Since Tomorrow

by Morgan Nyberg

  When Grace looked up, Frost was waiting beside the old man, who was now staring blankly. She saw that the man was not much older than Frost. She heard Frost ask clearly “Which one first?”

  Jessica and Salmon came through the doorway.

  Grace took another lengthy breath, made a slight motion of her hand toward the man with the shattered leg. Frost left the black bag and went to the bed and helped the man to sit up and swivel, and he helped the man lift the damaged leg over the edge of the bed as the man cried out. Jessica pushed through the women, and she and Frost stood the man up on his good foot. He wrapped his arms around their shoulders. They were both taller than him. They shuffled carefully through a door into a smaller room.

  Frost and Jessica and Grace and Salmon laid the man on a narrow cloth-covered mattress that was dirty and ripped. The boy held the man’s leg free until the man was down. Then Grace helped to place the leg also on the mattress as the man again cried out. Six inches below the knee the shattered, blood-smeared end of the tibia seemed to glow in the poor light.

  Salmon went out and got Grace’s black bag. She set it down and with her left hand, her only hand, she took out the orange plastic basin and set it on the floor, for there was no table in the room. In the basin she placed a folded pink rag, a roll of faded yellow cotton bandage that was printed with abstract slashes of other colours. She also put in a darning needle, a coil of yellow nylon thread and another of blue, the needle-nose pliers, the eight-inch knife, the hacksaw. She took out two one-litre bottles of alcohol, one full, the other half full. These she set on the floor, for she had no way to open them with her single hand. Beside them she set the half-litre bottle of skag-in-water, half full.

  Frost said to the boy. “You have to go out now.” He had to repeat it because of the noise of the women outside.

  The boy said “Are you going to cut off his leg?”

  “Yes.”

  The boy looked faint, wobbled. But he nodded and let Salmon lead him by the hand to the door.

  Grace squatted and screwed the lid off the half-full bottle of alcohol. She poured a little alcohol on the pink rag and wiped the three plastic bottles. There was no sterile place to put them, so she stood the full bottle of alcohol and the bottle of skag-in-water again on the floor. She held one hand at a time over the basin and with the remaining bottle she sterilized her hands, and she poured alcohol over all the items in the basin. She wiped the sides and rim of the basin with the alcohol-soaked rag. She fished out the needle and threaded it and stuck it vertically into the rim of the basin. Salmon came forward and had her one hand sterilized. Grace motioned with her head to Frost, who came and squatted and held his hands over the basin and rubbed them all over with the alcohol she poured. Then he stood.

  Grace handed him the knife and then the hacksaw, dripping. “Hold these till they dry.” He took them and stood there with the knife in his right hand and the hacksaw in his left.

  He said “Where’s the powdered skag?”

  Grace did not reply. She took the rag from the basin and squeezed out some of the alcohol and turned and knelt on the floor and studied the bloody mess of the shattered leg.

  Frost said “You two go out for a minute. We’ll call you.” Salmon and Jessica left, Salmon holding her sterile hand away from the plastic over the door.

  Grace wiped the blood from the skin above the wound. She folded the cloth and wiped the area again. She said, without looking up “I need something to put underneath to raise the leg up.”

  Still holding the knife and the hacksaw, Frost went to the doorway and pushed the covering of thick transparent plastic back with a shoulder. He looked into the main room. It was as before, but the woman who had been lying on the mattress on the floor was now lying on the Hide-a-Bed beside the field boss. Another man lay on the mattress on the floor. Two women were trying to remove his blood-soaked poncho. As they slid it up his torso Frost saw the wound and the slight but steady flow of blood over the corrugations of the ribs. He saw the shallow white chest rising and falling. Beyond the women, he saw the face of Daniel Charlie, troubled, silent as a moon above the tumult. Jessica and Salmon stood near the doorway to the room from which Frost looked out.

  He said to Salmon “If no ribs are broken, press on the wound to slow the bleeding.” Salmon turned and stepped between women toward the man on the mattress.

  He saw nothing out there that could be used to support the man’s leg. He let the plastic curtain fall and turned back into the room and set the saw and the knife back into the basin. He said to the man “Bend your good leg.” The man did so. “Help him lift his other leg.”

  The man, pale, eyes squeezed shut, brow creased, groaning loudly, raised the leg while Grace supported the lower part. Frost doubled the end of the mattress over on itself. The man lowered his good leg to rest on and hold in place the folded mattress, and Grace supported the wounded lower leg while he lowered the thigh to the mattress. The heels of both sandals rested on the floor. There was room to cut now.

  Grace and Frost sterilized their hands again, and Grace wiped the back of the upper calf, where she had not been able to before, and Frost crouched near the man’s feet, holding the saw and knife again. He said “We’ll need more skag.”

  Grace said nothing.

  He said “I’ll send someone back to get the powder.” He waited. She did not reply. He rose, turned toward the doorway.

  Grace said “Wait. There may be enough.”

  “There’s four people need it. So far.”

  “Come back.”

  He stood staring down at her.

  She said, wiping the skin again “There is no powdered skag.”

  Frost stood there gaping.

  Grace did not look at him. She dipped the rag into the basin and wrung it out over the floor. She spread the rag on the man’s leg above the knee. She unscrewed the cap of the skag bottle.

  Frost exclaimed softly “What!”

  Grace said “Can you lift your head?”

  The man managed to boost himself partway up on his elbows. Grace tilted the bottle, and he took a good swallow of the liquid. She gave him a little more, then put the lid back on and set the bottle down as the man lay back again.

  Frost said “What happened to it? You haven’t had to use any of it since Salmon.”

  Grace said nothing. After a while the man’s face went slack and dreamy. She turned and gave Frost a hard and fearful glance and blurted “It’s gone, that’s all.”

  He said “Someone stole it.”

  Grace shrugged, watched the man’s face.

  “Jesus Christ, Grace!”

  He took the saw and knife in one hand. He picked up the bottle of skag-in-water and went to the doorway and pushed the plastic aside with his back. “Salmon.” She was kneeling beside the man on the mattress, pressing her hand against the wound. She rose and came to Frost. Blood began trickling from the wound again. Frost said “Give them all one swallow each. There should be enough.” She held up her hand to show him that it was bloody. Frost said “It doesn’t matter.” She took the bottle.

  Frost let the curtain fall, turned. He said “So someone stole it.”

  Grace shrugged again. “It’s gone. It’s just gone.”

  “Damn!”

  She held out her hand to him, looked up at him steadily. He turned the knife, and she took it from him by the handle. Again she watched the face of the man as he sank deeper into his trance. She said “We need more.”

  “He won’t give us any more. Not after today. And I won’t ask him for any more.”

  “Bundy should never have attacked.”

  “You’re saying you want me to talk to Langley.”

  “We need more. You’ve got to do something.”

  “I’m finished talking. We’re way past talking now. Anyway, I’ve got nothing he needs. He’s got all of Wing’s spuds. His cows. He’d just laugh at me.”

  “Take it.” She slashed the air with the knife.

  “Tak
e Langley’s skag!”

  “We need it, Frost!”

  “Jesus Christ, Grace. I don’t even know where he’s got it. But even if I had an army there’s no way I could get near it. It’s what he’s about. It’s his heart and soul. Nobody’s going to get near Langley’s skag. But what the hell happened to it? Nobody could get past my dogs. Was it someone on the farm?”

  Grace again watched the man’s face. She said “Get Jessica. Get Daniel if he’s there.”

  Frost closed his eyes, let the saw hang at his side, released a long sigh. “One of my own people took it.”

  Grace said “He wants land. You said he wants to trade. He’ll leave us alone if we go to Wing’s. And he’ll give us skag.” Her voice had lost its hesitancy. There was a metallic edge to it.

  He said fearfully, almost pleading “Grace, don’t say that. Please. I can’t stand to hear you say that.”

  “It’s war, Frost. He’ll take your farm. Talk to him.”

  “What are you saying? Is it you saying this? Give him my farm...?”

  “He’ll take it.”

  Frost just shook his head.

  Grace said “Then it’s gone anyway. And we’re all dead.”

  Frost went on shaking his head, looking down at the floor.

  “Dead, Frost. You, me, Will, Daniel, Jessica. I guess that’s what you want.”

  He said softly “Quiet now, Grace. Be quiet now.”

  “Talk to him, Frost.”

  Frost said nothing for a while, then “Are we ready?”

  “The farm gone. All of us dead. You’ve got to lead, Frost.”

  “Grace, please....”

  She said “Okay.”

  Frost backed the plastic curtain open again. He called Daniel Charlie and nodded to Jessica, and they came into the room. Daniel held the man’s shoulders down, and Jessica crouched opposite Grace and leaned on both thighs. The knife work was fast and did not bother the man much. But from the depths of his trance he screamed as blood sprayed from the blade of the hacksaw. And soon Frost stood there looking down at the severed leg he held in both hands, a thing heavier than stone.

  35

  Noor gazed down the trail, waiting while Beauty drank. The rain had let up a little, but the light had not improved – the day had turned dark with thick low clouds, and it was late afternoon as well, with the dusk gathering quickly. In the distance the rickshaw rested again on the fractured sidewalk in front of the big building, among leafless scrub. It was perhaps in a different position, the shafts pointing now toward the street whereas before they had pointed toward the building. In the monochrome of the sinking day the quilt on the seat seemed to glow with a threatening light, the light of a dream, pink as a dog’s tongue.

  Noor saw no one, heard nothing but the drizzle. Beauty lifted her head, and Noor poured out the remaining inch of water and set the bucket on the cart. She looked up, and in a glassless display window fifty feet away she saw a man.

  Behind him the interior of the old shop was dark, and he was standing a few feet back from the window. He was barely a silhouette. Noor stared at him. Finally the man lifted a hand. He said “Frost’s Farm.” It was an old man’s voice, powdery and broken.

  Noor said “Yes.”

  The man let his hand fall. He waited. He said “Be careful.”

  Over the window there was a broken, faded and dirty sign, with painted letters behind a hard sheet of transparent plastic. There was enough light to read the single remaining word.

  Meats.

  The man stepped back and merged with the darkness.

  When Noor looked again down the trail the light was almost gone.

  She swung east at the big building. Even this close there were no human sounds, no smell of food, only the thin background stench of excrement, of Town. There was also the soothing smell of the wet horse, who moved steadily along the dirt trail under the empty black windows of apartment blocks.

  Then Noor heard something. She whispered “Whoa" and Beauty stopped. She listened. It had been like the cry of a nighthawk in summer twilight. But there were no nighthawks in this cold dusk and rain. It had been the brief scream of a woman, distant, muffled by walls.

  She clucked, and Beauty moved on. She kept listening but heard only the soft thuds of the hooves of the workhorse, the small rattles of the cart, and the hushed patter of drizzle on her own shoulders and on Beauty’s back. Fifty yards ahead was the point where the trail turned south again, down to Frost’s Bridge. The dark faces of three-storey apartment buildings with blackberry vines sprawling among them like a range of low hills kept her from seeing down that stretch of the trail.

  She whispered part of a song. “The water is wide, I cannot cross o'er. But neither have I the wings to fly. Give me a boat, that can carry two, and both shall row, my love and...”

  Ahead, Langley came around the curve of the trail. He was walking fast. He had the leather jacket, the tight jeans. His soldiers followed close behind, crossbows slung on their backs. They were silent, but she heard a few sounds now, murmurs, crossbow bolts clinking in their bags. She swung Beauty hard, and the horse reared. But twenty-five yards behind, two soldiers stood on the trail, with their crossbows raised. Noor soothed the horse and went forward again.

  Langley stood waiting. The soldiers, about twenty, took their swords out and moved past Langley and formed a circle around Noor and Beauty and the cart. The two with the crossbows joined them.

  Langley said “Toss your spear down.”

  She took the spear with her left hand and let it fall.

  “Now your sword.”

  She dropped the sword beside the spear.

  “Get down.”

  She swung her right leg forward and over Beauty’s back and sprang lightly to the ground. She said “You were down at Frost’s Bridge.”

  Langley said “Is that so?”

  “How come?”

  “She wants to know why we were down at her granddaddy’s bridge.” Langley smiled at his men. He looked at her again, and there was no smile. He stood three feet away, scratching at one scabrous cheek. He said, still quietly “Well Noor, what’s your guess? What do you think we were down there for?”

  “You’re never going to take it.”

  “You been in Town?”

  She did not answer.

  “You missed all the fun. Didn’t she, boys?”

  One of the soldiers, a squat, muscular fellow with a pale face that was bright in the dusk, said “Your men kilt Broadway. And your dogs kilt Jericho.”

  Noor glanced down. Langley had one foot on the spear. He bent and picked up the sword by the blade and handed it to the man who had spoken.

  Freeway, towering behind Langley, said in his throbbing bass. “And yous shot me in the ass.”

  Langley clenched his fists, appeared to deliberate, unclenched them, said evenly, without turning “Shut up.” He waited. Freeway was silent. Langley said to Noor “That goddamn Fundy and his crew tried to get his bridge back. Ain’t that somethin’!” His voice had risen. The whine was there. His eyes widened. He produced a choked chuckle. He shook his head. “It’s been a long day for these men, Noor. Killin’ all them fools. Runnin’ from the dogs. Gettin’ shot...”

  “In the ass.” It was Freeway.

  Again Langley seemed to grapple for self-control.

  One of the men said “Give her to us, Langley. For what they done. It’s only right.”

  Langley said “Does that sound fair, Noor? Sounds fair to me.”

  Noor said “Is Grampa all right?”

  “Grampa?” The word seemed to delight him. “Nice old Grampa. No, he’s not all right. He’s a fool like Fundy, and he’s going to end up like Fundy, takin’ that long swim in the river. We thought maybe he’d have all his dogs over on Fundy’s Bridge, but he’s got a few here on this one too, so we decided to call it a day. Hell of a day, right men?”

  The same man spoke again. “We deserve a treat, Langley. We worked hard. We got shot at. Let us have
her.”

  Another man said “For Broadway and Jericho.”

  Langley said “Yeah. Maybe. But what about me, you selfish bastards. Doesn’t Langley get a treat?” He reached and touched Noor’s cheek with a fingertip. The hand smelled like soap, like the Camay in the bag on the cart. She moved her head away. He slid the fingertip down over the swell of a breast. He said “That’s a nice vest. You been to see Robson? Robson’s going to find out a thing or two. Him and that Church Gang. He’s on my list. For some reason you people don’t understand what’s happenin’. Which is why I say you’re fools. Fools do learn, see, but they learn the hard way. The way Fundy learned.” He said to the soldier “My treat first. If I like it I keep it. If I don’t it’s all yours.”

  Someone said “You won’t like her, Langley. Look how ugly she is.” A couple of the men laughed.

  Langley ignored him. He said “Dogs. I guess I better get some dogs of my own. Then we can have a great big dog fight.” He leaned forward slightly toward Noor, lowered his voice as if to confide. “But did you know... Did you know I got my own dogs?”

  There was the smell of meat on his breath. Noor could see the shine of a droplet of blood where had gouged his cheek with a fingernail.

  The men looked at one another, puzzled.

  Without turning, with his face still near Noor’s, Langley said “Don’t I, Freeway?”