by Lucy Treloar
Darkness began to spread. We stopped and lit a small fire under cover of trees to boil water and clean Niña’s equipment. Sparks crackled and spun in the darkness. Alejandra sat on my lap. ‘I want Girl.’
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘How’s Niña?’
She unwrapped her. Her tiny legs paddled and she began her blind searching.
We spent that night in the tent, which we were glad of. I thought I heard shouts and whoops and screams once and then thought I might have been dreaming. I got up twice to prepare milk for Niña. The second time I could swear I smelled smoke, but perhaps the wind had shifted and it was our own small campfire. I got everyone hurrying next morning. Something didn’t feel right.
It was a relief to get going. Thin daylight began to trickle into the dense wood, then flow, diluting the darkness until it was mostly light that we saw ahead. We came to thick reeds and bushes, and pushed through them, and as quickly as that left the forest behind. Before us was a stretch of straggly marsh meadow, dry enough to walk on, and past that, not far, a banner dangled above the highway: Welcome to Freedom! It was caught between electricity poles propped up like drunks in the grasses. Its colours – red and yellow and green – were faded, and the limp balloons that dangled from it moved. The breeze was shifting about and I caught another whiff of smoke, of something burning somewhere. A dense plume was rising above the woods.
‘Would that be our fire?’ Luis said.
I shook my head. ‘Further away.’ I thought of those screams and wondered if we should go back but didn’t say it.
We walked parallel with the highway inside the line of the wood. A few cars went past, and a fire engine, sirens going, and police and, some minutes later, an ambulance. We stopped in shadow at each one. When we’d passed the sign by a good margin and came to drier ground – a winter-sown field just sprouting – we cut across. The soil clagged our shoes until we grew taller and had to pause and bang them clean, the way we used to with snow on our boots. We reached the road a hundred or so yards further on. We were too tired to rejoice. A car went past and didn’t slow at the sight of us. Then tall buildings – skyscrapers I suppose you’d call them – came into view, appearing like a lost kingdom or a mirage.
Chapter 20
I didn’t fully understand what we had become until we began the walk into the city, which, like us, had fallen on hard times. We walked down canyons of abandoned factories and warehouses and apartment buildings with hollowed-out windows and boarded doors covered in graffiti: writing in many languages and fantastical images of flowers and crosses, skulls, chains and manacles, hearts, and screaming faces and laughing faces. The side roads were lined with overgrown empty houses – some with their sidings stripped away, some burned. Behind us was that low smudge of smoke and a long way ahead dull-windowed skyscrapers. I could imagine it whole and lived in, pulsing, people on their porch swings, children running or climbing those trees, people falling in love and people dying at the proper time, every neighbourhood its own world. Every bit of dirt, every chink in a paving stone, every vacant lot, every yard, every traffic island was tall with winter grass, and the roadsides and roads and asphalt turned to crazy paving were too. Ghost gardens were all around us, if a person knew how to see them: the seed heads of tall flowers (lilies and Queen Anne’s lace and thistles, other things I couldn’t tell), fruit trees, hydrangeas with papery flower heads bobbing stiffly, giant oaks, ivies that had broken free. It was beautiful actually, soft, and quiet, but uncanny too, and mostly empty. A car travelled the highway we walked the edge of towards the city, and a minute later another one, and at first there was not a person apart from those in the cars.
Then there began to be more: a child riding a bike, a father walking a pram, a couple of laughing teenagers with linked arms heading somewhere (but where?), a middle-aged woman with a shopping cart like mine, a boy with a dog. (I am frightened of the way my face might change at sight of a boy and a dog. Do I look longing or bereft? Either might be creepy.) A few leaves trembled still on roadside trees, the dew had dried and the air was textured with it, the sun had had its way and goldenness bounced from the leaves and the sandstone buildings. Things changed again. Grass had been mown around a house, and an expanse of land had been turned into vegetable gardens bedded down with straw to sweeten the soil for spring.
In the space of a block we were in town. Menu boards were out on the sidewalks. I couldn’t help reading them. I’d lost count of the days. It was Sunday by the look of it. A sign in a front yard said, Welcome! Help Yourself to Water! and a large arrow pointed to a tap and a dog bowl brimful with water at its side. We filled our bottles and drank. Cat sat on the sidewalk against a low brick wall and fed Treasure, crossing her legs comfortably and making a little world around her. I mixed some formula for Niña, warmed it against my skin and did the same with Niña. She was getting wriggly and nosing around. Luis opened a bag and shared some chocolate. We didn’t care what people passing by thought, if they thought anything. We would have been a strange sight – a middle-aged lady, a young woman, a young man, a little girl, a baby and a puppy, all worn down and in need of washing, and there because we had no place to go, not yet – but people hardly spared us a glance. We were in our world, which was real and solid. Other people were nothing but legs passing by. Only children looked twice, especially at the sight of Niña dozing at my neck. We were islands and they were boats.
Luis stopped a woman running past. She jogged on the spot in her slippery black clothing. She looked at us as if we came from some remote pit of hell, a clay mine, a slave farm, a place of horror, but she adjusted, pulling a smile from somewhere, and before he could ask a thing she said, ‘Straight on at the lights, second right after the park. Charlotte Street.’
‘Okay,’ Luis said. ‘Thank you, ma’am.’
‘Basketball courts. Cute puppy. Anyway, welcome to town. Hope it works out.’ And she pumped her fist and yelped, ‘Freedom! Woo!’ and went on her way.
We came to a Burger King and I went to buy fries for us all and realised my wallet was outside packed away – I hoped it was, anyway. I couldn’t remember. I had nothing but a few dollars and coins in my jacket pocket, enough for the fries. My worry must have shown on my face.
The cashier looked me up and down, what she could see over the counter, and peered out the window. There they were, the wind buffeting them and pressing their coats to their bodies, standing bunched together like they were holding each other up and waiting for someone new to knock them down. ‘They with you?’ I nodded. ‘Wait a minute.’ She came back with another big bag. ‘Burgers,’ she said.
‘Thank you.’ I wiped my face clean of sudden tears (they’d been coming up from nowhere since Girl died) and picked up the bags. Fifty miles down the road my dog had been killed. What made people so different?
‘Have a nice day.’ She looked past me to the next customer.
The stadium was a white and grey circular monolith with a red-lettered banner – GOING SOMEWHERE? WE’RE HERE TO HELP – swagged above the entrance. Clustered beneath, people dragged on cigarettes or hunched against the wind with phones tight to their ears. Cigarette butts lay like old snow, softening footfall, thin and worn where people walked, thick and driven against the building’s corners. Some kids ran about kicking a soccer ball. It was a small space they had and they used it all. They wore their thin clothing layered up. Their breath steamed and they wiped their noses on their sleeves and the running seemed to keep them warm. We edged past the people, whose eyes moved over us economically, pausing on one face or another, building a story about us that made some kind of sense. It’s what I’d do, what I thought they were doing, but I don’t know if I was right. We might have been nothing but competition: five more people wanting the same thing, a passage to somewhere safe. They didn’t prepare me for the inside: desks with big signs – Documentation, Food Stamps, Bedding, Legal, Medical, Missing Persons, Transportation – swaying above, and
rows of low cots, people sitting talking on them; people lining up; people shooting hoops – muffled yells and laughter when the ball went skittering among the cots (‘’Scuse me, ma’am,’ a young giant said, squeezing past after a ball); a makeshift playground crawling with children, parents and people whose eyes were seeing things far away, as I was. I’d seen rooms like this online after hurricanes or earthquakes or revolutions. All around us, other disasters were playing out, each as outlandish and ordinary as ours. We were nothing special. No one was about to pick us up and comfort us. I count that thought a revelation (to me, I mean), though it’s one I’d edged up to a couple of times. We are each the centre of our own lives and now all these lives were humming up against each other, their voices overlapping like our singing in the revival tent. I thought of my mother saying: Everything has a tune. If that is so, I wonder what tune people create together in the world – unthinking contentment or discord and misery shot through with rare and piercing notes of beauty?
There was some kind of buzz around, of people passing on news they’d heard. The murmuring rippled out and finally reached us through a worker filling out our forms. A family of runners had been shot and the abandoned house they were in torched the night before, just south of town. No survivors, she said; vigilantes from south of the border everyone supposed. It was not usual for them to come so far north, and it had spooked people. I said we would have stayed in that house except they got there first. She said someone must have been looking out for us. I said it was no such thing, nothing more than luck. There’s no justice and no pattern to the world. How could I be grateful it wasn’t me? But I was thankful for the others, and glad that Alejandra did not have to suffer that terror.
I had thought Wolfe small and the world large. It was the opposite. The whole of Wolfe had been mine; here, I had the space of a single cot and room for my feet when I sat up, and a safe night’s sleep. But if I wanted to leave that, go for a night walk, I had to be careful, watch my back, be alert, make sure I had my gun with me, and yet I should be grateful. I was for Luis and Alejandra most of all, and for Cat if she wanted to be with them. I wouldn’t try to stop her in that. I’d explain it to Claudie as best I could, or leave Cat to speak for herself. I was glad for them. As for me – no one would throw me out of my country or imprison me for the crime of not belonging; murders were a different matter. I was in my own country yet I had become – I don’t know what other word to use – a refugee. And I supposed I was an outlaw, too, if that was possible when my crimes remained undiscovered.
On the second day I learned that I was merely homeless. No one would imprison me for that or deport me. No other country would take me in.
It was a mistake of habit I made at the documentation desk. They asked me for my papers and I handed them over, as obedient as a child. It was a nice young man there helping, a rosy-cheeked lawyer volunteering his time to help right wrongs. ‘Are you in danger? In fear of your life? Are you being persecuted?’
The things I could have said: I have committed grave crimes, I am haunted by memories and the thought of my failings and the murders I have committed. I said, ‘No.’
He gave me a gentle, pitying look and opened his mouth to explain my mistake. I held up my hand to stop him. He told me he was sorry. ‘I’d look the other way, only it’s life or death for some.’
‘Can I at least stay until the others go?’ I asked. Busloads departed each day, heading north to the border, where they had to walk over a snowy pass to safety.
He moved his eyebrows and mouth in a sort of shrug. ‘That’s a different department. I’d have no reason to talk to them. So . . .’
‘So,’ I said.
It might have been three weeks we were there. I mostly kept to my cot by day. I brought my notebook up to date, told the truth as far as I could. If others saw it differently, let them set the record straight. I slept poorly in the midst of the murmuring and snuffling and coughing and sobs. There was nothing to drive me on, only this dull waiting, and the thought of sadness to come. I might not have concealed my feelings as well as I thought. Even Cat noticed. I’d finished my writing one afternoon, and made my cot and Alejandra’s, smoothing the grey blankets, folding the tops over so the red trim showed nicely, fluffing the pillows. Then I lay back with my hands folded on my belly, and stared at the stadium ceiling. A few birds twittered around up there, like the pigeons in the old revival tent. Did they ever go outdoors? Perhaps they were accustomed to this; perhaps I would be too in the end.
‘Posing for your tomb?’ Cat said. She laid Treasure by her side on Alejandra’s cot, patting her tummy and catching her feet when she kicked them up, a game that made Treasure laugh.
I couldn’t break a smile.
‘Do you regret things?’ she asked.
‘Regret things.’ I turned my eyes on the roof to protect her from my feelings. ‘You’re asking me if I approve my own actions. I ask you: what choice did I have? I had responsibilities. I had to keep you safe. How else would I face Claudie? How would I live with myself? I haven’t always done that with people I—. I did this time. Are you sorry Luis and Alejandra are alive? I am not. Doesn’t mean it’s comfortable living in my skin.’ My voice was harsh.
It was impossibly rare for Cat to back down, but she did then. She stopped playing with Treasure. She paid attention to the moment. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No need. I know that. I still have to live with it, though. The rightness of an action doesn’t set you free from it; it only sets you free from the danger.’
She nodded.
‘There’s not much here to distract me.’
Gradually, Alejandra took over with Niña. She did a good job; I kept an eye on that. Luis and Cat disappeared for hours and came back quarrelling. They’d lost the way of being comfortable together. The best of that time was hot water and the Goodwill. I kept my jacket, got new jeans, thermals and fur-lined boots, and did the same with Alejandra, thinking of the deep winter of the deeper north. There was a lucky find too, a travel basket that could hold Niña, if necessary, for a few more weeks at least.
Freedom was nothing but a way station. It could never be home. People didn’t mind newcomers as long as they understood it was only passing pleasantness and support being offered. They had space but no jobs, and who could trust that the creeping sickness and discontent in the country wouldn’t spread this far north? People had believed that before and been wrong, and there had been that house burned down. It wasn’t a bad place, not prettied up, ruins, a few nice old buildings, several schools in the area, the things you would expect of an old city, and yet the people here were not the same. They went out of their way for others. How had that happened? I went walking, learning to be alone again, as I knew I soon would be.
Night seeped in early. The soccer games finished before dinner. Parents called their children inside, worried at what the darkness might conceal. It was cold out. By night Freedom was another place. A building was burning nearby. It made some folk edgy and inclined to stay indoors. Others clustered in the smoky half-light of streetlights looking at the glow and the sparks flying, and it seemed like they were looking at places far away. There’s smoke from fireworks and explosions and flames and a lingering haze in the aftermath of each, and there are the crowds and heat and sirens that go along with these things, moving through them like ghosts. Sometimes there’s beauty in that, and sometimes violence.
The centre was stifling after the cold. I checked Alejandra and Niña and went to bed myself, listening to the many sounds people made. Later I woke to a hissing conversation between Luis and Cat.
‘What are you talking about?’ That was Cat. ‘I’m not going back to my parents.’
Luis’s voice was lower, and strained. He said, ‘You have to go home. There’s no need for you. There’s nothing there for you.’
‘There’s you. Both of you. How do you leave your family if you don’t have to? And there
’s Josh. What might he say? How would I forget that?’
‘Yeah.’ He sounded despairing, the words meaning something different to him.
‘Luis,’ she hissed. ‘Listen to me.’
But he rolled over to face the brick wall.
They hardly spoke for days. Alejandra fluttered between them, trying to draw them together again. I was drifting, and drifting away from them, waiting for the time to be done, maybe even looking forward to it, even though it would be hard, because at least then it would be done. There was nothing I could do except stay until the end and mind Niña if Alejandra wanted to join one of the games. I created a few makings and gave them to children. I emptied my pack.
Contents
-Clothes: one change of everything, extra socks, fleece sweater
-Utensils: 2 spoons, 1 paring knife, 1 fork, 1 small saucepan, 37 rounds of ammo
-2 packets soup mix, dried hunk of bread
-Silverado keys
-Makings things (I hadn’t realised I’d collected so much):
-roll of thin wire
-5 paperclips
-3 buttons
-1 reel of cotton (black)
-11 small sticks, various lengths (I wondered about them, and put four aside to throw out, but I passed them later and liked them so much I took them back)
-1 cardboard tube
-alfoil, pieces
-assorted bottle tops
-a plastic cereal figurine – a tiny freckle-faced creature with yellow hair – from long ago (easy enough to date online, but competition for computers was fierce at the transfer centre)
One night late in that time of waiting, lying awake in the darkness worrying about possible futures, I watched Cat delicately lift herself away from Treasure and cross the narrow space. She lay alongside Luis, along the curve of his back, and put her arm around him and her face against his neck. His arm reached back around her waist and pulled her over, close, and their arms went clumsily around each other. ‘Idiot,’ Cat whispered and touched her mouth to his. I shut my eyes and went to sleep.