Veracity

by Laura Bynum

  She waits for him to walk by before giving me a scowl."You couldn't wait?"

  "You paying, then?" Ed calls out to her. He has one hand flopped indiscreetly over the register, beckoning.

  Ezra retrieves her pay card from a small purse carried around her waist like a belt and throws it on the counter.

  "You think too much of yourself!" the shop keep snarls. He runs the card through the reader, a trenched piece of oblong plastic sitting atop the register like a malformed head. "Too good for the local clientele, huh? Unless they happen to wear a badge, maybe?" He looks up, soliciting approval from the other shoppers, but they turn away or hunker into the shelves.

  "I'd like a bag for my beverages, please." Ezra studies her nails, ignoring Ed, who's come back around the counter.

  "The church allows it!"

  "Plastic, not paper."

  The old man reaches over the desktop and yanks a plain white bag from the underside. "You just like a little pork with your pork, is that it? Those of us without the blue suits, we don't meet your standards." He laughs, throaty and wet.

  "My card?" Ezra puts out her hand, palm up. Fingers waving.

  Ed throws it at her. "It's my right as a Confederation citizen to partake of that particular social service and there's no shame in it! Nobody's going to make Ed Saunders feel anything but satisfaction for having chosen to release my loins to better service my soul! Eh? That's how the Pastor puts it! And I know my rights, Ezra James! You can't turn me away unless I have a record and I don't have a record! The rule of All Equals applies! Even to you!"

  Ezra is cool. She follows me to the front of the store. Shoves a bottle of water into my hands.

  The woman next in line walks over to the shop keep. Whispers something in his ear while nodding at us.

  "Come on." I hold open the door for Ezra.

  But Ed's been pressed into action. He runs a hand through his thinning hair. Starts toward us in long, dragging steps. "Hold up, Ezra," he says. "I know you're providing society a service, honey. You think I don't know that? I'm a widower! I'm the best kind of customer you gals got! A man with straightforward, no-nonsense needs! We're all placed according to our individual strengths. This just happens to be yours."

  Next to me Ezra is tensing. I can see each vertebra of her neck extend as the muscles of her shoulders compress. "Excuse me?"

  Good Christ. I twist the top off my water. Drink half the bottle in one gulp.

  Having caught Ezra's attention, the old man goes back to the woman waiting at the register. Scans her items as he explains, "When somebody turns eighteen they're given tests to determine their best placement, right? We all take these tests and then the government officials tell us what our strengths are, what are weaknesses are, and so on." He looks up at us. "They're very accurate tests, Ezra. If you'd been better suited for other work, you would have been assigned other work. Think of it this way. If you weren't so pretty, they'd have made you a day laborer." This makes Ed happy with himself. He smiles at Ezra. Gives me a wink. You, too, honey.

  Ezra retrieves a pair of sunglasses from a trouser pocket and slips them over the bridge of her nose. "Thanks for the water, Ed," she says, smooth. Then looks at the others, who turn immediately away. "Have a nice day, ya'll." And is gone.

  By the time I get through the front door, Ezra's already halfway across the street. I have to jog to catch up with her. We walk together for two blocks, not talking. I'm torn between anger that Ezra's put me in this position and guilt that I've acted on it. Ezra's thoughts are impenetrable.

  "Well?" I'm the first to break the silence.

  "Well, what?"

  "You have something you want to say?"

  "What do you want, Adams? You want me to grill you?" Ezra looks back at me with hooded eyes. "Okay. What were you fucking thinking? Walking into town. Are you fucking stupid? Is this your version of hiding? How's that?"

  "You didn't leave me anything to drink! Or any matches so I could at least boil creek water!"

  Ezra turns the corner and we're suddenly in a residential area. On a road lined with old-fashioned, pre-Pandemic houses. She jogs ahead, onto the sidewalk. "You're not my only problem, Adams."

  She moves along quickly past the old homes. Most are two stories with front yards and porches, some of them screened in. They'd look nice if it weren't for the boards used to patch up the missing strips of yellowed plastic--some material from the past that's no longer used. No replacement parts available.

  Ezra turns up the drive to a large, pretty house, all its cream-colored siding intact. The grass is neatly trimmed. Boxes of purple and orange flowers line the windows. It's domestic. The kind of home my grandparents had, without the crops.

  "You coming in or what?" she asks.

  "This is your place?"

  Ezra frowns at my disbelief and disappears into the screened porch. Her voice trails back through the open door. "Don't let the cat out."

  I'm halfway in when she releases the screen. It bangs me in the nose.

  "You own a cat?" I ask. It's a stretch to imagine Ezra caring about anything long enough to keep it alive.

  She ignores my questions. "Wipe your feet."

  I do as I'm told. Shoo away the ugly gray cat that appears and rubs itself against my shins. Drag the soles of my shoes across her Welcome mat. Once inside the kitchen, I stop and look around. It's not a home with sterile white walls and gray floors. It's the house I wanted to grow up in. There's a loaf of bread resting on the counter, fresh-baked, breathing out the heady scent of yeast. There are spices in a rack and dishes upside down on a towel, perspiring. The kitchen is well used. Loved. I'd have done anything to live in a place like this.

  I imagine Veracity here. Imagine her bursting through the porch door after hours spent playing in the autumn leaves. She kicks off her boots, struggles out of her coat. Steals a soda from the refrigerator. Not the government-issued kind. A Coca-Cola, the kind my father used to drink out of a bright red can. I imagine us--a family--and maybe a few friends playing cards at the large round table. We see you over there, Veracity. Come here, darlin'. We'll deal you in. A roast cooking in the oven, a pie cooling on the windowsill, all foods we could separate into parts and eat together as a whole. This should have been Veracity's life. This should have been my kitchen.

  "Harper!" Ezra is in front of me, snapping her fingers in my face. "Hey!"

  It takes a moment to shake off such powerful longing. "What?"

  "Shut the door," she says, disappearing through a side hall.

  I follow Ezra around the corner to a plain bedroom. A wide, nine-drawer bureau and an equally long mirror line one wall. Her bed is made, covered with a white comforter sporting pink flowers, the corners tucked in. There's not much else to see. She walks through an arched doorway and enters a room with a sofa and a chair and a mirror the length of its closet door.

  Ezra is waiting for me with her evening wear in one hand and her prostitute's sash in the other. She needs to change. The bare skin of her face and forearms is paler than I'd thought. White as snow, and thin enough that the veins show through.

  "You're going to have to stop taking things so goddamned personally," she says. Then, somehow, shoves a glass into my hand, though I don't remember seeing her move.

  I look down into the clear water. "You left me alone. With nothing to drink."

  "I was being watched, Adams! What did you want me to do? Compromise the whole fucking bunker for you!"

  No. I blink. Time elapses. When I look up, Ezra's already changed into her evening wear. A short black skirt and a shirt made of see-through plastic with bits of black material sewn on.

  "What's this really about?" she asks. "It's not about you getting dehydrated."

  The room is wobbling. Jostling the thoughts in my head until one spills out. "I left my daughter for this! I let her be taken away for this!" Oh. I've said it.

  Ezra turns and looks into the mirror. "You have to let go of that shit, Adams. It's not helping you or your d
aughter."

  I feel the last vestiges of my strength drain away. Sit down, quickly, on her recliner. "What do I do?"

  "You don't die." Across the room, my blinking eyes get snapshots of Ezra dabbing at her mouth with a tube of bright red lipstick. "Don't die and someday you'll be able to tell her you didn't leave her."

  My mind is drifting away and my eyes start to go with it. Ezra's arms become wispy bits of poplar. White and black branches caught in a breeze. They change, become long ropes of flesh tubing that have no children at their ends. Umbilici.

  It would be so easy to shut my eyes and drift off. I'm so thirsty. My lips taste like salt. My body is a pool with the plug pulled out.

  "Hey. Bigwig." Ezra is right next to me. I've nodded off again. Lost more time. "You have to let it go. Got it?"

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  AUGUST 2012.

  A woman has passed out in the checkout lane. The things in her wire basket are strewn all over the floor: tins of government food covered with white labels full of black words, a tall bottle of hairspray like my mother's, a pouch of beef jerky, and, peeking out from between her thighs, a jar of green olives. While everyone else checks for a pulse, I worry about what's going to happen when she's taken to the hospital. Then after, when she doesn't come home.

  "Mommy," I say. But my mother is watching the woman and doesn't hear.

  Two other customers put down their wire baskets and adjust their masks with jerky fingers. They split the woman up, one arm and one leg each, and carry her to an office in the back where she'll be given some juice and the officials will be called.

  We aren't to worry, the Store Manager assures us. Happens all the time.

  When it's our turn to upend our basket onto the black conveyor belt, my mother asks the checkout girl why it happens all the time.

  "Them announcements." The girl points to the latest yellow note with a covered hand. Her name is Lindsay. She lives on the spread of land across from my grandparents' farm. Doesn't seem too worried about the box of latex gloves now posted at every checkout. They make me nervous. Remind me of visits to the doctor. Of shots.

  We follow Lindsay's finger to the racks that used to be full of magazines showing pouty-mouthed women. They've been gone for a while now, just like the blue metal boxes out on the sidewalk that used to yawn when fed a quarter, spit up a copy of the daily news. Now there's nothing left to read. Just these bright yellow pieces of paper delivered by men in blue suits.

  Today's message is briefer than usual. Mostly numbers. A five followed by a long series of others.

  "How many dead to date," Lindsay explains, looking down at me with her empty blue eyes. They're spectacular above the white paper mask everyone's supposed to wear over their mouths. Cerulean. "How you doin', sport?"

  My mother collects her bag and walks me roughly through the automatic front doors. Misplaced rage. She thinks I'm clueless about what's happening and that the checkout girl let the cat out of the bag, even though, for months, things have been changing. The television has been losing its stations. We used to have ninety-nine and now there's just one--channel 4. The only thing channel 4 shows anymore is news that turns my parents pale. It makes them drink more. Huddle around the kitchen counter and whisper. A woman with gold hair tells us, Everything's fine. Don't risk your lives with so many questions. Go get your shots. Do what you're told. Blah-blah-blah. My parents won't keep it on. Call it gibberish.

  It's not just the television. My favorite brands of cereal and soda have been disappearing, too. Kindergarten. Play dates. The yellow bus that used to pick me up at the end of my grandparents' drive a few months after we left the city. Belly laughs. Pats on the back. See ya'll laters, Good to see you agains. Good to anything. The Pandemic isn't here yet and most people have already died, their important parts anyway. My mother thinks I'm too young to understand this. In some ways, I understand better than she does. What's happening. What's already been allowed.

  There's an old fire burning in the middle of the square. It's been there for weeks. My mother is so angry, she walks us back to the car the wrong way round. Through the gray smoke that smells like must and makes me cough. Past other men in blue uniforms posted one at each corner. One, two, three, four. All of them with guns.

  I look past them into the red and orange center of the fire, my heart racing. I've been told not to look. On any other day my mother would have put a hand over my eyes. Or picked me up and forced my head into her shoulder. But today she's forgotten and I'm free to see what it is they're burning. I prepare myself as my head begins to turn. It could be anything. Puppies with their eyes gouged out. Kittens with legs like four blackened sticks. What if they're burning people? The idea almost stops me, but there's something even more awful and exciting about that.

  Ahead of me, my mother is rounding the last corner. We're almost back to the car. Quickly, I turn my head. Feel the heat of the fire on my cheeks.

  Nothing exciting. No dead kittens or people. Just a set of sloping red hills come up from layers of black ash. No bones or teeth or feet or paws sticking out. Just books. Words I can't read shining through the hills' flaming tops. Most of the pages are gone or going quickly. Plastic covers are dissolving. The hardback ones have held out the longest and cut the fire into seesaw angles.

  When my mother turns around to hoist me into my child's seat, she catches me looking and frowns.

  "Do you want to know why they're burning those books?"

  I nod yes because she wants to tell me. I sit quietly as she buckles me in.

  "Because the government thinks there's the possibility this flu might be passed through the oil in our skin." My mother's voice is low, like it gets just before she starts to cry.

  She sits back on her heels and looks down at the sidewalk between her feet. "It's nothing you need to worry about, okay?"

  "Okay."

  I put my hand on hers. We link fingers.

  The man in the blue suit nearest glances over. My mother feels him watching and stands up. She kisses me on the forehead and shuts my car door. Starts driving back to my grandparents' farm. I know what will happen when we get there.

  She'll pull my father aside and tell him about the whole thing. She'll say Lindsay mentioned the Pandemic in front of me. And all those people dying. She'll tell my dad I've seen them burning books. My father will tell my mother, She's a smart kid. She's been dreaming about it, hasn't she? Must have leaked into her head somehow. He's not going to march over to Lindsay's house and tell off her parents. Besides which, We've got bigger fish to fry, don't we? Damned right we do. My mother will end the conversation with the same thing she always says. She thought things would be different out here in the country with Grandma and Grandpa. But it's not. And she misses our home.

  My father's right. I have been dreaming about it.

  The dream starts like this. I'm outside on the front lawn with my mother and father and grandparents playing a game of Wiffle ball. Above their heads, a big tan cloud is hanging low in the sky. Nobody sees it but me. It crawls quickly onto the corner of the farm. Moves toward us like a wide brown mouth. Before we can move, the cloud of earth explodes into a million tiny pieces that fly around and between us, pulling my hand from my mother's and hers from my father's. Reducing my grandparents into kneeling sculptures of sand. The air is thick and I can't breathe, or see my family, or my hand before my face. Then, as suddenly as it came, it's gone. Any left-behind sand drops to the earth and I see my family come up out of the fresh brown hills. The horror of it never fades.

  Holes have been bored into their bodies, starting at the top of their skulls. Their features and joints have been smashed flat by what looks like a head-to-toe bandage pulled too tight. Cheeks, noses, foreheads, chins, all the parts of them I recognized are gone. These tube people have no eyes, just holes where they should be, no tongues in their open mouths, not even teeth. When they tip down their heads, I can see straight through to the sandy ground. But they can still move. They are still a
live.

  These tube people walk around like they don't know where they are. They bump into me on their way to somewhere else. Don't know me. But I don't know them either. They've become empty, hungry monsters with so many places needing to be filled, I worry they might try to eat me. Pick me up and stuff me whole into their toothless mouths. I try to run but the hard ground has become soft with sand. Behind me, they have their arms stuck out, feeling for my small body, which won't be enough for even one of them.

  It feels like I'm the only one unchanged by the storm, but I have no mirror. No way to see if there's a hole in my head, too.

  Almost every night for the last few months, I've had this dream. Some nights, I find my mother at the side of my bed wrapping a cool towel around my neck, hurrying to get a bowl under my mouth. She never asks me any questions and I understand why. I can see it in her eyes and in the colors swirling around her. The purplish blue cloud she usually wears like a poncho, the one only I can see, has changed colors. It's now sickly brown, spiked with lines of vibrant, terrified red. She doesn't ask me about my dreams because she's having them herself. Calls me an acorn fallen not so far from the tree.

  Our car is barreling down the country road way too fast. It makes the car vibrate like we're on a ride at the county fair.

  "Mom?" I ask.

  "Yeah, honey?"

  I'm thinking about the woman from the grocery store. About her soft knees on display, the jar of olives buried halfway up her privates. "Is that woman going to be okay?"

  "Yes, honey."

  "Will they take her to the doctor?"

  My mother finds me with her rearview mirror. "I'm sure they will."

  "Someone's going to have to go to her house."

  "Why?"

  It's a sore subject between us, me knowing things I'm not supposed to, though I've heard Grandma talk. Know my mother did the same things, too. "Just somebody needs to go out there."

  "Why, honey?"

  I look out at the fields where I won't see her furrowed brow. "Somebody needs to feed her cat."