Alternative Truths

by Bob Brown

  Livvy wasn’t sure what to believe. Sometimes she imagined there were just people on the other side, people different from herself, but having their own hopes and dreams and sorrows. She didn’t expect she’d ever find out.

  She swung again, her knees and ankles beginning to feel warm at last. She was hungry, and thought of going to the soup kitchen in the church basement, but she was reluctant to leave the sunshine. The church basement smelled of cheap candles and old food, and echoed with hymns and lectures. She wished she could take a bowl of soup back to her shack, and eat it in peace, but they would never allow that. They liked the relics to behave themselves, and act properly grateful.

  She was trying to decide whether to go home for a cold sandwich or subject herself to the church ladies when she heard a light step behind her. Stiffly, she twisted her body so she could see who had come into the park.

  A little girl was climbing the stairs to the slide. She couldn’t have been more than eight, with a thatch of fair curly hair and good leather shoes that looked as if they fit her well. One of the Councilmen’s children, for sure. Livvy looked around for her minder, but didn’t see anyone. Maybe the girl had escaped to seek a few moments in the sun, just as she had.

  Livvy worked her body out of the swing seat, and limped to the foot of the slide. “I’ll catch you,” she told the child.

  “Okay!” The girl put her legs over the edge of the rusty steel incline. She was wearing denim pants, and there were rough spots on the slide. “You might tear your pants,” Livvy warned.

  “I know,” the girl said, and pushed off.

  Now Livvy knew for sure she was the daughter of a Councilman. No one else could risk their clothes that way. The girl bumped down the slide, its surface no longer smooth enough for real sliding. At the bottom, Livvy put out her hands, though there was really no catching involved. It was nice, though, to touch a child’s firm, warm body. She released her with a pang, remembering all the times she had caught children coming fast down the slide, shrieking with joy, flying into her waiting hands.

  She folded her arms. “What’s your name?”

  “Pansy.” The girl started for the stairs again.

  “Where’s your mama? Or your minder?”

  “Mama’s at home. She’s feeling sick.”

  “Does she know you’re here?”

  Pansy had reached the top of the stairs. She swung her legs over again, but didn’t push off. “No.”

  “Shall I walk you home?”

  Pansy pushed herself off, and slowly bumped her way to the bottom of the slide. Livvy didn’t try to catch her, or even put out her hands, though she would have liked to touch the child again, to feel youth and energy and warmth through her fingers.

  Pansy said, “Did you used to go the school?”

  “Yes, until it closed.”

  “Why did it close?” Pansy bounced on her toes as if standing still were impossible.

  “Doesn’t your mama tell you about that?”

  “No.”

  “Well.” Livvy turned to look at the faded school buildings, the windows boarded up, the old parking lot cracked and sprouting weeds. “Well, I guess people just lost interest in the school. They let it die.”

  “I wish I could go to school.”

  “Who’s teaching you to read? To do your arithmetic?”

  “Mama. But she doesn’t read very well herself.”

  “Oh, I’m real sorry about that, Pansy. I do love reading books.”

  The little girl turned up her face, blue eyes sparking with interest. “Do you? Could you teach me?”

  “I would, but I don’t have books to use.”

  Pansy said, “I have books. I have three of them.”

  “That’s nice. What are they called?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Ah. You haven’t learned to read at all, then.”

  “No.” Pansy sighed, and looked around at the dilapidated play equipment. “Kids used to play here, I think.”

  “Yes, they did. I did.”

  “You were lucky.”

  “In some things.” Livvy looked around, surprised no one had come looking for the child. “I think I should walk you home, Pansy.”

  “We could read one of my books!” The little girl bounced on her toes, and her curls shook with enthusiasm.

  “If your mama says it’s okay.”

  “Mama’s lying down.” Pansy seized Livvy’s hand with her small, strong one. “Come on!” As they started out of the playground, Pansy asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Olivia Sutton, but you can call me Livvy.”

  Pansy swung Livvy’s hand back and forth, and walked on her toes, as if regular walking didn’t burn enough energy. “Are you old, Livvy? You look really old.”

  Livvy laughed, and it felt good. She hadn’t laughed in a while. “I’m pretty old. It’s what happens if you live a long time.”

  “Will I be old someday?”

  Livvy squeezed the little girl’s hand. “I hope so, Pansy. I do hope so.”

  It wasn’t an easy climb, and she struggled to keep up with the child. She was out of breath by the time they reached Pansy’s house, a solid sort of building with two floors and multiple windows, and an iron fence around everything. There was even a garage behind it, its door up, waiting for one of the few remaining automobiles to be parked there.

  Pansy led her around to a side gate, and then in through a spacious kitchen with real cupboards and a stove with four burners. It made Livvy sigh with nostalgia. There was an electric coffeepot and an assortment of cups hanging on hooks above it. There was a counter with stools beside it, and a fruit bowl that held three apples and one single, perfect orange.

  The sight of the orange made Livvy’s mouth water. She averted her gaze.

  Pansy dashed into another room, and came back with a little stack of three slender books. She held them out to Livvy. “Can we read now?”

  Livvy cast an uneasy glance around her. “We should get permission from your mama first. She might think I—well, that I came for something else.”

  “What?”

  Livvy didn’t know how to explain to a child that she was at risk of being accused of theft, or abuse, or whatever offense might occur to someone. Pansy obviously didn’t notice that she and Livvy were different colors. It had been interesting to Livvy that the little girl saw she was old, but not that she was dark. Pansy wouldn’t understand the problem.

  “Who are you?”

  Livvy started, and whirled to see a young, very thin woman in a white bathrobe standing in the doorway to the kitchen. “Oh! Hello, ma’am,” Livvy said hastily. “I just walked your little girl back from the playground. Didn’t seem like she should be on her own that way.”

  The woman put a hand to her throat, holding the lapels of her robe close. She looked frail, and Livvy wondered just how ill she was. “Pansy,” the woman said, in a thready voice. “You weren’t supposed to go out of the yard!”

  “Sorry, Mama,” Pansy said, without sincerity. “This is Livvy, and she—”

  “Olivia Sutton, ma’am. I used to work two houses down.”

  “Oh.” The woman took an uncertain step to one side, as if she couldn’t decide whether to go back upstairs or come into the room and face the situation. “Pansy isn’t supposed to talk to strangers, but—”

  “I told you, Mama!” Pansy cried. “This isn’t a stranger. This is Livvy. Livvy’s going to teach me to read.”

  ~o0o~

  It was the nicest afternoon Livvy had enjoyed in a very long time. Pansy’s mother, called Sarah, was easily convinced that Livvy was no threat to her house or her child, and retreated to her bedroom. Pansy and Livvy made cheese sandwiches, and Livvy made Pansy carry one up to her mother before they ate. Afterward, she sat down with the little girl and read all three of her books. When she finished, she started again with the first, explaining how the letters worked. Once Pansy could read the title and the first sentence, she seized the book, and g
alloped up the stairs to show her mother.

  Sarah came down once again, still barefoot, but dressed in a blouse and skirt. “Thank you, Olivia,” she said. “Pansy has been longing to learn to read. Let me give you some money.”

  “Oh, no, ma’am, thank you, but I don’t want to be paid. I enjoyed myself.”

  “Well,” Sarah said, with a vague wave of her hand. “I should give you something. Pansy gets so lonely since I’ve been sick.”

  Livvy hesitated. She hadn’t come to the house for anything except to read to Pansy, but the chance was too good to pass up. She hugged herself, and blurted, “Ma’am, if you have any extra coffee . . . ?” At Sarah’s surprised look, she said, “I’m down in the sh—the residences, see, and we don’t get coffee too often.”

  “Oh!” Sarah said. “Oh, if you want coffee . . .” She pointed at the cupboard above the coffeepot. “Help yourself. As much as you like.” Another wave. “There’s some sugar, too, I think. Cheese. Anything you want, really. Just take it.”

  Ten minutes later, Livvy was on her way down the hill, her pockets bulging with things from Sarah’s kitchen. She had a precious pound of coffee, and a half pound of good yellow cheese without a speck of mold. She had two eggs, and best of all, she had the orange from the fruit bowl. The walk took her a long time, downhill being worse than uphill for her knees, but she spent it planning the feast she would prepare for Porter in the morning.

  She placed the orange in a saucer, and set it out in imitation of Sarah’s fruit bowl. She hid the coffee behind her kettle, and set the cups ready for the morning. She went to bed early, and slept well, with a tummy full of cheese sandwiches, only waking when the sledgehammers began in the early dawn.

  They sounded closer today. She supposed they had discovered another tunnel. The blows rattled her walls, and made the woodstove shimmy on the plank floor.

  Muttering instructions to herself, she filled the woodstove and lighted it. She boiled water for coffee, and while it was steeping she peeled the orange into sections, savoring the smell of orange peel. She steamed the eggs in the rest of the water, and when everything was ready, she went across the patch of dirt to Porter’s shack.

  She had to wait while he hobbled to the door, and pulled it open. “Mornin’, Porter,” she said.

  “Why, Mrs. Sutton,” he said. His voice was rough with sleep. “What brings you here?”

  “A feast,” she told him.

  It took a bit of persuading, but soon she had Porter in her shack, seated on her only chair, with a cup of fragrant coffee between his shaking hands. She worried he might drop the cup, but he didn’t. He drank it slowly, smiling at her between sips. She sat on her bed as they each ate an egg, then carefully shared out the orange.

  At the first taste, Livvy groaned with pleasure. “I haven’t had me an orange in so long.”

  “Me neither, Mrs. Sutton. It’s like this is my birthday or something.”

  They smiled at each other, two old relics enjoying a good meal. And coffee.

  When she had helped Porter back to his shack, Livvy looked up the hill to the playground. She didn’t see anyone there, and she was tired from her climb of the day before. She decided she would rest, though it wasn’t easy with the banging and cracking going on.

  The next day, when she had drunk a precious cup of coffee and taken one to Porter, she went out for water and saw someone was in the playground again. It was too far for her to be sure, but she thought it might be Pansy. She took a shawl this time against the cold, and clambered up the steep street.

  Pansy ran to meet her. She had her first book with her, the one she had started reading in, and she had an orange in her pocket.

  They fell into a routine, Pansy and Livvy, with Sarah’s all-but-invisible support. When the weather was fine, Livvy and Pansy read at one of the picnic tables in the playground. When it was rainy, Livvy labored up the hill, and she and the little girl worked in the warm kitchen. Sarah found more books for her daughter, books she herself could barely read, and Pansy devoured them.

  They went on that way for weeks, and it was almost like the old days. Livvy came away each time with cheese or eggs or oranges, sometimes coffee, often apples from beneath the tree in Pansy’s yard. Pansy glowed with enthusiasm. Livvy’s joints eased from being in the warm house so often. Porter flourished, too, in his modest way, with a bit of better food and a cup of coffee each morning.

  Then, one afternoon, Livvy looked up from the book in Pansy’s lap and saw a tall blond man staring at the two of them. “What are you doing in my house?” he demanded.

  Livvy jumped to her feet, and Pansy did, too, the book falling to the floor. They hadn’t heard the automobile come up the hill. “I’m Olivia Sutton, sir. I—I’m teaching Pansy to read.”

  “I’m reading, Papa,” Pansy said in the smallest voice Livvy had heard her use.

  “Your mother is teaching you to read,” he said, in a flat voice that made Livvy’s belly tighten, and Pansy shrink against her.

  “Sir, Sarah—uh, Miss Sarah—she wasn’t feeling well, and—”

  “She’s lazy,” he snapped. “Nobody feels well if they lie in bed all day.”

  Livvy made no answer. There was no point. She bent to pick up the book, and laid it softly on the sofa where she and Pansy had been sitting.

  Pansy’s papa said, “Did she hire you? Without asking me?”

  Livvy had no answer for that, either. She had no way of knowing what Sarah might have spoken to her husband about. She wasn’t hired exactly. She didn’t know what to say, but she could see this was the end.

  She tried not to look longingly at the three oranges in the fruit bowl. She didn’t go anywhere near the cupboard where the coffee was kept, or the electric refrigerator where there were always eggs and cheese. She said, “Pansy, I’m gonna have to go now.”

  Pansy’s sweet little hand slipped into hers, and squeezed, but she didn’t say a word. Livvy wanted to kiss her, but under her papa’s glare, she didn’t dare. She murmured, “You can read those books to your mama now, Pansy. You know all the words.”

  “Sarah can read them for herself,” her father snapped. He stood with his hands in his pockets, watching Livvy walk out the kitchen door as if he was afraid she was going to steal something on her way.

  Empty-handed, heavy of heart, Livvy limped her way down the hill to her shack. She didn’t mind so much not bringing back an orange or a couple of eggs. She minded leaving Pansy with a father she was obviously afraid of, and a mother who hadn’t admitted to her husband that she couldn’t teach their daughter to read because she couldn’t read herself.

  Porter came out as she crossed the lane. “Good day up the hill, Mrs. Sutton?”

  She shook her head. “My little girl’s daddy came home. Wasn’t happy to see me.”

  “He didn’t know about you.”

  “Guess not.” She trudged toward her door. Her knees had begun to ache in earnest. “I didn’t bring anything this time, Porter. I’m out of coffee, out of cheese—everything. I’m sorry.”

  “That don’t matter. You’ve been so generous already. I think I have the fixings for some soup. Would you like some?”

  “No, thanks. I’m going to have a lie-down, I think. This is making me sad. My poor little girl.”

  “You taught her a lot, I think.”

  “I don’t know if it does any good.” She opened her door, and stared into the dim, dusty interior. “It’s not right, Porter. Those people up there with so much. Us down here with nothing.”

  “Always things in this world aren’t right, Livvy.”

  “Yes. I oughta know that by now.” She lifted her hand to him, and went into her shack.

  ~o0o~

  Livvy went to bed without eating anything, though she still had a wedge of dried-out cheese and two slices of bread that weren’t too moldy. She had no appetite. She kept seeing Pansy’s desolate face, and her heart ached all over again. She didn’t know where she would find comfort for this loss. At
least when the babies died, she had Butch to hold her, cry with her.

  When she finally fell asleep, it was the thick nightmare-ridden sleep of exhaustion. When the rumbling started, it seemed to be part of her dreams. Not until it got so loud she couldn’t ignore it did she wake fully, sitting up in bed with her quilt clutched to her bosom.

  The rumbling grew to a roar. Her shack began to vibrate, then to shake. Gray dust sifted from the ceiling to powder her quilt, her floor, her hair. She scrambled from bed, her painful knees almost giving way. Stiff-legged, she struggled across to her door.

  It wouldn’t open, though she shook it and banged on it. Through the dimness, she saw her side walls tilting, pulling loose from the Wall, jiggering her door so it wouldn’t budge.

  Rocks began to fall, battering her roof, bouncing against the off-kilter walls. One burst through the growing crack between the shack and the Wall, and rolled across the floor, just missing her bare feet. She thrust her feet into her shoes and began to kick at the door. The noise intensified into a mind-numbing cacophony of falling rocks and cracking wood. She found herself screaming against it, as if her voice could stop the obliteration of her home.

  The door finally gave way beneath her kicks. It fell outward, taking the front wall of the shack with it. The side walls, like playing cards in an old stacking game, flared outward and collapsed, shattering into a hundred bits of ancient wood and rusted metal. Livvy made her escape, dashing across the lane with her quilt around her shoulders. When she reached safety, she whirled to gape in horror at the wreck of the shacks.

  Hers was flattened, as if a child’s giant foot had stamped it to pieces.

  Porter’s had fallen inward.

  She shrieked, horrified by the sight. His roof had crashed onto his floor, his side walls collapsed on top of that, and a mound of stones loosened from the Wall had buried the whole mess. Had buried him. People from up and down the lane came running, and frantically tried to lift rocks and planks and bits of old tin, but it was mostly to make themselves feel better, to know they had done all they could. They knew—as Livvy knew—it was too late for Porter.