The Rift

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Everyone here saw the same thing? They’ll all back your story?”

  David shrugged. “Sure. It’s what happened.”

  Omar nodded. “Good,” he said. “Now what I want you to do is give me your pistol, then go to my office at the courthouse. We’ll do the paperwork.”

  David looked at him in surprise. “I don’t get to keep my gun?”

  “Not one that’s been used in a shooting, no. And you’re off-duty until Tree Simpson rules the shooting was justified.”

  Omar collected David’s gun and sent him off to Shelburne City. He sent the handcuffed boy in another car. He told the deputies they’d each have to give a statement at the end of their shift. He sent one of the deputies back to Shelburne City for a camera, then told the deputies who had rushed to the emergency, and who weren’t normally assigned to the camp, to go about their normal business.

  “Boss.” Merle’s voice quiet in his ear. “I need to tell you something.” At Merle’s hushed tones Omar felt his heart sink. His son, he thought, trembled on the edge of the abyss.

  “What is it,” he said, and the words almost failed to leave his throat. Merle drew him aside. “David got a little carried away, there,” he said quietly. Omar licked his lips. “Tell me.”

  “The kid drove off, okay? David drew and fired, and the car went across the road and into the ditch.”

  “It’s martial law,” Omar managed. “That was justified.”

  Merle nodded. “Sure, Omar. But what David did next was maybe a little, I don’t know, dire. See, that Negro wasn’t dead when he crashed the car. David pulled him from the car and shot him twice when he was lying on the road.”

  Omar’s mouth went dry. He took off his hat, wiped sweat from his forehead.

  Merle put a hand on Omar’s shoulder. “I’ll stand by your boy, okay? We’ll look after David. He’ll be all right.”

  “Any witnesses?” Omar said.

  “Some of the other deputies. They’ll be okay.” Merle looked sour. “But some people in the camp, yeah. They saw it. And Morris, he saw it, too.”

  “Reverend Morris,” Omar repeated.

  “Yeah. Morris. He was in his car, about to leave the camp just when the whole thing happened, got a bird’s-eye view.” Merle nodded toward the camp. “There he stands, with the others. Watching us like a black buzzard settin’ on a power line.”

  Omar closed his eyes, felt himself sway like a willow in the wind. Even with his eyes shut he could feel the touch of Morris’ hooded gaze.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Omar said, “and we’ll see what he says.” He crossed the road and took a long stride across the bar ditch and walked through the grass where the people at the camp had parked their cars. As he came closer he could see the tension grow in the knot of people around Morris, see the shoulders hunching as if against a blow, the fury blaze brighter in the stony eyes.

  There were white people in the camp, Omar knew. A few, anyway. Where were they?

  Omar politely touched the brim of his hat. “Reverend Morris?” he said. “I understand you may have been a witness to the shooting?”

  The preacher’s eyes did not leave Omar’s face. His words were enunciated with care, with great precision. “I saw the crime,” he said. “Yes.”

  The crime. Not the accident or the pursuit or the shooting. The crime. Omar felt his face prickle with heat. Kept his voice under control, kept his hands calm, thumbs hooked over his belt.

  “Do you want to come to the courthouse and make a statement?”

  “Possibly,” Morris allowed. “Possibly I will make a statement. Possibly I will reserve my statement and give it to the federal authorities at a later time.”

  Omar’s head swam. He licked his lips, managed to speak. “Why would you do that, Reverend?” he asked.

  Morris hooded his eyes and pretended to consider. Black bastard was enjoying it, Omar thought. He couldn’t beat me in the election, but he’s got me whipped now. Whipped like a cur dog in a hailstorm.

  “I saw your son shoot that boy,” Morris said. “He put two bullets into him without reason. What would be the point of giving a statement to you?”

  “You tell him!” a woman called from the back of the crowd. “You tell him!” There was a chorus of assent. Omar stiffened. Behind his sunglasses he looked at the faces in the crowd, tried to memorize them. The faces he already knew he was going to need to remember. The hostile masks swam before his gaze. His heart fluttered in his chest.

  “If you want to make a statement,” he told Morris, “you can make it any time.” Omar turned his back carefully and walked away through the grass and between the parked cars to the highway. He had turned his back on more than the camp, he knew; he had turned his back on his life, his position. Every thing he’d achieved, every advancement to which he’d clawed a path. His future.

  “Is there anybody else from Shelburne City in the camp right now?” Omar asked Merle.

  “There were some church people in there, but they left before the shooting. Morris is the last.”

  “Nobody leaves the camp,” Omar said. “Nobody but Morris.” He got in the car and got on the radio. He got ahold of Micah Knox, and told him that he and the rest of the Crusaders were relieved from their regular duty and should meet him on the highway by the John Deere dealership north of the Corp limit.

  Omar knew that his own life—that everything he’d built and stood for—was already lost. But if he had to move heaven and earth to do it, he was going to save his boy.

  Trucks began rolling into the compound in late afternoon, bringing people back to the men’s camps. Jason was introduced to the leader—“guide”—of his unit, a lanky red-haired man named Magnusson. Mr. Magnusson had a band on one arm that had probably once been white. Though he looked and for the most part smelled as if he’d been working in the hot sun for days, his chin was shaven blue and there was an alert look in his eyes. He called everyone by their surnames, as if first names were too much to bother with.

  “We’ll be heading in to dinner when we’re called by the PA, okay?” he said. “We’re the Samaritans.”

  “Samaritans,” Jason said. “Right.”

  “Thing to remember is, you don’t leave the camp unless you’re working, or unless you’re called. People are doing important work out there, and they don’t need you bothering them.” Jason didn’t like the sound of this. Everyone was supposed to stay behind a fence made of string?

  “When can I see my friends?” he asked.

  “Morning and evening services.” Mr. Magnusson squinted as he looked down at Jason. “What denomination are you, by the way?”

  Jason hesitated. He had a suspicion a truthful answer—his mother’s belief in pyramid power and Atlantis, and his father’s lack of any religion whatever—would not be received well.

  “What kind do you have around here?” he asked.

  “Well, Reverend Franklin, he’s sort of his own denomination—or he’s multidenominational, depending on how you look at it. He’s Charismatic and Fundamentalist, anyway. We’ve also got Baptists and Pentacostals, okay? Lots of Lutherans, but our pastor was killed in the first quake, so we’ve kind of split up among all the others. The Catholics—uhh, the same. Not that there were so many Catholics to begin with.” He narrowed his eyes and looked at Jason. “You’re not Catholic, are you?”

  “I’m Presbyterian,” Jason said.

  “Well,” Magnusson said, “we ain’t got any of those. So I guess you’ll just have to pick a congregation from the ones we got.” A gleam entered his eye. “I’d recommend Brother Frankland’s,” he said. “He saved me.”

  Jason had hoped that Presbyterianism might leave him out of this issue altogether. “I’ll pick the one that my friends join,” he said.

  Mr. Magnusson nodded. “Fine. Any questions?”

  Jason pointed at the man’s arm. “What’s the white armband mean?”

  “It means I’m in charge. Any more questions?”

  “I guess no
t.”

  “Good,” he said. “I want you to buddy up with someone who will show you the ropes and keep you out of trouble. And that someone will be Haynes over there.” He pointed to a skinny, freckled boy in a baseball cap. He lowered his voice, bent to Jason’s ear. “Now Sam Haynes lost his parents in the quake, okay? So what I want you to do is look after him, all right?” He put a hand on Jason’s shoulder.

  “Okay,” said Jason, confused by this brisk, over-efficient manner of intimacy. Mr. Magnusson straightened, shouted out. “Haynes! Heaven-o! I want you to meet Jason here.” Sam Haynes was a few years older than Jason. Jason shook his hand. Haynes didn’t seem to have much to say. “I want you to show Jason the ropes,” Mr. Magnusson said. He picked up a roll of large-sized plastic garbage bags, tore a bag off the roll, then handed it to Jason. “This is your ground cover. You sleep on this.”

  Jason looked at the bag. “Right,” he said.

  “You two go have fun now.”

  Jason slung his telescope over his shoulder and prepared to follow Haynes to whatever fun might be found in this place.

  “Hey!” Mr. Magnusson called after him. “Adams!”

  Jason turned around. “Yes?”

  “What’s that thing on your shoulder?”

  Jason looked at the Astroscan and decided he was already fed up with this place. “It’s a portable nuclear reactor.” he said.

  Mr. Magnusson hesitated. His eyes narrowed, as if he was trying to decide whether or not to size up Jason for a liar. Jason tried to assume an expression of earnest good intentions.

  “A nuclear reactor, huh?” Magnusson said. “Like the one in Mississippi that blew up?”

  “Well,” Jason said, “not as big.”

  Mr. Magnusson hesitated again. He propped his wiry arms on his hips. ” That one ain’t going to blow up, right?”

  Jason tried to exude authority. “Not if people don’t mess with it,” he said.

  “Well.” Mr. Magnusson chewed his lip. “You don’t let anyone touch it, then.”

  “I won’t.” Jason decided he’d better ease away before his guide had time to think about this, so he gave Mr. Magnusson a little wave and headed into the camp.

  Haynes wasn’t much company. He didn’t seem interested in whether Jason had a nuclear reactor, or indeed in anything else. He just pointed out a place under an awning, near his own, where Jason could stretch out his plastic bag to sleep on.

  “Or you can pick any place that’s empty. Plenty of empty places.”

  “Yeah,” Jason said. “I noticed that.” The camp seemed more than half-deserted, as if it had been laid out and equipped for a much larger group of people.

  “When do we eat?” Jason asked.

  “Soon, I hope.” Haynes dropped onto the grass, then flopped onto his back. He pulled his baseball cap down over his eyes. “Let me know when we’re called.”

  There were about a dozen Samaritans altogether. They and another group called the Galileans were called to dinner a couple hours later. The meal consisted of a modest piece of baked fish, some mixed vegetables out of cans, and a large scoop of white rice, all served on a compartmented plastic tray that, Jason suspected, had been plundered from a local school. Water to drink, though younger kids got a small glass of milk. During the meal a gospel choir practiced beneath a nearby awning, sometimes swinging into a gorgeous mass harmony before the conductor, dissatisfied with something, stopped them and made them start again.

  Jason ate his meal in less than five minutes and asked the others if he was allowed more. He wasn’t. He had eaten better when he was a refugee.

  Mealtime lasted fifteen minutes, after which the Samaritans took their trays to a galvanized trough, washed the trays, rinsed them in another trough, and stacked them for the next shift. After this, Mr. Magnusson marched them back to the young men’s camp.

  After that it was another long wait, till it was time for church.

  It was a long empty road between the A.M.E. camp and Shelburne City. Reverend Morris’ old Ford could be seen for half a mile, even in the fading light, and that was enough. Micah Knox pulled in front of Morris in a pickup truck he’d borrowed from Jedthus. Another one of the Crusaders pulled out behind the Ford, then tapped its bumper from behind. And then, when everyone had stopped to examine the accident, Omar drove up in his cruiser, parked opposite the Ford, and stepped from the car.

  Most unexpected was the lack of surprise in Morris’ eyes. There was a strange silent confirmation in those eyes, as if Omar was only attesting to the truth of the reverend’s opinion of him when he raised his pistol and fired it five times through the window.

  After that, the pickup rammed the Ford broadside until it tipped over into the bar ditch and rolled onto its roof. Gasoline was poured into the interior and set alight.

  An accident. That’s what would go on the report. Failing light, an old man in an old car, on an old earthquake-torn two-lane blacktop. He must have lost control.

  Omar would let someone else find the wreck, report the accident, fill out the papers. He would be miles away.

  “Beautiful!” Knox said. He stomped up and down the asphalt in his heavy boots, uneven teeth bared in a grin. “Just like in Hunter.”

  “There are more witnesses in the camp,” Omar said.

  “Beautiful!” said Knox. Firelight danced in his shotgun eyes.

  Omar arranged for charges to be dropped against the boy who had been in the car with the driver David had killed. He turned him over to Knox and one of his friends to be driven back to camp, and he was never seen again.

  No one would miss him. He’d been released from jail, the camp wasn’t expecting him back, and that was that.

  He had gone where the woodbine twineth.

  Omar used the shooting incident that day, plus the earlier shooting at Ozie Starks’, as leverage with the parish council and got permission to fence off the two refugee camps. That night he arranged for chain link and barbed wire, fence post diggers, and extra personnel. Extra cars. Extra guns. They would start the ball rolling first thing in the morning.

  Nick spent the rest of the afternoon floating. A glorious sense of well-being had fallen on him, and he felt almost free of gravity, bounding over the torn surface of the Arkansas bluff like an Apollo astronaut skipping over the surface of the moon. He had come through fire and water to find Manon and Arlette, through snakes and a hail of buckshot, past madmen armed with guns and a city choking on poison gas. They were alive, and he was alive, and they were alive together.

  He had seen Manon’s smile and the glow in Arlette’s eyes when she looked at her birthday present. He was happy, and he wanted to bask in his happiness.

  But he couldn’t. Manon and her family were in mourning, and Nick had to conceal his joy, had to pretend that sorrow flooded his heart instead of delight. His was a difficult happiness to conceal; he had to try to remember not to let a ridiculous grin break out on his face, or make too light-hearted a remark. He helped Manon with her work, happy just to be around her. Supper had to be prepared, in an improvised kitchen, for something like a hundred and forty people under the instruction of an elderly white lady who had once been in charge of a school cafeteria. The old woman was very careful of her calorie counts: she ordered rice, vegetables, and fish to be weighed out very carefully.

  “Twenty-two hundred calories per day for everyone except the people who have work assignments,” Manon explained. “Five thousand for nursing mothers, or for folks searching the swamps, raising food, or toting bricks. Milk only for growing children, since we don’t have many dairy cattle in the area.”

  “That’s not a lot of calories,” Nick said.

  “It’s enough to get by, they tell us. But we’re all going to be fashionably thin when we get out of this.” Nick looked at her, and his hand twitched with the impulse to pat her butt. “I always thought your weight was fine just where it is.”

  A smile twitched at her lips. “That’s one of the things I liked about you.” Nic
k hadn’t told anyone that he and Manon were divorced, so he’d been given a place to sleep in the married men’s camp. Married men were assigned to the same work units as their wives and their children, which allowed families to meet during meals. The group that Nick shared with Manon, rather oddly called the Thessalonians, ate last of all, after the lady Thessalonians fed everyone else. Even the late, scanty meal did not dim Nick’s joy. He was with his family. That was all that mattered. After supper was over, just as the sun was touching the western horizon, the PA called everyone to a religious service. The church was too small to contain everyone, so they all sat to one side of the steel church building, on the grassy sward between the church and the young men’s camp. The chorus—massed voices combining the choirs of all the local churches—opened with a rousing version of “Lord Help Me to Pray.” Arlette and some others bounced up to clap along, but most people seemed too tired.

  After the song ended the Reverend Frankland bounced up on a box, beaming left and right. “Heaven-o!” he said, and his people chanted “Heaven-o!” right back at him. He thanked the massed choir, promised more music for later, and began by welcoming Nick and Jason to Rails Bluff, and asked them to stand so that people would know who they were. Nick rose, feeling awkward, and saw Jason standing about a hundred feet away. People shouted out, “Welcome!” and “Glad you could make it, brothers!” Nick waved, mouthed the words “Thank you,” and sat again.

  Then Frankland spoke of the deaths of Gros-Papa and the others, murdered in Toussaint just a short distance away, and asked for a moment of silence to pray for them.

  “Who told him about your daddy?” Nick whispered to Manon after the silence ended. “I never mentioned it.”