Beggars and Choosers

by Nancy Kress

  I could only think, me, of two ways to do that. One was to hunt for food in the woods. The other was to take Lizzie and Annie to Eden. I’d found it, me, just before the gravrail quit this last time. I found that big-headed girl in the woods, and I followed her, me, and she let me follow her. I watched a door in the mountain open up, where there couldn’t be no door, and her go inside, and the door close up again like it was never there in the first place. But just before it closed, the Sleepless girl turned, her, right toward me. “Don’t bring anyone else here, Mr. Washington, unless you absolutely must. We’re not quite ready for you yet.”

  Those were the scariest words, me, I ever heard.

  Ready for us for what?

  But I’d bring Lizzie and Annie there if I had to, me. If they got too hungry. If there wasn’t no other way for me to feed them.

  I came to a place where dogtooth violets used to grow, them, back in June. I dropped to my knees. They sang out in pain, them, but I didn’t care. I dug up all the dogtooth violet bulbs I could find and stuffed them into my pockets. You can roast them. My jacks already held acorns, to pound into flour—wearying work, it—and some hickory twigs to boil for salt.

  Then I settled down, me, on a rock, to wait. I held as quiet as I could. My knees hurt like hell. I waited, me.

  A snowshoe rabbit came out of the brush, him, on the opposite bank, like he was right at home. Casual, easy. A rabbit ain’t much food to use up a bullet. But I was cold enough, me, so I knew I’d start shivering soon, and then I wouldn’t never be able to hit nothing.

  Bullet or rabbit? Old fool, make up your mind.

  I saw Lizzie’s hungry eyes.

  Slowly, slowly, I raised the gun, me, and squeezed off the shot. The rabbit never heard it. He flew up in the air and come down again, clean. I waded across the creek and got him.

  One good thing—he fit under my coat, him. A deer wouldn’t of fit. I didn’t want nobody hungry to see my rabbit, and I didn’t want to stay around, me, near where the gun fired. An old man is just too easy to take things away from.

  But nobody tried, until Dr. Turner.

  “You’re going to skin it?” she said, her voice going up at the end. I could of laughed, me, at the look on her face, if anything could of been funny.

  “You want to eat it, you, with the skin on?”

  She didn’t say nothing, her. Annie snorted. Lizzie put down her terminal and edged in close to watch.

  Annie said, “How we going to cook it, Billy? The Y-unit don’t get hot enough for that.”

  “I’ll cook it. Tonight, by the river. I can make an almost smokeless fire, me. And I’ll roast the violet bulbs in the coals.” It made me feel good to see how Annie looked at me then.

  Lizzie said, “But if you—where are you going, Vicki?”

  “To the café.”

  I looked up. Blood smeared my hands. It felt good. “Why you going there, Doctor? It ain’t safe for you.” The stomps still gather at the café, them. The foodbelt’s empty but the HT works.

  She laughed. “Oh, don’t worry about me, Billy. Nobody bothers me. But there’s something going on down there, and I want to know what.”

  “Hunger’s what,” Annie said. “And it don’t look any different at the café than it does here. Can’t you leave those poor people alone, you?”

  “I’m one of those ‘poor people,’ as you put it,” Dr. Turner said, still smiling without nothing being funny. “I’m just as hungry as they are, Annie. Or you are. And I’m going to the café.”

  “Huh,” Annie snorted. She didn’t believe, her, that Dr. Turner wasn’t eating some donkey food somehow, and nobody could convince her any different. With Annie, you never can.

  I finished skinning the rabbit, me, and showed Annie and Lizzie how to pound the acorns into flour. You have to cook a bit of ash with it, to take away the bite. It was late afternoon, already dark. I wrapped the rabbit meat in a pair of summer jacks, which pretty much kept the smell inside unless you were a dog. I put a small Y-lighter in my pocket, and set out for the river, me, to make a fire.

  Only I didn’t go to the river.

  More and more people were walking to the café. Not just stomps, but regular people. In the winter dark they hurried, them, hunched over but fast, like something was chasing every last one of them. Well, something was chasing me, too. I sniffed hard to make sure nobody really couldn’t smell the fresh rabbit meat, and then I walked into the café.

  Everybody was watching the Lucid Dreamer concert, “The Warrior.”

  I had the feeling that people’d been watching all day, them. More and more, coming and going but even the goers coming back for more. I guess, me, that if your belly’s empty, it helps to have your mind feel good. The concert was just ending when I come in, and people were rubbing their eyes and crying and looking dazed, like you do after lucid dreaming. But I saw right away that Dr. Turner was right, her. Something else was going on here.

  Jack Sawicki stepped in front of the holoterminal and turned it off. The Lucid Dreamer, in his powerchair, with that smile that always feels like warm sunlight, disappeared.

  “People of East Oleanta,” Jack said, and stopped. He must of realized, him, that he sounded like some donkey politician. “Listen, everybody. We’re in a river of shit here. But can do things, us, to help ourselves!”

  “Like what?” somebody said, but it wasn’t nasty. He really wanted to know. I tried to see, me, who it was, but the crowd was too packed in.

  “The food’s gone,” Jack said. “The gravrail don’t work. Nobody in Albany answers, them, on the official terminal. But we got us. It’s what—eight miles?—to Coganville. Maybe they got food, them. They’re on a spur of the gravrail franchise, plus they’re a state line, so they got two chances for trains to be running, them. Or maybe their congressman or supervisor or somebody arranged for food to come in by air, like ours, only it didn’t stop. They’re in a different congressional district. We don’t know, us. But we could walk there, some of us, and see. We could get help.”

  “Eight miles over mountains in winter?” Celie Kane yelled. “You’re as crazy as I always thought, Jack Sawicki! We got a crazy man, us, for a mayor!”

  But nobody yelled along with Celie. I stepped up onto a chair, me, along the back wall, just to see this more clearly. The feeling you get after a Lucid Dreamer concert still filled them. Or maybe not. Maybe the concert had got down inside them, from watching it so much. Anyway, they weren’t raging, them, about the donkey politicians that got them into this mess, except for Celie and a few like her. There’s always them people. But most of the faces I could see, me, looked thoughtful, and people talked in low voices. Something moved inside my belly that I didn’t never know was there.

  “I’ll go, me,” Jack said. “We can follow the gravrail line.”

  “It’ll be drifted in bad,” Paulie Cenverno said. “No trains for two weeks to blast the snow loose.”

  “Take a Y-unit,” a woman’s voice said suddenly. “Turn it on high, it, and melt what you can!”

  “I’ll go, me,” Jim Swikehardt said.

  “If you make a travois, you,” Krystal Mandor called, “you can bring back more food.”

  “If they got food, them, we could set up a regular schedule—”

  People started to argue, them, but not to fight. Ten men walked up near Jack, plus Judy Farrell, who’s six foot high, her, and can beat Jack arm-wrestling.

  I climbed down off my chair, me. One knee creaked. I shoved my way through the crowd and stood next to Jack. “Me, too, Jack. I’m going.”

  Somebody laughed, hard and nasty. It wasn’t Celie. But then they stopped, all at once.

  “Billy…”Jack said, his voice kind. But I didn’t let him finish. I spoke real low and fast, me, so nobody could hear but Jack and, standing next to him, Ben Radisson.

  “You going to stop me, Jack? If you men go, you going to stop me from walking along behind you? You going to knock me down, you, so’s I can’t follow? Lizzie’
s hungry. Annie don’t have nobody else but me. If there ain’t enough food brought back from Coganville, you telling me Lizzie and Annie, them, are going to get a fair share? With Dr. Turner staying with us?”

  Jack didn’t say nothing. Ben Radisson nodded, him, real slow, looking right at me. He’s a good man. That’s why I let him hear.

  The rabbit meat squished against my chest, inside my coat. Nobody could smell it. Nobody could see the bulge, them, because it was after all just a small piece of meat, a measly rabbit, pathetic as dirt. Lizzie was hungry. Annie was a big woman. I was going, me, to Coganville.

  But I wasn’t going to tell Annie. She’d kill me, her, before I even got the chance to save her.

  We started out, us, at first light, twelve people. More might scare the people of Coganville. We didn’t want, us, what they needed for themselves. Just the extra.

  No, that ain’t true. We wanted, us, whatever we needed.

  I got up from the sofa too quiet to wake Annie or Lizzie in the bedrooms. But Dr. Turner, on her pile of blankets in the corner, she heard me, damn her. A man can’t never have no privacy from donkeys.

  “What is it, Billy? Where are you going?” she whispered.

  “Not to no Eden,” I said. “Lay back down, damn it, and leave me alone.”

  “They’re going to another town for food, aren’t they?”

  I remembered, me, that she’d said last night she was going down to the café. But I didn’t see her there, me. But they know things, donkeys. Somehow. You never know how much they know.

  “Listen, Billy,” she said, real careful, but then she stopped like she didn’t know what I should listen to. I pulled on three pairs of socks before she got it.

  “There’s a novel, written a long time ago—”

  “A what?” I said, and then cursed myself, me. I shouldn’t never ask her nothing, me. She can out-talk me every time.

  “A story. About a small worldful of people who believed in sharing everything in common. Until a famine struck, and people on a broken train needed food from the nearby town. The passengers hadn’t eaten in two days. But the townspeople didn’t have much food themselves, and what they did have they wouldn’t share.” The whisper in the dark room was flat, her.

  I couldn’t help asking, me. I like stories. “What happened to the people on the gravrail?”

  “The gravrail got fixed in the nick of time.”

  “Lucky them,” I said. Wasn’t nobody going to fix our gravrail or café kitchen. Not this time. Dr. Turner knew that, her.

  “It was a fairy tale, Billy. Brave and inspiring and sweet, but a fairy tale. You’re in a real United States. So take this with you.”

  She didn’t say not to go, her. Instead she gave me a little black box that she pushed onto my belt and it stuck there. I got a funny flutter in my chest, me. I knew what it was, even though I never wore one before, me, and never expected to. It was a personal energy shield.

  “Touch it here,” Dr. Turner said, “to activate. And the same place to deactivate. It’ll withstand damn near any attack that isn’t nuclear.”

  Turned on, it didn’t feel like nothing. Just a little tingle, and that might have been my imagination. But I could see a faint shimmer around me.

  “But, Billy, don’t lose it,” Dr. Turner said. “I need it. I might need it badly.”

  “Then why you giving it to me, you?” I flashed at her, but I already knew, me. It was because of Lizzie. Everything was because of Lizzie. Just like it should be.

  Anyway, Dr. Turner probably had another one, her. Donkeys don’t give away nothing unless they already got another one for themselves.

  “Thank you,” I said, rougher than I meant, me, but she didn’t seem to mind.

  The morning was cold and clear, with that kind of pink and gold sunrise that turns clean snow to glory. There wasn’t no wind, thank God. Wind would of bit deep. We tramped, us, along the gravrail track to Coganville. Nobody talked much, them. Once Jim Swikehardt said, “Pretty,” about the sunrise, but nobody answered.

  At first the snow wasn’t too deep because the woods crowding the tracks on either side held the snow from blowing. Later it did get deep. Stan Mendoza and Bob Gleason carried Y-energy units, them, that they’d ripped out of some building, and they aimed them at the worst places and melted the snow. The units were heavy, them, and the men puffed hard. It was slow going, part uphill, but we did it. I walked last, me.

  After two miles my heart pounded and my knees ached. I didn’t say nothing, me, to the others. I was doing this for Lizzie.

  About noon clouds blew in and a wind started. I lost track, me, of how far we might of come. The wind blew straight at our faces. Stan and Bob turned the heating units around, them, whenever they could, and then we walked in warmer air that the wind whipped away as fast as it could.

  I got to thinking, me, stumbling through the snow. “Why couldn’t…couldn’t…”

  “You need to rest, Billy?” Jack said. I could see tiny ice crystals on his nose hairs. “This too much for you?”

  “No, I’m fine,” I said, never mind that it was a lie. But I had to say, me, what I started. “Why couldn’t…the donkeys make lots of…lots of little heat units for us all to…c-carry—”

  “Easy, Billy.”

  “—c-carry around in our gloves and b-boots and jackets…in the winter? If Y-energy is really so…cheap?”

  Nobody answered, them. We came to a big drift, and they turned the heat units on it. It melted real slow. Finally we just slogged, us, through what was left, snow to the waist, wetter and more sticky than it would of been if we hadn’t tried to melt it. Jack stumbled, him. Stan pulled him up. Judy Farrell turned her back to the wind to get a moment’s rest, and her cheeks were the red-white that is going to hurt like hell when it finally warms up.

  Finally Jim Swikehardt said, real low, “Because we never asked, us, for lots of tiny heaters, and they only give us enough of what we ask for to keep our votes.” After that nobody said nothing.

  I don’t know, me, what time it was when we got to Coganville. The sun was completely hid behind clouds. It wasn’t twilight yet. The town was quiet and peaceful, it, with nobody in the streets. Lights blazed in all the windows. We walked, us, up the main street to the Congressman Joseph Nicholls Capiello Café, and we could hear music. A holosign flashed blue and purple on the roof: THANK YOU FOR ELECTING DISTRICT SUPERVISOR HELEN ROSE TOWNSEND! It was like the world here was still normal, and only us was wrong.

  But I didn’t believe that no more, me.

  We went in to the café. It must of been too late for lunch, too early for dinner, but the café was full of people. They were hanging plastisynth banners and bows, them, for a scooter race betting night. Tables were pushed around to make booths and a dance floor. The smell of food from the belt hit us all the same time the warmth did, and I swear I saw tears, me, in Stan Mendoza’s eyes.

  Everybody got real quiet, them, when we came in.

  Jack said, “Who’s the mayor here?”

  “I am,” a woman said. “Jeanette Harloff.” She was about fifty, her, skinny, with silver hair and big blue eyes. The kind of Liver who gets kidded about having secret genemods, even though you know she don’t. It’s just something people say, them. People can be damn stupid. But maybe that’s why this woman was mayor, her. Nobody wouldn’t just let her be one thing or the other.

  Jack explained, him, who we were and what we wanted. Everybody in the café listened. Somebody had turned the holoterminal off. You could of heard a mouse walk.

  Jeanette Harloff studied us, her, real careful. The big blue eyes looked cold. But finally she said, “The main gravrail’s busted, it, but we got a spur and it works. There’s another kitchen shipment coming in tomorrow. And our congressman can really be trusted, him. We’ll always have food, us. Take what you need.”

  And Jack Sawicki looked down at the ground, him, like he was ashamed. We all were, us. I don’t know of what. We were Liver citizens, after all. />
  The mayor and two men helped, them, to load the two travoises with everything we could from the food line. Jeanette Harloff wanted us to stay the night in the hotel, but we all said no, us. The same thing was in all our minds. Folks were sitting home hungry, them, in East Oleanta: kids and wives and mothers and brothers and friends, with their bellies rumbling and hurting and that pinched look around their eyes. We’d rather walk back now, us, even after it got dark, than hear those bellies and look at them faces in our minds. We stuffed food off the belt into our mouths while we loaded the travoises, stuffed it into our jackets and hats and gloves. We bulged like pregnant women, us. The Coganville people watched in silence. A few left the café, them, their eyes on the floor.

  I wanted to say: We trusted our congresswoman, too, us. Once.

  There was only so much food prepared for the line. The travoises would hold more. When it ran out, we had to stop, us, and wait for the kitchen ’bots to make more. And all that whole time nobody except Jeanette Harloff spoke to us. Nobody.

  When we left, us, we carried huge amounts of food. Looking at it, I knew it wouldn’t be huge when there was all the hungry people of East Oleanta to feed. We’d be back tomorrow, or somebody else would. Nobody said that to Jeanette Harloff. I couldn’t tell, me, if she knew.

  The sky had that feel that says the most part of the day is over. Stan Mendoza and Scotty Flye, the youngest and strongest, dragged the travoises first, them. The runners were curved plastifoam, smoother than any wood could be. They slid easily over the snow. This time, at least, we had the wind at our backs.

  After half an hour Judy Farrell said, “We can’t even talk, us, to the next town, with the terminal. We can talk to Albany, us, or to any donkey politician, and we can get information easy, but we can’t talk to the next town to tell them we’re out of food.”

  Jim Swikehardt said, “We never asked to, us. More fun to just hop the gravrail. Gives you something to do.”

  “And keeps people separate, us,” Ben Radisson said, but not angry, just like he never thought of it before. “We should have asked, us.” After that, nobody said nothing.