Frost looked for a way to assist the woman, but there was none. He let them continue toward the clinic, and walked beside them. Blood dripped slowly but steadily from the ends of the woman’s fingers. Grace appeared briefly in the doorway, then went back inside.
There were other dogs now, first around the clinic, sniffing at Blackie and prancing around him, then barking at the approaching group, then racing toward Frost and the girl and the woman. “Get out of the way, god damn it” said Frost. The woman ignored the animals and walked grimly forward.
At the clinic Frost said “Let your momma walk through the door by herself. It’s not wide enough for you both.” The woman stepped through the door, then the girl, then Frost. The sheet was on the couch again. With a white cloth, Grace was wiping alcohol on the table of two-by-fours, and the smell was strong. She looked at the woman and nodded to her and the girl but said nothing. Frost put a knee on the couch and a hand behind the woman’s back. With her good hand the woman took Frost’s free hand. He eased her onto the couch. But the woman wanted to lean forward so that the damaged arm could hang without touching anything. She sat there moaning.
Frost said “Sit here by your momma. Sit on this side.” The girl did so, and the woman put her good hand again on the girl’s shoulder. Then she bent the girl’s head toward her and turned her own head and kissed the girl’s hair. Then she looked at the table.
Frost said “How’d it happen?”
The woman’s thin dark hair hung in strings. Frost reached and cleared some strands from her face. The face was weathered and dirty. There was a strong nose and thin lips. The small blue eyes were wholly exhausted, and underneath the dirt the skin was drained and white. She closed her eyes and swallowed, and then opened her eyes and said “Fell. Rocks.” Although thin and trembling, the voice was clear, the voice of a young woman. She asked “You can save it can’t you?” Grace looked away from what she was doing only long enough to shake her head.
There was another, wider, shelf, on the end wall, above the table. On this shelf was an upturned orange plastic basin. The two litres of alcohol now stood on the floor. Grace poured some of it onto the rag and wiped the bottle itself and then set the bottle on the table. She took the basin from the shelf and wiped the outside of it with alcohol and set this also on the table. Now revealed on the shelf were the instruments of amputation. There was a length of plastic twine. There was a knife with a blade about eight inches long. Another pair of pliers. A hacksaw. An extra blade for the hacksaw. Grace laid the instruments, except for the spare blade, in the basin.
She came and took the bag of cloth bandaging and a coil of thread from the first shelf. While she sterilized lengths of these, Frost went to the other shelf and took from it a torn page. On the shelf there were several such pages, parts of pages really, brown, stained, ragged and brittle. And there were sections of books, a dozen pages, twenty. At the top of the torn page that Frost held, part of a heading read ...vil War. He stood there and read from the page.
“Apply a tourniquet over the brachial artery three fingerbreadths above the internal condyle of the humerus, at the inner edge of the biceps muscle.” He looked up. Grace was pouring alcohol into the basin, over the instruments. She nodded. Frost read “If possible, cut about one third of the way down the forearm. After the amputating knife has been carried around the limb, the skin is to be detached from the fascia, a little way upward. Ligate the radial, ulnar and interosseus arteries.” Grace nodded again. Frost read “The muscles are then to be divided obliquely upward. Then the bones are to be...”
Grace said “I know.”
Frost put the page back and went to the other shelf and took the half-litre bottle of skag-in-water and a clear plastic glass that had been resting there mouth downward.
Grace said, sharply “No.”
He turned and looked at her. She was facing him, with the bottle of alcohol in her hand. There was no expression on her face, just a slight trembling of the chin. She seemed to be working to keep her face blank. Frost looked at the woman and her daughter on the couch. He looked at the half-litre bottle in his hand, two-thirds full. He turned slightly and looked at the plastic bag of dry skag on the shelf. He said “There’s plenty.”
Grace said “We’ve got to save it.”
“For something worse than this? Like what?”
After a moment she said “Just a little, then” and went back to her preparations. There had been something like resentment in her eyes.
“Grace” said Frost, but she did not turn again. He poured a half-inch of liquid into the glass and set the bottle back on the shelf. Then he squatted in front of the woman and held the glass to her lips. He said “Drink it quickly. It’s bitter.” She tilted her head back and Frost cupped his other hand under her chin, and she drank the liquid in two swallows.
Frost set the glass mouth upward on the shelf and quickly left the clinic.
He went to the domicile, again not quite running. Once there, he called up the stairwell for Daniel Charlie, and he found Noor in their apartment, and the two of them followed Frost back to the clinic.
When they arrived, the girl was alone on the couch. She looked like she wanted to cry but was afraid to. The woman was seated on the chair, which was sideways to the table. She was facing away from Frost and Noor and Daniel Charlie and her daughter. Her ruined arm rested outstretched on the table, with the wrist supported by the edge of the basin. The arm drooped at the point of the fracture, but the protruding bones did not touch the table. Blood dripped from the sharp ends of the bones onto the table, on which the alcohol had now dried.
Grace acknowledged Noor and Daniel Charlie with a glance and said “Daniel, you just have to hold her from moving. Noor, you’d better sterilize your hands.”
Frost squatted in front of the girl. She looked down at her dirty knees. Frost said “You and your momma are going to stay here on our farm. At least until your momma feels better.” He took a hand. She did not pull it away, but did not look at him either. “There are some girls here who you could play with. Come, and I’ll show you where they live. You’ll like their room.” Frost let go of the hand and gripped the girl under the arms. The girl gave a cry. “Momma.”
The woman said, from the chair, without turning “Go, Cloud.”
Frost said to the girl “We have to go out so these people can fix your momma’s arm.” He stood, lifting the girl. She put her legs around him because it was the easiest thing to do, but she would not hold on with her arms, and she would not look at him. Frost carried Cloud out of the clinic.
Because the girl would not hold on, Frost was panting by the time he reached the domicile. Will was standing at the door. The girl was a year or two younger than Will. Frost said “Her momma is at the clinic. I’ll take her up to Rain’s.” Will followed them down the half-dark corridor to the entrance of the stairwell. There was no door on it. The only light inside the stairwell came from here in the corridor. Frost started up the stairs.
He went up slowly, balancing the awkward weight of the girl, stopping every few stairs to adjust the load and to catch his breath. When he reached the complete blackness between the floors the first distant scream came. He muttered “Damn" and tried to move a little faster. But then the second scream came, and the third. The girl cried “Momma!” and started to thrash. Frost held on. There was another scream. The girl pushed at him and threw herself from side to side and shrieked “Momma! Momma!” and then started screaming herself. She scratched at Frost’s face. His glasses fell off. He closed his eyes and held on and felt with a foot for the next stair.
“Help” he hollered. “Someone help me.”
He felt Will’s hands at his back.
11
It was raining hard, and the day was dark, and the only sound was the far-flung hiss of rain on pavement. Frost stood at the summit of his bridge, on the sidewalk. He had on his rabbit skin poncho and a rabbit skin hat. A length of twine held the poncho closed. There was a sword at his side
. Water spotted the lenses of his wire-rim glasses as he leaned on the railing and stared westward out over the river. King stood beside him on a twine leash, head and tail drooping. Beside the dog, among stunted grass that grew in cracks in the concrete, a large black plastic bag rested.
On Frost’s right, to the northwest, running down to the river, stretched the same long treeless slope he had seen from Little Bridge, a panorama of mud cut by ravines, splotched by mounds of blackberry and low brush and dotted with collapsed or grown-over buildings. Below him was the old railroad bridge, its open span hanging parallel to the roiling current. To the south of the river was his own farm, bleak and still except for the smoke that spilled from the stovepipes of the domicile. Farther downriver to the left sprawled the vast unkempt plain of Fundy’s farm and the ruins of the airport. Closer, directly to the west, Fundy’s Bridge sat slantwise across the river. There were men on it. It looked to Frost like they had crossbows. Three of them stood at the railing, looking back at him through a quarter-mile of rain.
At the Town end of his bridge three guards and their three dogs watched Frost come down toward them, with the bag slung over a shoulder. When he got close the dogs wagged their tails, and then they all sniffed King and he sniffed them, and there was a little half-hearted prancing. Then they just stood there hang-dog and miserable in the downpour.
Frost set down his bag and said “If Langley’s men come, don’t think about fighting them. They’ve got crossbows and can kill you from the end of the bridge. Just turn the dogs loose on them and run back to the farm. I’m sorry to have to send you out here on a day like this when no one’s crossing the bridge. But you know why. When I go back I’m going to send out four men with two dogs each, and you can all go home and get dry.” He threw the bag over his shoulder, and he and King walked on.
After a while Airport called “You shouldn’t be goin alone.” But Frost neither turned nor replied.
There were maybe two hundred people at the market, collected under the narrow shelter of the span. They crowded the dry packed earth close to the river. As he came near, Frost heard some of them speak his name, more like a ritual utterance than a greeting. Frost. Frost. Like something heard at a grave or a birth. And he heard, already, Lookit. Lookit what I got.
There was a widespread clatter of plastic garments and a tumult of voices raised in desperate negotiation. There was a stink of dirty flesh, of sick flesh and its excretions. King stopped for a second. His eyes were bright, and his fur stood up a little. He made a low noise that was both a whine and a growl. Frost took an extra wrap on the leash.
A dozen people ran out into the rain, thin as ghosts, waving bent nails, bent chunks of aluminum window sash, a foot-wide triangular shard of glass, a rotted and broken board. They had wool ponchos that did not adequately cover their private parts. They had polyethylene slickers, layered for winter insulation. They had poly over wool. They waved their loot like weapons, screaming Lookit lookit lookit!.
Frost said “Speak up" and King dashed left and right on his leash, barking and snarling. The dozen veered away with shouts of fear, or they threw up their arms and tried to stop, flailing, clubbing one another with their miserable loot. They skidded in the mud and collided. The shard of glass fell. Frost led King around the shattered pile as the woman who had dropped it tore at her hair and wailed as if a son had died. Frost said “Settle down" and King was quiet and looked at Frost, and Frost said “Good dog.” Frost stopped and set the bag down and opened it with one hand and reached in and took out a wedge of squash and held it out. The woman came forward, stepping barefoot on the glass, took the squash and walked away into the rain, trying to bite the vegetable with her few teeth.
As Frost walked in under the bridge people made way for him and King. He scanned the crowd as he moved through it to the far edge, where he was faced again with a wall of rain. He turned left and skirted the mob, peering into it. He was a head taller than anyone else, and he could see that many were watching him and that a few were following, calling quietly, Frost. Frost. Lookit.
Where the crowd petered out three men in sheepskin ponchos stood around two bags like Frost’s. They had swords and two of them had spears. Frost said “Getting rid of any wool, Bailey?” and the man who did not have a spear - grey haired, grey bearded, one eyed and hunched, holding a mass of raw wool in one hand and a skein of spun wool in the other - said “There’s nothin’ that I want.” Frost said “What are you looking for?” and Bailey said “Hardware. Tools.” Frost said “I’ll keep my eyes open" and turned back into the crowd, moving through it lengthways now.
People held up whole bowls made of plastic and fractured bowls made of pottery, the white shell of a mechanical pencil, a brick scabbed with mortar. They held up bunches of Town carrots, pairs of scabby Town spuds, a plastic bowl of blackberries. Frost, lookit. It was a white light bulb. Frost stopped and took it and turned it in his hand. There was a half-melted bulge. He handed it back.
Frost saw a skagger. He was almost as tall as Frost. He had a neat brown beard, his hair was tied into a tail, and he wore a torn, sleeveless, buttonless tweed overcoat. The nose of his crossbow rested on the packed earth at his feet as he haggled with an emaciated man with shoulders like axe blades, who wore only a layered plastic kilt. The man was offering a bone-handled hunting knife and a compact disk. As the skagger examined the disc rainbow winks leapt from it. There were low gasps from those nearby. The skagger put the disk into a nylon backpack. He took the knife and put that in too. Then he handed the man a twist of clear plastic with grey powder inside.
As the man hustled toward the edge of the crowd, a woman shouted “That’s him. That’s the one stole my knife.” The man ran, shoving people aside, out into the rain. The skagger picked up his crossbow and looked toward Frost and mouthed through the noise “None for you" and looked away again and then stood there, waiting, smiling slightly.
In front of Frost people stepped away from King, but Frost checked behind himself often. This time when he turned, there was a new face among the followers, among those whispering, Frost, Frost, lookit. It was an old man, a man his age, wearing a wool kilt. Frost stopped, and King sat at his feet. “Do I know you?” said Frost. The man shook his head and just stood there.
He was barefoot. He was bald except for a fringe of white hair that stood out a foot from his head in filthy matted chunks. His mane of chest hair was also white, but his beard was soiled to the colour of the ground. He rested in a half-crouch, leaning on one knee. He had a lump on his side the size of a large potato. He was wearing glasses with burgundy rims and narrow lenses. He took them off and held them out to Frost.
Frost set down his bag of squash and took his own glasses off and handed them to the man. The man put on Frost’s glasses, and Frost put on the man’s glasses and looked around. He inhaled sharply and jerked back his head. He said “God, I can see. Everything is clear.” The plastic capes and skirts and pullovers were suddenly like sheets of moving light. Every face a live carving. The murky daylight now hard and crisp. He saw Wing at the far end of the crowd, his wisp of beard a twist of pure light, the eyes looking back at him, welcoming from even this far away. Frost closed one eye, opened it, closed the other one, opened it.
“Both eyes. Everything is clear in both eyes. I couldn’t see before and didn’t even know it.”
In an empty space not far from Wing there was a carrot on the ground, bright as a flame. Frost watched a rat heading toward it, dodging around feet. The rat sparkled with drops of rain. A woman was also charging for the carrot, reaching forward with a hand, taking long fast barefoot strides. There were colours in her wool poncho, half a dozen kinds of dirt grey. She had a long jagged mole on the back of her right calf. The rat beat her but was slowed in its escape by the weight of the prize. The woman stomped the rat. Then she picked up the carrot and the rat and clutched them both to her chest and walked away into the rain.
Frost turned back to the old man. He said “What do you want f
or the glasses? Do you want some squash? I’ll give you the whole bag. Look, I’ve got a lot.” But before he could open the bag to show him, the man shook his head. Frost said “Come and live at the farm. We’ll keep you warm and safe and fed.” The man stood there, bent, one hand braced on a knee, goggling back through the fog of scratches on Frost’s lenses. He gave an upward twitch of the chin and lifted his eyes to Frost’s hat.
Frost took his hat off and placed it on the man’s head. The man smiled. He had no teeth. Frost also smiled and said “Okay?” The man looked down at Frost’s shoes. “You want my shoes?” The man nodded. “My new shoes?” Frost stopped smiling. The man waited. Frost said to King “Stay" and dropped the leash. King lay down as Frost untied his shoes and stood there barefoot, holding the shoes out for the man to take.
The man’s eyes narrowed. A deep line of worry formed between his brows. Frost said “You don’t know how to tie them. Fine.” Frost knelt. The man put his free hand on Frost’s head for balance as Frost helped him slip one and then the other dirt-caked foot into the shoes. “Watch” said Frost as he slowly looped and tied the laces. Frost stood. The man looked down at the shoes and wiggled them around and looked up and smiled again. “Okay?” said Frost. The man reached and took a pinching grip of Frost’s poncho.
Frost stood staring soberly back at the man. Then he turned away and looked around for a minute through the narrow flawless lenses. Then he turned back and drew his sword and laid it on the ground. He untied the length of yellow twine around his waist and handed it to the man. He took off his poncho and helped the man put it on and tied the twine around the man’s waist.
Frost held out his hand to seal the transaction. The man looked down at Frost’s sword. Frost said “No way.” The man shrugged and shook Frost’s hand and turned and tossed Frost’s old glasses away. There were grunts and squeals and a rattling blast of plastic as people dove for the glasses. King stood up and barked but did not move. The old man hobbled out of the market.
Since Tomorrow Page 7