by Alden Bell
Temple uses her good hand to swing the duffel onto her shoulder while Ruby opens the door and glances up and down the hallway.
Here we go.
On the way to the elevator they pass one family, a man and a woman and a little boy, and they are talking about airplanes and how they stay up in the air and if the boy will ever see one in real life. Ruby and Temple smile and say good morning as they pass.
They are alone in the elevator and Ruby presses a button that says P2 and when the door opens they are in a deserted parking garage packed with cars and Temple follows Ruby to the end of one of the rows where she stops behind a midsized Toyota with its taillight busted out.
I can’t give you one of the nice ones, Ruby says. But it’ll be weeks before they notice this one’s missing. It runs, and it’s got a full tank, I checked already. Here, give me that.
She takes the duffel from Temple and puts it on the passenger seat of the car.
Now you listen to me, Ruby says, taking Temple by the shoulders and looking straight into her eyes. I know some nice people north of here about an hour. They’ll take care of you—tell them you know me. Just follow the signs for Williston and look for a gated compound off the freeway. You got that?
I got it.
You be careful, all right?
Temple doesn’t know what to say, but the moment calls for something.
You done a good thing here, she says. It’s an act of generosity that goes past the ordinary. You’re a right person, like a queen or somethin.
Go on now, Ruby says, looking worried and teary. I suspect you’ve got more troubles ahead of you than behind.
SHE DRIVES north an hour, but she can’t find the place Ruby told her about. The signs are no help. Once she was a safe distance outside the city, she stopped by the side of the road to study a sign and she found the name of a town that was forty-one miles away and thought that might be Williston because that would be about an hour’s drive. So she memorized the look of the name and followed the signs, but now here she is and there’s nothing like a compound at all.
Then it starts to rain and she pulls into the parking lot of a strip mall and shuts down the motor and listens to the drops drumming on the roof of the car.
The rain is bad luck. It stands to reason, she thinks, that the rain ought to come and wash away the impurities of the world. A cleansing like the holy flood was, to slough away the dead and bring dandelions and butterflies to bear every which way on the ruined surface of the world. But it doesn’t work like that. Instead, it just gets cold and damp and shivery in your collar, and afterward, when the sun comes back from behind the clouds, there’s just more mold and rot than there was previous, and the stink rises like gas from every soil and stone.
THE RAIN comes down hard, and she would rather wait it out inside somewhere. There is a warehouse-sized toystore in the strip mall, the colorful sign over the glass doors with all the letters still intact—which she takes as a sign of good things.
She reaches into the duffel and takes out one of the pistols, an M9, and ejects the magazine to make sure it’s topped off. Then she pulls the car up onto the sidewalk under the store’s overhang right in front of the wide glass doors and gets out.
The smell of the air is already worse—ozone and canker mixed. The pestilence dribbling to the surface and oozing into puddles of decay on the asphalt. A film coalesces over the water, a waxy skin that splits like gelatin when you tread on it.
Inside the electricity is out but the tall windows in front cast a workable gray light over most of the store. She walks up and down the aisles, fingering the dusty packages and trying to imagine a family room filled with colorful plastic dolls and cars, abstract magnetic construction kits, spacecraft adorned with stickers, miniature pianos with keys that light up when you press them. Silly, the casual and disposable fantasy of such objects.
In one aisle she finds a rack of miniature die-cast toys. She takes one, a fighter jet, and tears the plastic open and holds the thing in the palm of her hand. She remembers the boy earlier this morning asking his parents about airplanes. And she thinks of something else from a long time ago.
Malcolm in the passenger seat, on their way to Hollis Bend, him pointing at something through the windshield.
What’s that, he said.
She looked up and saw a streak in the sky like a sliver of cloud and an object at its head like a tiny metal lozenge.
It’s a jet, she said. An airplane. You’ve seen em before on TV. Must be from that military base back a ways.
I never seen one for real before.
Well now you seen one. Not too many around anymore.
How come?
Hard to fly, she says. Takes a hell of a long time to learn, I expect.
How do they stay up there?
What? Listen at what you’re sayin. Birds don’t have any trouble staying up there. They do just fine.
Sure, but they flap their wings. How come the jet don’t have to flap its wings?
Cause a jet, it rides the wind.
How does it do that?
It just does, she says. It’s how they build it.
Oh. What if there ain’t no wind?
You get movin swift enough, you make your own wind.
How?
Here, look, roll down your window. All the way. Now make your hand flat like this. That there’s your wing. Now keep your hand like that and stick your arm out the window.
He did so, and his hand danced up and down.
You feel that? You feel how that air wants to lift up your hand? That’s how a plane works. It’s called aerodynastics.
What’s that?
It’s the name of what I just got done explaining to you.
Oh. How come you know about that?
I don’t know. Someone told it to me once.
And you remembered it?
Sure did. And I got it told to you, and now you’re gonna have to find someone to tell it to. That’s how it works. That’s how civilizations get themselves built.
Aerodynastics, Malcolm repeated to himself under his breath. Aerodynastics.
Okay, boy, now roll up that window—it’s gettin frosty in here.
She’s still lost in the memory when she hears a sound at the end of the aisle and looks up to discover a meatskin pulling itself along the linoleum toward her. He’s ancient and desiccated, his skin shriveled and flaking around his mouth and the knuckles of his hand. Probably been trapped in the store for years without anything to eat. A dry clicking sound comes from his throat, and when he tries to open his jaw she can see his thin cheeks tearing. It takes him a long time to get near her.
She points the M9 at his forehead and pulls the trigger. There’s no blood. Only a poof of papery dust as the slug collapses.
When she goes back outside the rain has tapered off. According to her watch she’s been wandering the store for the best part of an hour. She gets into the car and tosses the die-cast jet into the glove compartment. Then she takes one of her pills—she’s not sure which one and doesn’t care since she just wants to feel different than she does right now and it doesn’t really matter which direction that different might be.
IT IS after ten o’clock that night when she comes across the hunters. The farther north she goes the more populated the roads become. It seems like she passes a car every thirty minutes or so now, and each time they both slow down and try to meet eyes or wave or smile or pretend to tip a hat or give a military salute or something to pay homage to the kinship of nomads. But when night falls the streets go bare again. Nighttimes, most people like to hole up and wait for the sun.
But the hunters, she sees their campfire from the road. It’s more of a bonfire, really, and they’ve got it set up in the parking lot of an elementary school. She circles in her car seeing the heads of the three men rotate to watch her, their bodies hunched and motionless.
She gets out of the car and approaches them, making her face into a wall.
The men look h
er up and down, but they make no move. They are roasting something on a spit, and the light from the fire makes dancing shadows on the facade of the school building. A minor holocaust on an earth erased by night.
One of them is wearing a cowboy hat, and he tips it back on his head.
Evenin, princess.
I ain’t no princess, she says.
You coulda fooled me. You’re a little late for the cotillion, darlin.
She’s still wearing the yellow sundress that Ruby put on her earlier, and she is embarrassed.
They are drinking something from metal tumblers and eating meat and beans from tin plates.
I’m comin from down south, she says. Lookin for a place called Williston.
Williston? You gone past it. It’s about twenty miles back the direction you came. You’re nearly to Georgia now.
Shoot, she says, looking into the deep dark horizon behind her. I knew it.
Clive here’ll draw you a map, but it’ll be hard to puzzle through in this dark.
I guess not. I reckon I’ll just keep goin north. It never pays much to go backward to someplace you already been.
North to where? says the one named Clive. It’s not so safe for a little girl to be wandering around the countryside by herself. I don’t know if you noticed, but we got a little bit of a zombie problem.
She shrugs.
They don’t bother you so much, she says, if you can stay out from between their teeth.
The men laugh.
Well, that’s true enough, Clive says. What happened to your hand?
Just a scuffle, she says and hides her hand behind her back.
Listen, says the one in the cowboy hat, how about you join us for a little supper before you head back out there? We found some whiskey too if you’re interested. What do you say, road warrior?
She looks back at the car and then at the road ahead.
Well all right, she says. But just for a little bit. I like to keep advancin.
They are hunters, they tell her, and they travel from place to place, living off the land and trying to see the lengths and breadths of this great nation of ours before it goes under for the last time. There are still majestical things to see, they tell her.
I never been above Greensboro, she says. They’ve got some things up there in the North I wouldn’t mind gettin a look at.
We been all the way through the northern states and even into Canada, says the one called Lee, the one with the cowboy hat.
Tell her about the waterfall, says Horace, who sits on the ground and leans back on his palms and looks up into the starry sky.
Sure, Lee says. Niagara. Used to be a place honeymooners would go. Maybe you seen some movies. All this water, pouring over the cliffs, a thousand rivers falling down all at once, like somehow there was a mistake in the crust of the earth and someone had taken away half of a lakebed. And the force of it, water against water, so strong you can feel the spray on your cheeks a half a mile distant. I never seen anything like it. See, that’s the kind of thing that just keeps on going, century after century, no matter what us puny humans are doin all a-scurry over the surface of the earth.
They fill up a tumbler from the bottle and hand it to her, and she drinks and feels the whiskey radiate down her chest and into a tight ball of warmth in her gut. Then she tells them about her own wonderment—the Miracle of the Fish, and they all agree that it’s a marvel.
Horace scoops some beans onto his plate from a pot they have steaming at the edge of the fire, then he cuts some meat off the spit and passes the plate to Temple.
Have some, he says. We got plenty.
What is it?
That there is creeper meat.
Slugs? You aren’t telling me you’re eatin slugs.
Sure are, sweetheart, Lee says. Ain’t nothin wrong with it. Either they eat us or we eat them—which would you rather?
Ain’t it poison?
Not if it’s dressed right. We been out here goin on five years. So much food walkin around a man could live just fine by rifle and bow.
What about the rot?
We hunt the fresh ones—the ones that ain’t been around too long.
She examines her plate, tilting it toward the firelight to get a better look. The slices of meat are oily inside and charred black on the surface. She puts her nose to it.
It smells like rosemary.
The men smile, Horace looking hangdog and pleased.
Well, Lee says, just because we’re out here in the wilds don’t mean we have to forgo the finer things. Horace is a downright culinary wizard. What you’re smellin there is a spice rub of his own concoction.
What the hell, she says. I’m game.
She puts the meat in her mouth and chews, letting the juices coat her tongue and teeth. Then she swallows and looks at the men who are leaning forward, anticipating her response.
It’s good, she says, and they holler gladly. Tastes like sow.
Always said, Lee laughs, the only difference between man and pig is a good spice rub.
She eats more, and they pass the bottle around and refill their tumblers, and when they see a slug approaching in the distance Clive shows her how good a shot he is with the bow, pulling back the string and putting his cheek right up to his hand to aim and sending an arrow right through the eye.
She claps appreciatively.
Horace has a guitar, and he sings about moons and women and loneliness, and she gets sleepy listening to it and breathing the thick, smoky air.
Her head gets wobbly from the whiskey and the tiredness and the talk of God’s great earth, and they tell her she can lay down on one of their mats till morning—they sleep in shifts anyway. She eyes them suspiciously.
It’s all right, Sarah Mary, Lee says. We ain’t gonna mess with you. We know places to go when that’s what we want. Besides, you’re one of us. You might as well get a good night’s sleep. I got a feelin you’re gonna want to be goin your own way in the morning.
So she lays down and stretches out on the pallet, facing the fire to keep warm.
She begins to drift off, but before she does she remembers something and lifts herself onto one elbow.
Say, she says. My real name ain’t Sarah Mary Williams. It’s Temple.
We’re happy to know you, Temple, Lee says.
Yeah, she says. All right then.
And she lays back and looks at the stars, and when she closes her eyes she can still see them.
WHEN SHE wakes in the morning, there are two new men who weren’t there the night before. They are leaning on a truck, and Temple’s hunters are consulting with them. She sits up and puts her arms around her knees and wishes she weren’t still wearing that ridiculous yellow sundress.
The two new men are dressed in jeans and denim jackets and they have rifles hooked in the crooks of their arms, and their conversation seems friendly enough.
Lee looks at her and comes over to where she’s sitting. He seems concerned, his mouth moving around a lot as though the insides of his cheeks were itching.
Who’re they? Temple asks.
Just some friendly folk is all, Lee says.
How come you got that look then?
They been tellin me they had an encounter with someone on the road. Big guy. Rough lookin, bad teeth. Say he was lookin for a blond-haired girl, wouldn’t say why. But they figure it couldn’t of been good.
Where?
Just goin into Williston.
Uh-huh.
She gets to her feet and starts toward her car.
I don’t guess there are many blond-haired girls travelin this way by themselves, says Lee.
I don’t suppose so.
She opens the door to the car and unzips the duffel bag on the passenger seat and takes out a pair of pants and a shirt. Then she pulls the sundress over her head and tosses it into the backseat.
Lee shields his eyes and turns away. The other four men in the distance look at her where she’s standing in just her cotton underpants.
You wanna tell me what you did to get this guy on your tail?
I killed his brother, she says, slipping the shirt over her head and then pulling the pants on.
Did he deserve killin?
He deserved something—killin’s just the way it happened to go. You can turn around now.
Lee turns and looks at her. Then he looks squinting into the distance.
Where you plannin to go?
North. Just north. He can’t follow me forever, I got a lot of patience for travelin.
Yep. He nods and kicks the tarmac with his shoe and squints into the distance again. Then he says, You might think about comin with us.
He is a man at least two decades older than she, yet he possesses the intense frailty of boyhood.
Lee, that’s real nice. I want to thank you and Clive and Horace for bein so agreeable to me. You got somethin good going here. You’re seein the wonders of this wide country. But me, I got a chasin problem. I’m always either bein chased or chasin somebody. And I don’t expect I would feel right about pulling you all along with me, gettin you off your chosen course.
Well, says Lee.
Yeah.
I guess you’ve taken care of yourself so far.
I guess I have.
5.
Her hand throbs, and she reaches into the duffel on the passenger seat to find her pills but comes up instead with the plastic bag she put the end of her pinky finger in. The road is straight, and she keeps an even course while she holds the bag up to the light of the windshield to examine its contents.
The amazement is that it still looks like a finger—there it is, like a magic trick, like all of a sudden the whole rest of the body is going to pop out from behind a curtain and reattach itself to the finger with a lot of showy prestidigitation. The nail is still painted cotton candy pink, and the skin around the edge of the wound is drying out and shriveling slightly.
Strange to think how it used to be a part of everything she did for her whole life, and now it’s on its own. She goes to put it back in the duffel but changes her mind and puts it in the glove compartment instead.