Folk of the Fringe

by Orson Scott Card

  "I'm an immigrant," said Deaver.

  "In the long run, so are we all. Immigrant from where?"

  Am I applying for a job or something? "I don't remember."

  The father and mother glanced at each other. Of course they assumed he was lying, and now they were probably thinking he was a criminal or something. So like it or not, Deaver had to explain. "Outriders picked me up when I was maybe four. All my people was killed by mobbers on the prairie."

  Immediately the tension eased out of the parents. "Oh, I'm sorry," said the woman. Her voice was so thick with sympathy that Deaver had to look at her to make sure she wasn't making fun.

  "Doesn't matter," Deaver said. He didn't even remember them, so it wasn't like he missed his folks.

  "Listen to us," said the woman. "Prying at him, when we haven't so much as told him who we are."

  So at least she noticed they were prying.

  "I told him my name," said Ollie. There was a trace of nastiness in the way he said it, and suddenly Deaver knew why he got mad a minute ago. When Ollie introduced himself outside the truck, Deaver didn't give back his own name, but then when Ollie's father asked, Deaver told his name easy enough. It was about the stupidest thing to get mad over that Deaver ever heard of, but he was used to that. Deaver was always doing that, giving offense without meaning to, because people were all so prickly. Or maybe he just wasn't smart about dealing with strangers. You'd think he'd be better at it, since strangers was all he ever had to deal with.

  The Voice of God was talking like he didn't even know Ollie was mad. "We who travel in, on, and around this truck are minstrels of the open road. Madrigals and jesters, thespians and dramaturges, the second-rate sophoclean substitute for NBC, CBS, ABC, and, may the Lord forgive us, PBS."

  The only answer Deaver could think of was a kind of smile, knowing he looked like an idiot, but what could he say that wouldn't let the man know that Deaver didn't understand a word he said?

  Ollie grinned over at him. Deaver was glad to see he wasn't mad anymore, and so he smiled back. Ollie grinned even more. This is like a conversation between two people pretending not to be deaf, thought Deaver.

  Finally Ollie translated what his father had said. "We're a pageant wagon."

  "Oh," said Deaver. He was a fool for not guessing it already. Show gypsies. It explained so many people on one truck and the strange-shaped objects under the canvas and most of all it explained the weird way Ollie's father and mother talked. "A pageant wagon."

  But apparently Deaver said it the wrong way or something, because Ollie's father winced and Ollie snapped off the inside light and the truck sped up, rattling more than ever. Maybe they were mad because they knew all the stories that got told about show gypsies, and they figured Deaver was being snide when he said "pageant wagon" like that. Fact was Deaver didn't much care whether pageant wagons left behind them a string of pregnant virgins and empty chicken coops. They weren't his daughters and they weren't his chickens.

  Deaver moved around so much that a traveling show never come to any town he was in, at least that he knew about. In Zarahemla he knew that they had an actual walk-in theatre, but for that you had to dress nicer than any clothes Deaver owned. And the pageant wagons only traveled out in the hick towns, where Deaver never hung around long enough to know if there was a show going on or not. Only thing he knew about pageant wagons was what he found out tonight—they talked weird and got mad over nothing.

  But he didn't want them thinking he had a low opinion of pageant wagons. "You doing a show in Hatchville?" asked Deaver. He tried to sound favorable to the idea.

  "We have an appointment," said Ollie's father.

  "Deaver Teague," said the woman, obviously changing the subject. "Do you know why your parents gave you two last names?"

  Seemed like whenever these people ran out of stuff to talk about, they always got back to names. But it was better than having them mad. "The immigrants who found me, there was a guy named Deaver and a guy named Teague."

  "How awful, to take away your given name!" she said.

  What was Deaver supposed to say to that?

  "Maybe he likes his name," said Ollie.

  Immediately Ollie's mother got flustered. "Oh, I wasn't criticizing—"

  Ollie's father jumped right in to smooth things over. "I think Deaver Teague is a very distinguished-sounding name. The name of a future governor."

  Deaver smiled a little at that. Him, a governor. The chance of a non-Mormon governor in Deseret was about as likely as the fish electing a duck to be king of the pond. He may be in the water, but he sure ain't one of us.

  "But our manners," said the woman. "We still haven't introduced ourselves. I'm Scarlett Aal."

  "And I'm Marshall Aal," said the man. "Our driver is our second son, Laurence Olivier Aal."

  "Ollie," said the driver. "For the love of Mike."

  What Deaver mostly heard was the last name. "Aal like A-A-L?"

  "Yes," said Marshall. He looked off into the distance even though there was nothing to see in the dark.

  "Any relation to Royal Aal?"

  "Yes," said Marshall. He was very curt.

  Deaver couldn't figure out why Marshall was annoyed. Royal's Riders were the biggest heroes in Deseret.

  "My husband's brother," said Scarlett.

  "They're very close," said Ollie. Then he gave a single sharp hoot of laughter.

  Marshall just raised his chin a little, as if to say he was above such tomfoolery. So Marshall didn't like being related to Royal. But definitely they were brothers. Now that Deaver was looking for it, Marshall Aal even looked kind of like Royal's pictures in the paper. Not enough to mistake them for each other. Royal had that ragged, lean, hard-jawed look of a man who doesn't much care where he sleeps; his brother, here in the cab of the pageant wagon, his face was softer.

  No, not softer. Deaver couldn't call this sharp-featured man soft. Nor delicate. Elegant maybe. Your majesty.

  Their names were backward. It was Marshall here who looked like a king, and Royal who looked like a soldier. Like they got switched in the cradle.

  "Do you know my Uncle Roy?" asked Ollie. He sounded real interested.

  It was plain that Marshall didn't want another word about his brother, but that didn't seem to bother Ollie. Deaver didn't know much about brothers, or about fathers and sons, not having been any such himself, but why would Ollie want to make his father mad on purpose?

  "Just from the papers," said Deaver.

  Nobody said anything. Just the sound of the engine rumbling on, the feel of the cab vibrating from the road underneath them.

  Deaver had that sick feeling he always got when he knew he just didn't belong where he was. He'd already managed to offend everybody, and they'd offended him a few times, too. He just wished somebody else had picked him up. He twisted a little on the seat and leaned his head against the window. If he could go to sleep till they got to Hatchville, then he could get out and never have to face them again.

  "Here we've been talking all this time," said Scarlett, "and the poor boy is so tired he can hardly stay awake." Deaver felt her hand pat his knee. Her words, her voice, her touch—they were just what he needed to hear. She was telling him he hadn't offended everybody after all. She was telling him he was still welcome.

  He could feel himself unclench inside. He eased down into the seat, breathed a little slower. He didn't open his eyes, but he could still picture the woman's face the way she looked before, smiling at him, her face showing so much sympathy it was like she thought he was her own son.

  But of course she could look like that whenever she wanted to—she was an actress. She could make her face and voice seem any old way she chose. Wasn't no particular reason Deaver should believe her. Smarter if he didn't.

  What was her name again? Scarlett. He wondered if her hair had once been red.

  The sky was just pinking up with dawn, clear and cold outside the heated cab, when they rattled over a rough patch in the road
. Deaver wasn't awake and then he was awake. First words he said were from his dream even as it skittered away from him just out of reach. "It's your stuff," he said.

  "Don't get mad at me about it," said the woman sitting next to him. It took him a moment to realize that it wasn't Scarlett's voice.

  In the night sometime the pageant wagon people must have stopped and switched places. Now that he thought about it, Deaver had half-awake memories of Scarlett and other people talking soft and the seat bouncing. Marshall and Scarlett were gone, and so was Ollie. The man at the wheel wasn't one of the people Deaver saw last night. They had called Ollie their second son; this must be his older brother. The young girl he saw on the back of the truck last night—Janie—she was asleep leaning on the driver's shoulder. And next to Deaver was about the prettiest woman he could remember seeing in his life. Of course women got to looking nicer and nicer the more time you spent on the range, but it was sure she was the best-looking woman he ever woke up next to. Not that he'd ever say such a thing. He was plain embarrassed even to think it.

  She was smiling at him.

  "Sorry. I must have been—"

  "Oh, it was some dream," she said.

  I look at you and think maybe I'm still dreaming. The words were so clear in his mind that he moved his lips without meaning to.

  "What?" she asked.

  She looked at him like she'd never look at another soul until he answered. Deaver was plain embarrassed. He blurted out something like what he was thinking. "I said if you're part of the dream I don't want to wake up."

  The man at the wheel laughed. Pleasantly. Deaver liked his laugh. The woman didn't laugh, though. She just smiled and crinkled up her eyes, then looked down at her lap. It was the absolutely perfect thing for her to do. So perfect that Deaver felt like he was starting to float.

  "You've done it to this poor ranger man already, Katie," said the driver. "Pay no attention to her, my friend. She specializes in enchanting handsome strangers she discovers in the cab of her family's truck. If you kiss her she turns into a frog."

  "You wake up very sweetly," said Katie. "And you turn a compliment so a woman can almost believe it's true."

  Only now did Deaver really come awake and realize he was talking to strangers and had no business saying what came to mind, or trying to make his jokes. In the roadside inns where he used to stop while he was driving a scavenger truck, he always talked to the waitresses like that, giving them the most elegant compliments that he thought they might believe. At first he was flirting, teasing them, which was the only way he knew to talk to a woman—he couldn't bring himself to talk crude like the older drivers, so he talked pretty. Soon, though, he stopped making it a joke, because those women would always look at him sharp to see if he was mocking them, and if they saw he wasn't, why, it brightened them, like pulling the chain on a light inside their eyes.

  But that was back when he was seventeen, eighteen years old, lots younger than the women he met. They liked him, treated him like a sweet-talking little brother. This woman, though, she was younger than him, and sitting tight up against him in a cab so small it caught all her breath so he could breathe it after, and the sky outside was dim and the light made soft pink shadows on her face. He was wide awake now, and shy.

  You don't flirt with a woman in front of her brother.

  "I'm Deaver Teague," he said. "I didn't see you last night."

  "I didn't exist last night," she said. "You dreamed me up and here I am."

  She laughed and it wasn't a giggle or a cackle, it was a low-pitched sound in her throat, warm and inviting.

  "Deaver Teague," said the driver, "I urge you to remember that my sister Katie Hepburn Aal is the best actress in Deseret, and what you're seeing right now is Juliet."

  "Titania," she said. In that one word she suddenly became elegant and dangerous, her voice even more precise than her mother's had been, like she was queen of the universe.

  "Medea," her brother retorted nastily.

  Deaver figured they were calling names, but didn't know what they meant.

  "I'm Toolie," said the driver.

  "Peter O'Toole Aal," said Katie. "After the great actor."

  Toolie grinned. "Daddy wasn't subtle about wanting us to go into the family business. Nice to meet you, Deaver."

  All this time Katie didn't take her eyes off Deaver. "Ollie said you know Uncle Royal."

  "No," said Deaver. "I just know about him."

  "I thought you range riders worked under him."

  Was that why she was sitting next to him? Hoping he'd talk about their famous uncle? "He's over the outriders."

  "You want to be an outrider?"

  It wasn't something he talked about much to anybody. Most young men who signed on as rangers were hoping someday to get into Royal's Riders, but the ones who got in usually made it before they reached twenty-five, which meant they had five or six years on horseback before they applied to the outriders. Deaver was twenty-five when he joined up, and he hadn't had four years as a range rider yet. Except for a couple of older guys, most rangers would have a good laugh if they knew how much Deaver wanted to ride with Royal Aal.

  "It's something that might happen," said Deaver.

  "I hope you get your wish," she said.

  This time it was his turn to search her face to see if she was making fun. But she wasn't. He could see that. She really hoped for something good to happen to him. He nodded, not knowing what else to say.

  "Riding out there," she said, "helping people make it here to safety."

  "Taking apart the missiles," said Toolie.

  "Ain't too many missiles now," said Deaver.

  Which pretty much ended the conversation. Deaver was used to that, having his words be the ones that hung in the air, nobody saying a thing afterward. A long time ago he tried to apologize or explain what he said, something to make that embarrassed silence go away. Last few years, though, he realized he probably hadn't said something wrong. Other people just had a hard time talking to him for long, that's all. Nothing against him. He just wasn't the kind of person you talk to.

  Deaver wished he actually knew their uncle, so he could tell them about him. It was plain they were hungry for word about him. If their father'd been feuding with Royal for a long time, they might hardly know him. That'd be strange, for the kinfolk of the best-loved hero of Deseret not to know a bit more about him than any stranger just reading the paper.

  They crested a hill. Toolie pointed. "There's Hatchville."

  Deaver had no idea how long ago they left the grassland and came into the fringe, but from the size of Hatchville he figured this town was probably twelve, fifteen years old. Well back from the edge now, really not fringe at all anymore. Lots of people.

  Toolie slowed enough to gear down the truck. Deaver listened with an ear long attuned to motors from his years nursing the scavenger trucks from one place to another. "Engine's pretty good for one this old," said Deaver.

  "You think so?" said Toolie. He perked right up, talking about the engine. These folks made a living only as long as the motor kept going.

  "Needs a tune-up."

  Toolie made a wry face. "No doubt."

  "Probably the mix in the carburetor's none too good."

  Toolie laughed in embarrassment. "Do carburetors mix something? I always thought they just sat there and carbureted."

  "Ollie takes care of the truck," Katie said.

  The little girl between them woke up. "Are we there yet?"

  They were passing the first houses on the outskirts of town. The sky was pretty light now. Almost sunrise.

  "You remember where the pageant field is in Hatchville, Katie?" Toolie asked.

  "I can't tell Hatchville from Heber," said Katie.

  "Heber's the one with mountains all around like a bowl," said Janie.

  "Then this is Hatchville," said Katie.

  "I knew that," said Toolie.

  They ended up at the town hall, where everybody stood around th
e truck in the cold morning air while Ollie and Katie went in looking for somebody to give them a permit for a place to set up for the pageant. Deaver figured that this time of morning the only one on duty'd be the night man who did the data linkups with Zarahemla—every town had one—so he didn't bother going in on his own business. As for them going in, well, it was their business, not his.

  Sure enough, they came out empty-handed. "The night guy couldn't give us a permit," said Ollie, "but the pageant field's up on Second North and then out east to the first field that's got no fence."

  "And he gave us such a Christian welcome," said Katie. Her smile was full of mischief. Ollie hooted. Deaver was having fun just watching them.

  Toolie shook his head. "Small-town pinheads."

  Katie launched into a thick hicktown accent, full of r's so hard Deaver thought she must have her tongue tickling the back of her throat. "And you better stay there till you come back in at nine and get a permit, cause we respect the law around here."

  Deaver couldn't help but laugh along with the others, even though the accent she was making fun of, that was pretty much the way he talked.

  Marshall, though, he wasn't laughing as he stood there combing his sleep-crazy hair with his fingers. "Ungrateful, suspicious, small-minded bigots, all of them. I wonder how they'd like to pass this autumn without a single visit from a pageant wagon. There's nothing to stop us from driving on through." This early in the morning he didn't talk so careful. Deaver heard a little naturalness in his speech, and even though it was only by accident, it kind of made Deaver feel better to know that the real person Marshall used to be wasn't hidden all that deep after all.

  "Now Marsh," said Scarlett. "You know that our calling comes from the Prophet, not from these small-town people. If their minds are little and ugly and closed, isn't it our job to bring them a broader vision? Isn't that why we're here?"

  Katie sighed pointedly. "Why does it always have to come back to the Church, Mother? We're here to make a living."

  She didn't speak harsh or nasty, but people acted like she'd slapped her mother. Scarlett immediately put her hands to her cheeks and turned away, tears filling her eyes. Marshall looked like he was about to tear into Katie with words so hot they could start a brushfire, and Ollie was grinning like this was the best thing he'd seen all year.