legally. I could never eat rat! Orm, at least, is a fish.

  The sunflower is our most valuable possession now. It is our future, should no better future shine upon us.

  2.

  We do think of a better future, you know. Not for our children. The Brevant is not for children. But because, why? Mr. Vesilios gave a beautiful talk last night about the number of colors he has counted in the blossoms on the apple tree, and his talk gave me a dream that I didn’t want to wake from.

  It is now dawn again, when most of us habitually wake. That sound is beginning. I should rush down to the drypit.

  The sunflower. The sunflower, though still a sprout, is breathing in, exhaling oxygen or whatever it is plants do. In, out. Just like us, but the sunflower calmly breathes all day and sleeps all night, every night, in its rare earth. And is loved. To be so loved.

  That sound. Its muffled quality only makes it more terrifying. I always make a racket of noise rushing to get down the stairs as fast as I can. I make as much noise as I can, to cover up the sound. Today, for some reason, I listen—don’t let myself move.

  One of Fey’s leaves. Is it possible to imagine chewing a leaf? A gob of them? The bitter spit, that pinch of plaster that Fey and Julio figured out as the strange accompaniment to the leaf. The leaking of ease and happiness into my blood, my heart, my thoughts. It lasts such a short time, but in that time, even the sunflower doesn’t matter.

  I listen, and imagine being George Maxwell. Being Julio. Being more than them because they rush down to the drypit, too. I imagine being like someone in the old days—strong, brave, heroic. Like men in blue were back when they were real men in blue.

  The sound is louder now but still far away, I think. Crashing bangs and slides? I’m sure if you were underneath, you could only feel, not hear, because your eardrums would explode.

  I am going. I am going. I wish I hadn’t stayed in bed this long. Moving is all the more difficult. Usually I run, but now it’s all I can do not to flatten myself and crawl, hugging the walls. Ashamed, I force myself to walk calmly, an insane compromise.

  In the vestibule, a tiny opening high in the barriered window lets in the dawn light, pink as a young rose. When did I see this light before? It’s been so long. Back in the time of roses, when I used to wake to pigeons cooing against my window. Then, on with the tracksuit, out to the park. One lap, and a cool-down in the rose garden when the dew lay in the petals.

  Now, roses in the sky just makes it all the worse to dive like a mole as day breaks. My stomach twists. Wouldn’t it be funny to
describe the reasons why, as in the old days. Doctor…

  And the solution to my problems? Clumps of cintered powders.

  That sharp bar of rose-colored light enters my right iris. I should be a mole-rat now, huddled in the drypit with the rest of them. Eyes unnecessary, as we sit out the monotony of our daily terror.

  Perhaps it is my stomach, or maybe the color of the rose.

  I lower my head and quickly perform all the tasks needed to open the small exit door.

  Its swish-clunk at my back speaks for me. I can’t hear it, but I feel it against my body. Felt it.

  Dawn is dead.

  The Sound that blanketed the Brevant’s door-thud is alive. So alive, it runs between my teeth like a mouse. There is nowhere to go. I threw off my moleskin when I touched the door, so I do what I imagined—step into the street. Now’s the time to lift up my head… and that feels good.

  Searching the skyline, where is the source? The Sound is so loud now that it crowds into the me-ness of me, or would like to. It is so loud that I can’t tell which sounds I hear. Originals or echoes.

  The sky is now the color of wet cement, with a slick of blood in it. Peer as I do, I can’t see anything through the murk.