by Pat Murphy
A long silence. The young woman strained to hear her mother’s reply. “I don’t know if I could. Too many ghosts. Everyone died—my husband, all my friends. I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to be afraid to go back because of …” Leon hesitated, letting his sentence trail off. “I recognized you—not at first, but after a bit. But you don’t have to worry. No one blames you anymore. People have forgotten.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” she said.
“The monkeys live all over the city now,” he said. “People are going about their lives. They don’t live in the past.”
Silence from her mother. The young woman frowned, trying to make sense of the conversation.
“Think about it,” Leon said. “One way or the other, I understand. I don’t spend much time in the city myself, though I always go home to it. I have friends there; I bring them news of the rest of the state. Tell them that the redwoods are coming back up north. Tell them that I saw a mountain lion in the Sierra.”
“It must be lonely, traveling all the time,” her mother said.
“Sometimes. But I keep busy.” A moment’s hesitation, then Leon continued suddenly. “I might as well tell you—I’m writing a book.”
“A book?”
“Ms. Migsdale, the woman who puts out the city’s newspaper, publishes a few books now and then. Some poetry, a few accounts of the Plague, some technical manuals—how to build a solar water heater and that sort of thing.” Leon spoke quickly, with a new note of enthusiasm in his voice. “I’m working on a travel book. Nonfiction—mostly advice to travelers. Places to go, places to avoid. A few stories about the people I meet. I’ve been up and down the coast doing research. Went inland until the mountains stopped me. I have a typewriter and some ribbons, and I’ve been taking notes as I go. Some of it’s pretty good, I think. The chapter about Los Angeles—I think that’s good. Down there, it’s all places to avoid, near as I can tell. Ms. Migsdale has read that chapter and she thinks it’s all right.”
Her mother laughed, a sound the young woman had rarely heard. “I can’t believe that there’s still a publishing industry. That’s great. And your book sounds wonderful. So tell me about Los Angeles. What’s it like down south?”
“Crazy. Los Angeles always was on the edge. The Plague just pushed them over. The Church of Revelations pretty much runs the city. They preach about what you’d expect: the Plague was God’s punishment for our sins and all that. The men wear black and the women wear dresses down to their ankles even when the temperature’s over a hundred. Depressing as hell. They’re evangelical too. They’ll be sending missionaries up here before too long.”
“They’ll run into opposition,” her mother said. “We have our own brand of lunacy.”
“I’ve heard about that. Sounds like you have a nice little military dictatorship in the making. Headed by some military man who promoted himself to four-star General. General Fourstar, I’ve heard him called.”
“Don’t call him that around here. Here, he’s General Miles, and don’t you forget it. He’s got big plans. You should warn the folks in San Francisco that he’s getting serious about expanding his territory. With so few people, you’d think we’d have given up fighting, but it doesn’t seem to work that way.”
“I guess human nature hasn’t changed.”
“I guess not.” A moment of comfortable silence. “Would you like some tea? Or I could open a bottle of apricot brandy. I have one set aside.”
The young woman heard the pop of a cork. Her mother proposed a toast “to your book,” and glasses clinked. Lulled by the murmur of soft voices, the young woman fell asleep. In her dreams, she roamed the streets of San Francisco.
Leon stayed the next day to help her mother repair a leak in the farmhouse roof. The young woman slipped away in the morning, saying that she was going hunting. In the orchard she found a high branch that gave her a good view of the house. She watched her mother and Leon carrying a ladder from the shed to the house and climbing up to the roof. Now and then, when the breeze was right, she could hear their voices: her mother calling up to Leon as she steadied the ladder; Leon calling back. There seemed to be an easy camaraderie between the two of them. The young woman heard her mother laugh in response to something that Leon said. She watched and thought about traveling to San Francisco with Leon and her mother. Finally, when her legs grew cramped from sitting motionless in the tree, she climbed down and went hunting for rabbits.
Leon stayed another day, this time helping her mother split wood from a fallen tree and haul it to the shed for winter firewood. And then another day. The young woman did not mind. Having Leon around changed her mother: she talked more, laughed more, seemed to relax. At night, when they thought she was asleep, Leon and her mother talked about San Francisco—reminiscing about times past.
“So what do you think,” her mother said lightly. “Will my daughter and I become a story in your book? Once-famous San Franciscan hides out in the Central Valley?”
Leon said nothing for a moment. Then he spoke softly: “I wish you’d be more than just a story. Why don’t you come travel with me? Together we can deal with the ghosts. You don’t belong here.”
“Maybe,” her mother said. “Maybe we could. Maybe you’re right.”
“I am right,” Leon said.
“All right,” her mother said. “We’ll go.”
The young woman lay awake, listening to her mother and Leon plan. They could leave in a few days, her mother said. There wasn’t much to pack.
Early the next morning, when the grass was still wet with dew, the young woman went out riding alone. She visited her favorite places: the collapsed freeway bridge where the hunting was good, the creek where watercress grew, the abandoned farmhouse where she had found the glass globe. She was filled with a wild excitement, thinking about San Francisco and the lands beyond it. She tried to imagine what the city would be like. In her mind it was like the Woodland market, only a thousand times bigger.
Just after noon she rode back toward the house. From the far side of the orchard came the sound of barking. Dog’s bark was a deep desperate sort of sound, filled with fury and frustration. Leon’s terrier was yapping angrily. She heard two gunshots in rapid succession, and the dogs fell silent.
She slipped from Young One’s back and tied the filly to a tree. Under the cover of the tall grass, she crept closer to the house. From the edge of the orchard, she could see the yard. The terrier lay by the pump; the blood on his head gleamed in the sun. Dog was sprawled at the foot of the porch steps. The horses tied at the porch rail flared their nostrils and shifted their weight nervously, eyeing Dog’s body.
As the young woman watched, two soldiers stepped from the house. One of them, a burly man in his twenties with a blond crewcut, shoved Leon in front of him. The trader’s hands were tied behind his back. Blood from a cut on his forehead trickled down the side of his face.
The scene had a crystalline clarity. The young woman could hear the soldiers’ boots on the porch, could smell gunpowder and fresh blood. She lay motionless in the grass, scarcely breathing.
Her mother followed the soldiers. A soldier walked beside her. He kept his rifle pointed casually at her head, but she seemed oblivious to him. Her hands had been brought together as if she were praying and bound in front of her with rope. She looked so small beside the soldier. Her expression was calm, as if she were somewhere very quiet and peaceful.
An officer, dressed in a khaki uniform with gold braid on the shoulders, stepped from the house. In the shelter of the tall grass, the young woman clutched her crossbow. The three soldiers were armed with rifles; the officer had a revolver in a leather holster at his side. She would not have a chance against them.
As she watched, Leon started to say something. The officer slapped him hard across the face. “You’ll have your chance to speak soon enough,” the officer said. “We’ll see to that.”
They brought the horses around from the corral at the back o
f the house and hitched them to Leon’s wagon. They tied her mother’s mare to the back. The burly soldier shoved Leon into the covered section. Awkward because of her tied hands, her mother climbed to the wagon seat.
The young woman ducked her head lower, afraid that the mounted men might look over into the grass and see her. She listened to the wagon wheels creak, smelled the dust raised by the horses’ hooves, heard the rattle of the harness fade in the distance. When she emerged from the orchard they were gone. She knew where they were going. Her mother had once pointed out the army’s headquarters in Woodland.
The soldiers had ransacked the house. Broken dishes littered the kitchen floor. In the living room, the men had overturned one of the bookshelves. Pages torn from the books were scattered on the floor like fallen leaves. The mirror over the fireplace was shattered, and the knickknacks from the mantel had been swept to the floor.
She was confused and her hands hurt from clutching her crossbow. She was afraid, and she did not like feeling afraid. This house, where she had grown up, wasn’t her house anymore. Standing in the living room she felt cold and empty, the way she sometimes felt when she explored houses that had been abandoned since the Plague. Too many shadows at the corners of the room. The air held the scent of strangers, gunsmoke, horse sweat, leather.
She buried the dogs in the orchard and picked her mother’s books up off the floor. Then she took a warm jacket, a blanket, and all the jewelry that she had for trade. She mounted Young One and headed for Woodland.
The army’s headquarters were in an old bank in the heart of town. The young woman arrived in the early evening. The soldier standing guard at the door would tell her nothing, but she saw Leon’s wagon in the street beside the courthouse. She slept that night in a house on the edge of town.
It was more than a week before her mother was released. Each morning, she went to the courthouse and spoke to the sergeant who sat by the entrance. He was a soft-bodied man in his forties, older than most of the soldiers she had seen. The first time she asked about her mother, he questioned her sharply, glancing at the other soldiers who were in the lobby.
She denied all knowledge of a trader from San Francisco. She had been out hunting for a few days, she told him. When she got home, her mother was gone. She said that a neighbor had told her that soldiers had taken her mother away.
The young woman left, but returned that evening when the sergeant was alone in the lobby. He spoke more softly then, and advised her to go home. “Don’t you have any other kin?” he asked. She shook her head. When he frowned, she backed away.
Each day she came to ask after her mother in the morning and in the evening. In between times she hunted for rabbits in the surrounding countryside. The weather turned cold, and she woke each morning shivering in her blanket. She spent as little time as possible in the town itself. The townspeople watched her closely, and she didn’t like that.
If no one was around, the sergeant would talk to her as she stood by the desk in the chilly lobby. “You know,” he said one evening. “I had a daughter once. If she had survived the Plague, I think she would have been about your age.”
The young woman watched him, trying to guess what he wanted from her. She did not know what to say.
“I think I can get your mother released,” the sergeant said. “She doesn’t know anything. Come here tomorrow, and I’ll see. I can’t promise.”
She nodded, her eyes fixed on the sergeant’s face. “What about the trader?”
He studied her face. “I thought you didn’t know him.”
“I don’t. I just wondered….” She shrugged.
“They’ll be taking him to headquarters. I wouldn’t waste my time wondering about when he’ll be back. I wouldn’t bother waiting.”
She nodded. “I’ll come back tomorrow,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” he muttered.
Without thinking, she reached out and touched his hand. Then she backed away, and ran from the room.
The next day, the young woman waited by the desk while three soldiers brought her mother to the lobby. The time in prison had aged her. Her skin had a grayish tone; shadows as dark as bruises circled her eyes. She wore only a T-shirt and jeans, the same clothes she had been wearing when the soldiers took her.
The young woman put her arm around her mother’s thin shoulders. The older woman was shivering uncontrollably in the cold lobby. “Daughter,” she said in a broken voice. “Are you really here?”
“Put this on,” the young woman said, draping her jacket over her mother’s shoulders and pulling it around her. “I’m really here. It’ll be all right now. It’ll be all right.”
Her mother, ignoring the jacket, lifted her hand to touch her daughter’s face. “You’re really here,” she said in a tone of great surprise. “I thought you were a ghost.”
“You can take her home,” the sergeant said. He spoke casually and did not look at her. The young woman knew that he did not want her to speak. She put her arm around her mother’s shoulders and led her from the building.
The ride home seemed to take forever. The young woman sat behind her mother and kept her arms locked around the older woman’s waist. Her mother had a fever, and she swayed with every movement of the horse. Through the heavy jacket the young woman could feel her mother trembling, as if with the cold. As they rode, the young woman found herself muttering reassurances: “We’re going home and you’ll be all right. It’s not so far. I’ll make you some hot soup when we get there and you’ll feel better. Really you will.” She was not certain whether the words were for her mother’s benefit or for her own. Eventually, they reached the farmhouse.
Her mother had always been frail, stronger of spirit than of body. She continued to shiver even when she was wrapped in blankets and sitting by the fire. At night, she coughed with a ragged tearing sound. By day, she huddled near the fire, wrapped in a wool blanket.
The young woman did what she could, clearing away the mess that the soldiers had left, making broth and strong tea for her mother to drink, moving the bed so that the sick woman lay near the stove. But her mother ate little and her fever grew worse. She slept uneasily, muttering and tossing in her sleep. Sometimes, late at night, the young woman believed that her mother was talking with ghosts and tried to quiet her. “Rest, Mother,” she would say softly. “Sleep so that you’ll get better.”
“I’m afraid,” her mother murmured one night in her sleep. “Always so afraid.” Her eyes opened, staring directly at her daughter. “They can kill you, you know. Blow you up just by pushing a button. Just push a button and the world will burn, we’ll burn.” She tossed in her bed. “Burning up.”
With a damp cloth, the young woman wiped the sweat from her mother’s forehead. The fire died to coals and the young woman pulled away the blanket that covered her mother, so that she was wrapped only in a sheet. “It’s the fever,” the young woman said. “It’s the fever that makes you feel hot.”
“The fever,” her mother repeated. “The fever is killing them all. Burning them up. They’re dying. I have to help.” Her eyelids fluttered and she thrashed, as if trying to get out of bed. “It’s my fault that they’re dying. But I didn’t know—I didn’t know that peace would come like this.”
The young woman gently restrained her mother, pressing her shoulders back down onto the bed. “Lie still,” she pleaded. “You have to get some rest.”
Her mother’s talk of death frightened her. The light from the kerosene lantern burning on the mantel seemed dimmer than usual, as if the shadows were pressing close. The coals in the fireplace crackled softly.
“My fault,” her mother muttered. “My fault.”
“Hush,” the woman said softly. “Go to sleep.”
“We only wanted peace.” Her mother’s voice was suddenly strong. “That was all. We wanted peace. No more war. I didn’t know how much it would cost.” She muttered something more, but the young woman could not make out the words.
She dipped the cloth in the water bucket to cool it, wrung it out, folded it, and laid it across her mother’s forehead. Her mother fell silent. The young woman sat by the bed, half asleep herself. Now and then, she would rouse herself enough to wring the cloth out and wet it again with cool water. She was very tired.
The line between sleeping and waking blurred. The lantern burned out, and it seemed too much trouble to adjust the wick and light it again. The only light came from the coals in the fireplace. Sometimes she watched the burning embers, points of light like eyes in the darkness. And sometimes she only dreamed that she was watching the coals, imagining the red glow flickering.
“I’m sorry I never gave you a name,” her mother said suddenly. “The angel will name you after all.”
The young woman blinked in the darkness, struggling to wake up. Her mother’s eyes were open and they reflected the light from the coals. Automatically the young woman reached for her mother’s hand.
“I’m going back to San Francisco,” her mother said. “There are things I must do there.”
“When you’re well, we’ll both go,” the young woman said. “We can take the horses and ride to San Francisco. When you’re better, we can …”
Her mother was shaking her head. “No, I’ll go now. You’ll have to follow as best you can.” She seemed to be looking past her daughter into the darkness beyond. “There’ll be a war, you see, and you have to warn them that Fourstar’s coming.” She looked at her daughter with fever-bright eyes. She squeezed her daughter’s hand. “You must promise me that you’ll go to San Francisco and warn them. You understand?”
“I understand.” The young woman clung to her mother’s hand. “But you’ll come with me. You’ll get better and …”
A flash of golden light filled the house, as sudden as a shaft of sunlight in a darkened room. Squinting against the light, the young woman saw her mother cast off the blanket, get out of bed, and walk away. She heard a sound like the thunder of wings when a heron takes off, only louder. Then the light grew brighter and she closed her eyes against it.