Black Locust Letters

by Nicolette Jinks

  For whatever reason, the hospital had been built from an old tuberculosis sanatorium design, though the nature of Sanctuary had transformed its rectangular walls into soft curtains of hops and doorways into climate defying wisteria. Once concrete steps were now shelves of slate beneath Betty's feet, and a nurse came forward to talk.

  “Betty, come in. I have a nice steeping of willow and echinacea which would be perfect after your exercise. How are things, what is new, and all of the usual questions?”

  Gertrude, a slump-shouldered woman which time had turned into a humpback, had been nursing since Sanctuary was still called Area 71, and she'd keep on nursing until the day she could no longer hobble from room to room. The other nurses were keen to leave Betty sitting in the sun room with Gertrude, and brought Betty the best of puddings and gelatin to entice her to stay as long as possible. Betty had worried she would be conspicuous, but once Gertrude's guest, any strange question she asked was immediately lost in the flood of conversation issuing from Gertrude like a bursting dam.

  Such a mood one would always find Gertrude in, talking of this and that, everything under the sky and above it and within it. She talked like this to patients in particular, for the other nurses and doctors had long since wearied of her stories.

  “Did anyone come in looking like they'd taken a beating?” Betty finally squeezed in.

  “The market incident? Heavens, no, or I'd have put him to rights immediately. Why, only last spring a red bear and a gryphon got into such a tangle, you'd never have seen anything quite like it before. The bear they sent to the veterinarians, the ones on the riverside, what's their practice called now, old Doc Francis' son bought the place, anyway, and the gryphon wouldn't be sent to the veterinarians. He demanded to see me. I was so charmed, and in no time we were the best of friends, and he healed up so beautifully from my salve!” And on and on she went.

  By the time Betty left, two hours had gone by, and Gertrude waved Betty off with the parting words, “You've tired me out. Come again, dearest, and we will talk again. Good-bye, good-bye.”

  It was getting late by Betty's schedule, but there was one more place to check on Tom and it was on the way home, and the mortician liked visitors but didn't like to talk, so it was made all the more agreeable to Betty.

  The morgue looked like it should be a landscape center instead of a place to prepare the dead. The mortician swore the path groomed itself and annuals cropped up overnight fully in bloom. In a place other than Sanctuary, he might have been disbelieved, but Never Weres were strange about giving the newly deceased a picturesque farewell, so it seemed rather normal to someone like Betty, who had never lived anywhere else.

  The mortician talked a whole ten minutes, said that he hadn't had anyone come through his doors in the last two days, and so it was with sore legs and nothing to show for it that Betty went home.

  That night she kept her ear to Welch's show and wrote down suspicious words and phrases. Every minute she wasn't on the microphone herself, she listened to the others, the Alpha day hosts in particular, though Welch seemed forthcoming.

  It was unfortunately impossible to listen to both hosts and still perform her morning job, so she had to content herself with listening to one on one day, and the other the next. She looked like she'd been jumbling her sleep schedule around, though, so by the time she had Sunday off, she just fell into a day's sleep.

  Monday after her show, she evaluated the phrases she'd found in the break room while everyone else attended to their own duties. There wasn't much to look at. The codes weren't a standard set of words, nor a numerical or skip code; it was sort of a combination of everything. Mostly it was inside understanding stemming from a common knowledge. Maybe a wave talker and an interpreter would read the same copy of a book, and the talker would make references which only applied to that particular book. Nothing was more devastating to the troops during the World War as when they lost their interpreter, since they could try to guess what the wave talker was saying, but in the end they probably would come to the wrong conclusions.

  The phone rang in Mr. Gresley's office. His voice came through a crack in the door. Betty thought of closing it all the way, but she was already on the other side of it, waiting for the bathroom to become available.

  “Hello, this is Mr. Gresley.”

  The toilet door was locked. Was someone actually in there or did Welch lock it and then leave out the window again? It had been a while since he'd done something like grape gelatin in the coffee pot, so he was due for another trick. Still, it felt awkward to knock and ask if anyone occupied the toilet. Mr. Gresley grunted.

  “Well as may be, given the circumstances. ….yes, that. Know anything?”

  Betty heard a horrendous fart on the other side of the door and edged away from the toilet.

  “I can't say I have much to add to that, General, other than it's a damn shame. He was the brightest in the field.”

  Was Mr. Gresley talking to her father about Tom? Betty couldn't believe that, but neither could she imagine they were talking about anything else. Mr. Gresley sighed at something the General said.

  “If Area 51's testing goes bungled, we may have a chance to renew that pledge. Maybe a second nuclear winter would put this strife behind us ... or yes, that could be, too...I hear them, I hear them, work never stops for the likes of us. Yeah-huh. Bye.”

  The receiver gave a soft thunk as Mr. Gresley put it down. He groaned and his chair creaked as he leaned back in it, then Betty heard the scrape of boots as they propped up on a desk.

  Betty no longer needed to use the toilet. In any case, even the hallway was getting fumigated with a stench like rotten eggs and dog fart. Instead she went to the break room, gathered up her things, and pondered what to do over a cup of coffee.

  There was only one thing to do: Find a way back inside. Betty rubbed her eyes. Did she want to intentionally go back into the wave talking world? Yes, she'd accidentally found herself twisted into a corner there before, and she'd paid dearly to extract herself from it.

  She poured herself a bit of cream, and it was there that she discovered what Welch had done: He had strained off some cottage cheese and dropped it by spoonfuls into the cream stored in the icebox. So when Betty poured the cream into her coffee, the curds floated around the top of the cup and it seemed the cream had gone off. Being as unwilling to buy new cream as the next person, Betty tossed out her coffee and put the cream back in its place, pretending to have not noticed the curds. None too pleased, she washed out the mug. An idea formed, one which could replace her coffee and answer the questions about Area 51 fermenting in her mind.

  At the reception telephone, she dialled Pearl's number.

  Chapter 5

  The waitress clinked down a coffee and cinnamon roll oozing with cream cheese frosting. Betty, pale-faced, barely muttered a word of appreciation before the waitress was gone. She glanced at the clock on the wall. Pearl said she'd be here within an hour, and that was a half-hour ago. Betty had called her from the station, thinking that it would take forty-five minutes to walk here. She was wrong, and now she debated what other drink she should get besides coffee to keep from looking like she was being stood up for a date.

  There was only one thing to do, then: Find a way back inside. Betty rubbed her eyes. That was what brought her here, what had made her call Pearl after nothing more than scant exchanges of pleasantries for so long. But now she was having second thoughts. Did she want to intentionally go back into the wave talking world? Yes, she'd accidentally found herself twisted into a corner there before, and she'd paid dearly to extract herself from it.

  Had she done it, though? Had she ever been free from it, or had she been hiding from the real troubles, tucking into a hole and hiding like her bogey did during cleaning day? The thought was not a nice one, and while she sat here, she stared blankly at the white washed panelling and the cutesy doilies spread out over the tables.

  This was Pearl's favorite shop, and word would spread tha
t Betty had met up with her here. Over a bugged phone line, though, it was hard to be picky about the venue choice without being obvious. So she'd agreed to Pearl's suggestion. Pearl never was the brightest, and she just might get lost if Betty had tried to direct her someplace else.

  She looked to the clock again.

  “Hi!” Pearl's squeaky voice came with the opening of the door, and the people behind the counter responded with warm salutations. In a flutter of pink scarves and gleaming teeth, Pearl sat down in the chair opposite Betty.

  How the years had changed them. Last she had been with Pearl, they were both wearing white button-downs and school skirts. Betty's attire had taken a turn for utilitarian and timeless, while Pearl's had gone glossy, sleek, and tailored so tight that she couldn't do more than wriggle her ankles to move. Even her white lace gloves looked tight, and her cropped blonde hair was shiny with aerosol spray. The Pan-Am smile Pearl gave Betty could have been disingenuous, but that was how Betty always remembered her smiling.

  “Good afternoon, Pearl. You're looking well.”

  “And you're looking a little puffy. Are they working you too hard?” Pearl asked, suddenly looking worried as she grabbed Betty's hand.

  This reminded Betty of her coffee, which had gone cold. Ah, well, better off to not drink caffeine so late in the day. Pearl's casual comment struck too close to the truth, so Betty laughed it off. “Don't they always?”

  “Well, don't let them waste you away too much, or I won't have a friend left!”

  “So, what have you been doing with your married life?” Betty asked, and instantly the other woman set off in a nonstop chattering. Most of it was talk about Christmas and New Years, and about the annual Thanksgiving argument over if potatoes should be whipped or mashed, and about the scandal that her sister-in-law made by regifting the gloves she'd been given for her birthday.

  Betty watched her friend with a small smile, enjoying this simple time, pretending that all was as it used to be, and that this was how things would be again in the future, even though she knew that it was utterly impossible. She tried not to feel guilty that she was using her friend to get information. After all, her father and Slim hadn't felt guilty about using her.

  “It was so terrible what Slim said about you after you ran away. Why, I'd nearly thrown him out of my house twice in as many days.” Pearl's comments brought Betty back to reality with a snap and a twist in her gut. “I see why you left him. Such an unseemly fellow, and after all he seemed so nice. I can't cut off ties with him, you know, since he and Karl are...well, anyway. I just wanted to let you know that you can come to me any time you need to.”

  “Thank you, Pearl,” Betty said, thinking to herself that it was a nice thought but Betty would never be able to go to Pearl for help. If she needed help, Pearl was the last one who could provide it. “Anything new with Karl? Any chance of getting out of Sanctuary?”

  Pearl blinked. “I'd forgotten! And I was so keen on telling you, too.” She lowered her voice and said, “There's talk that the Cold War isn't as cold as they all say it is. Some battalions are mobilizing, and we haven't heard one way or the other, but there's a good chance that we'll be next. They're moving some families to Texas. Big air base there, as I understand it, but Karl thinks we might move out to Nevada since that's where he's been flown in to work on testing sites, but he doesn't look too happy about the idea.”

  Pearl sighed dramatically. “He says he doesn't like how quickly they've said it's all safe, but really, there's a lot of open air there and so much of it is sun. How I can't stand the cloudy days here, and the snow! It's intolerable.”

  “I like the snow. We always had such fun making snowmen.”

  Pearl's eyes glistened at the memory. “You liked to make them, I liked to give them hats and scarves and buttons for eyes.”

  “We had a whole army of them once.”

  Pearl laughed. “And then the g-men ran around poking holes in them with prods to check for explosives! How stupid they were.”

  Betty chuckled, but she felt sad and so very, very bereft. Here was what she had left behind. A cheery friend, a wealth of memories, and a treasure trove of golden times. It was all corroded now, as surely as she had poured acid on them. Well, so she would have to be careful.

  Though she hadn't put together much from this conversation, the news about troop movement and weapons testing were real gems, things that Pearl might be scolded for revealing later. But with her, they could do no more than be annoyed for having shared the intelligence with her. Pearl had never been one to have a complex understanding of the world.

  “Look at the time. You've kept me here longer than I really should be,” Pearl said, and Betty agreed it was time to leave.

  While she paid, she caught the gaze of a shrewd lady, and the look in those eyes was hostile.

  Betty hastened to be about her business, leaving the café eagerly, and hitting the sidewalk with palpable relief. She had household errands to run, things like bread and onions to buy, because she did not stop eating simply because she was investigating a murder.

  The market at Sunny Glenn was once made of metal and concrete. The old market's support poles twisted into orchard trees, and the tarp that used to stretch between them was now a canopy of branches hunched under pears, nectarines, and cherries. Their roots cracked the slab of a floor into gray mosaic, where zucchini and honeydew melons thrived. It was here the residents of Sunny Glen went for their nourishment, if they weren't in the mood for fresh liver from the dock shops.

  Sunny Glenn's market hummed with commerce as though there had not been a murder in the days prior. The sky was clear, hot, a throwback to pleasant summer days and people crammed to the streets to enjoy the shortened daylight hours. Betty noticed one thing above all else: She seemed to be the only human, and Never Weres stared as though she had missed the public service announcement warning humans away.

  Perhaps she had. Alpha's day hosts no longer made sense, an inside joke she was on the outside of. But Welch made no more sense.

  In all her hours of listening, she had prepared her garden for winter with the radio blaring out the window, she had cleaned her charcoal grill, her house was so spotless she distinctly saw bogey footprints every morning and now knew his usual routine (out from by the fire, to the potted plant which always looked ill no matter what, to the ice box, to the trash bin, snooping around her now empty yarn basket then back to his hole), and it was that empty basket which now brought her here.

  Jenny had the best, cheapest wool in Sanctuary.

  Betty elbowed her way through the crowd which seemed to thicken as she went. At last she stood at the corner of Jenny's octagonal shaped booth. She flashed Betty a smile which revealed too many teeth, all of them rounded or pointy.

  “It's my Betty!” Jenny declared. Never before had she said anything like this, and her voice was raised as though Jenny were talking to the crowd not Betty. “How are you feeling, love? Long time since I last saw you.”

  At Jenny's words, the Never Weres thinned as surely as Jenny had told them all to bug off. Betty wondered what would have happened if Jenny had not said anything to her, and shuddered to think of the possibilities.

  “What can I do for you? You look like a six by six took out your house overnight.”

  Betty chuckled despite herself at the mental image of a six-wheeled truck ploughing through her front door. “Wool today. Lots of wool.”

  Jenny spread her hands out over the booth. “Plenty to pick from. Are you doing a blanket, a lace doilie, a pair of mittens?”

  “Hmm? No no. Well, I need some more gray to finish off a dish towel, the cotton for that. I've made all the others. Guess I hadn't thought about my next project yet.”

  Jennie whistled. “So it is true, then.”

  Betty glanced nervously around. “What is true?”

  “You're talking the waves.”

  “I host a show. Of course I talk the waves.”

  Jennie was assembling an assor
tment of skeins—thick and thin, creams and reds, moss green and coral—and she said, “That is not what I mean.”

  Betty grimaced. “It is not decided at all. I won't be used as a pawn. It's bad enough I can't have my own bank account.”

  Jennie stared at Betty, her expression equal parts relief on her lips and concern across her brow. “Betty, you can make a difference. Ain't no one here who will trust an Alpha, and ain't no one in HQ who will trust a Tango. Except you.”

  Betty groaned and wished she couldn't guess why it would matter. “It is the Cold War with the bear?”

  “They have nukes, Betty. Or so the shadows say.”

  Betty understood now: If they went to war, Sanctuary would be first on the lines, and if the troops wouldn’t take orders from their interpreters they would fail and total war would break out. War with nukes. Maybe more than that.

  “Shadows say a lot of things.”

  Jennie nodded and traded Betty her goods for a buck and a nickel; perhaps they'd both been overzealous but it was hard to focus. Betty asked, “I haven't seen Tom around Tango.”

  “Hasn't been here, either.”

  “Not since tea time in the market.”

  Jenny hushed her. “Look, you can't go talking like that here. Go to the rockability club. Wear something with a full skirt. And put rags in your hair and lipstick on.”

  “Maybe. Thank you.” She wasn't sure she wanted to get involved. Not yet.

  The next morning, while Betty was getting water during her break between the local events and the weather, Liza entered the break room. Betty gave the short woman a spry grin. “You're here early.”

  Liza did not look amused, and the woman's grim expression set Betty's heart still. Before Betty could ask what was wrong, Liza said, “I heard you had coffee with the pink-suit.”

  “My old friend, Pearl. Why?” Unvoiced, Betty wondered as well who had told her. But that was less important.