He said nothing, his eyes blank and startled. He tried a smile, and then one corner of Martin’s lip slowly raised into a sneer and he swore. “Keeper? What’s that supposed to mean?”
She saw that it was over, then. No alliances would be built here, their intentions were at odds. If the Sherwood Club continued to grow like they were, they would overrun his territory and their aims would clash. “You can go talk to Ronny if you want to.” Her voice hardened. “But it’s his choice. If he wants to stay, he stays. You know, as a leader yourself, you could make a difference. We would be happy to have your service.”
Martin scoffed, “Oh, I’ll talk to him.” He pointed at her. “And I’ll be back.”
Renee pulled a sheet of paper from her stack. On it was written the name of every “boss” in the Northeast that her volunteers had come up with. She found Martin’s name and crossed it off. “Good luck,” she said.
After he left in a huff of disgust and confusion she went over her list. By each name she had written the estimated number of employees, what their business was, and any notes she had about their reputation. She would invite each of them to meet with her.
“You’re going to make a lot of enemies,” Bea said.
Renee startled, having forgotten that Bea was in the room, as still as a statue and holding the shotgun. She leaned back in her chair. “Yeah. His employees would rather work here.”
“I think you need more guards.”
Renee nodded. She stared at her friend, leaning against the door of her office and could hear in her voice all the ways Bea thought she was being foolish, and Renee wasn’t sure she disagreed with her. “Would you take care of that for me, Bea? Also, maybe you ought to have someone tail Ronny for a few days.”
The plan with the tunnel was not entirely clear, but that did not bother Nevel in the least. He was driven, mainly, by the fervor to dig. One must trust that one’s subconscious has an intent, he thought. But then, as he remembered some of the dreams he’d had lately, he worried that perhaps his subconscious was not to be trusted after all. Perhaps his subconscious was working against him, rebelling against his conscious mind, assuming control, propelling him to do things that he should not be doing.
But what harm is a tunnel, he thought. Other than, say, the threat of collapse. He wiped the sweat from his brow and left a long dirt streak there along his receding hairline. “But you won’t, eh?” He patted one of its supports, which felt firm enough under his hand. Maybe the harm was that he was obsessed with it when he should be doing something else. Averting some catastrophe he was not yet aware of or making a solid plan for survival for his family’s future.
He suddenly craved to ask the question of his sleeping daughter, who’d only started speaking, and subsequently began spouting out pidgin prophecy like an oracle. This was silliness, he could see that, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that she might still carry with her some omniscience from the other side, before birth, before she was anything.
He removed his shoes at the basement door and did his best to scrub himself off with the towel his wife had thoughtfully installed for him there. As he ascended the stairs he remembered that in one of his dreams the mayor had appeared with giant wings. From his bed he had watched the winged mayor flutter against his bedroom window as if he were a moth drawn by the light inside, his efforts frustrated by the glass between them.
At his daughter’s bedside he saw that she was sleeping hard, deep below dreams, and his desire to wake her for divination evaporated. Instead, he pulled the sheet up to her shoulder and admired her. These were questions he needed to answer himself.
In one quick motion she raised up on one elbow and stared intensely at him in the dim light, her eyes sparkling black beads, and he put his hands to his chest, waiting for the oracular blow that was to come. But after a moment, she only asked for her bear.
He located the dirty little stuffed animal wedged between the wall and the mattress. She wrapped it tightly in her arms again and fell back into sleep.
It was time to fly right, he told himself as he trudged back downstairs toward the basement. To stick up for his family, fists a-blazing. Once back in the tunnel, though, he picked up his shovel and began to dig anew.
Water distribution in Cully happened at a dysfunctional elementary school. Parents with younger children had been the first to migrate away.
A water truck pulled into the large open-air structure built over the basketball court, to the side of the dry field. Behind it, eight National Guardsmen pulled in in two jeeps. With their rifles out, they guided people back to the perimeter while distribution was organized.
Renee and the others stood on the edge of the crowd and watched. She had a sweatshirt hood pulled deep over her face. Of the nine days she’d been to this station, three days had been violent and there’d been one death; a heavyset man attempted to steal the truck while it was in operation. He was killed brutally by a guardsman who wasted no bullets, but beat him to death with his rifle butt.
The crowd surrounding the truck was irritable with dehydration and hunger, and the system was slow and hostile.
She imagined the feel of carrying her own unit gallon home. The heaviness of that wealth.
The criminal database and the water distribution lists cross-referenced, so known criminals regularly emerged a few days after a crime, delirious with dehydration, or showed up in the hospital sick after having tried to drink from the river sludge, or fled the city to join the shadowy gangs that roved outside the governed area.
Renee crouched and watched. It was a lot of fucking work, she thought, just to survive. Today they were trying a couple of cards and Josh would be their guinea pig. Tomorrow they would try more, letting those with cards run through and then dressing them up for another go-through.
Someone patted the top of her head insistently, and she looked up to see Leroy.
“What?”
“Look.”
She stood and tried to follow where he pointed. “I don’t know what you’re trying to show me.”
Leroy pointed again, and then turned his back to where he’d pointed, as if bracing for a blow. She looked around his shoulder.
“Brown shirt, brown shirt,” Leroy whispered.
She saw him, a black man in his late twenties or early thirties. Twenty yards away, mingled into the crowd. He had woolly hair and a well-used light brown T-shirt, a hole below the collar. His face was angular and lean, his beard sparse, and then he looked directly at her and smiled. Renee shifted so that she was hidden behind Leroy. “Who is he?”
“Jamal Perkins. Ring any bells?”
Renee shook her head. She couldn’t be recognized, not here.
“Perkins. Gregor’s son. This wouldn’t be his distribution, if he even goes to one.”
Renee shifted so that she could take another look at him. He smiled again, as if they were old friends, and began to walk toward her. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked as though several others peeled off of the crowd and began to mingle slowly their way as well.
“He’s coming,” Renee said.
“Shit. Shit,” Leroy said.
“Should I be scared?” Renee stepped around Leroy and began walking toward Jamal and they met halfway. Behind her she could feel her group fall in around her, protectively.
Jamal held out his hand, “I’m a big fan.” He smiled again, as if the punchline to a joke about himself had been told. He leaned in close and whispered, “Maid Marian. Right?”
She took his hand and he pumped it with warm exaggeration. It was hard not to like him immediately. “I’ve just been told who you are,” she said. “Someone suggested that I run.”
“Oh?” he laughed. He inspected her group and nodded to a few he seemed to know. “You’ve got me mixed up with my father. I’m only a fan—” he lowered his voice so o
nly she could hear “—I’d be interested to hear your plans.”
Renee shuddered momentarily, as if he’d somehow spied her out, her pencil and paper that morning. She nodded and looked away and wondered if he was mocking her.
When he spoke again all of his charming veneer was gone, replaced with earnest haste. “Can we talk?” he said in a voice that was barely audible. He still held her hand embraced in a handshake and Bea came beside them and stood with her arms crossed.
Renee said she’d love to and straightened. “What about? Come back to our headquarters,” she said. “We’ll talk. I’d love to meet your father, too.”
Jamal’s face clouded briefly, “Sure. I have a few others.”
“You’re with people?”
Jamal smiled and then merged back into the crowd.
Renee scanned the distribution and felt a tingle of fear and excitement.
“Who was that?” Josh asked. He had done something to his hair for the card scam that made him look surprised.
“You should be in queue,” she said.
That night they sat in a circle around a campfire in their big backyard, all of them, plus Jamal and the three that he’d brought along—young men who seemed ill at ease among them. It was a rough-looking bunch, every one of them, Renee thought. Herself, surely, included. After Josh’s success they’d made up others and some still wore their disguises to fool the ID checkers. They passed around a couple of contraband unit gallons like jugs of moonshine, excited at their sudden wealth. For the first time in weeks Renee quenched her thirst, and in so doing she felt a residual exhaustion fall away.
Josh was cocky and relived each gallon they’d acquired, already excited for the extra units that would be theirs tomorrow.
It did feel good, but as they drained another gallon dry, the small victory began to feel like an embarrassingly small win. In her belly she felt the water slosh, turned fishbowl. She began to work at a plan in her mind, an ambition. Like a seed stuck in her teeth she pressed against it from all angles, trying to pry it loose.
Jamal pulled a small flask of some kind of alcohol out of a ratty canvas bag he carried with him and passed that around. Alcohol was hard to come by, especially that which wasn’t the awful swill distilled from rations. She raised the flask to him in cheers and studied him to get a sense of his purpose here.
“What’s your story?” she said.
Jamal paused. The expression on his face was that of someone who wishes to choose his words wisely. In the space of his careful pause, all other talking dried up and attention focused on him.
After a moment he noticed everyone staring at him and he smiled and poked at the dirt in front of him with his feet. “Hey all, it’s not very complicated,” he said. “I was impressed.” He gestured to Renee with his chin. “I saw you on the news and I thought, good stuff. I want to do that. Just like you did, but up here, in the ’hood.” He considered Renee. “I’ve been trying to find you. We’ve been hearing about Sherwood Club. I wanted to see what you were working on—and here you are.”
“And here I am.” She wondered if she was living up to the expectation Jamal had of her, and knew she wasn’t living up to her own. “It’s a beginning,” she said.
“Sure.” He turned to Josh and hefted the dead unit gallon. “This is a good plan. You could do more. But this is a smart plan.” Jamal picked a stick up and rearranged the logs on the fire, which burned hot on their faces.
“Thanks,” Josh said.
“But I wonder if it could—you know, scale,” Jamal said. “It all depends on one’s objectives.”
“I’ve been thinking about another truck,” Renee said.
“There you go,” Jamal said.
Next to Renee, Leroy twitched in place, stretching his neck and adjusting his feet and mumbling to himself so that Renee finally turned to him. “Yes?”
He sat up quickly on his knees and his eyes glistened blackly with the reflected firelight. “Gregor,” he said into the fire, and then finding no words that fit into the well of silence he’d created, said it again.
“I hear it,” Jamal said. “I know. This is only me, though. These smart-asses, too.” Jamal jostled one of the men he’d brought with him. “A real talky bunch.” The flask was passed to him and he held it for a moment. “Pop does one thing, I do something else. We share a name. He’s old, you all know that. Mostly he just widens his middle and lives off reputation these days. I’m not him.” Jamal took a small pull on the flask. “I am not him. I understand that you might not see that all at once, that it’s going to have to be shown.”
“Tell me more about Gregor,” Renee said.
“I live at his place, I’m not going to deny that. These guys have all worked for him. But Pop’s operation is—well, diminishing,” he said and drew the word out. “He wants it to. He does a lucrative trade and he’s, you know, respected, in his way, but he’s tired. Everybody knows this. Am I right?”
“The Governor,” Leroy said.
“Yeah,” Jamal said, “a nickname.”
“The Hammer,” Leroy said.
There was a smattering of uncertain laughter and Jamal stayed silent.
“The Arm,” Leroy said.
Renee put her hand on Leroy’s arm to silence him. The fire crackled. She leaned back and rested on the ground. Outside the circle of firelight the stars shone brilliantly. She liked how the man sounded, portly and riding a slow empire into nothingness. He had won the drug war of some years past, she knew. She’d invited him to meet with her but had not heard back.
“Scary motherfucker,” someone said.
“Not like he used to be,” Jamal said. “I can tell you.”
“Here’s what I’m thinking,” she said, her voice pointed skyward. “What if we steal the truck before it has water in it.” She let that sink in for a minute and could hear Josh gearing up to protest. “We drive it right off the lot where they park them at night.”
Jamal laughed and it was a pleasant sound. She felt stronger with him around. This was not someone from their activist group with a history of sparring with her, and it was not someone come looking for help. He had sought her out, a person of note.
“We’re not even stealing the water,” she said. “We’re filling up. And we don’t steal it publicly. We don’t do it in protest. No news. We steal it to have it. Then we start a new game entirely.”
“New game?” Josh said.
“An entirely new game.”
“We’d have to research the piss out of it,” Josh said. “You’re talking about driving through water pickup? The piss out of it.” He swore. “Say we acquire a couple of uniforms? Yeah.”
Renee closed her eyes and listened to Josh continue on. Once an idea was set in his mind it festered there like an infection, each facet of it ferreted out until all unknowns were revealed. She smiled, listening to him prattle on, clever boy. In this way, she would utilize him, let him do what he did best. Maybe this was the secret. To design a system that made it easy for others to choose her steerage. To govern by suggestion and the planting of seeds.
Some days the house felt like a non-stop party her roommates were having, or a busy political campaign office. A constant trickle of people she did not recognize showed up and Julia, whose initial meekness had transformed into a hard-staring, voice-of-power when tasked with command, put them to work or sent them away or catalogued their needs so that they could be assisted. Renee made herself available to the newcomers that came to meet Maid Marian. As if they were on some pilgrimage to see a statue, she thought. The first truck, the copycats, the burials, the neighborhood security that spread out from them, all of it had continued to accelerate visitors. She pressed their hands warmly and welcomed them. She had a knack for names and she burned their faces into her mind. She felt grateful toward them, each a sand-gr
ain of confidence.
On any given day there was a cadre of people gussied up in disguise for water ID card duty, or outfitted with tools for a backyard construction project, or huddled over the living room table sketching out a plan. Renee ran a distribution project once a week. Her neighborhood burial crew, the Sherwood Club, brought her names of those who needed it as they went door to door. She sent water with them for delivery.
Demand was high and need was hard to verify and what she offered was a drop in the bucket, she knew. At the end of the week, they averaged an extra sixty rations now, and these she delivered to those who were the most needy, carting the unit gallons and food in child bike trailers with Bea and the Sherwood Club. Families with young children, a few infirm, and so on. A tiny stipend she reserved for a master gardener who had come on staff, and who was slowly etching out a garden space in the backyard.
On one such delivery run, as she handed a unit gallon across the threshold to an elderly man, a woman dressed in a red skirt appeared out of nowhere and asked for a moment of her time. On the sidewalk the interviewer smiled over-broadly, her nervousness infectious, tilting slightly from her inappropriate shoes.
Renee faltered. Her hands, emptied now of anything to hold on to, fidgeted with her sleeves. Behind the woman stood a cameraman and the news team’s security guards and van.
She stared at the woman in red and tried to read her expression, with her painted, overly large eyes. Was she being mocked, or were they genuinely interested? Would this give her away to the city?
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