Old Brittany was as tall as Frost’s chest, and she was as thin as a snake. Her small, sharp features were difficult to locate among wrinkles. “Frost, I seen her. I seen Grace.” She had a child’s voice.
“Good. Who told you I was looking for her?”
“What? No, Frost, I seen Grace.”
Frost opened his mouth to answer, closed it, said. “Where did you see Grace?”
“I seen her over there at the domicile. She gets along good with that one arm, don’t she?”
“That’s not Grace, Brittany. That’s Salmon.”
“No, no, Frost, Grace is a woman. Fish don’t got arms. Jesus, Frost, are you crazy! Anyway, there’s no god damn salmon no more.”
“Fine, Brittany, thanks for telling me.” He reached and touched a shoulder, felt the sharp-edged bone through her poncho. He walked on.
“Get your head on straight, Frost” she yelled after him in her voice of a nine-year-old. “There’s drug addicts and all kinds of weirdoes.”
A drop of rain touched his face. King had gone off. He looked back at the domicile. Jessica and Night and Salmon were rising from the steps where they had been seated. He heard from their direction a ripple of female laughter.
He passed the tall and skeletal ruin of an industrial plant. The rusted hoppers and chutes were still mostly intact. Here the ground was gravel and hard, grown over with broom, blackberry and horsetail that the winter could not kill. Farther on he saw Amber’s barge. She was in her garden, working with Deas and Will. On the dark earth there were three piles of carrots, as bright as fire.
He heard the voices of children and headed down to the water again. Arthurlaing and Cloud and Rain’s two girls were chucking rocks at something in the water, close to the shore. They all quit throwing at the same time and started searching the ground frantically. Frost stopped a short distance from them.
“I got somethin’!” yelled one of Rain’s girls. She had a length of rotting weed with a few limp leaves.
Skytrain was sitting on the ground. His bare legs and feet stuck straight out of his woollen shift. They were streaked with mud. He was banging the ground with a plastic bottle. He threw his head back and shouted “Got sumpin’! Got sumpin’!” His fine blond hair was wet from the drizzle. A cord of snot sat on his upper lip.
Rain’s girl cocked her hand back over her shoulder and threw the weed. It landed in the water two feet out. The children yelled and blasted it with rocks and handfuls of dirt and then started furiously searching again. Skytrain yelled too and pounded the ground harder. Arthurlaing came over to him and leaned close and spoke to him gently. Skytrain stopped pounding. Arthurlaing pointed to the river and continued speaking. He put his hand on Skytrain’s shoulder. The three girls were watching.
Frost heard “Okay?”
Arthurlaing helped Skytrain get up. Skytrain ran in a sort of fast stumble to the water’s edge. He cocked his hand as Rain’s girl had and threw the bottle. It bounced off his bare foot. Skytrain snatched up the bottle and tossed it out about ten feet. The children found rocks or grabbed some mud. They threw whatever they had, yelling and screaming. Soon they were silent as they watched the bottle bob and slide away on the current. Then Skytrain shrieked “Bottle! Bottle!” and turned and threw himself face down on the ground, bawling and kicking his feet.
Frost watched the bottle pick up speed. By the time he had taken a half-dozen breaths it was out of sight. He said “Has anybody seen Grace?”
Arthurlaing and Cloud and Rain’s girls whirled around, surprised and afraid. Skytrain stopped wailing and scrambled to his feet. They gaped at Frost. None of them spoke. Frost said “Arthurlaing, you keep Skytrain back from the water. It’s dangerous. Can you do that?”
Arthurlaing nodded and said “’Kay, Frost.”
“So what is it you’re going to do?”
“I’m going to keep him back from the water.”
Frost nodded and left them. As he passed Amber’s garden Will looked up and hollered “Hi Grampa!” Deas waved, but Amber was occupied with a particular carrot and only gave him a glance. Frost waved but did not stop.
He walked until he came to Little Bridge. Fundy’s Bridge was close now. There was only one soldier up on top. He could not see Fundy’s end. He turned left toward Fallen Bridge.
Near the bed of cattails he stopped on a slight slope and stood staring down at the expanse of grey and twisted leaves. But it must have been something else that he was seeing, because behind his rain-spotted lenses his eyes did not appear to be focused on anything. He stood like that for three or four minutes, as the rain increased. He had no hat. When a rivulet rolled under his poncho and down his back he shivered and sighed and turned away and took a step. But there was a sudden rustling, and from out of the wall of dead leaves stepped old Brandon.
“Hello Frost, you bastard.”
In his bleached and torn poncho and kilt, with his white beard and white hair bent at clumped angles, he looked as if he were constructed of the cattails that had hidden him. His eyes, however, were like black marbles. He stood there with legs spread. In one hand he held a half-litre plastic bottle with some liquid. He jogged it a little, showing Frost.
Frost said “What the hell are you doing in there?”
Brandon barked his reply “Lookin’ for arrows. I’m a hell of a shot with my Robin Hood bow.” He unscrewed the top of the bottle, lifted the bottle to toast Frost, said “Up yours" took a swallow, and screwed the cap on again.
Frost said “Where are you getting your hooch from? I cut you off.”
Brandon waved his free hand in dismissal and half-turned to go back into the cattails. He said “You think you know what’s goin’ on on this farm? You think you know what’s goin’ on around here? Bah, you don’t know nothin’. You ain’t the only game in town.”
And then Frost was staring again at the wall of winter-dead leaves.
25
Tyrell alone occupied the middle of the roadway. The rest of the guards shuffled unsurely near the sidewalks. They looked embarrassed and confused, and glanced at Tyrell every second or two, as if they were waiting for instructions, which he did not give. He said to Noor “Where you off to?” He held loosely at his side a spear made of one-by-two. His sword was slipped through a belt of blue twine. He stood directly in Beauty’s path.
The leashed dogs were all prancing and wagging their tails, and some of them were yapping. Beauty veered to the left and touched noses with King, who was held by Will. Then she snorted and tossed her head.
Noor clucked and kicked with her heels, but Beauty was reluctant to move on. Noor did not look at Will.
Will seemed worried. He said “Where you goin’?”
Finally Noor got the horse to start up again. She said, still without looking at Will “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.” Her eyes were hard. Her mouth was set.
Tyrell stayed in front of the horse, walking backwards. ‘Noor, are you crazy? You can’t go into Town on your own. Not with things the way they are.”
Noor clucked twice and flicked the reins, and Beauty picked up her pace a little. Tyrell stepped aside. He said “Take a dog at least. We can spare one.” Then he stepped farther aside, first to get out of the way of the spear that Noor held crossways in front of her, and then to get out of the way of the two-wheeled cart that Beauty was pulling. Noor in no way acknowledged him. “God damn it, Noor!” he called after her. Then he swore for a while. Then he said “Shit. Well, say hello to Robson for me.”
Behind Noor some of the dogs whined as she progressed down the bridge.
The cart was low and rode at a backward slant. It carried two big open black plastic bags stuffed with hay, three plastic buckets covered tightly with plastic and sitting in circles of slopped water, and a tied bag that revealed through a rip the mottled orange skin of a squash. A pair of leather sandals sat loose on the dirty and weathered bed of the cart, and a litre bottle of liquid had rolled back against a water bucket. There were no sides to the car
t, but a back of spaced horizontal two-by-fours kept the load from sliding off.
When the bridge was behind her and she faced the long scrubby slope in which Town Trail was more or less hidden she let the reins droop, and Beauty picked her own way along the footpath that ran down the centre of the old road. The trail was clear enough. But the edges of the cart caught often on brush, and sometimes a wheel would jolt against a bulge or foot-wide crack or the elevated edge of a fracture. When this happened Noor would turn, and her eyes would slide from item to item, hay to squash to water to sandals to hooch.
The sidewalks were less grown over, but their heaved or fractured slabs of concrete prevented passage. Here fewer buildings had fallen than on the peaty delta soil across the river. The buildings lining the sidewalks were more bent than collapsed. Walls leaned away from other walls. Where concrete blocks had separated Noor saw sinews of rusted rebar. Through glassless windows she sometimes saw the wet winter sky or the edges of sunken roofs. Weeds reached out through some of the openings. Through others blackberry vine spilled in a mass onto the sidewalk. From time to time she smelled smoke. Once she heard distant voices but saw no one.
Soon the trail swung sharply westward and became earth where it ran close to the fronts of a few more or less intact concrete apartment buildings. There was a pervasive stink of excrement. A man leaned out of a window and watched Noor pass a few feet below. He had no shirt, and his skin was as white as paper, but he wore a fluorescent green toque. His eyes were blank, and his mouth hung open a little. Behind him a baby wailed. Noor did not look up.
The trail swung northward again. Where it did so it merged with a trail that continued south, down to Fundy’s Bridge. Here Noor let Beauty rest. On her left rose a massive building several storeys tall. She heard, faintly, the laughter of men. She smelled meat cooking. Down the trail a little, on the shattered sidewalk beside the building, rested a cart not much different from the one she was pulling. It had a roof, however, and a padded seat, on which was tossed a pink quilt.
The drizzle eased off. She continued to follow Town Trail northward. Here the trail again ran down the middle of the old street. Every hundred yards or so someone leaned against a wall or sat in an empty window or on a slab of the broken sidewalk, watching her pass. Noor’s eyes were a little softer now. She examined each face, and recognized some of them from the market. If these watchers met her gaze she would acknowledge them with an upward nod of her chin, but they seldom returned the greeting. One old man standing in the obscurity of an interior behind a display window sheeted in plastic raised a hand and said something that might have been “Frost.”
The shops ran out. Noor stopped and set one of the buckets on the ground and untied the plastic covering and let Beauty drink. She looked southwest and saw that the clouds were broken by uneven swatches of blue.
At a point where one of the many overgrown streets intersected her route the trail took a slight jog and became earth. The going was easier now for Beauty. The only interruptions in the smooth path were the concrete walks that crossed it. These led from the street to steps and foundations and the occasional standing row of rusted metal studs. The scrappy growth of brush and bracken and grass was littered with asphalt shingles and grey patches of rotted and weedy gypsum from old drywall. In the enclosure of one foundation stood a white hot water heater, like a squat idol presiding over the desolation. As Noor studied the heater a crow landed on it. It watched her go by. When she was well past, it bobbed its head and shrugged its wings and it made its abrasive call.
Beauty plodded on, sweating a little in spite of the cold. Noor rocked on the broad back and was soothed by the motion and the horse smell and the rhythm of the hooves. Ahead, faintly, she heard sheep. The scrub thinned out. Among the foundations there were scattered stretches of short grass. Ahead, not far from the trail she saw the flock, spread wide among the brush, and she saw Bailey and one of his men and a dog.
When she came even with the flock she slid down and let Beauty rest. She laid her spear and her sword across the stuffed bags in the cart. The dog barked while Bailey picked his way among bushes and stepped over the low wall of a foundation and walked through the rectangular enclosure and stepped up onto the front porch and came down the three steps and along the walk. He had a long, hooded wool poncho over an ankle-length shift, and leather sandals and knitted socks. The wool, the leather, the beard, the man himself – it was all grey, grey as a winter storm cloud. He was badly bent but moved aggressively. The poncho bulged where it covered a sword. He had one eye, which darted like a bird’s.
He said “I hope you’re not headin’ downtown.”
Noor said “You better add a few more layers. You might catch cold.”
Bailey looked at her sharply. When a slight smile touched her eyes a trace of colour passed over the negligible region of Bailey’s cheeks that was visible above his beard. He shook his head, as if Noor’s joke were exactly what was to be expected from an insolent child. He said “You better go on back.”
Noor said “How’s life on Town Ranch?”
He nodded meaninglessly. Noor waited. Bailey said “Young Flower died. She got the pneumonia.”
“I’m sorry. She was Will’s age.”
“Yes, same age as Will.”
“She was your granddaughter.”
Bailey nodded.
Noor said “I’m sorry.”
Bailey nodded some more, not looking at her. He said “Now her mom is sick.”
“Can I send someone up to help?”
“No, it’s best your people stay away. So as not to catch it.” Bailey’s voice was as rough as the wool he wore. “There’s not many of us left now.”
Noor said “Times will get better.”
“You remember Langara? He run off. He got addicted somehow. Hemlock the Messenger saw him with a pack of them.”
“Addicts?”
Bailey nodded.
“They run in packs?”
He nodded again. “You better head on back, Noor. The skaggers are getting pushy. You never know who they’re making deals with.”
“Are your sheep safe?”
“Depends how hungry people get.”
“Then I would say you better put some more guards on.” She walked back to the horse.
Bailey said “I can spare some animals if you need them. I hear you got extra mouths to feed.”
Noor took two quick steps and vaulted onto Beauty’s back. Bailey handed her up the spear and the sword. Noor nodded a goodbye.
The trail began a long downward slope. On the opposite side of the old street the land was gouged by wide ragged ditches. Some of these merged like tributaries. From their mouths trivial but steady streams of water flowed onto the street. Before long the middle of the paved street had sunk into a narrow brush-filled depression. In a hundred yards this had deepened and broadened into a ragged, steep walled erosion gully that replaced the old road entirely. Warped sheets of torn asphalt lay where they had collapsed against the sides of the gully, along with shards and rectangles of sidewalk and sections of storm drain that had been weathered loose and rolled down.
The trail was lined with tree stumps. Most of them were rotted to brown punk, but some still showed the chewed surfaces left by whatever tools had been used to fell them. Their dead roots reached into the empty space of the gully. At a narrow point in the channel there was a jam of stumps, with their roots splayed out like a mass of stubby nerves.
The trail continued across old front yards. Gradually the foundations became bigger, farther apart, farther back from the trail, and the cart bumped across paved and overgrown driveways. Suddenly the gully widened. There was only a narrow space for the cart to pass between the steep fall-off and a foundation wall. Noor got down and led Beauty carefully through this space, watching that a wheel did not slip over the edge.
When the horse and the cart had passed safely through she glanced over the wall. There was a deep basement. It was full to half its depth with cle
ar water. The body of a young woman was floating face down, naked, with the arms spread wide. Long dark hair floated out around the head. Noor scanned the bushes and the trail behind her and ahead. There was no one but her and the woman in the water. Then she noticed, on the far side of the foundation, a single rat, leaning as far over the edge as possible without falling in.
She remounted and continued down Town Trail. In the distance, to the east and to the west of the trail, concrete buildings of three storeys rose here and there above the low scrub. Ahead were more of these, and also taller, more substantial buildings.
The erosion channel widened even more and deepened. Sixty feet down, a sheet of water slid along silently. Like the stumps, a half-mile of buildings had been undermined. Some had toppled or slid sideways into the gully. One of the buildings was many storeys tall. Whatever had filled the spaces between the girders of the top floors had fallen out. From her higher vantage point Noor looked northward through the skeleton of naked beams toward the bridge over Salt Creek. This was the end of Town Trail.
A less traveled path led along other streets, proceeding zigzag fashion toward the water. There were many buildings now, all concrete, whole or only partially wrecked. The smell of excrement was present again, but beyond this and the fact that most of the brush around the buildings had been crudely cut back there was little evidence of life.
Ahead the land fell steeply. Noor caught glimpses of Salt Creek. Beyond the Creek ranged the profuse and tall and melancholy towers. She stopped for a minute and gazed at these. Unlike the domicile, they stood perfectly straight. There was even glass in many of the windows. Staring at the lonely, looming towers, Noor appeared to be both puzzled and hurt. But she clucked twice, and Beauty moved on.
Since Tomorrow Page 16
