Since Tomorrow

by Morgan Nyberg

  Frost said “Someone put the poison in at the farm. Did Jessica cut up the rabbits?”

  Daniel Charlie said “Probably. Jessica didn’t do this, Frost.”

  “I know. Where was Granville going? Why did he take off like that?”

  Neither man had an answer.

  39

  She waits on the dike, sitting where the grass has been worn down. She is the only one waiting. She loosely holds the twine leash of a dog who lies with his chin resting on her bare foot. It is a warm afternoon in late spring, with some cloud. Perhaps the wind has shifted, for there is a tiny smell of new leaves, a smell like honey, and the only trees are far to the north on the slopes of the mountains.

  At the river’s edge the raftsman lies sprawled on his back on his raft. An arm is thrown over his eyes. He lifts the arm, waits, as if he is listening to the river through the timbers of the craft. He sits up, waits another minute, then stands and steps off the raft onto the bank. He walks to her up the slight incline. He is about her age. He has a knee-length kilt but wears no shirt and is tanned chestnut brown. His grey beard and hair are like a cloud that envelopes his upper body.

  The dog rises and stares at him.

  He says “You ready?”

  The woman stands.

  He says “We better talk about how you plan to pay.”

  “I brought spuds.” She lifts a large plastic bag from the ground beside her. It is less than a quarter full, for she lifts it easily.

  He smiles with a slight bitterness and shakes his head and says “I got too many spuds already. They’ll go rotten before I can eat them all. Do you got any tools?”

  “They took my tools when my dad died.”

  “Who took them?”

  “Neighbours. Friends.”

  “Your dog didn’t chase them off?”

  “He thought they had come to visit. He’s not very smart.”

  The dog stands looking up at the raftsman, wagging his tail.

  “He looks smart to me.”

  The man turns and walks down to his raft. The woman and her dog follow. At the edge of the water the man says “The tide is good now. We better go.”

  “Well, how am I going to pay?”

  He steps onto the raft. It bobs slightly. “I’ll take your dog.”

  She stops, steps back. “You can’t have my dog.”

  “Why not? What do you need a dog for? Where you headed?”

  “I’m going to Frost’s Farm.”

  “Frost? He already gots plenty of dogs. He don’t need another one.”

  “Well you can’t have my dog. There might be coyotes up ahead. Anyway, I can’t give him up. What do you need a dog for?” There is a kind of quaver in her voice, a sense of persistent unsureness.

  He spits into the water. “There are people who would like to smash my head in with a rock and dump me in the river and take over my business. They’ll think twice if I got a dog. Any coyotes come along, you can chuck them spuds at ’em.” He smiles.

  She walks away with the dog. She stops, waits, turns, comes back. “I can’t stay there anymore. I just can’t.”

  “What’s his name?”

  A pair of tears spill down her cheeks. “Shadow. His name’s Shadow.”

  At the far side the woman steps off the raft. In spite of the animal’s frantic barking she has not looked back. But now she does. The dog is sitting there tied to a bush at the top of the dike, watching, quiet at last.

  She says “Do you know the way?”

  “Just stay on the trail. You’ll see his bridge at the north arm. They live in a tall buildin’ that looks like it’s goin’ to fall over.”

  “They?”

  “Frost and his people. They’ll have room for you.”

  She walks through the afternoon beside the old highway. Although she is barefoot it is easy going on the delta soil. If there are any birds they are quiet. She hears only her own footsteps. Once she sees a man a few hundred yards away, working in his garden. There is a half-collapsed building that could once have been a church. Faintly she hears him singing.

  She sees nothing ahead but more of the same flat brushy landscape. The mountains seem no closer. Far off to her right the tips of the superstructure of Nobody’s Bridge catch the last of the day’s sun. The coyotes begin their yipping. She walks faster.

  The upper slopes of the mountains are still lit. Where fires have killed the forests the sunlight itself has an ashen hue. The light slides farther up the faces of the mountains, disappears, the dusk thickens. The coyotes are closer. They are keeping pace with her on either side. After a while they are silent, and the only sounds are her own soft footfalls and the tiny shrieks of nighthawks. But from time to time she catches some hint of movement, some wink of the twilight a hundred yards away between yellow broom blossoms. She is very tired, but she picks up her pace.

  She starts to see a few silhouettes of chimneys above the brush not far from the trail on either side, like the snapped-off trunks of dead trees. She passes a tall building on the east side of the trail. There is a flicker of light in a lower window. She looks back. There is nothing following her, no person, no animals, only the gathering darkness. Soon she stops and listens. She squats, twists, trying to see farther into the brush on either side. She gasps. Fifty yards away she sees the face of a coyote. It does not move, it just stares back, for it is merely an arrangement of branches and shadow. She walks again, faster.

  She sees the bridge a mile ahead. In light reflected from the river it seems brighter than it should be. There is a glow to it. She begins to run, not fast, pacing herself. She waits a minute, a minute-and-a-half, then looks over her shoulder. She sees a single coyote dodge off the trail.

  Now she makes out the domicile, a dark, uninviting mass, suddenly close. She hears the barking of a lot of dogs. She dares to run faster. When she looks back again she sees the pack of coyotes, five or six animals, trotting away from her, back along the trail the way she has come. She slows to a walk but continues to check behind her and into the brush as far as she can see. Her breathing becomes normal again.

  The path bends onto the old highway, and the going is rough for a ways. At the foot of the bridge she leaves the road at an old exit ramp, down which she continues until she reaches a place where the railing has been removed. There she turns down a path, past the fallen slab walls of some vast structure, across a space of trampled dirt, toward the tilted building, in which now can be made out a tiny glow in a few of the windows. The dogs come pouring around the corner of the building and surround her, roaring and snarling and showing their teeth. She stands, waits, careful not to look directly at any of them.

  When a man comes around the corner of the domicile the dogs stop barking but continue to growl. They stop growling and stand watching him when he starts singing in a voice that has its own doglike quality “In your Easter bonnet...” - he sees the woman, comes toward her - “...with all the frills upon it.” His path is not direct but involves several long curves. When he is close she sees that he holds a bottle, and that he has matted white hair. He sings again. “You’ll be the grandest lady in the....”

  She smells his hooch breath. She says “Is this Frost’s Farm?”

  “What, that son of a bitch! He don’t know shit. Hey, I bet you don’t even know what a bonnet is. What is it? See! Nobody knows shit but me.” He puts a hand on her arm, pushes her aside and continues on his way. She watches him go toward the bridge. Her jaw trembles as she tries not to cry. The dogs are more or less quiet, but wary. The man becomes indistinct in the dusk. The distant voice sings “The photographers will snap us....”

  Another man comes around the corner of the building. He is tall and young and broad-shouldered and holds a drawn sword in his hand. He says to the dogs “Settle down!”

  She says “Is this Frost’s Farm?”

  The man looks at her bag. “What’s in there?”

  “Potatoes.”

  “You brung potatoes to Frost’s Farm?”
He laughs briefly, then slides the sword under his twine belt. “I’m Airport. Are you hungry?”

  “Yes.”

  The apartment is very dim, lit only by a small fire. Airport fills a bowl and sets it and a spoon on the table. She sits on a chair made of two-by-fours but before she can begin eating, a tall young woman emerges from another room. The young woman nods to the newcomer. Then she goes to a hammock that is strung in front of the fireplace and sits facing the fire. She places her face in her hands and begins crying.

  The woman rises from the table and goes into the room the young woman has come out of. It is even darker than the first room. A tallow candle stuck to a flat stone gives off more smoke than light. A boy of about eight is lying on his back on a narrow mattress near the door. He is shirtless but wears sweatpants. His eyes are open, but he does not look at her as she enters.

  A man is kneeling beside the mattress, stroking the boy’s head. He looks up. He has glasses and his hair and beard are white and curly. It is hard to see the man’s eyes in the dimness. She leans down, holds her hand above the boy’s head. The man moves his own hand away. She lays hers on the boy’s forehead. She says “His fever is very high. We’ve got to bring it down.”

  The man says “I’m afraid. I’m so afraid.”

  “We’ve got to cool him off. Have you got cold water?”

  Behind her in the doorway she hears the voice of the young woman. “I’ll bring it. And I’ll bring some rags.”

  The woman says “Have you got any willow bark?”

  The man shakes his head.

  “Have you got a willow tree?”

  He studies her for a few seconds. He clears his throat. “One left. By the river.”

  “Cut three switches. We’ve got to boil the bark for him to drink.”

  There is a different voice behind her, Airport in the doorway now. “I know where it is. I’ll get them. Three?”

  “Three. Don’t take bark from the trunk. It’s bad for the tree.” She looks at the old man, says to him “He’ll be fine. You should stop worrying now. Are you his grandfather?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Grace.”

  40

  Wing sat on Daniel Charlie’s workbench, sharpening the edges of an arrowhead. He held the metal point by its wide base and pushed a file along one edge. Between each rasping stroke the rain could be heard falling on the flat roof of the workshop.

  Daniel Charlie stood before his vise, in which was clamped a cattail cane. At the top of the cane a stroke of glue gleamed slightly in the dim light of the shop. Very carefully he set a shaped triangle of brown chicken feather against the glue. A mound of identical feather shapes lay on the bench beside a pile of a few dozen finished arrows with both feathers and arrowheads. A similar pile had feathers but no tips. Daniel Charlie slacked off the vise, turned the cane, tightened the vise, pinched another piece of feather with his thick fingers.

  Frost sat on a low pile of concrete blocks with his back to the other two, so that the car door resting on his lap would not be in anybody’s way. He made a final cut with tin snips, and an arrowhead fell free. He set the snips down, picked up the metal triangle and, without looking, handed it over his shoulder to Wing. He flexed both hands. The knuckles and the backs of the fingers were crisscrossed with cuts.

  Daniel Charlie said flatly “What we need is two pairs of tin snips.”

  Neither Wing nor Frost replied or even indicated that they had heard.

  Wing slid the shaft of his sharpened arrowhead part way into the end of a cane, tapped the point against the bench to drive it the rest of the way in, laid the arrow on the bench with the other completed ones, and started sharpening the point he had just received from Frost.

  Daniel Charlie said “I’ll snip for a while. Frost, you can come and glue.”

  Frost stood, laid the snips on the seat of blocks, and turned to the others.

  Wing said “Jesus, Frost, your hands look like hamburger.”

  Daniel Charlie said “When’s the last time you saw hamburger, Wing?”

  “Recently, for your information. It was last night. In a dream. It looked just like Frost’s hands.”

  Daniel Charlie said “Just glue them at a bit of an angle. So’s the arrow will spin. That’s to....”

  “I know” said Frost, stretching his back. “So it will fly straight.”

  The men were still and silent for some time. There seemed to be an unseen weight in the gloom of the shop, against which each of them had to struggle. As if at a signal, they shook their heads wearily.

  Daniel Charlie said “I guess Granville done it.”

  Wing said “If he didn’t he wouldn’t of run off.”

  The men were silent. The rain whispered above them on the roof. There was a noise beyond the door. Wing slid off the bench. The men’s eyes widened. They turned to the door and reached for their swords, which none of them was wearing. A dog burst through the plastic curtain and trotted to Frost and reared up and put its front paws against his chest and licked desperately at his face. Its tail beat against Wing’s leg.

  Frost did not push the animal down. He lowered his chin for the dog to lick, while he thumped its sides with both hands. Will came through the door. He said “Down, King. You’re going to knock Grampa over.” At this, Frost did step back so that the dog had to get down.

  But King was still excited. He tried the same business with Daniel Charlie, who would not let him jump up. “Stay down, now” he said. “You’re a good dog. But stay down.”

  Finally King sat at Will’s feet. Will said “He doesn’t have any friends now but us.” Will looked small and frail and deeply sad.

  Frost sat again on the pile of blocks. He motioned to King and whispered “Come on.” The dog went and sat by Frost and laid his head in Frost’s lap. Frost held the dog’s ears and spoke to it, a long stream of nonsense endearments. It was a while before Frost could look up. He said to Will “We’ll get some more dogs.”

  Will went to his grandfather. King moved his head away so that Will could sit in Frost’s lap. Will put his thumb in his mouth and leaned his head against Frost’s shoulder. Frost held him and kissed his head.

  Will said “What’s going to happen, Grampa?”

  Daniel Charlie turned and clamped a new cane in his vise. Wing picked up the arrowhead he had been working on. He leaned back against the bench and examined the edges and started filing it again.

  Frost said “Well, good things are going to happen. We’re going to build a good world. We’re going to build a happy world. We’ve just got some things we have to fix first.”

  “Is there going to be a war?”

  Frost waited. Daniel Charlie looked toward him. Wing looked up from his filing. The rain fell steadily on the roof and pattered occasionally against the plastic that covered the door and the lightning-shaped crack and the window. King lay with his head on his front paws. He seemed not to like the silence. He gave a small whine.

  Frost said “Some kind of war, yes.”

  Will said “And it will be all right after that?”

  “Yes. Then things will be a lot better.”

  The scrape of the file resumed.

  Will said “Are you going to die in the war?”

  The filing stopped.

  Frost said “I’ve got to fight. I didn’t want to before, but I’ve got to. I’ll try not to die. But I will die sometime. I’m old. We’ve talked about that.”

  Slowly, with no expression, like a lost boy encountered in a dream, Will got off his grandfather’s lap. He stepped to the bench and picked up one of the finished arrows. He brought the tip close to his face. He turned the arrow, examining the sharpened and shining edges of the rusty metal. He moved his index finger slowly toward the point. He touched it. He jumped when King suddenly scrambled to his feet.

  For a second the dog stood there with his ears erect. Then he started barking furiously and shot out the door, blasting the plastic aside. Frost and Wing and Daniel Charlie
each grabbed a handful of the finished arrows. They snatched their bows, which were leaning in a corner. They ran from the workshop.

  Near the bank of the river, where the River Trail emerged from the shadow of the bridge, four figures were standing around a cart. Two of them held spears and had bows slung over their backs. King raced on, barking, until he reached the group, then stood silent and alert. Frost, Wing and Daniel Charlie slowed to a walk. Will followed at a distance. Frost gave a signal, and the two men with spears jogged away toward the ramp that led onto the bridge.

  The shafts of the two-wheeled cart rested on the ground. A woman stood beside it, staring toward the river. She was thin like her man and equally tall. Like the last time Frost had seen them, water dripped from their garments, their hair and the man’s beard.

  BC said “I brung them two things you wanted.” His voice was weak and rough and slurred. He held an edge of the cart with one hand, near where a small black plastic bag hung from a nail. He weaved a little.

  Frost and Wing traded glances. Frost slung his bow over his back and stepped past BC and looked in the cart. There was a thick rusted metal disk a yard across, with gear teeth around the edge. And there was an object the size of a cantaloupe, in an aluminum housing. With his free hand Frost lifted this from the cart. Then he nodded to Wing and Daniel Charlie. The two men slung their bows and laid their arrows on the ground. They hoisted the shafts until the flywheel slid off the back of the cart and thudded on the sodden soil. BC did not let go of the side of the cart, so that his arm went up, then down, like a barricade at a level crossing of the old railway near which they stood.