Frost spotted Daniel Charlie, and he and Will walked on toward him.
Fire started up again. “I know what you’re plannin’, Frost. The spuds tell me everythin’.”
Frost tried not to walk faster.
“Frost, Frost, I seen Zahra.”
Frost stopped. Will said “Never mind, Grampa. Don’t pay any attention to her. She’s just crazy.”
Fire called “She come to tell me what you’re up to. She come down the river on the midnight tide from the farm of the Ghost Crew.”
They moved on, and now it was Frost who would not look at Fire. Will picked up a stone and threw it at her.
“No, no, Will. She can’t help it. She sees things.”
Fire called “She said it was you kilt her. She said I better move in with the Ghost Crew before it’s too late. She said listen to the spuds.”
They walked on.
She called to their backs “Will, you shot up like a weed. When you going to visit me? I got somethin’ to show you. Lookit, Will, look what I got to show you.”
“Don’t turn, Will.”
“I know. She’s always tryin’ to show it to me.”
Daniel Charlie was talking to the field boss, Deas, who was sitting on the seat of the big wagon behind Beauty. Frost stopped a good distance away and pulled Will toward him and hugged him briefly and kissed him on the head, and Will went off to work with the others beyond the wagon. Deas got off the wagon and walked along beside Will with a hand on his shoulder.
Daniel Charlie came over to Frost. He was tall, almost as tall as Frost, and his hair was as white. He had a wispy white moustache but was otherwise beardless. He was darker skinned than Frost and wore his hair in a braid. He had an eagle feather tied into it, but almost all the barbs had worn away so that only a triangle remained at the end.
Frost said “When you going to get a new feather?”
“As soon as the eagles come back.”
“That may be a while. You better pluck a tail feather from one of the chickens.”
“You grow a chicken big enough and I just might do that.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Meanwhile, I’ve got a job for you.”
“If I can stop pickin’ spuds, I’m your man. What is it, the waterwheel? We won’t need to water the fields till next summer.”
“No, it’s something else. Do you think you could make some bows?”
“Bows? Like that?” He nodded down at Frost’s dusty shoes. “You want me to tie your new shoes for you? What, you getting’ too old to bend down?” Daniel Charlie laughed.
Frost stood there nodding for a few seconds, appearing to wait for a comeback that never came. “Different kind of bow” he said.
“Tyrell’s been talkin’ to you.”
“Can you?”
“Bows with an s. As in more than one. Damn it, Frost, I never thought it would come to this.”
Frost sighed. “I know. Me neither. It may not come to anything, Daniel. But skagger Langley’s been acting weird.”
“So I heard. Yes, I can make some bows.”
“You’ve got the right wood?”
“If the bows are going to have any kind of power they’ll have to be laminated. Two kinds of wood, one kind for the front and a different kind for the back. I’ve got some maple floorin’, and I’ve got some oak floorin’. I’ve got tons of fir.”
“Glue?”
“I made some a while back. If it hasn’t dried up. What do you plan to shoot in these bows? You’re not going to ask me to make the arrows too, are you? Because…”
“No, I’ve got an idea for the arrows. I’ll have them ready as soon as you’re done with the first bow.”
“Come on, I’ll show you my floorin’.”
“I doubt if I could stand the excitement. I think I’ll pick some spuds.”
8
Many years before, a young man sits in the backseat of a taxi in a traffic jam in Dubai. His dark curly hair grazes the roof. He wears a pressed short-sleeved blue shirt, a yellow tie with a picture of Karl Marx, and wire-rim glasses. Beside him on the seat lies a black canvas shoulder bag with the logo Mountain Equipment Co-op. The taxi has not moved for thirty minutes. The driver, who has a neat moustache and a white shirt and tie, turns and says something that the young man cannot hear because of the din of blaring car horns. The young man leans closer. The driver says “The time has come to take care of yourself, sir.”
“What? Sorry, what do you mean?”
“You must take care of yourself now, sir. I cannot take you any farther.”
“I have to walk?”
“Yes, I am sorry, sir.”
The young man reaches for his wallet.
The driver says “I am walking too. Could you help me? I am going to Pakistan.”
The young man falls back in his seat. He looks out the window. The sidewalk is as jammed as the street. People stand there looking anxious and confused, holding their hands above their eyes against the sun. Many talk into mobile phones. A blond European man in a cream-coloured linen suit, carrying a leather briefcase, walks past the young man’s cab. A few seconds later he passes in the other direction. Ten seconds after that he passes again, running, knocking people aside. The young man says to the driver “You are going to leave your taxi?”
“Yes sir.”
“And you are going to go home to Pakistan?”
“I am, sir.”
“Why?”
“There is no point in staying here. It is finished. There is no food in the stores. There is no petrol. That is why we have this traffic jam. Everybody is leaving. If I can’t get a plane I will get a boat. Can you help me, please?”
The young man looks out the window some more. Then he opens his wallet. He does not have air fare to Pakistan. But neither does he have enough to worry about keeping. He gives what he has to the driver, who says “Thank you, sir. You should go too. Can I ask, where is your home, sir?”
“Canada.”
“It is all finished. All finished.” The driver turns off the engine but leaves the keys in the ignition. He gets out of the taxi and heads down the street between the jammed cars. He makes better time than the people on the sidewalk.
The young man sits there for a minute, but it becomes unbearably hot with the air conditioning off. He sighs and takes his shoulder bag and gets out. The honking is a wall of sound so solid it seems to be an aspect of the day itself, like the smell of exhaust fumes carried on the hot wind, like the sky murky with dust, like the blasting heat. He loosens his tie and stands like many of the others, looking equally anxious, equally confused. Above the level of the car roofs in the street move the heads of hundreds of drivers or passengers who have now left their cars. The sidewalk is crammed with more and more people, Arabs, Indians, Philippinos, Europeans, some wanting to go one way, some wanting to go another, many seeming not to know what they want.
He looks around. Almost invisible in the hot grey sky, above office towers, he sees the pointed top of a building, monstrously tall, fading as it rises in the dust of the atmosphere. For a few seconds he stares at it and fingers his Karl Marx tie. The corners of his mouth turn down in sadness or anger or confusion. Nearby, well back from the road, beyond waving palms and colour-coordinated plantings he sees the half-completed sinews and curves of playful architecture. He sees building cranes, unmoving, sleeping like real cranes in the heat and dust. People are now pouring out the doors. A few workers are coming down off scaffolds. As far as he can see in either direction the many-laned road is crusted with stopped cars. He sees gusts of sand sliding between the cars and the sidewalk, piling up against wheels and against the curb. He wipes blown grit from his eye. He takes his mobile from his bag and calls a number.
“Susan? What? I can’t hear you. Sorry…what? Listen, I’m…” Someone crashes into him. He is pushed along. His phone is knocked from his hand.
The AC is still working in the school. The young man goes into the bathroom off the admin area and sets hi
s shoulder bag and his glasses on the counter and washes his face with cold water and undoes his shirt and washes the sweat from his chest and neck and armpits with damp paper towels. He dries himself and puts on his glasses and does up his shirt and snugs up his Karl Marx tie and goes out.
Tony Walsh, one of the Science teachers, is screaming at Muna, the secretary. “I don’t care if the accountant’s not here! I want my pay and I want it now! Call the principal! Call her at home! Call her in Denver or wherever the hell she’s run away to! I’m leaving, don’t you get it? The school owes me money!”
Muna just sits there and weeps. Tony says. “Useless bitch" and walks away past the young man but then turns around and pushes the young man aside and goes back and starts screaming at Muna again.
The halls are empty. The young man goes into his classroom. There is one student, Oleg.
He sits down at his desk and stares at Oleg for a minute. Oleg says “You are late, sir.”
“Do you have your mobile phone?” asks the young man.
“We are not supposed to have our mobiles at school, sir.”
“Do you have it?”
Oleg nodded.
“Can I borrow it?
“It does not work. No service.”
“Where are the other students?”
Oleg shrugs.
“I guess you’d better go.”
“I am waiting for my driver. I called when there was still service.”
“Where do you live?”
“Not too far.”
“Does the metro go there?”
“The metro is not working.”
The young man waits, then says “I don’t think your driver will be coming. You can walk home or you can stay here. The advantage of staying here is that there is air conditioning. But it may not be working for long. The advantage of walking home is that your family might still be there.” The young man rises from his desk and goes to the door of the classroom and turns and nods to Oleg and goes out.
Madame Bourguiba, the French teacher, is sitting on the floor, leaning back against the lockers. She is pale and shaking. The young man tries to help her up but she jerks her arm away. He walks toward the staff room. He opens the door to each classroom he passes and looks in. Most are empty. Two of them have a few students. In another, Janet McPherson, the drama teacher, is comforting a single female student. He can still hear Tony Walsh shrieking, and he can hear the car horns.
He goes into the staff room. It is empty except for Mohammed Al Massoud. There is coffee in the urn. He takes a mug and sits down at a coffee table, across from Mohammed, who says “Good morning, Frost.”
For some reason this is funny. They both laugh for a minute.
Mohammed wears a white Arab robe and sandals but no head covering. He is clean shaven. A substantial belly bulges under the loose robe. He is well jowled and has hooded eyes and massive grey eyebrows. A circle of amber worry beads crawls sedately over the fingers of his right hand.
The young man says “Fatima Bourguiba is sitting on the floor.”
Mohammad only nods.
The young man says “The classrooms are empty. No students, no teachers.”
Mohammed says “You came to Dubai too late, young Frost. Bad timing. You should have seen.”
“I know.” There is a minute of silence. “And what about you, Mohammed? Shouldn’t you have seen?”
“Oh well, what could I do? God’s will.”
“Such a useful excuse.”
“Tremendously useful.”
“As always.”
They smile.
“I don’t suppose there’s a newspaper.”
“Frost, really.”
“Radio? News?”
“Try the internet.”
Frost half rises, but just then the lights in the staff room go out, and the air conditioning stops. Subdued light enters through a tinted window.
“Damn" says Frost and sits again. “Is it really that serious?”
“Young Frost, it is as serious as it can possibly get. Well, no – it’s the beginning of things being as serious as they can possibly get. Things will, I think, continue to deteriorate for some time to come. But anyway, here we are at work. What used to be work. I am surprised that you came. Very surprised.”
“Why? You came.”
“Actually, you have an excuse, being an English teacher. Head in the clouds and so forth. Me, I’m an economist. Hard-headed sort, supposedly. Whatever happens, serves me right.”
Frost sits for a while, frowning at his mug of coffee the way he frowned at the tall building. Without looking up he sighs and says “Yes, I knew it was coming. Of course I did. It didn’t take a genius. What have we been talking about here in the staff room for the last year? Even before that, long before I came to Dubai, I knew. Natural resources were used up. People were already starving because the world couldn’t produce enough food. Too many people, too much prosperity for a few including us, starvation for the rest. I read about the wars, the riots. I knew one day soon it would probably just all collapse.”
“We were all gambling, weren’t we, Frost - gambling on getting out before it fell apart.” Mohammad slides the beads steadily, nodding. He says “I guess you’re a bigger gambler than most. Most teachers knew better than you or I and hightailed it – is that the word? - ...”
“Yes.”
“...hightailed it while the hightailing was good.”
“The pay was ridiculous, Mohammed. The worse things got, the better the pay.”
“The sheikhs were desperate to hold it together.” Mohammad gives a low, bitter chuckle.
“I just wanted enough to go home and build my boat and sail around for a while.” Frost sighs again.
“Ah, Frost, still full of naive dreams.” With difficulty on account of his paunch he reaches across the table. He takes Frost’s hand, pats it. He releases the hand and sits back again. “Let me tell you about boats. Do you know the army is deployed along the beach to drive back the thousands of Iranians and Pakistanis in boats who are trying to get away from starvation and epidemics in their own countries? Soon the soldiers will get fed up with not being paid, and they will walk away. Then the hordes will descend on the city, and the looting will start. The chaos. Of course the foreign labourers will want their share too, and who can blame them? They built this city – why shouldn’t they have a piece of it?” He takes a sip of his coffee, grimaces, sets the mug down. “Blame me for the coffee. There was no one else to make it. Anyway, Frost, things aren’t actually very bad yet. Not for us. But perhaps we shouldn’t linger too long over this disgusting coffee.”
“What about you, Mohammad? What will you do?”
“Me? Oh, I will go home to Al Ain. Somehow. My family has a big farm there. It’s a good place to survive. Lots of water. I’m looking forward to it, actually.” But he sounds resigned, worried. He says with quiet amusement “The joy has gone out of living in Dubai.”
“No kidding.”
“Gone forever now. This magnificent and hideous shrine to money. I suppose the desert will take it all back. Our farm will have to be protected, of course. That is the part I am not crazy about. Like a generation ago, before law and order. If the world economy hasn’t collapsed completely, maybe I can locate a few light machine guns, inshallah. Ammunition - that will be the problem.”
Frost stares again at his mug of coffee, untouched on the table. “Well, it appears the time has come at last to go home and build my boat. I hope.” He manages a sardonic grin. He stands up.
Mohammed looks up at Frost. There is no amusement now in his face. The amber beads freeze in his hand.” He says “If the planes are still flying. If there is fuel. If there is wood for your boat. If there is steel for the nails. If there are factories to make the nails, and power for the factories. If there is food for you to eat while you are building it. If money still has meaning.” He stands up slowly, with a grunt. “Never mind. Goodbye, young Frost. Please remember me and remember that I
liked you very much. Go home now and get your wife and go to the airport.”
“Will we get out, do you think? Everybody must be trying to leave.”
“This is a country of foreigners, and of course lots of people suddenly think things will be better at home. Wherever that may be.” Mohammed shrugs. “Well, maybe they’re right. Don’t worry, my brother is well placed at the airport.” He takes his mobile phone from a pocket of his robe.
“There’s no service" says Frost.
Mohammed puts the phone away. “I will write you a note.”
Frost gives him a pad of foolscap from his shoulder bag, and a pen. They both sit again. Then there is a noise. It is like the car horns but different, closer, getting louder. Janet McPherson comes through the staff room door. She is carrying a bundle in her arms. This is the source of the noise. She walks quickly to the coffee table and sets the bundle down near Frost’s coffee mug. In a gap in a pink blanket Frost sees the face of a very young baby, red, wailing. He and Mohammed stare at it with stunned and fearful expressions. Janet McPherson says “Someone left it in an empty classroom.” She turns and runs from the staff room.
Since Tomorrow Page 5