by John Helfers
One corner a her mouth lifted. ‘‘No, really. How old?’’
‘‘Almost fourteen.’’
Diane poured more tea. ‘‘It’s the lack of sunlight. Everyone raised here looks young for their age.’’
‘‘I’m going to adopt her, raise her as my own. She’s not going back to the mines.’’
‘‘Anna—!’’
There was a knock on the door. It had to be Law. I snatched up the maple tree. Would they make me give it back?
But it was the Flea Pack. They nodded politely to Diane when she opened the door and then pushed on past her afore she’d said a thing. They stood round the kitchen with its daffodil-yellow curtains and ponderosa-green walls. With all that color, the pack looked like them icicles on the frozen river in the hologram. I laughed, but it sounded like a hiccup.
Diane looked scared and left the room. But Anna got to her feet and pulled out the chairs so everybody could sit.
‘‘These friends of yours?’’ she asked me.
‘‘The Flea Pack. That’s Flea, and Fox Girl and Rings. Our real names are John 511 and Ruth 423 and Daniel 367.’’
‘‘Numbered children,’’ Anna said. ‘‘Sit down, all of you. I’ll get you something to eat and drink.’’
Flea squatted by my chair and took my hand. ‘‘Rings, watch out the window for that copper.’’
Rings grabbed a cookie, and Fox Girl did the same, and then they went to stand at the window. Diane came back into the room. She smiled okay, but when she took the teapot to the sink, I saw her hands was shakin..
‘‘You okay?’’ Flea asked me. ‘‘What’re you doing here?’’
I grabbed his hands. ‘‘I’m streamin, Flea. We’re all streamin. These women, they want to help us.’’
Flea narrowed his eyes. ‘‘Not us, Willow. You.’’
‘‘All of you. It’s wrong, what they do.’’ Anna looked all the sudden sad. ‘‘I mean, I can’t help all of you. I don’t have that kind of money. But there are others like me. Isn’t that so, Diane?’’
Diane rattled the tea pot.
‘‘You gonna leave me, Willow?’’ Flea asked.
Tears squeezed out from beneath my lids. ‘‘I’m not leavin you, Flea.’’
‘‘You could. You could, and wait for me. I’m almost eighteen. I won’t be all that long.’’
‘‘She not gonna wait for you,’’ Fox Girl said.
I glared at Fox Girl. ‘‘Flea named me Willow on account my roots go deep. I don’t go over.’’
‘‘Coppers,’’ Rings said.
Flea looked at Anna and Diane. ‘‘Is there a back way out?’’
‘‘Only a window,’’ Diane said. ‘‘It’s too far to jump.’’
‘‘Well, praise shit,’’ Flea said.
Fox Girl ran into the kitchen and grabbed a knife.
‘‘Drop that!’’ Diane shrieked.
But Fox Girl didn’t pay no nevermind. She looked all stupid-scared. Just like I felt. By the window, Rings jerked down the long, metal bar holdin the curtains. He held it up like it was a spear.
Flea didn’t say nothin.
The coppers didn’t knock. They busted the door down. They came in swingin clubs. They saw Fox Girl, still standin stupid with the knife. Rings threw the metal rod at them and clear missed them and they hit him in the stomach. When I jumped up, one a them smashed me in the nose.
My face exploded. Blood blasted out like vent air. The maple tree flew out a my hand.
‘‘Willow!’’ Flea screamed.
Flea jumped the one that had got me and hit him hard till another copper turned and clubbed Flea in the back a his head. Flea fell to the floor, and they clubbed him again and he quit twitchin.
‘‘Flea!’’ I cried.
Anna and Diane was screamin and Fox Girl was wailin. Rings was holdin his stomach, his mouth gapin open like a Great White Shark from the summer hologram.
But Flea didn’t say nothin. I saw his crutches by the door, and that’s what I remember. His crutches throwed down near his feet. The maple tree lay smashed into a glitter a light near the special shoes Flea wore on account a his short leg. I stood up, meanin to go toward the crutches, toward the heat a Flea’s skin where his leg met his foot.
The Law lifted up his club.
‘‘Stop!’’ Anna moved toward the copper. ‘‘She’s going to be my little girl.’’
Diane hauled her back. ‘‘Look at her, Anna. She’s dull. Stupid. It’s why her mother tried to get rid of her. You don’t want a child like that. You can’t have a child like that.’’
Poof, went Anna’s face, all crumpled like. She sat down hard, like her legs just quit.
I understood things real clear then. I understood we was the ones shouldn’t a been the way we was. We could a been perfect, only it takes money to be perfect. I understood no one would ever want us but the Gawders, them people who look at us not like we was made a flesh and blood, but as if we was dollars and cents. Bein made a dollars and cents was how we gave back to the world when otherwise we’d be worth nothin.
‘‘Flea,’’ I sobbed.
Flea wasn’t movin.
I let my hand fall back.
It was a long time afore Fox Girl and Rings and me was sent back to the Praise Dome, on account we had to pay for our sins.
After we got back, the Gawders moved us south. Temperature went up five degrees. We changed into our short-sleeve coveralls. The holographs sprouted leaves and grass and names like honey maple, Miriamac, weeping willow. I couldn’t say the words no more on account of havin paid for my sins, but I whispered them in my head.
No one will say one word about Flea. He’s in some in-between space like that second between when you see the rock break loose in the shaft and afore it reaches where you’re standin at the bottom. He can’t be dead, on account a when someone dies the Gawders have a big celebration to show the deceased is gone to a better place. But he’s not here either.
It’s like he never was.
Every Seven-Day I sit by myself, tryin to figure it out. I sit still, all still and watch the holograms like I got roots and can’t move.
But the holograms don’t make much sense anymore. I mean, what kind a name is weeping willow?
What call would a tree ever have to cry?
BETTER GUNS
by Jean Rabe
Jean Rabe is the author of more than twenty novels and more than forty short stories. In addition, she has edited several DAW anthologies. When she’s not writing (which isn’t often), she delights in the company of her two aging dogs, dangles her feet in her backyard goldfish pond, and pretends to garden. She loves museums, books, boardgames, role-playing games, wargames, and movies that ‘‘blow up real good.’’ Visit her web site at: www.jeanrabe.com.
‘‘AH TINK MY gun’s better’n yours, Cousin Cletus.’’ Cletus snorted and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his Tennessee Titans sweatshirt. ‘‘Matter of opinion, Jimmy-Don, and your opinion’d be wrong on that count. What you’ve got there is a Colt, army model 1860, a .44 caliber six-shot revolver, double-action. It were used in what they called the Western theater.’’
Jimmy-Don held the gun in front of him so that the moo
nlight revealed its old tarnished glory. The teenager brushed a hank of wheat-blond hair out of his eyes with his free hand, some of the strands sticking to the sweat on his forehead. ‘‘Well, Ah dunno, Cousin Cletus. Ah still think it looks better’n yours. Ain’t so nicked up as that piece you got, and Ah’m pretty sure it . . .’’
‘‘Shut your pie-hole, Jimmy-Don.’’ Cletus glared for good measure. He was sweating, too, despite it being the first day of winter and despite them being outside crouched on a frost-tinged lawn. At least Jimmy-Don had thought to wear a coat, dark like the shadows that stretched from the pines and maples that ringed the property.
Smart boy, Cletus thought. Might even be community college material someday.
‘‘That there gun of yours, Cousin Cletus . . .’’
‘‘. . . is a Le Mat, boy, the best foreign-designed revolver that were used in the Civil War. See?’’ Cletus drew the gun from beneath his belt and held it so Jimmy-Don could get a good ogle. ‘‘It’s got two barrels, this top one here can fire nine .40 caliber bullets, and the bottom’s loaded for a 16-gauge shotgun ball. It were made by Jean Alexander Francois Le Mat, a French doctor working for the Confederacy.’’
‘‘So you really think yours is better ’cause it were a Confederacy gun?’’ Jimmy-Don shook his head. ‘‘The Union won, Cousin Cletus.’’ He waved the Colt for effect and grinned, showing an even row of bright white teeth. ‘‘Ah know my history, Cousin Cletus. Ah’m gonna be graduating junior high come June.’’ He waved the gun again.
‘‘Careful with that, Jimmy-Don.’’ Cletus ground his stubby teeth together. ‘‘These guns ain’t ours. Your Uncle Bodean loaned ’em to us.’’
‘‘From his Civil War museum down by the turnpike. Ah know.’’ Jimmy-Don nodded. ‘‘On account of the gun laws now, Uncle Bodean had to borrow them to us, else we wouldn’t have anything to shoot with. Them government men confiscated the ones Ah had stockpiled. My deer rifle, that .357 magnum, the Walther PPK like James Bond used in the movies. They even got my old Derringer, too, the one that Grandpa gave me when Ah finished the sixth grade and that Ah’d been hiding in my sock drawer. Got all of them. Got my mom and dad’s stash, too.’’ The teenager wistfully wiped at the Colt’s barrel, treating the revolver almost reverently now. ‘‘Ah’m surprised they didn’t pull all of Uncle Bodean’s guns from the museum.’’
‘‘Them government men didn’t consider museum pieces dangerous,’’ Cletus said. ‘‘Probably figured putting that big Cabela’s out of business down at the ‘I,’ closing our sporting goods shops and the gun shows were enough, raiding homes and hunting clubs, disbanding the NRA, making it more illegal to buy a gun than to buy . . . And all of that in the span of a couple of months. Don’t you get me started, boy.’’
‘‘Sorry, Cousin Cletus.’’ Jimmy-Don blew at the Colt and tried to polish the handle. ‘‘Hope this packs a punch. Sure wish Ah had that .357 right now.’’
Cletus sucked in a lungful of the chill air and held it deep. A moment later he let out a big breath that feathered to hang suspended in front of his lips like a woman’s lace hanky. He shivered, though not from the cold, and stretched out on his stomach, the breech-loading carbine that he’d slung over his shoulder lying uncomfortably across his back.
It was nerves that had caught a firm hold on him and Jimmy-Don, Cletus knew—which was why the boy was talking so much, and why he was sweating like he was sitting in the YMCA sauna. He couldn’t let the boy realize how rattled he was by this venture. He needed to look brave. This had been his idea, after all, and he’d only brought Jimmy-Don along because the boy’s eyesight was so good. Why, Jimmy-Don could spot a June bug in a mass of spring willow leaves and could shoot the gold circle off a Campbell’s soup label at fifty paces . . . when no one else was looking, of course. Firing ranges, skeet, target-practice, hunting . . . none of those things were legal anymore. Five months past the Bill Of Rights had been rewritten to eliminate the right to bear arms.
What had this country come to?
‘‘Someone’s coming, Cousin Cletus.’’ Jimmy-Don held a finger to his lips and mouthed: My turn. He stuffed the Colt in the pocket of his jeans and drew a bowie knife from a homemade sheath on his belt.
Jimmy-Don scuttled forward, reminding Cletus of a big toad, back all hunched and legs in close, mouth gaping open as if to catch a fly. Good thing he’d brought the boy along, Cletus thought, as he hadn’t heard the guard approach.
The man wore black, looking like a piece of the night sky come to ground. He was lean and broad-shouldered, and Cletus knew he was armed, though he couldn’t see a gun. Cletus wouldn’t have seen the man at all if it hadn’t been for his breath easing away from his face like a little cloud of fog. Probably how Jimmy-Don noticed him. The guard, maybe a secret service man, was patrolling the grounds, certainly only one of many with such a task. Enviably quiet, the man’s course took him near Jimmy-Don and into a patch of moonlight.
He had night-vision goggles, and they allowed him to see the teenager springing at him.
Again, the image of a big toad rushed at Cletus. He clamped his teeth together so tight his jaw ached, and he held his breath and prayed.
The man brought up a gun, sleek and black and almost two centuries newer than what Cletus and Jimmy-Don toted. Probably deadlier, too, but he didn’t get the chance to pull the trigger. Jimmy-Don barreled into him, knife leading and sinking into the man’s neck before he could cry out a warning. Cletus had told Jimmy-Don that the guards were all no doubt wearing some type of fancy body armor, and the boy had taken the words to heart, going for exposed flesh.
Jimmy-Don gave a soft victory whoop and the guard made a gargling sound that didn’t last long. Then Jimmy-Don pulled the body back and stuffed it under a big pine next to three other bodies that Cletus had put there minutes ago.
‘‘You done good, boy.’’
Jimmy-Don’s grin splayed wide across his face. ‘‘Let me get the next one, too, Cousin Cletus. Ah’m getting the hang of this.’’
It looked like the boy was having fun, and that notion chafed in Cletus’ craw. This wasn’t about fun or adventure. This was about taking something back, fighting for a just cause and teaching the politicians . . . what was left of them . . . a lesson. Forcing them to grow a backbone.
Cletus closed his eyes and in the back of his mind pictured the footage that had played over and over for weeks upon weeks this past summer and into the fall. The west wing of the White House imploding in the passing of a heartbeat, the Washington Monument toppling, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum vaporized, the Lincoln Memorial the site of the dirty bomb that wiped out the city and a good chunk of Arlington and into Baltimore. Smoke and fire and screams and death, caught by news crews stationed on street corners intending to capture Fourth of July activities and recording destruction instead. News crews that died days later in hospitals.
Radiation got them.
Practically all of Congress wiped out in minutes, most of the rest of them succumbing within the month, some of them still lingering in hospice care.
The president, vice president—gone. Speaker of the House, cabinet members. Only a political skeleton was left behind, those folks who weren’t in Washington that day. The ones who were in their hometowns for celebrations or overseas on some diplomatic mission or other were spared.
Like the secretary of agriculture, a former soybean farmer from south of Nashville who was pushing eighty, born in the fall of 1980 like Cletu
s’ father. That old coot was the Commander in Chief now, and he was somewhere in the building that loomed ahead of Cletus and Jimmy-Don.
What had this country come to? Cletus wondered again.
Didn’t matter.
He and Jimmy-Don, Bodean and the others, they were going to take back a little piece of it. Set this particular patch of Tennessee soil to right again.
Cletus peered across the lawn and to the palatial building, the white columns practically glowing in the moonlight. He blinked and tried to get some water going in his eyes, tried to get a better fix on the guards tucked in by the trellis. Hard to see them nestled close to the front door. He crawled under the pine where the bodies were stashed and retrieved a pair of night-vision goggles and two of the fancy guns. One he stuck into his back pocket, the gun was small enough and he turned it barrel out. The other he passed to Jimmy-Don, who grinned wider and put the bowie knife away.
Cletus fitted the goggles on. He was on the far side of fifty, and his vision was getting a tad fuzzy, though he was certain he would be able to shoot well enough when they got closer. Point, aim for a man’s middle if he wasn’t wearing body armor, pull the trigger, and pray you hit something vital. Shoot a couple of times, just to be certain. He had a pocket full of ammunition for the old Le Mat, two bowie knives, and an old Ketchum grenade, all from Bodean’s Civil War museum.
The goggles didn’t improve on the fuzziness, but they held back the dark well enough and tinted some things a ghastly green. Jimmy-Don didn’t seem to want a pair. He was doing fine on his own.
‘‘This one’s mine, too, Cousin Cletus,’’ he whispered.
A few moments later Jimmy-Don tugged another body under the tree. This one he’d shot with the new pistol. It had made a spitting sound, some sort of silencer built in.
Too bad the guards were going to have to die, Cletusthought. They were only doing their jobs, protecting the former secretary of agriculture and his lackeys. Too bad a lot of people were going to die tonight.