Frost said “There any teeth left on that file?”
Noor lifted the blade and sighted along its edge toward the fire, lowered it and addressed her efforts to a particular two inches. “No, it’s pretty well had it. But it’s all we’ve got.”
“That sound could get on a person’s nerves.”
“You ought to sharpen yours once in a while. Then I wouldn’t have to do it for you.” A second sword lay beside her.
“I don’t need a weapon. The dogs look after me.”
Noor shook her head, then turned to him.
He said “You’re the one that looks tired.”
She said “I want to see you wearin’ this in the mornin’.”
Frost watched the peat flicker and glow. The fireplace was glassed in but there were cracks, and the top corner of one of the panes was smashed. There were vents at the side that admitted heated air into the room. The book had half a front cover. Soldiers with tall fur hats and long rifles with bayonets were fighting for possession of a bridge.
“A dog can’t defend against a crossbow” said Noor.
“Neither can a sword. But yes, yes, I’ll wear it. God, you can be a nag sometimes.”
Will sat at a table a few feet away, at the darker end of the room. He said “When do I get a sword?”
Frost watched for a minute as Will looped and twisted lengths of wire. He said “How can you see to do that?”
“I can see. It’s only snares” answered he boy.
“Doesn’t it hurt your fingers? Why don’t you ask Daniel Charlie if he’s got some pliers in the workshop?”
The Christmas bauble sat on the table near the half dozen completed snares. Its colour was muted in the dimness, but occasionally it sparked with reflections from the fireplace. The boy said “What if the skaggers came after me and I didn’t have a sword?”
“God almighty.”
Noor turned away from the fire to look at her brother. She said “Are you afraid?”
Frost said “The skaggers aren’t going to come after you. No one’s coming after you.”
Noor said “How do you know that?”
Frost closed the book and reached down and set it on the floor and said “Thank you, Noor. We all feel safer now.” He fell back against the pillow and stared up at the ceiling and waited. Noor picked up the other sword and felt its edge and sighted down its length. She set the tip on the floor and pushed the file firmly along the edge. Finally she said “No one is safe. Let’s not pretend.”
Will left his snares and crawled under the hammock and took the book and sat at the other side of the fireplace from Noor. “Principles of War” he read aloud.
“Try this” said Frost and held out the lens.
Will took it and held it close to the page and gave a little laugh.
After a while, when Frost spoke again his voice was soft and sleepy. “Noor, I’m happy you brought the baby. She’ll have a good chance with us. Grace says she’s improving already. When she’s better, when she’s a little bigger, she can stay with us. I’ve been thinking - but I wanted to ask you first since you brought her – I would like to give her an Arabic name. Like yours. Like your mother’s. I was thinking of Aisha.”
The hypnotic rasping of the file stopped.
Will read “We can triumph over such obstacles only with very great exertion, and to accomplish this the leader must show a severity bordering on cruelty.”
Noor said “Go to bed, Will.”
“What’s severity?”
“Now.”
“But it’s still early.”
She dropped the file and grabbed his arm and gave him a shake. “I said go to bed.”
Will’s face contorted. He stood and placed the book and the lens on his grandfather’s stomach. He walked around the hammock and left the room through a door at the dark end. Before he could close the door there was the sound of a single sob.
Frost stared at the back of Noor’s head. “What the hell was that?” he said.
Noor laid the sword beside the other one and wrapped her arms around her knees and began to rock slowly from side to side.
Frost lay back again, waiting. His breathing became tight and shallow.
Noor said “You didn’t see Grace this afternoon?”
“No” said Frost in a hurt whisper. It was not a reply to her question. “No, no no…”
“The baby died.”
Frost made a small sound, a whimper. He struggled to leave the hammock. He stepped across the small room like a man made of lead, letting the slope of the floor carry him. A sudden flare of the fire shot Noor’s shadow and his against the walls. Frost bent and opened a cupboard door and slid out a green plastic bottle and slowly twisted the lid off and took three swallows.
He stood there holding the bottle of potato hooch and said “No one’s buried her?”
“No.”
“I’ll do it.”
“I know.”
5
“That’s the last one” said Tyrell.
Frost did not respond.
“Grouse Mountain” said Tyrell. He turned his head in a slow arc from northwest to northeast. “Hollyburn, Grouse, Seymour.”
The mountain still smoked a little. A blanket of low cloud was sliding in from the southwest, gradually hiding the mountains and the smoke.
“No green at all now” said Tyrell.
Frost did not look away from the trail ahead. He said “Please, Tyrell.”
“I was just…”
“I know.”
Beauty pulled the wagon with its heaped potatoes. Frost held the reins. Tyrell sat beside him, holding upright between his feet a six foot length of black plastic pipe with a slender blade set and tied into the end. Below the blade a crude pennant made from a few strands of wool stirred in a cool breeze.
The trail ran beside an old asphalt road, which was potholed, fissured, buckled and grown over. A second wagon followed Frost’s, drawn by two steers. In it lounged five men. Marpole drove. Six spears rested with their blades projecting over the sides of the wagon, their pennants a stronger green than the weeds that from time to time stroked the dangling wool.
Frost said “The dogs are going to scare the squatters. We’d better tie them.” They stopped and he whistled the dogs in and the men leashed them to the backs of the wagons. They continued along the trail.
In a while, not turning to face Tyrell, as if in fact addressing Beauty’s tail, Frost said flatly “I know Grouse Mountain is burnt. I also know there is no green now on those mountains.” Beauty plodded eastward. Not far to the left of the wagons the water of the north arm swirled restlessly, waiting for a tide change. Frost said “I know a mother died yesterday, and I know a baby girl also died yesterday. I know we’re on our way to do business with an ugly customer. I know we’ll be lucky to survive the winter.” He was silent for a while. Then he said. “I don’t need to be reminded.”
They passed squatters’ digs in half-collapsed concrete structures, mounded with blackberry vine. A man approached carrying an armful of twiggy branches. He stepped between a pair of bushes onto the old road to let the wagons pass. Wing’s Bridge was not far ahead. Frost said “I’m a grouchy old man.”
“True” said Tyrell, and then “Ugly customer - haven’t heard that for a while.”
Frost produced a weak chuckle.
A staccato laugh burst from Tyrell. “Ugly customer” he said again, and laughed again, like a jackhammer. Tyrell wore a dirty polyester eye patch of an unidentifiable pale hue. A thick scar ran at an angle from his hair to the eye patch and emerged below the patch to fade among the spiraled dots of his beard. His grey hair was cropped close. His skin was the brown of melted chocolate. His right hand, which loosely held the spear, was missing the index finger. He was a small man with the precise, negligent movements of a cat.
Frost said “Why does he have the crossbows?”
“Because he’s a cockroach.”
“I’m no killer, Tyrell.”
> “I am.”
Frost said “That is not the world we’re building.”
“Does the world we’re buildin’ have skaggers in it?”
Frost gazed southeast through a sprawl of collapsed and grown-over warehouses and across the scrubby plain to the desolate enormity of Nobody’s Bridge and to the bald ridge beyond it.
They were soon on a rutted track among Wing’s rows of wilted potato plants.
Tyrell said. “We need real weapons.”
“Bull.”
“We need bows.”
“Crossbows? So we can be like them?”
“No. We need longbows. So we can kill them. You can shoot a longbow ten times before a skagger can reload once.”
There was Wing’s plain home, a warehouse with one of the concrete wall slabs leaning out, and his barn of concrete block and fibreglass panels. There was old Wing himself, bent over a half-handled shovel, digging up spuds with his crew. His dogs saw Frost’s wagons and came running.
“God almighty, Tyrell” said Frost. “Like Robin Hood?”
“Who’s Robin Hood?”
Frost shook his head. “I never wanted to be a general.”
Tyrell said “I always did.”
Wing saw them and unbent himself slowly and waved his shovel.
Wing’s crew, led by half a dozen young women whose arms were dirty up to the elbows, approached to talk with the guards. The women were barefoot and wore sleeveless rag-stitched dresses and had gap-toothed smiles. There were a few children among them, including an adolescent girl. Marpole and Hastings unhitched Beauty and the steers and led them away to be watered. Tyrell let the dogs loose. With Wing’s dogs they raced off toward the river in a pack. Frost and Wing walked side by side, Tyrell a little distance away.
Wing said “I think my girls like your boys.”
“Some things at least endure” said Frost. “Would you let any of them come to my farm to stay, if it came to that?”
“Let them? You think I would have a say in the matter?”
“Well, they would be welcome. How’s your water?”
“That rain come none too soon. It’s a bitch haulin’ it up from the river. How is that water wheel comin’ along?”
“Good. It’s coming good. Daniel Charlie will get back to work on it as soon as the harvest is over.”
Dead leaves of potato plants formed a mottled carpet through which rose a ragged stubble of weeds.
“I like them shoes” said Wing. “Gucci?” He threw his head back and laughed.
Frost managed a tight smile.
Tyrell called, his words like a series of gunshots “Who’s Gucci? Friend of Robin Hood’s?”
“Yep” said Wing. “One of the Merry Men.”
They came to the riverbank. There was a wide pool at the water’s edge, ringed with rocks. The horse and the steers drank. The dogs had already finished and were playing or scrutinizing smells.
“You going to stay and visit?” asked Wing.
“No, we’ve got business farther east. It’s a good hike. We better keep going.”
“Skag business?”
Frost nodded. “There’s no use wishing we had real medicine, because we don’t.”
“He kilt someone at the market.”
“Noor told me. This is new. It bothers me. I don’t want to have to…”
“It ain’t new.”
Frost looked at him.
Wing said “What do you think he does with his workers when they get too addicted and messed up to work?”
“You’re saying…?”
“I told you.” called Tyrell.
“He sent me a message” said Wing
“Langley?”
“Hemlock the Messenger come yesterday. He says, ‘Langley sends you a message. This is the message. “I hear you got a nice farm. I like farms.”’”
Frost said “You know he took over Fundy’s Bridge?”
“I know.”
6
The day grew dark. A frigid wind blew. They crossed an area of ruined asphalt grown over with brush and thistle. A quarter-mile to the east, between the tops of the scrub they could see Skaggers’ Bridge. They could not find a trail. The wagons bumped and tottered over bulges and through dips and sharp-edged holes. The guards cursed and protested and finally jumped down from the wagon and walked, carrying their spears and each holding the twine leash of a dog. Tyrell sprang down and took the leash of King and walked out in front of his men. The group went ahead of Frost and called out if they found a clear way for Beauty and the wagon. Marpole’s steers hesitated, lurched and made slow progress.
Boundary shouted “Look at this. Do we want it?”
When Frost came up beside him he saw that it was a car wheel half hidden under blackberry vine. It still had the tire. Frost nodded. Boundary and Newton dug it out, and when Marpole caught up they heaved it into his wagon.
They angled south. They passed the remains of an industrial building. Parts of the roof and a wall were intact but there was no sign of habitation. Frost said “No one wants to live here, not even squatters.”
The brush thinned. They could see the raised approach to the bridge. “The dogs smell somethin’” said Tyrell. Indeed, the animals all pulled their handlers forward. Ahead a single crow flew up. King barked at it, once, then strained forward again.
Frost stopped his wagon and got down. The men and dogs stood looking at some bones. Almost all the flesh was gone but vegetation had not yet completely grown over the bones, which were wildly askew. A shin had come loose but rested nearby with its foot. The bones were human. Tyrell made a motion with his head and handed King’s leash to Frost, and Frost and the guards pulled the dogs back. Tyrell squatted down and bent his face close to the bones but did not touch them. Soon he stood. “Throat cut” he said.
They went on and came to an old road and crossed it and passed several more derelict structures and then crossed the approach to the bridge itself where it curved west at ground level. There was a trail beside the road. On this trail they stopped. Beyond was Langley’s poppy field.
It was only an odd-shaped few acres, merging at the edges into brown grass, fireweed, thistles and scrub. The poppy plants were short and sickly, the leaves browning. Three quarters of the field was only stems, with weeds between. At the far end a handful of men and women moved from plant to plant, breaking off the pods. They dropped the pods into plastic basins or black plastic bags on the ground. The workers were as thin as the stems they left behind. One of the women had a skirt of rags. One of the men had a torn poncho. The rest had nothing.
The wind picked up. There were spits of rain. Frost and his men stood looking at Langley’s poppy field, silent. The dogs sat at their feet.
Finally Tyrell spoke. “Second crop, must be.”
Beyond, there was brush, thinner at regular intervals where foundations and old basement floors restrained its growth. A few chimneys or fragments of chimneys rose above the desolation.
Frost shook his head. “Let’s get this done.” The guards lifted the dogs into their wagon and climbed up themselves. Tyrell climbed up beside Frost, and the wagons started along the trail toward Langley’s driveway.
Langley’s house was square, box-shaped, two storeys, with white vinyl siding. The roof had a shallow slope and was covered in asphalt shingles of pale green with a few irregular patches of darker green and some individual black shingles. All the windows had glass. At the top of some concrete steps was a warped and faded door of cedar panels.
But there were five or six sprawling one-storey additions. The tilting walls of these additions were covered mostly by crooked sheets of rotting fibreboard. There were glass windows but with dark skewed gaps around the window frames. On some of the walls strips of vinyl siding overlapped haphazardly or hung loose, twisting in the cold wind.
There was a carport. In the carport was a two-wheeled vehicle, a kind of rickshaw, with its shafts resting on the ground. Frost recognized other items stored in t
he carport: a white upright piano, on top of which sat a rusted toaster, a laptop computer and a black ceramic table lamp with no shade.
There was a zone of weedy gravel all around the house.
A path ran down the edge of the field to a second house. This was a single-storey structure, with walls of disintegrating corrugated fibreglass, concrete blocks, rotted fibreboard, some vinyl siding, some black asphalt shingles. The single window was clear polyethylene. The roof appeared to be boards covered with bits of poly held down with stones and broken concrete blocks.
Between that structure and Langley’s house was an open-ended A-frame of corrugated fibreglass and concrete block, six feet wide. Inside the A-frame was an ancient wood stove with two large aluminum pots on it. Steam and smoke from the stove blew out the far end of the A-frame. A man squatted near the stove. He had a carpenter’s hammer and with it was smashing poppy pods on a flat sheet of metal on the ground. He worked slowly, straining to raise the hammer, letting it fall. He was as skinny as the other workers. He wore a wool kilt. Stringy grey-brown hair lay against his back. Near the A-frame there was a soggy mound of poppy dross, and beside that a pile of split cordwood covered in plastic.
Since Tomorrow Page 3