I stand and arch my back, trying to stretch a few more minutes of life into it.
“Can I ask you something?”
Willie doesn’t stop picking, but he says “Sure.”
“Before you found me and Caroline the other day we came across something kind of gruesome. It was a wailer hanging from a tree branch. You do that?”
Willie stands and smiles. “You sure it was a whole wailer you saw? Because, yeah, I may have done something like that.”
“Was just wondering,” I say and start picking again.
“What?” Willie asks. “You didn’t like it?”
“It was gross,” I say, continuing to pull weeds and put the into my sack. “But I don’t suppose I have an opinion on it one way or the other.”
“It feels good,” he says and starts picking again. “Get one like that and just take out all of your anger, frustration, sadness out on the thing. Just let it have it. Then when you’re done, you walk away a much calmer and cooler person.”
“But why’d you string it up?”
“Advertising. Let others know what would happen to them. They aren’t stupid.”
I think back to the coordinated attacks I’ve seen from the wailers: in a downtown office tower. The night that they overran Fair Park and took out Caroline’s mom. The other day in the garden. No, wailers aren’t stupid.
“Like I said,” I say, “I was just wondering.”
I continue to grab handfuls of weeds, careful to pull them from the root as much as I can. Willie hasn’t said to do that, but I’m watching him, and it’s what he’s doing.
Until he stops.
He stands up and looks back out through the trees into the clearing that we passed through to see the wailer’s hot tub earlier.
He puts up a hand, a five-digit stop sign. I quit picking.
“Down,” he says. I drop onto my belly.
“Quiet,” he says.
I finally hear what has Willie spooked. It’s the shooshing of grass. It’s the snapping of branches. Willie sits stock still, so I do the same thing. It feels like forever. The noises all get louder as whatever is making them gets closer. Willie gestures for me to get lower, and I push myself to the ground as hard as I can, trying to will myself a hole to roll into.
The noise begins to fade, and after a minute or two I poke my head up. Willie has crawled to the edge of the bank of trees we are in. He’s looking out to whatever has just passed. He reaches into one of the pockets on his vest and pulls a small spiral-bound pad of paper and a pencil. He makes a few notes then puts the pad back away.
“You can get up now,” he says and comes back to our wild little garden. He swings his bag around and begins picking again.
I stand, expecting some kind of explanation for what just happened, but Willie doesn’t offer one. Instead, he tells me that once my bag is full we can head back to camp.
I grab another handful of weeds and shove them into my bag. I grab another couple of handfuls of weeds, but can’t take the silence any longer.
“Is everything OK?”
“Yep,” Willie says, still picking.
I wait a beat then ask “What just passed? Where they wailers?”
“Nah.” He struggles to pull this bunch from the ground. These weeds are long established and some of them aren’t giving up the ground they’ve claimed without a fight. Two more hard tugs and Willie wins. He also doesn’t say anything more to me. He just goes back for another handful of greens.
We are picking in silence again when it’s Willie’s turn to start asking questions.
“The other night when I found you and Caroline,” Willie begins then starts struggling with another weed. “When I found you, something was happening. She was doing something with her hands and mumbling something. She was glowing.”
“Yeah?” I say it like a question, and Willie calls me on it.
“Yeah. Really.” He pauses. “What was it?”
I don’t know how to answer, so I don’t. I just keep pulling weeds, reaching deep for the roots and plucking them out in one motion. Willie doesn’t let it go, though.
“What was it, friend? I think I deserve an answer seeing as we’ve been very hospitable to you and your girlfriend.”
I stop; I stand. The muscles in my lower back grab tight. I fight a grimace. “Look, friend,” I begin. “We appreciate you putting us up. We appreciate your feeding us. But that doesn’t obligate you to know anything about me or Caroline. So, if this warm welcome comes with conditions, you can have my bag here and I’ll find my way back to camp.”
Willie waves me off and puts on a smile. “No. No. No obligations. I was just curious.” He goes back to picking. “We’ve just heard things around here. About witches and magic and that kind of stuff. I didn’t know if I’d stumbled onto something or someone rare.”
“She’s rare. That’s for sure.” I return to my work.
We pick for a minute more before Willie says: “Because having someone with magic abilities would be pretty useful. It’d be a good quality to have. And ...”
I interrupt Willie. “She’s a good kid. She’s been through a lot the last month. More than I could have handled, but she’s persevered. She hasn’t let it break her.”
“Another good quality.”
Caroline’s secrets aren’t mine to spill. If she wants Willie to know more about what she can and can’t do then it’s up to her to tell him. I don’t suspect that she’ll want to say anything. She only told me about it because we got into a spot where she had to. But if he wants to ask he’s free to, and that’s what I tell him.
Wille stops picking for a moment and stands. He looks up to the sky, sweat dripping down his nose and disappearing into the whiskers on his chin.
“Sun’s about on top of us,” he says. “We should be getting back. Lunch will be soon.” He picks up the pickle bucket, and I hear the two rabbits inside thump the sides. He shakes the bucket out in front of him and rocks it side to side.
“Plus, they’ve got to prep dinner.”
+++++
I open the door to our apartment and Caroline is on the couch reading one of her mom’s magic books. She puts it down and smiles up at me.
“How was your trip with your new best friend?” she asks through a smile.
“Stop,” I say. “He’s not that. But it was fine.”
I’m thirsty and want a drink. I walk to the refrigerator and open it. It doesn’t occur to me until I’m staring at bare shelves that there won’t be anything in there, not even cold air. Mental habits aren’t broken easy, I suppose. My mind has been tricked by this roof and this door. It has fallen back into familiar patterns and comfortable routines. It’s accessed files that it hasn’t had to in a while and it’s running old programs.
I shut the door and head back out to the living room and collapse on the opposite end of the couch from Caroline. She’s already back in her book but still asks, “So was it a successful hunt?”
“I’d say so, but I don’t know what Willie and the others here would call a success. They’d set traps and caught two rabbits. Then we picked weeds. I’d suspect it’s what we’ll have for dinner the next couple of nights.”
“That’s good,” she says. She lays her book, pages down, on the couch beside her and starts concentrating on some trinket that I haven’t seen before. It’s a golden cannon set inside some square cube of plastic. It’s bigger than the knife she’d been practicing with. Heavier too. But she spins it up off the table easily. It hovers in front of her for a moment then she pushes it out in a circle around the room.
“Hey,” I say as it’s halfway done with it’s trip. “You’re getting good.”
It goes out toward the window, by the door, then she brings it back in front her and lets it hang there for a second before setting it down on the table, like a pilot landing a helicopter on some concrete pad.
“I’d be getting good if I was 5.” She grabs the book again then folds her legs under her on the couch. She
stretches out and starts reading the book again. I give her a moment then mention that Willie asked about her.
“What did he want to know?”
“The other day, when he rescued us, he saw that you were trying to magic us out of a tough spot. Asked about what you were saying and why you were glowing.”
She puts the book down and looks at me with a wrinkled brow.
“And what did you tell him?”
“Nothing. Told him that if he wanted to know anything he’d have to talk with you. But he seems to think having someone with your set of skills around her full time could be useful.”
“He’s not wrong,” she says. “As you said, I’m very talented.”
“I don’t disagree.” I get up and look out the window and the activity happening in the courtyard. People are prepping the table for lunch. Chairs are getting put back underneath. The table is being cleared of books and cards and other things that residents have been using to pass the time since breakfast.
“But be ready for a conversation,” I say after a long pause. “That’s all I’m telling you.”
A woman who I recognize from earlier comes to the middle of the courtyard with what looks like a bell some teacher would use in a movie about prairie life to call her kids to class. She starts ringing it loudly, and people who aren’t already in the courtyard start coming out of their apartments.
“Come on,” I say to Caroline. “Lunch time.”
The lunch routine is similar to dinner. We pass plates and silverware. Everyone sits in roughly the same place. Caroline sits and begins immediately talking with Grace. They seem to have become fast friends. Or at least acquaintances. They are talking about the things that teenaged girls talk about, and I begin to wonder how it feels for Caroline. For months now she’s not been able to be the thing that she’s biologically programmed to be. She hasn’t been able to get upset about something someone said at school. And she hasn’t been able to worry about missed phones calls or gossip about boys or just be herself. Instead she’s been focused on keeping herself and others alive, on burying her mother, on where she needs to go next if she wants to restart her life.
Others are talking too. It’s all inconsequential chit chat, the kind of talk you make when you feel comfortable with who you are and where you are, when life hasn’t pulled your feet out from under you in a while. I’m jealous people have found that.
Food starts to be passed. It’s mostly vegetables from the garden out back. There is a bit of meat. It’s cold--likely from last night--but I take some anyway. It’s only a pinch since this needs to feed the entire group. I also take a few slices of tomato, a handful of radishes and a couple pieces of the cucumber that’s been sliced.
Willy is a few seats away. He’s talking to the woman next to him, laughing and poking her in the shoulder--needling her for something she’s just said. He’s taken more than his share of the meat. He keeps pinching large chunks and dropping them in his mouth, flinging anything left on his fingers to the ground. Willie is the king of this particular castle, and he knows it.
Conversation suddenly goes quiet, like everyone has suddenly been given the same instruction: “Shut up.”
I look around for a reason, and see them coming from someplace behind the far building. They are two young men covered in mud and dressed in camo. I’ve never seen either of them before. They approach Willie. He leans back and the taller of the two whispers something into Willie’s ear. He nods that he understands.
“Keep eating everyone. We’ll be back in a couple of minutes. No reason to be alarmed.”
Everyone returns to their plates, but the conversations have stopped. They all eat quickly. Quietly. Then plates start to be taken to the far end of the table and deposited into trays for cleaning. Those who have finished head back to their apartments.
Caroline looks just as confused as I am. I give her a shrug to indicate that I don’t know what’s going on either. Grace stands to take her plate, and Caroline follows. The last two people still eating finish, leaving me alone at the table.
Within minutes, I’m alone in the courtyard and it’s odd. I haven’t been alone like this in so long that I can’t remember if I like it. I think I do. It’s peaceful. I listen to the silence, the sounds of nature, such as it is now. It’ reminding me as each second passes of being in the mountains of Europe. My backpack is under me, keeping my back side from the damp grass. It’s early morning. I’ve just broken camp. All my gear is back where it belongs, and I’m finishing a cup of coffee. I’m looking through the trees to a stream that cuts its way down the mountain and through the forest, and the only thought in my head is “This is my life?” It seems perfect. And for the longest time it was.
I was the only kid I knew from high school who was doing what he said he’d do. Senior year with graduation stalking you, conversations inevitably turned to “What’s next?” My answer was always the same. I was going to be a reporter and travel the world. Granted, I thought then that I’d be covering wars and politics for some major news organizations. There’d be excitement and danger. Bullets and ballots. I hadn’t figured that what I’d wind up a travel writer exploring Europe. But as I got older, I counted my blessings that that’s what I’d become.
But there’s only so much of that you can take. Living out of backpacks and suit cases. Coming home to apartments that are still mostly packed up in boxes because you’re never there long enough to actually make it into a place that’s yours. Watching friends hit all of those post-college milestones--weddings and kids and promotions--and not having any of them for yourself. So you decide that even though you aren’t quite in your 30s, it’s time to start over. Maybe because you aren’t in your 30s yet it makes the most sense. It’s not too late for a fresh start. You can still have that normal life, the one that seemed so unappealing when you were 18, barely a decade ago.
So you do it. You hang up the reporter’s notebook. You buy a closet full of button front shirts and pants that you have to iron and shoes that you should shine and you start going into an office. And you realize that it’s not that bad. But something in the back of your head keeps whispering “Yeah, but it’s not that great either.” And you shut that up by arguing that it’s only been a month. What can you tell about a big decision like that in a month?
Then, though, the whole internal debate is rendered moot by the sky falling, the wailers rising, and you just trying to find a way to survive the day.
Willie opens the door of the apartment that he’s run off to. He steps outside and the two young men who pulled him from lunch follow. They all stop and talk for a moment in a small huddle then the younger men head back out the way they came, disappearing between buildings in the back. Willie walks toward me.
“How’d you end up out here by yourself?”
“Luck?”
Willie chuckles. “It’s nice, right?”
I nod.
“Some nights when it’s like 2 in the morning, I’ll get up and just come sit out here. I stare into the sky and imagine the stars. I recreate the bug songs of my youth. And for a moment,” Willie holds pinched figures up in front of him, “just a moment, I’m back in the days before all of this when I could sit out back in my yard and do just what I’d described. The nights when it was turning to fall, and it was cool but not cold, those were my favorite nights.”
“I just spent a few minutes doing something like that. I was in Europe.”
“Good trip?”
“Not bad at all.”
“What kind of plans do you have for tonight?”
“Well, I was going to stay close to home. Maybe catch a movie. And there’s a restaurant around the corner that everyone’s talking about …”
“Hardy har,” Willie says through a smile. “If you want, some of us are meeting this evening.”
I don’t let him finish. “Meeting about what?”
“Defenses,” he tells me.
“Well that’s a nice and vague answer.”
W
illie shrugs.
“It have anything to do with what those kids needed to talk with you just now?”
“We’ll talk about it tonight.” Willie stands up and begins to walk to his apartment. “I’m going to head back to my place and take a nap. Don’t wander off.”
He isn’t more than a dozen feet away, and I shout his name. He turns and I jump to catch him.
Once I’m close enough I ask: “Who or what were those things we saw today while picking.”
“We’ll talk about that tonight too.”
FIVE
I knock three times on the door to apartment 18, then I wait. I hear Willie’s voice from behind the door. I hear other voices I don’t recognize, so I know there are people in there. I raise my hand to knock again, and I hear someone fiddling with locks. One lock releases. Then a second and a third. One final lock, then the door opens.
A young kid is on the other side, maybe older than Caroline, but maybe not. Dirt is on his cheeks, and a thin moustache is on his upper lip.
He looks me up and down. “Help you?” he asks.
“Willie told me to come by.”
From somewhere on the other side of the door: “He’s fine, John. Let him in.”
The kid opens the door wide enough for me to step inside. All of the furniture is pushed against the walls leaving the middle of the room open. A half dozen guys are all standing in a semicircle watching another guy draw something on the wall. I step closer, and it’s not just a wall. It’s a map. An X marks the location of our camp.
The major landmarks are all drawn in marker. Roads, large structures, creeks, large groves of trees. Everything else is in pencil. It must cover miles in every direction, and it’s incredibly detailed, at least for a hand done map. There are two other Xs on the wall. One is near the ceiling. It’s a larger X than the one used to indicate our camp. I don’t know if size of the X is equivalent to the size of the camp, but the second X near the floor is about the same size as ours.
Willie pulls the paper with the notes he’d taken earlier in the day from his pocket and studies what’s there.
The Road North Page 5