by Eric Ellert
No one called Moren Mor but mom. Moren hated it since just about the time two years ago when she'd discovered the power of the word whatever. "How'd you know?"
"Your mom's, ok, Faud," he said and paused, "If you will, Moren's getting pretty good."
Faudron pulled the skirt together with her left hand, but it was so silky, sheer and stretched-out she couldn't quite get the two ends together. She only managed to unfasten it and had to hold it together with two hands, but it didn't seem very important. Mom had left her a monster; the brat had grown and morphed. Watching her was a job for aunts and uncles. Faudron swore she wouldn't over-react. She'd bring Moren home, call all the aunts and uncles until she found one who'd physically come here with two plane tickets. No stay-over to sort it out, no coffee-cake hour, no why can't you two get along pep talks. She'd dump Moren into the nearest willing-unwilling arms and tell mom when she came home. All that could take a day or two; a lot could happen in a day or two. "How many times?"
"Not to worry. Not too much law and order around here."
"That's good?"
"If you're breaking the law."
"She could end up on the highway," Faudron said.
"Not a chance. Name's Rau, by the way."
Faudron shook his hand then grabbed the skirt again, forgetting him for a moment as she pictured the Lincoln's front end stuck in the broken window of the nearest store, a hundred cruisers parked around her, a hundred pairs of dark eyeglasses on a hundred State Troopers shaking their heads.
"Come with me."
"Sure." He pointed back to his house shaking an imaginary pair of keys in the air, hopped over the stream that formed where their lawns touched and jogged to his front door, disappearing into fog.
Faudron rushed into the house, ran her leg under the shower, threw a pair of jeans on and put on a pair of her mother's dark-brown, ankle-length nineteen-thirtie's style, Timberlands, since there were wild animals about, and wild ticks, maybe the very one that had caused all this. She put a new a t-shirt on, maybe mom's, maybe Moren's, the laundry was always all mixed up. It stretched at the chest, must be Moren's. That would show her when she gave it back. Nature was kind to Faudron in that regard, as her grandmother said last Thanksgiving. She'd called her, 'perpendicular, not prone to gravity in that regard.' Moren started calling her Eurotrip after that when they spoke on the phone every six or seven weeks.
Faudron took the stairs three at a time, still on a run when she grabbed the windbreaker from the peg by the door, no longer concerned with mouse droppings in her pocket. She got outside, feeling zippy and on top of things then remembered her wallet on the counter, but she'd already locked the door behind her. The co-op rules said you had to have ID on you at all times. She'd just have to get there before they did and she had a feeling that Rau knew the ropes around here.
She slid across two lawns, stepped all over Rau's flowerbed and stopped at his door. "Rau you there?"
She got no answer. She shook the doorknob but it was locked. His house was just like their's, except for the lama in the barn, the English saddle laying over the fence and the half-finished paint job. Faudron was thinking so fast, she planned two days at once. She'd yell at Moren, offer to help him paint the house, charge the plain ticket. Would they send it Fed-Ex the same day? They didn't weigh much; they might, or maybe she'd have it printed at home, but Moren would have to help her with that and she'd have to lie her into it.
Faudron shivered. The place reminded her of an Airforce base. You could get in a lot of trouble on an Airforce base, probably more so here. This place was so out-of-date, like left-over GI housing from the fifties, and it wasn't a lake out there, though the brochure on the kitchen table bragged that it was -- Eggbert's Lake. The name didn't sing vacation, but tell that to the brochure mom had left on top of the bill on the dining room table to prove it did. It was a reservoir out there and there was a difference -- lakes didn't fill your basement and ruin all the stuff from your old room, the old room from the old house, the old life, the good life and all the clothes she'd left behind.
The rain soaked through the windbreaker; Faudron realized the anti-gravity t-shirt was soaked, but when she tried to zip up the windbreaker the zipper separated. She pictured one of the dozens of imaginary, redneck troopers in her mind, her 'in that regard' showing in their mirrored-sunglasses as they asked her to repeat the name of the deceased, but slowly this time. "M-O-R-E-N, officer. Can we
switch places? It would be easier on the parents, you see." And he would wait, and accidentally say Eurotrip and he would apologize, but the others would giggle.
Rau was gone, she could feel it, but she couldn't be polite. Moren was just crazy-enough to test out the highway, just crazy-enough to try to drive to Florida. She'd been bluffing about the phone call; she'd been worried too. Moren had a heart, difficult to find under all that bone, but Faudron was sure she had one. It was the last Space Station flight, before they let it sink into the atmosphere and burn up, NASA being mostly out of business since the Second Depression and all. They did something, Faudron supposed, just not much in space.
She pulled the tarp off Rau's Ford Escape, got in and started the engine. Something about a pushbutton start didn't give the v-8 jolt she longed-for. She honked the horn twice and waited a moment before backing up but no one came to the window and she sped down the road.
Chapter 2
Moren knew she was a good driver, so good, she edged the speedometer up to thirty-five. It took some time, but the engine seemed to grow as it gained speed. She aimed with the hood-ornament in the center of the chrome radiator cover, keeping the white line in its center since it was a one way road, posing as two. One car had to stop to let an oncoming car ease by, but she'd noticed they all drove with the brights on, so there'd be no problem. If the wind didn't spin the hood-ornament, she knew from a couple of other drives last week, she was going at the right speed, though she hadn't actually left Lake End Road and headed into town before.
Since it was the first day of school; she didn't want to be late, now that she had to go. Over the years, she'd noticed that not showing up was easier than arriving late. If mom wanted to check into the hospital as she'd said, for two weeks, three weeks ago, Moren figured the car was hers. It wasn't like Fresh Direct knew how to get to the place and the 'country' store, with the sign outside that said country store, was five miles from their door and mom had forbidden her from jogging on this road. All in all, Moren was much safer with all this steel around her.
The Lincoln's power steering wasn't great but Main Street, which actually looked like the Main Street on the Universal set from the old tv shows, had catty-corner parking, so all she had to do was ease into a spot and let the front tires bounce against the curb. That's why cars used to have chrome-plated bumpers. They didn't show the effects of a little bump.
Mainstreet was empty of traffic, but Moren still slowed to about fifteen mph and slid into a parking spot at the edge of the school's broad, green lawn. She couldn't see the flag at the top of the flagpole for the fog, so she figured no one would notice her from the upper windows, and she was fairly sure she was below the view of anybody in the first floor office. She put the car in park, shut the ignition off and opened the door while the engine knocked but the door snapped back shut, smacking into her knee.
A fat guy wearing a blue jacket and a striped-tie with clashing colors leaned against the door, holding it shut and knocked on the window as hard as if he'd punched it. He motioned for Moren to roll it down.
It took her three tries to get the electric window to slide down without jamming, but when it opened, there was something about the guy's breath that made her slide it up until she left a six-inch gap. The rain must have done something to the motor because the window bucked up and down four or five inches at a throw. Without thinking, Moren held her hands above the steering wheel to show she wasn't doing it, then realized the smell on his breath was whiskey, the bad whiskey smell nightly drinkers get, like rotting garb
age in the belly.
"Hey there. You're looking real cute, there," he said, like one of those sheriffs that have been elected instead of going through a police academy, a force of one, add whiskey and stir. Moren didn't say a word.
He walked to the front and made an exaggerated-effort at leaning on the hood, bending the shocks down and looking at the front end.
Moren wanted to say, "Deliver us from Deliverance," and honk the horn, but her instincts told her that mom wasn't going to be able to get her out of this the way she had when the realtor had caught her driving last month out by the package store they called The Country Store.
The Lincoln's worn shocks bounced as the Mayor stood. "But you might want to get that license plate changed-over now that you're driving in Jersey...on my road. Out of town plates are more likely to get stopped."
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it." He smiled, looked over the top of the car and called to someone, then looked Moren over. "I bet we see you at the Pig Dance soon."
For a second she thought he'd meant some kind of country fair, where the carni-people came with the fixed-games and cheap rides and sold the people really big hamburgers that tasted like kangaroo meet. Sometimes they were. He'd said Pig Dance as if substituting the words for a curse, or an insult. She pressed her hand against the window to make it stop rolling up and down. She had a friend named Karen here, who'd warned her about the sheriff, who was the mayor, who was the co-op board director, who's blind wife manned the phones inside the school. She'd said he did what he pleased to people he didn't like, and he obviously liked her, in a way she hadn't been ready for. She eased across the car to the far door. "Yes, thank you." She got out.
"Hey, Morie. Forgot to lock it."
Before Moren could reach the lock, he'd leaned into the car and locked all the doors. "Quite an advanced automobile for its day." He turned away, then turned back, his smile plain and friendly as if he'd mistaken her for someone else. "You're the Astronaut's kid, ain't you?" Before Moren could answer he said. "It's all right. If you're Tom Falkirk's kid. But just today." He nodded, looking at her as if apologizing for looking her over before. "We're lucky to have Tom as a neighbor, love to meet him. Likely to give him a parade when he comes home."
Moren was afraid to answer, but he saved her the trouble by turning his back.
She hurried up the lawn to the school's main entrance. She'd passed it a few times. Its wandering, green lawns ended abruptly on its left side where the beginnings of a State two-lane highway had cut into their domain, but there was never any traffic and people said the highway rolled off into nothing, never having been finished. They called it the highway to nowhere. A mile away it cut into the mountain, then rose to a cliff, waiting for the marvelous bridge that never appeared. They'd placed permanent boulders at the roads end.
People said people walked it at night, all the way to the elevated part and fell off the edge. It happened at least once a week. Once in a while they drove off through the space between the boulders and the shoulder. Karen had said there was a car museum down there -- thirty years of burnt-out wrecks covered with graffiti and the years of each graduating class painted on the roofs. They did paint class numbers on rocks in any number of small towns Moren had lived in, but everybody in town knew everybody else, which made it sick. You couldn't say it was just a wreck like you could back in Connecticut; it was the wreck.
The school was three stories tall, twenty windows across, but she'd hardly seen any kids at all, though she hadn't really been looking. She'd made one friend, one funeral shortly after. They said Karen had hit a Pontiac when she'd fallen off the highway's edge. Funny thing was, everyone in town went to the burial, since there was no wake, because of the damage from the fall, and no church service. Perhaps three hundred people attended, but no one, not even her parents, had entered the small cemetery, just Moren, the undertaker and the ushers for hire, none of whom lived here. She'd entered just to be that way, because the others wouldn't, though it seemed to make the parents feel better.
Moren climbed the steps. At the top, just before the flagpole, whose flag was at half-mast and upside down with forty-eight stars, stood a bronze statue. It looked so familiar, but was so strange, two wolf cubs nursing from a woman, some version of Liberty you'd see on an old coin. She sat on a throne, robes about her, a spear in one hand, a shield on the other. Whatever had been etched on the shield had been hammered out flat and it showed brassy-colored scratch marks bright against the patina-green bronze that covered the rest of the statue.
It was so strange and creepy, Moren felt as if she was being watched, but when she turned around there was no one about.
Down on the road, an ambulance passed, but they always did. The driver got out, opened a grey metal box attached to a telephone pole and put in a grey bundle of cloth then latched it shut and double-checked the latch. He nodded to Moren when he noticed her. She smiled back. He wasn't local; he, unlike everyone else in town, said hello to everybody.
Moren had to use two hands on the door's brass thumb-latch to get it to open and headed in. A hallway speaker hung just below the ceiling to her left and she remembered that they usually put one outside the office. The office was locked, though there were lights on within. She tiptoed down the hallway, found an open door near the far exit below the yellow and black fallout shelter sign and poked her head in.
There, a woman sat at a bank of television screens monitoring the school and grounds, that changed views every few seconds but all the rooms were empty, all but one. For a second Moren wondered if she was a day early, but knew it was wishful thinking and she'd been too lucky this morning to push it. Dad had always told her that the odds always caught up with you, but Moren knew exactly when to stop, so that bit of advice didn't apply to her. She was about to ask the woman where to go, or where to ask where to go, if it wasn't really the woman's job to answer dumb questions but thought it best to try the classroom.
The letters 2-B, stood in white relief at the corner of the tv screen when it focused back on the occupied room.
She was winded by the time she ran up the stairs and fumbled with the locked-door.
The teacher who pressed her face against the twelve-inch diagonal, chicken-wired window was a dry hippie-type with big white hair with the silvery, dyed, highlighted look people whose hair went gray early sometimes used to seem special. She smiled, took Moren's hand and pulled her in as if she was used to pulling people in to show them she could. "Say good morning Ms. Faulkirk," she said to the class, her eyes darting from Moren's to the room and back, animated as the mean, old, hippie singer with the big-momma hair who pledged for PBS.
"Good morning, Ms. Faulkirk," the class said.
They were of different ages, though luckily, Moren wasn't quite the oldest. But all stuck together? This was what they did on Little House on the Prairie and the only seat was in the front of the room and they knew each other and they all stared the way people stared at oddities. They would always know each other and would always stare.
"Yours," the teacher said pointing to the chair no one must have wanted.
"Thank you," Moren said, feeling people look at the back of her neck though she was facing them. She stared at the Palmer Method script drawings all around the top of the cracked, slate blackboards, the scent of old chalk sponges filling her nostrils, putting her mind back in grammar school, before she could drive. She held her breath, but if anyone had seen her from the window, or if the Mayor-sheriff-co-op Master of the Universe had called, they were going to sit on it until they could call a parent. Good luck.
Moren sat down feeling better; she'd started new many times before. Air-force brat's did, for the country or for dad's pension, she wasn't sure for which. It depended how happy the holidays that year were.
" 'All is chaos under the clouds and everything is wonderful,' " the teacher said in a voice like a snow queen delighted at the poetry she'd memorized. She waited to see some recognition on Moren's face and getting none, f
rowned. "Read along with one of the other children until we can get you a textbook."
Moren pulled her chair close to the nearest student who smiled pleasantly. Her seatmate wore one of those faux-prep school uniforms with the boy/girl look like a congressional page, her tie pulled down low and twisted to fight against having to wear it as far as she dared. Moren made a note to call mom to get a move on the uniform order. She'd forge the signature, but that hadn't worked out too well the one time she'd tried it on her last report card.
"And what happens on your twentieth birthday, children?" the teacher asked.
"You get bit or you go home," the class repeated in a sing song, abc kind of way.
"That's right. Do you understand that Moren?"
"No, I don't."
No one spoke; the other kids in the front row looked straight ahead. The clock on the wall made a buzzing sound as if an alarm had gone off and someone had removed the clapper. It was old, banded by steel, in that overbuilt fashion from just-post-war schools. Beneath it stood a metal-boxed television on a wheeled-baker's rack. She'd seen lots of them tossed-out when they'd cleaned out one of her old school's storage lockers. If she wasn't mistaken, it was black and white and if you could turn it on, the back would glow with vacum tubes, giving off staticy heat that made the dust bunnies on the back float and wave as if against the air of some fan, like the fan in the corner.
She sweated once she realized there was no ac, and she wasn't going to be singled-out. Mom would fix this once she told her. Moren was about to stand up and leave, but couldn't quite make herself go. She couldn't call mom; she remembered one of the unwritten rules, never complain to a sick person, about anything. But she had no answer, the teacher was looking for a fight and no one ever liked the tone in her voice lately.
"That's too bad," the teacher said. She crossed the room to her desk, bumping it as she sat, making its legs squeak against the floor. That was a grammar school trick if Moren remembered correctly. She took a quick look behind her when the teacher had her back turned.