“Hey now, hey,” he said. “This isn’t a robbery, is it? This about that notice maybe? I—ha ha—was just reading that.”
He crouched naked on the other side of the bathtub. Humiliating. “You going to say anything first?” Martin tried to reach his arm around the tub. “Sir? About that notice. I was hoping—Fred!” He was going to have a few things to say to Fred, that was for sure. His heart thumped in his chest, a bass line of a rap song in a cheap car. “Tell me your name. Who you’re with at the very least.” He took inventory of the places he could hide behind in his basement, the man-hole, as he called it. There was a pool table, the bath, a bunch of couches. He had done some work on a dude’s skull with a pool cue once, but that was a ways back. “Say something!” he yelled and felt like weeping and pissing all at once.
Then the ninja-fucker leapt in front of him and Martin’s head whipped back and hit the concrete.
When he woke they were dragging him up the stairs, and he had a headache to end all motherfucking headaches. One eye was all worked over. Through it he could see nothing. Through the other the world was a hazy film. They’d put a plastic bag over his head! The ninja shot him in the head and he wasn’t dead. It was a miracle. The bag was to keep blood from getting all over the place, he thought, which in the back of his mind he was appreciative of. Professionals.
The good eye began to go dark and he struggled to get a hold of himself. Come on, Marty. Outside it was night and they were talking about him.
“Rose City?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“He’s naked.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to dress him. He was in a bath.”
“A water bath?”
“What else is there?”
“Son of a bitch.”
They loaded him into the back of some kind of bicycle-pulled contraption and began to pile stuff over the top of him and he tried to call out. Rose City was a cemetery. No way he was going there, but as he struggled to keep his remaining eye from going dark, he began to feel a hunger for sleep.
“Where next?”
“Twelfth and Prescott.”
“Oh man.”
“We’re nearly done.”
The other eye wouldn’t stay open now. Maybe Fred had let them in. He wished he could tell his cousin it was alright. He understood. Fred could take some of their reserves and do OK for himself. He wasn’t going to need the reading glasses back.
“You get the other one?”
“You mean Fred?”
“Ha ha, the dude was screaming for a dead man the whole time.”
A few days after Renee’s one night visit, and after spending the morning packing and then changing his mind, hanging out in various doorways in a state of pre-nostalgia for the building he’d not yet left, Zach put on his backpack, swung his leg over his bike, and started pedaling north.
In the end, it wasn’t a big deal. Several blocks were burnt utterly to the ground and the air was filled with a choking soot, but there was no human threat. On other blocks the residents ignored him—they sat on their porches or carried water rations back in protective groups or wheeled along, possessions piled high in shopping carts.
At the border he approached an outhouse-like structure and was hailed by a large black man dressed in green with MM’s insignia on his shirt: a bow and a unit gallon.
“What’s your business in the Northeast?” the man asked.
“Ah,” Zach said and tried to figure out how to say he was the boyfriend. “Do I have to tell you?”
“If you don’t live here, you need to be issued a permit.” The guard took out a piece of paper and Zach saw that the heading read Temporary Visiting Permit.
“On whose law?”
“Sherwood law,” the guard said with obvious boredom. The guard’s gaze wandered up the street and as he prepared to ignore the ignorant city peon.
Zach nodded. “And you work for Maid Marian?”
The Green Ranger looked briefly uncomfortable. “Of course.”
“It’s hard to get a regime off the ground,” Zach said. “You’re doing good work, I’m sure.”
“Do you want a permit or not?”
“I have a friend I’m visiting.”
“Location? If you don’t have the exact number, I can retrieve it for you.” The guard gestured up the block where Zach could make out another ranger dressed in green. “Visitors have to have sponsors within the country. We’ll send a message to your sponsor.”
“She’s on Going Street near Fifty-Second.”
The Ranger frowned at him. “Your friend doesn’t live there any more. That section is closed. No one lives there. Your city ID please and the name of the friend.”
Zach handed over his ID card and made up a name for the friend. The Ranger wrote them both down. “Come back tomorrow. I’ll have the location of this person if they’re still in the territory and confirm that she’s willing to sponsor you.”
“So I can’t get in?”
“No.”
“Is there anything I could do to get in?”
“No.”
He wondered why the hell he’d made the journey up here in the first place. He looked back the way he’d come and desperately didn’t want to return. He rode away in disgust—across the street and up a ways and pondered the territory. He passed a city police car going the other way along the border. He imagined they were always there, waiting and watching to see what this new entity would do next.
On a block with no guardhouse he rode up a bank, climbed a short fence into a backyard and pulled his bike after him, and then he was in Sherwood. He found his way to an alley and skirted round the Green Ranger who watched the intersection.
Above him the sky was gray with clouds and all at once a pattering of rain came down, moistening his head and arms as he pedaled, and he stopped momentarily to look up. It was a tease, as it always was. It would not stay or last. The dots on the street quickly dissipated. But nevertheless, he took it as an auspicious sign, and proceeded with hope.
He rode hard toward Cully neighborhood and saw that things were buzzing. There were people dressed in green outfits everywhere—whether they were employed by Sherwood, some volunteer force, or simply in solidarity with, he couldn’t tell. People were out on their porches, removing trash from their homes, talking with neighbors as if no riots had taken place. About a third of the houses were in a state of permanent garage sale, with items laid out on their dry front yards. Everywhere he looked people were packing things—bundles on their backs, loads in bike trailers, duffel bags over shoulders—he couldn’t imagine where they were all going. Perhaps this was simply the sign of a makeshift, functioning economy he thought. Trade and barter and the occasional sale.
At Nineteenth and Alberta he noticed that he was being followed by two women on bikes. He accelerated, and the moment he did they went into chase and rapidly caught him, pulling alongside.
“Stop,” a woman said.
Zach pulled his bike alongside a curb and feigned indignation.
“You snuck in. What’s your business in the Northeast?”
“I did not,” Zach said.
“Don’t even try,” the other woman said, wagging her finger at him. “You’re the third dude today. It’s such a hassle when you deny it.”
“I’m going to visit a friend.”
“But you were told to wait.”
Zach shook his head and wondered at how he’d been caught and how word had traveled about him already. They didn’t seem to be employing any kind of communication device.
“You work for the city,” the other, a heavy-set, blond-haired woman said. Her hands bore word-tattoos—Fire on the left, Ice on the right. The two women shared a striking resemblance and Zach spooked at the thought of the law being e
nforced by a great army of tattooed twins. He realized he was answering too slowly.
“Spy,” one said and the other nodded. “OK, you’re coming with us. Come on, back on the bike.”
Zach biked toward the Cully neighborhood escorted by his twin enforcers, relieved that they didn’t simply toss him back over the border but alarmed at being deemed a spy.
They took Zach to a house he remembered, a behemoth of a craftsman, as if it were built for a race of people of greater height and girth, and he saw how it had morphed into fulfilling the needs of a government building. In a backyard the size of a small schoolyard field there were construction projects on one end and troops—the fabled Green Rangers, he assumed—being run through drills on the other. They stepped into the house and into a waiting area, walled off from the rest of the house with seats containing several anxious looking individuals. Perhaps they were waiting for her audience, he thought, or job interviews, or criminals awaiting punishment.
One of the women steered him in, her hand firm on his shoulder. They went into a back room where an older black woman with a tall maroon hat was seated behind a desk.
“What’s your business in Sherwood?” the woman said without looking up.
“This one snuck in.” The girl had his shoulder like a dog bite. “He’s a spy.”
“Mm.”
Zach told them he was here to see Maid Marian, and that she was expecting him.
The woman with the maroon hat squinched up her eyes at him. “I’ve heard that one today already.”
“He works for the city,” the biker with fire tattooed on her hand said.
Zach told her Maid Marian’s real name, and said she would know him.
An older black man dressed in a black sweater and blue jeans appeared in a doorway at the back of the room that Zach hadn’t seen. In his right hand he wielded the bowl-end of a smoking pipe. He eyed Zach with cold authority.
“I’ll take this one, bring him back.”
They followed into the back room where the man seated himself behind a great desk. He wore a black baseball cap and the Maid Marian emblem was safety-pinned to the front. He was in his sixties, and from the moment Zach entered the room until he was seated in front of him, the man locked eyes with him. There was a professorial air about him and, from the way the escorting Ranger treated him, Zach knew he was in front of someone important. He sat and waited for the man to talk but he said nothing for a few moments. Zach fidgeted.
“You work for the city?” the man said.
Zach felt flustered and his face reddened. “How do you all know that? I work—worked—for an ad agency—we did work for the city sometimes.”
“You crossed the border without permission. What are you here to find out?” Zach didn’t know how to answer and so they said nothing. “We are specifically looking for someone to make an example of to send a message to the city. Are you that person?”
“No, sir,” Zach said hopelessly, his mind gone startlingly blank.
“This would be an appropriate time to explain why you’re here, then.”
Zach glanced at his woman captor, hanging back to see what their captain would order them to do with their prisoner. “I’m in a relationship with Maid Marian,” he said, and after no one made a response he felt like he ought to clarify. “I’m Maid Marian’s boyfriend,” he said, and it came out meek and uncertain. He wasn’t sure he knew this woman who had closed off the borders and flooded the streets with a green army. Any longer, “boyfriend” seemed such a small, pedestrian word. Unfit for a warlord. A warlord had a wife, or wives. He glanced again at his captors, who were at full attention now, surprised at this new, dubious news. Or perhaps she’s not here at all, he thought, this is just some great coverup, and it’s this man who’s in charge.
“Maid Marian?” the man said, one eyebrow raised and ready to crush the absurdity of the claim. He tapped the desktop with his pipe.
“I mean Renee,” Zach said.
The gentleman pointed his pipe at him like a pistol. “Prove it,” he said, and then turned to his Rangers and made a gesture. The two soldiers left and before Zach had formulated a proper reply they returned with a small wooden table and two chairs. Then a teapot and two cups were brought. The older man rose from his desk and sat with him.
Tea was poured and Zach felt disoriented, but grateful to be momentarily relieved of the glare of the man’s eyes. He fought the impulse to grab the tiny cup and down it in one gulp, a desire to quench the thirst that disabled all mannerly sipping. He sampled the tea and found it some kind of green. That was fitting, he thought, the tea, the uniform. Diuretics were heavily discouraged by the city and common sense—the man seemed to be indicating to him he was above these concerns.
“I don’t know how to prove it,” he said. “She worked at a cafe close to my house in the Southeast. I went every day for many months.” He gulped another swallow of tea. “I’m not particularly forward.”
He saw the man pull his chair close in, lean in so that he could speak in a quiet voice, the skepticism turning suddenly to curiosity and—perhaps—disappointment. So this is her boyfriend after all, Zach imagined him thinking, no great warrior but a bespectacled, uncertain fellow, with a slight stoop, shaved head, and arms that seemed extra long.
“After a while I asked her out and—and, and she laughed.” The amazonian warriors who’d brought him in chuckled appreciatively at this, and he noticed that they had leaned in to listen too. “One night I was in the cafe at closing. She locked the door while I was still in there. I was the only person in there. She pulled a bottle of wine from behind the counter and she took pulls from it. She sat down at my table.” Zach couldn’t help but smile at the memory, feeling proud and lucky and singled out. “She slugged me on the shoulder and said, ‘where are we going, old man?’” Zach remembered how he’d treasured that phrase, how it had made it into their lexicon, the intimacy of “old man,” as if they’d been married for years.
His interrogator nodded and looked up at each of the Rangers in the room with him for confirmation. “Sounds like her.” He held his hand out and they shook. “I’m Gregor, formerly of the Woodlawn neighborhood, and general of the Green Rangers.”
“OK, nice to meet you,” Zach said and took the man’s hand, the adrenalin still a skin-prickling fear in him.
“You suppose Maid Marian will still think you’re her boyfriend? Or is this stalking?”
“Well, I think she thinks I am,” Zach said and looked at each of them helplessly. So much had changed in so short of a time. “She told me she had a job for me.”
Gregor nodded at one of his soldiers and she left.
Zach finished off his tea and stared at the tabletop. He’d like to ask him about the Green Rangers and riots and governing and water distribution, but after you have just narrated in some detail your inadequate courtship skills and as you wait for your prospective girlfriend to show up and claim—or not claim—you like a soiled scarf from the lost and found—well. Zach felt it a bit of a challenge formulating a question that wouldn’t bubble out like some anxious gas and float in the air between them.
“It’s going well,” Gregor said, answering Zach’s unasked question. “Touch and go, I suppose. We’re calling this Faith Week. We’re working on borrowed confidence from the citizens.” Gregor put a weight of seriousness behind each word, so that one felt comforted by the inherent veracity of what he was saying. “What are your skills, Zach?”
Zach looked Gregor in the eyes and realized the implication. Any boyfriend of Maid Marian was a public figure, or else ought to stay in the shadows.
“I’m not sure,” Zach said.
“He’s my strategist.”
Zach and Gregor looked up to see Renee in the doorway. Zach stood. She was dressed in green too, and the emblem of Sherwood was embroidered over her heart
. They must have a team of full-time embroiderers and uniform-makers, he thought. Her braids flowed out from under a boxy baseball cap that said “Magnetic.”
“Tea time with Gregor, eh? We drink a lot of fucking tea around here.”
“Says he knows you,” Gregor said.
“Yeah,” Renee said. “Come on, Zach. I want to show you the map room.”
Gregor offered his hand to Zach again. “That’s a lot of clearance, boyfriend.” There was a warmness, and a warning, in the phrase.
Zach turned to follow Renee.
“If you want to put on a uniform—” Gregor said.
Renee shook her head. “No, he doesn’t. Come on, Zach.”
Halfway up the second flight of stairs Renee turned and embraced him. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “We’re barely keeping it together. People are dead.”
“I’m sorry,” Zach said, not knowing what else to say and feeling the joiner’s angst well up in him. Every cause he could ever remember being a part of had failed. He returned the hug until she released him.
Sherwood Nation: a novel Page 25
