SelectionEvent (2ed)

  Paul tentatively put his hand on her hip and gave her several little pats. “Leona?” he said.

  Catrin went over and knelt beside Leona and stoked her hair and spoke softly to her.

  Several minutes later, Leona was sitting up, Paul and Catrin sitting on either side of her. She was still taking short little gasps of breath, but it was clear she was readying herself to speak.

  “I used to work at a restaurant—” She faced Paul. “—like I told you. I worked at a real nice restaurant. And that woman comes in here, a hooker forever, and it's okay with everybody.” She wept terribly.

  Martin glanced at Catrin; they both wondered where this was going.

  “One evening... one evening a customer paid his bill and said he'd give me two hundred dollars for an hour of my time.” She looked at Paul with an expression of dread and fear. “And I did it. I sinned in the worst way. I was thinking two hundred dollars for just an hour and what I could do with it and I'd be able to forget about it, and I did it just that once, and I got pregnant, and god punished me by taking my baby with the disease, and that woman, she's been a hooker forever and she's just fine with you and everybody else, so why isn't she punished?” To Paul, she said, “Why isn't she?”

  “It's okay,” Paul said blandly.

  “Nobody cares and all the time I lied to everybody about what happened just that one time.”

  “It's okay,” Paul said again.

  Martin was remembering the power of ceremonies when he went into the kitchen, brought back an opened bottle of wine, and poured half a glass into their four glasses. Then he took Leona's hand and the four of them stood up.

  “Paul, do you love Leona?”

  “Yes,” he said, but his voice was tired and dull.

  “Do you still want to be her husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “Leona, do you love Paul?”

  She nodded. “Un-huh.”

  “And you still want to be his wife?”

  “Yes I do,” she whimpered.

  “Paul, you should treat this as something you've always known about, because Leona is the same person today as the day you married her.”

  “I am! I am!”

  Paul nodded a little bit.

  “Now we all know about it. Leona, look at how much we don't care.”

  Martin held his glass forward and the others did likewise, solemnly, and then they drank. “Now it's over.” He hoped.

  ....

  The next day, Martin and Xeng and Solomon were on their way to see if anything was salvageable from the library. When they passed by Paul and Leona's house, Leona was out front pulling some bermuda grass out of her hedge.

  “So sorry to hear you lost baby,” Xeng said.

  “Thank you,” Leona said. “Her name was Ramsey.”

  “My condolence,” Xeng said.

  Solomon stepped forward and hugged Leona around her legs. “My condolence too,” he said with great seriousness, looking up into her face.

  “Thank you, Solomon.”

  ....

  At the library, they found nothing but great heaps of smoldering books. The smoke stung their eyes, but when they started back, Martin realized that it was not the smoke that caused Xeng to weep.

  Chapter 51

  Through the Fall and into Winter, the group functioned smoothly. Leona was quiet and withdrawn for several weeks, but that passed and she became more like her old self. Several times, though, when Leona suggested some slight “modernization” of their house, Martin heard Paul say to her, in his quiet, no longer so bashful way, “No, I don't think I want to do that,” and apparently that ended the discussion.

  Jan-Louise never moved out of Winch and Xeng's house, and when there were gatherings, dinners, or when the group went somewhere together, such as the walks they sometimes took in the evenings, Martin noticed that Jan-Louise always walked between the two men and that both of them were quite solicitous of her, opening doors for her, clearing a place for her to sit, or helping her in a hundred ways.

  Once he asked Winch, “Not meaning to pry or anything, but I was curious how the three of you got along together.”

  Winch chuckled. “We get along very well. Back in the old times, they'd've dusted off their stake and burned all three of us for having too good a time. But we really get along very well. Xeng is a fine person — so how could I be jealous of him? — and I guess he feels the same way about me. And Jan-Louise, well, we both love that woman enough we don't need to own her.”

  “Winch, you're a gentleman.”

  “It's no sweat being a gentleman, here at the end of the world.”

  ....

  Xeng took over Missa and Solomon's reading lessons from Martin and Winch, although there wasn't much to take over. Missa imitated Solomon and he was so intent on learning to read, spending three or four hours a day reading and writing in his notebook, that Martin suspected that the kid was a genius, although where any special aptitudes lay neither he nor Winch nor Xeng were sure.

  Xeng had the first field-test of his medical skills when Winch was trying to move the refrigerator out of his kitchen, slipped, broke his arm and put a five-inch gash in it.

  Solomon ran across the street and told Martin, but when Martin got there, Xeng already had Winch sitting at the kitchen table and had his briefcase of equipment opened and ready. Xeng squinted at the injuries. “Hurt much?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” Winch said. “It's numb.”

  “Very good,” Xeng said, taking the arm in his hands, feeling it first one way and then another, and then quickly giving a little push on it.

  “Whoa!” Winch gasped, his body stiffening. “I thought you were my friend.”

  “No x-ray,” Xeng said, “so I made my best amateur guess.”

  “Okay, okay,” Winch said, breathing heavily and staring at the blood that was pooling on the table around his elbow.

  Martin was not sure how competent Xeng was, but Xeng at least acted as though he knew what he was doing and that was worth a lot.

  “Now to sew up the cut. I think only four stitches.”

  “Jesus, Xeng, don't you have any anesthetic?”

  “Not yet,” he said under his breath. Solomon handed him a needle with transparent thread already through its eye. “Look away. It's best.”

  Winch looked away.

  “Xeng,” Martin said, “can you wait two minutes?”

  “It will hurt more if I wait.”

  “I have something for the pain.” Martin ran across the street to his house, got his grocery bag of drugs, and hurried back to Xeng. “I guess you should have all this anyway," he said, “since you're our doctor.”

  Martin dug through the bag and found the chloral hydrate, picked out two of the green gelatin capsules, and gave them to Winch with a glass of water. Within five minutes, his eyes were rolling back in his head. “Thanks, Martin,” he slurred. “Stitch away, Xeng. Use the sewing machine if you want.”

  Xeng started and finished the stitching within a minute and a half. He quietly explained to Solomon what he was doing as he worked, how far back into the unbroken skin to pierce the skin and how far apart to place the stitches. Since Winch was unconscious, he put in eight.

  “Xeng,” Martin said, after they had got Winch on the sofa and were letting him sleep off the sedative, “what did you mean you didn't have any anesthetic 'yet?'”

  “Ah.” He was washing his hands in the kitchen sink and wiping off the table. “Martin, I am not sure, you see, how happy you may be with my anesthetic.”

  “If someone needed it, I'd be very happy with it.”

  “But pills go bad, go weak, after time."

  “That's true. Tell it to me in my mother tongue, Xeng.”

  “I have been planning for the time when our pills are gone or no good, planning for making anesthetic, for tooth problems, childbirth, you know. I can not be a good doctor if my patient has much pain.”

  He was avoiding looking at Martin and a film of sweat had
broken out on his forehead.

  “Yes, Xeng, yes. Bottom line.”

  “Opium poppies for anesthetic,” he said, looking down at his hands as he dried them. “A modest amount will be ready in two weeks.”

  “Xeng, you've been thinking further ahead than I have. Thank you. The next time all of us are together, I'll bring it up. They should know, but it isn't going to be a problem.”

  “There is Leona.”

  “I'll deal with Leona.”

  Martin gazed at Winch sleeping on the sofa. He shook his head and chastised himself. Life involved pain, and he hadn't considered this. Not only was there the question of having an ongoing supply of pain-relieving drugs, there was the problem of old attitudes from the old world. What had once been a taboo had now become a necessity. Once more, their new world was breaking the old rules.

  Chapter 52

  Isha smelled water and wet earth and followed her nose. As she picked her way through brush and weeds, she listened to the click and skreek of dry-grass insects around her and the crows in the trees above. Down a dry slope, through greener brush, was water, below her, down a sheer drop. It was a swiftly flowing river that had cut sharply into its old banks.

  Her eyes focused on the movement in the river. It seemed alive with things that swam just under the surface, all going upstream. Sleek, fat-bodied things that moved without noise. Her feet moved in place as she thought of herself wading through the water, biting at the things — eating fresh food. But there was no way down from where she stood.

  Downstream, an explosion of cawing crows burst from the trees. Isha lowered her ears and dropped into the weeds. When the noise subsided, she rose a little, then a little more, and saw a black shape moving sideways along the opposite bank, coming her direction. She had never seen such a thing — bigger than a human, coarse-haired and black as her pet. It shambled and shuffled, all its attention on the river. Then it paused a moment and suddenly leaped into the water. Out of a thrashing of white water, it lifted his massive head with one of the swimmers in its teeth. The victim flexed its heavy glistening body several times before the animal got it to shore and bit its head off, grunted and snuffled, and began eating the remainder.

  The dark animal suddenly raised its head, alert, looking around. Isha dropped deeper into the weeds, but it was not looking toward her — it heard something behind it. It spun around, trampling in the mud what it had caught, and rose up on its back legs, like a man. It spread wide its arms and growled louder than Isha had ever heard any dog ever growl.

  And then she saw them — a half dozen of the things she had seen in the street. They had spread out behind the huge dark animal and moved casually, unconcerned about its size or growling threats. They had dog-faces and spidery human-shaped bodies and walked on their back feet and knuckles. When one of them yawned, it showed unnaturally long fangs. Together, without a sound, they moved closer to the huge animal.

  It suddenly bounded toward one of the dog-faces, but the smaller animal easily skittered out of reach while another one, unseen, leaped onto the big animal's back, bit him with a ferocious shake of its head, and sprang away, beyond retaliation. The big animal roared in pain and anger and ran at one of them, then at another, swatting with its heavy paws, never once coming close. They drifted out of its reach like leaves moved by wind.

  The big animal stood on all fours, head lowered, panting, looking first at one, then at another. Together, the dog-faces moved a few steps closer and the big animal backed away one lumbering step.

  With sudden ferocity, one of the dog-faces screamed and threw itself at the big animal's face with its spike-like fangs stabbing through the coarse hair. The huge animal raked the dog-face away, turned and ran toward the river, lunged into it, splashed across to the other side, and climbed up the bank. With a single look back, it lumbered slowly away, into the brush.

  Meanwhile, the troop of dog-faces approached the water, lined up, and watched the silver bodies of the water animals as they silently moved upstream like a flashing river within the river. One of them tentatively touched the water, then stood poised, and leaped in. It churned the water and whipped at it with its arms, yet when it came ashore, one of the silver river animals hung stiffly in its jaws, twitching rhythmically.

  The dog-face dropped it at the feet of the others and they touched it, sniffed their hands, and then, together, they began to eat it.

  Finally catching a trace of their smell and the smell of wet meat and guts, Isha backed away, turned, climbed up the embankment and loped home. She would not come back to this place.

  Chapter 53

  The next time the group was together was less than two weeks after Winch broke his arm. Since no one knew Missa or Solomon's birthday, Catrin had arbitrarily set them at November 25th. She suggested that they make it a holiday and call it Thanksgiving for Children, since it was upon the few children, now, that the future depended.

  When this was first brought up, Leona said it would be nice to have a big barbecue, however, the last of the meat Martin had stored in the freezers had been eaten several weeks before. “Maybe we could have some fresh meat,” she said. “I saw deer of some kind down the street the other day. They're all over the place.”

  It was a cool evening and they were sitting in Martin and Catrin's living room. Paul was thumbing through a National Geographic and hadn't seemed to hear Leona's suggestion. Winch shrugged. “I guess a barbecue would be good,” he said.

  “I'm just so tired of canned meat and canned vegetables,” she said, warming up to the subject. “Just think of thick juicy steaks smoking over the fire with the sauce turning black on them. And we could freeze what we don't eat and have it for weeks. Wouldn't that be great, Martin?”

  “I hadn't been missing the meat,” he said, thinking that he would probably be the one that would have to do the killing. “As for freezing it, good gasoline's getting hard to come by.”

  “Oh, you know some steaks'd be great. You've just forgotten, hasn't he, Catrin.”

  “What do you think?” Martin asked Catrin.

  “I guess it'd be all right. It'd supply us for a week, anyway. It would keep that long.”

  “Okay,” Martin said. “I'll see what I can do tomorrow.”

  “I could probably dress it out,” Winch said. “I saw it done once.” But he didn't sound excited.

  ....

  The next morning, just before sunrise, Martin loaded the clip in a .30-30, left Isha whimpering behind the iron gate, and walked down the street, out toward the country, to an undeveloped area half a mile away, where there were several acres of pasture, a wild-growing grape vineyard, and a weed-filled walnut orchard.

  On his way, he saw small gray owls perched on lampposts in front of empty houses, wild house cats carrying dead rodents in their jaws, fading like shadows into bushes and around corners, and birds flitting around inside every tree. All at once, Martin realized he'd never heard so many birds before — hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, chirping, whistling, cawing, in all directions, from all distances. They packed the morning air with their cacophony. Without mankind's trimming, weeding, or spraying, they had returned.

  By the time he passed the last house, the sun had risen, and out in the middle of the pasture, he saw two horses standing knee-deep in dew-heavy weeds, grazing peacefully. Over them, a hundred blackbirds swooped and turned, making their wings thin and thicken in their wheeling.

  He walked on, the rifle-strap hanging heavy on his shoulder. The vineyard had turned into a jungle. Vines grew between the rows, tying everything into an impassable chaotic meshwork. The weeds grew chest-high. There could be deer in there, he thought, but once he was into it, he wouldn't be able to see five feet, and he'd make terrific noise moving around. If he could move around.

  The walnut trees had turned yellow and the fallen leaves were spread atop the high weeds under the trees, making an undulating blanket of gold and brown. Martin shifted the rifle to the other shoulder and waded into it. His enthusi
asm was low for the project, but he decided to force effort.

  An hour later, he was soaked from the waist down from the wet weeds and he had seen nothing but birds, a couple of rabbits, and a water buffalo. On his way back to the road, he spooked a pig, and it charged through the weeds past him and was gone by the time he got both hands on his rifle. His heart leaped into his throat and his legs felt rubbery for ten minutes.

  He was especially glad to be on his way back home. If Leona wanted venison, let her send Paul out to kill it or do it herself.

  Two blocks from their homes, a whitetail deer pranced out into the street, stopped and looked back at Martin. It high-stepped back into one of the yards, disappearing behind a tall hedge. It was good-sized with four-point antlers, brownish gray across its back and lighter on its underside.

  Martin unslung the rifle, snapped off the safety, and walked more slowly, watching for movement. The deer trotted around the hedge, onto the sidewalk, and turned into the next yard, once more out of sight. Now it was no more than thirty yards away and keeping track of Martin's distance behind it.

  They moved like this down the street, toward where Martin lived, the whitetail keeping about three lots between them, not afraid enough to bolt and vanish.

  Up ahead, Martin saw Solomon's small figure wander out in the street. Solomon stood there a moment, waved at Martin, but then saw the deer trot out on the sidewalk. He ducked out of sight.

  By the time Martin had stalked the deer to within a block of their houses, he saw Winch and Paul appear. They stationed themselves on either side of the street to keep the deer from running further. The animal got one look at them, turned off the street, and jumped a gate into one of the fenced backyards.

  Martin ran the length of the three lots as Winch and Paul came toward him, and when he went through the gate he saw that the deer was theirs. The yard had an eight-foot cyclone fence, and Martin stood with the rifle at the only gate.