Marpole stopped his wagon, and he and the guards and dogs got out. They followed Frost’s wagon as he turned down the driveway. Tyrell said “Hold them dogs.” Frost felt for his sword. It was not there.
The workers in the field turned and stared.
A door on the house side of Langley’s carport opened. Five guards came out of the house. Two of them had spears and swords. Three had crossbows. The bowstrings had already been pulled back and fixed in place.
“Those are leafs from old car springs” said Frost.
“Longbows” said Tyrell. “We need longbows.”
The guards formed a line in front of the carport. Frost swung his wagon so that they had to step back out of his way. He turned Beauty again. The back of the wagon was now lined up with the concrete steps below the front door. Frost got off the wagon. Tyrell came around and stood beside him, with his spear gripped for throwing.
Marpole stopped his wagon on the trail. The dogs jumped down, with Frost’s guards holding their leashes. Marpole and Hastings and the guards – Boundary, Newton, Oak and Richmond – lined up facing Langley’s guards twenty feet away. Each held his spear upright in his right hand. Each took another wrap of his dog’s leash with his left.
At the top of the steps the cedar door opened. Langley’s big guard Freeway stepped out and stood there for a few seconds, looking puzzled. He had his poncho and his cut-down rubber boots and a drawn sword. Tyrell snickered loudly. Freeway came down the steps and stood at the back of the wagon, and started his eyeball battle with Tyrell, who only nodded and smiled benignly.
Frost looked over toward the dogs and shouted “Speak up.”
The dogs leapt forward snarling and roaring, but Frost’s guards held them back. Langley’s guards stumbled backward, cursing. One of them tripped over a shaft of the rickshaw and sat heavily. Another accidentally fired off his crossbow. The bolt sailed high over Frost’s guards and came down in distant scrub.
Frost shouted “Settle down.” and the dogs fell silent but remained ready. Frost’s guards and the dogs took a step forward.
“I hope that was an accident” said Hastings.
The guard who had fired his crossbow tried to say something but could not. He nodded. The guard who had fallen stood up.
Langley stepped out of the door at the top of the steps. He was wearing a leather jacket, mostly colourless but black around the shoulders.
Frost took off his glasses and held them up to the light and wiped the few specks of rain off with the hem of his shirt and put them on again.
“Frost” said Langley. “What the hell is all this?”
Frost walked to the back of the wagon. There was a tailgate from a pickup truck. It said, very faintly, Toyota. Frost undid a catch and lowered the tailgate. A dozen potatoes rolled off the wagon.
Langley said “Just have your men take the spuds in downstairs.”
On one side of the wagon was a car’s steering wheel. Frost started turning it. The front of the wagon bed rose slightly. Frost kept turning the wheel. The wagon bed creaked loudly and kept rising. Potatoes spilled out the back. Potatoes at the front of the load tumbled toward the rear. Frost turned the wheel more. With a roar the whole load of spuds slid from his wagon. Freeway had not moved. He stood there holding his sword, up to his knees in root vegetables.
Tyrell doubled over blasting out his ear-splitting laugh. Frost lowered the wagon bed and closed the tailgate. He picked up a potato and wiped the dirt off and went and let Beauty eat it from his hand.
Langley remained at the top of his steps. He said “You bring an army to deliver potatoes. I always heard you was nuts, now I know it. Now get your goddamn crew off my property.” He turned to go back inside.
Frost looked in Langley’s direction at last. He said “Why’d you take Fundy’s bridge?”
Langley came halfway down the steps. His voice grew high pitched. His face grew red. “That there Fundy is a cranky old bastard, ain’t he. I’m stayin’ out of his way till he calms down. Then I’m going to tell him he ought to shift his crew over to your place. You got room. You also got the milk of human kindness. He’ll see reason.”
“So you want his farm. I thought so. Well, Fundy’s not interested in moving.”
“He better get interested. You tell him that, Frost. That trip to Town ain’t getting’ any shorter. I got better ways to spend my time than travelin’ all day.” He came all the way down the steps, gritted his teeth and punched Freeway hard in the kidney. Freeway cried out and dropped his sword. Langley picked it up. His face was blood-bright. He screamed “Get out of them potatoes. Get out or I’ll skewer your gizzard.”
Freeway pulled a foot out and stepped to the side of the pile. He pulled the other foot out. His cut-down rubber boot stayed behind. Tyrell laughed again. Langley glared at Tyrell, who hefted his spear and smiled back.
Frost strolled between his guards and Langley’s and stood looking into Langley’s poppy field. He said “You’ve got your own town.”
Langley walked behind Frost’s guards. Tyrell followed Langley. Langley still had Freeway’s sword. He walked past Frost and turned and faced him.
“Town?” he said. His voice had an angry whine to it. “You call Wesminister a town? It’s not a town, it’s a hole, and the hole is empty. Nothing left that I could use. All gone. Just a lot of drug addicts scrounging around for something to trade and not finding it.” He spat between his feet and Frost’s. He turned and faced his field. “Just like these sad losers.”
The workers, who had been watching the events up by the house, went back to work. They moved mechanically but very slowly, bending to grasp a pod with one hand, working to break it free, dropping the pod into a container.
Langley said bitterly “You’re lookin’ at more residents of the famous town of Wesminister, as soon as the crop is all in. More useless scroungers for the famous town.” Frost and he watched the workers for another minute. “There’s a whole other town full of stuff and full of people lookin’ for work just across Fundy’s bridge. No way I can stay here. Tell Fundy that.”
Frost said “You killed someone at the market.”
Langley shrugged, and did not turn when he spoke. “I did. True. That tall one-shoed lump of meat I got that looks somethin’ like a man ain’t completely useless. What do you think of my jacket? Real leather. When’s the last time you seen a real leather jacket, old man?” Suddenly he turned to Frost. “Speakin’ of meat, have you got any? You’ve got a farm – you must have some meat.”
Frost said “Show me your field" and took a step forward.
Langley blocked his path. “No way, farmer. You stay the hell away from my crop.”
Over Langley’s shoulder Frost was watching one of the female workers come up the path, carrying a basin heaped with pods. She was naked and walked very slowly. Her skin was brown from the weather and was shrunken against her ribs. Her arms and legs were sticks. She dumped her basin in the A-frame, near the man who was crushing pods, and started back to the field.
Langley turned to see what Frost was looking at. He smiled. He called to the woman “Hey. Come here.” The woman turned. “Yeah, you. Get up here. Move it.”
The woman came up the path. She held her grimy blue basin by its edge and let it hang at her side. There was no expression on her face. “I said move it.” She managed a slow trot and soon stood before the two men. Langley said to Frost “I will trade all of my horses for that one of yours.” He pushed the woman toward the rickshaw, wiped the hand that had touched her on his jeans, walked behind his guards and climbed up onto the seat. The woman stood between the shafts. “Let’s go, horsy.” She bent, gripped the shafts and stood. She leaned forward, straining. “Off to town, horsy.” Langley leaned forward and with the point of the sword jabbed her in a buttock. The hard wheels ground on the gravel. The woman pulled the rickshaw out of the carport.
Langley’s guards stepped out of the way. Newton and Richmond also stepped aside. The dogs started a confused b
arking. The woman pulled the rickshaw up the driveway.
Frost commanded “Settle down.” and the dogs were quiet again.
Although he was holding his bruised kidney, Freeway laughed, a deep and helpless haw haw haw. At the top of the driveway the rickshaw turned and came back. Langley got out and walked over to Freeway. The woman fell to her knees, gasping. Langley said to Freeway “Guess who the horse is next time we go to Town.”
Freeway stopped laughing and said “Aw, Langley.”
Langley handed Freeway his sword and took a potato and went and held it out to the woman. He said “Have a spud.” She took the potato and bit into it. Langley went and stood near Frost again and said “Trade me that workhorse. I’ll give you skag forever.”
Frost said “What would it take for you to give Fundy back his bridge?”
Langley scratched his head. “Now that’s a question. Jeez, Frost, a bridge is expensive. I mean, what would you trade your bridge for? But I’m a businessman, ain’t I. So, let’s see…. Well, as you might have noticed, there’s not a hell of a lot of healthy, good-lookin’ women around. But that Noor of yours…. I would say that Noor of yours is definitely bridge material.”
Frost said “Let’s go home, boys.”
Langley shrugged and said “Whatever" and turned and called down to the man in the A-frame “Stevie. Give her a taste."
The woman got up and ran. She pushed Boundary aside. His dog snapped at her. Langley’s guards got out of her way, as did Frost, who watched her run down the path to the A-frame.
As she neared, the man in the A-frame stood and turned. For a few seconds, Frost froze. Then he took off his glasses and held them six inches in front of his eyes and squinted. He put the glasses back on and turned to his guards and dogs and said “Speak up.” The dogs roared and snarled and strained at their leashes. Frost stepped through the dogs and up beside Marpole and said to him “I need one minute.” Then he backed away.
Marpole gave King some slack. The dog lunged at Langley. Langley backed toward the rickshaw. Frost’s other guards also let the dogs tug them forward. Langley’s guards all took a step back. Langley said “What the hell? Kill this dog, will you!” But Langley’s guards faced six dogs and six spears. They hesitated. They backed up. The guard who had tripped over the shaft tripped over it again. Tyrell ran down the path, behind Frost.
The woman had received her pinch of skag and was walking toward the other workers through the stems, with her basin and her potato. The man Langley had called Stevie stood in the entrance of the A-frame, with the hammer dangling at his side. He was tall. His long matted beard was brown like his hair but had more grey in it. The moustache drooped over his mouth. The skin of his face looked dead, as if it could be peeled away like wallpaper. One of his eyes was blue. The other one was green.
Hardly slowing, Frost collided with the man, throwing his arms around him. They almost stumbled against the stove. Frost hugged the man and said into his bare shoulder “You’re alive, Steveston. We all thought….” He stepped back and looked into the man’s eyes and gripped the man’s shoulders and gave him a little shake. The man stood there with his arms hanging. Frost took the man’s free hand and pulled him out of the A-frame. He said “Let’s go. You’re coming home.”
The man jerked his hand free. He said “Don’t talk to me.”
Frost hesitated, said “Don’t you remember me? You can’t have forgotten. Does the skag do that?”
“Don’t talk to me. He won’t like it.”
Frost reached for the man’s hand again. “No, Steveston. You’re coming. I’ll protect you. I won’t let him hurt you.”
The man raised the hammer. “Can’t you see what I am?” he hissed. “I have to stay. Go away. Go away quick or he’ll kill me.”
Frost looked over his shoulder. King had backed Langley up against the rickshaw, but Langley was watching Frost and the man. Frost looked down at the pile of pods the woman had dumped. Then he pushed the man, who stumbled back against the stove. Some water slopped over the top of the two pots and hissed on the hot surface. The man spun to steady the pots. Frost bent and snatched three of the driest-looking pods. He backed away a few paces, then turned and walked with Tyrell up the path. In the A-frame the man squatted, took a pod, set it on the metal plate and hit it with the hammer. He turned his head to watch Frost walk away. Then he took another pod.
As Frost passed, Langley cried amid the dogs’ uproar “Give me them pods, god damn you. You god damn thief! You ain’t gettin’ no more skag off me.”
Tyrell took King’s leash. Marpole walked with Frost to the wagon. They climbed up, Marpole took the reins and they started up the driveway. When Frost’s wagon was on the trail Tyrell hushed the dogs, and he and his men and the dogs backed up the driveway to the other wagon as Langley screamed curses.
Marpole did not go back through the area of brush and asphalt but headed over Skaggers’ Bridge. For a while Frost stared at the slope of the erosion-scarred hill of Wesminister where it plunged down to the river, the few makeshift dwellings amid broom and blackberry vine, the deserted concrete towers further up the river. North of the river a line of burnt-off mountains receded to the east. Frost set the three poppy pods on the seat beside him, and placed his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands and did not look up for some time.
At the north end of the bridge they passed three guards with swords and spears. A half dozen filthy, thin, ragged or naked people waited their turn to barter. They had dirty plastic bags with the names of stores, a knob for a cupboard door, a few feet of electrical wiring. The guards let Frost’s wagons pass.
They unhitched the wagons and watered the animals at the river, then headed west along Marine Trail. Frost sat slumped, silent. After about ten miles they crossed over Wing’s Bridge and watered the animals again and turned west on the River Trail.
As his bridge drew close, Frost said “Don’t tell her.”
7
Frost and Will left the domicile. Frost said “Today’s the day it goes over.”
Will said “You always say that" and turned to look back and up at the tilting domicile.
“Hey, don’t look at it.”
“Why not?”
“That could be what does it.”
“Lookin’ at it? Could make it fall over?”
“The destructive effect of looking. Never heard of that? I knew your education was deficient.”
First they passed the piles of inventory, as Frost called it. Concrete building blocks stacked six high, ten across, ten deep. Ten or twelve such piles with corridors between them six feet wide. Near the last edge of the last pile, under plastic weighted with three of those blocks, lay one and a half bags of cement powder. Frost stopped and stared down at the bags and the weeds growing around the plastic and shook his head and sighed.
Will said “You sigh a lot. Noor says so too" and a while later, as they passed a stack of two-by-fours, which was more or less squared off and was under weighted plastic as well “Grampa, there’s no such thing. You can’t make somethin’ happen just by lookin’ at it.”
Frost extended his hand and the boy took it and they walked on. There was more lumber, sorted by size. There were coils of electrical wire. Pyramids of white plastic gas pipe a palm’s width in diameter, piles of copper plumbing gone green. There were fibreglass panels. There was vinyl siding. There was an exposed stack of asphalt shingles, the top layer growing a mane of dense moss.
It was cloudy and chilly and the ground was dry again.
A ways to the south, beyond the old highway, house foundations – some with rows of steel studs, a few with one or two whole walls - were ranged in a receding perspective. In some of the nearer rectangles workers were harvesting fall vegetables. “Welcome to the burbs” muttered Frost. And sighed. They walked past Daniel Charlie’s workshop, a small one-storey building with a wide crack on one wall that plunged among the concrete blocks in the shape of a dark lightning bolt. The building still had part of
a sign with the word Collision.
The rapid transit bridge swooped southwest across the river and attached itself to Frost’s land like a pale and stubborn growth. Frost and Will stopped to pee against a pillar. “The destructive power of urine” said Frost.
Far ahead they heard a woman’s angry voice. Will stopped. Frost said “Fire won’t hurt you.”
“She shouts at me. She throws rocks at me.”
“She shouts at everyone. She throws rocks at everyone. What can I do, tell her to go away? She was here before you were born. Come on, we’ll make a wide circle.”
They walked into the farm’s fields, which were haphazard patches of delta soil among mounds of collapsed and overgrown buildings, among foundations of wooden structures gone decades before for firewood, among irrigation ditches dug willy-nilly. The fields ran up to a hay-stubble slope beside the old highway where it rose to meet Little Bridge, and continued south beyond the highway.
Frost and Will walked on the uneven dug-up earth, on the sparse carpet of dead leaves, through the widespread workers and the several wagons with their black and white steers. Everyone was out, the guards, the old folks, the few children, none of them near Will’s age.
Fire worked alone. No one within fifty yards. Her voice was shrill. “I know what you’re up to” she hollered. “You can’t fool me. The spuds tell me everythin’.” She bent and put a hand to her ear and cocked her head like a robin. “Oh, is that so?” she said loudly. “Evil plans, is it? Well, don’t worry, spuds, I got my own plans.”
Will would not turn in her direction. Frost called “Good morning, Fire.”
Fire was silent for a few seconds as she stood with her dirty hands on her hips, watching Frost and Will pass. She was a pretty woman, although many of her teeth were missing. She had reddish hair in loose tangled waves gone mostly to grey and wore a short rag dress. She picked up a potato and threw it, but it landed far short.
Since Tomorrow Page 4