Now she was free of that.
When Aunt Jenny fetched her from the closet in the morning, she dragged Martha to a tiny room with a disconnected bathtub. Tepid water still stood from probably two or three others' baths. Martha didn't relish wallowing in scummy water, or that dampness after washing. They hadn't made her wash but once a week at the camp.
"Wash your hair, too," Jenny said, closing the door.
She obeyed out of habit. Halfway through her bath, someone tossed in a shirt and pair of pants for her, which were slightly large when she dressed. Outside the room, Switzer sat on the floor, apparently waiting for her. "Hungry?" he asked.
Martha knew that her face changed with the suggestion of food. Switzer led the way back to the kitchen. Six or seven people crowded the room, fixing their breakfasts, washing up, or passing through and chatting.
Switzer motioned for her to sit. Taking the edge of the bench at the table, she noticed the lull in the conversation. A boy stared at her, but the weak-chinned man resumed eating, and the woman stared out of the window. Switzer returned with two bowls of white mealy soup and a chunk of bread. He tore the bread, gave her half, and began to eat rapidly.
As she began to spoon in the cereal, the man glanced toward her with a studied casualness, as if curious about the table manners of her kind.
She didn't waste time on manners.
As she stuffed the last of the bread in her mouth, Switzer said, "Let's go."
"Go?"
"C'mon." He strode across the room. In the entry hall, he put on a coat and knitted cap; his fair hair stuck out around his collar. He wrapped his throat with a cloth sack. Martha found her own coat on a peg.
"Where are we going?" she asked as they walked away from the house. The day was clear but for a few grey clouds in the south, but the sunlight was dulled by a persistent chill breeze.
"Scavenging," he said. He looked at her sidelong. "You've gone scavenging, haven't you? Yesterday I brought home a whole door." He sensed Martha's skepticism and touched the bag around his neck. "I chopped it up first, of course." And then he opened his coat and showed her a small axe hanging in the lining of the coat.
They walked without conversation for a long while. All the uninhabited houses she saw had been plundered. Inedible and non-fuel trash hugged chain-link fences. Ahead was the tall yellow tower she'd often seen in the distance.
"This used to be the University," Switzer said.
They passed into an open area which was crowded with hand-built shacks.
"There used to be trees everywhere," he continued. "I've seen pictures of this place where all this was green grass except for the walkways, and there were trees.…"
Martha had seen an area covered with trees outside of Smithville once.
"Maybe it will warm up before we have to ruin everything." Switzer said.
"Warm up?" Martha said. "Hah."
"It might." Switzer slowed down. "I've read that this is a temporary thing, not an actual climatic change. An aberration because of those three volcanoes and a fluctuation in the sun. If it goes on for another twenty years or so, then it might really be a permanent change, but it could warm up." He was straightforward, not fanatical like the Christians; Martha could see that it meant a lot to him.
But she didn't understand what he was saying. "Oh," she said, and squinted.
He smiled vaguely, as if knowing that she didn't follow.
"I don't know any different from now or the good times, anyway," she said. "My daddy told me a little about how it used to be, though. It just sounded like stuff he made up. You know how they talk."
"We'd be happier."
They were walking through the shacks. Martha saw faces listlessly watching from windows that had once been in automobiles. Even inside the scrap metal and cardboard huts with makeshift stovepipes, the occupants' breath condensed in little puffs. Only a few moved around outside their shanties, hands and feet and heads wrapped in rags, nostrils frosty. Martha thought they looked dulled somehow. She'd seen more people inside the city who looked like they belonged in the Other Yard at the camp than she imagined possible.
Even Switzer was subdued as they quietly walked the edge of the village-within-a-city. He glanced uneasily over his shoulder as two, then three men trailed them as they moved toward the street. Martha flinched when Switzer took her arm, but he held on.
"It's slippery here," he said, indicating the steps ahead. Martha figured that was an excuse.
When they had descended, Switzer walked at a faster pace. Martha saw that those who'd been following stood like sentries at the edge of what used to be the campus
"I thought you should know this place," he said. "And now you know where not to go."
Martha shrugged. "What would they do to me?"
He didn't answer.
They walked for a long time. Martha's feet began to grow numb and she had chills between her shoulder blades from the wind. The buildings around them were taller and closer to the street as they moved forward. Fractured glass, abandoned brick and concrete—she realized that was the insides of the city she'd only viewed from afar—not the spun-sugar she used to imagine.
"Pigeons," Switzer said, pointing to the roof of a three-story building. "Right in my favorite place, too." He took a slingshot out of his pocket. Martha wondered how many weapons and tools he carried. They scrounged the ground for chunks of concrete and rocks, or chips of metal.
He let loose with a rock. A burst of pigeons came outward in a wave. He loaded and reloaded with dexterity but out of the ten or so birds only one dropped. They both ran to retrieve it from the middle of the street.
Martha saw that the bird still fluttered and twisted its neck. "Let me," she said, holding her hand out for the slingshot.
Switzer handed it over. She looked up at the ridge just below the roof where the pigeons were settling again. The sky was a flat grey now, the clouds having moved in partway over the city, but it was still bright enough to make her squint. Switzer flushed them again, then she shot with the same speed he had, only this time three pigeons dropped.
"Damn lot of birds here," she said simply, as they walked toward the kill.
"You do all right," he said with admiration.
"I've had to." She remembered her father's coaching—"Right here," he had said, tapping his temple, "hard as you can."
"At the camp?"
"Yeah." She handed him one of her birds so that they each carried two. "They took care of us so that we could hunt, farm and chop wood for 'em. They've got one of those greenhouses the government gives out to folks they like."
"Why did you leave the camp?"
Martha shrugged. "Just seemed like the right time."
"Were they mean to you?"
Martha looked at the sky. A bleak day altogether. The only vivid color was the pink weather-pinch in Switzer's cheeks. "I don't know … naw. They just didn't pay much attention unless you got out of the line."
"Did you?" he asked, smiling conspiratorially.
"Sometimes."
Martha had been standing in the short-season garden with three others when old Randall fell. He'd had attacks before, but they'd been mild and a few days of resting had usually put him back on his feet
This time he pitched face forward into the mud, scattering the basket of asparagus he'd gathered at the fence's edge. The four of them watched, and each of them knew the thoughts of the others without so much as an exchange of words or glances.
They waited.
Summer, Martha remembered, and the sky was cloudy without thunderheads, threatening only to blow over without rain. A mockingbird made a sound like a dry wooden wheel squeaking. Martha stood, not even waving away the gnats.
Old Randall made no move.
At first they walked calmly, then more rapidly toward the fallen man. The dry grass shushed under their bare feet as they ran.
No one ever found the bones of old Randall. God moved Brother Guy to leave twenty children without food (only tw
o of whom had the memory of fat sizzling on the fire and a full stomach) just in case they'd forgotten that they lived in His mercy.
They swung their pigeons in tandem as they wandered the city. Switzer talked about things that she couldn't really understand. Like trying to imagine the shape of the city if she'd only seen the ruins they'd passed through, she couldn't follow his words.
"We're driven to excesses," he said. "If we have food, we eat it until it's gone. If there's more than we can eat at once, we eat until we're sick, and go back for the rest before we're hungry. If we have enough fuel, we burn it until we're hot, even if the next day we have to be cold again. People are stupid and greedy when they're hungry and cold. If the government hadn't deserted us, they would try to fix things. But everyone with money and power moved to the equator. We've been deserted. After the Tropical War, they took all the people who could help away from the situation, and now they've forgotten."
"What about the governor?" Martha asked, trying to take part.
"Oh, he's greedy, too," Switzer said with disgust.
As they crawled through empty structures, overturned heaps of trash, opened cans and boxes and wrecked cars, he talked about scientific farming in cold weather, building places to live in space, and the lack of research in fission, solar power, and other energy sources.
"They were working on all those things before the weather changed. But it was all so halfhearted because they never really believed we would need it. By the time we did, everything was too ruined to make any constructive moves. My parents owned a company that designed solar homes."
Martha wondered if his parents lived at the house, and what "solar homes" were, but didn't ask.
He was quiet as they headed back. The kind of quiet that sounded like he was trying to think of something to say. Finally, he asked, "Can I sleep with you tonight?"
"I guess so," Martha said. "But …"
"I'll fix the bell. Don't like it anyway."
The longer she was with him, the more peculiar he seemed, but she thought it would be nice to have someone to play with anyway.
Jenny greeted them at the door when they arrived just after dark. She stared at Switzer a long time, then rifled through their bag and nodded at the pigeons with approval.
"Martha got most of them."
"Maybe she'll earn her keep then," Jenny said.
It hadn't been such a good day for the others. For dinner they each ate a few spoonfuls of pigeon and potato in a paste of water, flour, and lard. Martha ate the sparse amount, hoping there would be seconds. There were none. She scarcely spoke a word, but conversation was limited to general comments about the events of the day or the assignment of chores. Martha noticed for the first time that even though her Aunt Jenny said little, most of the conversation was addressed to her, or in her direction, or with an eye for her approval or amusement. It had been exactly the same with Brother Guy at the camp.
Jenny was the head of the house, no doubt.
Martha didn't like her. Simply, without wondering why, she didn't like Jenny's silent appraisal of all that occurred around her. She didn't like the way she held her fork, or tilted her head and half-closed her eyes when someone asked her a direct question. Even the clothes she wore were crisp and characterless. Jenny was neither relaxed nor tense, neither cheerful nor irritable. She was obscure and remote. Martha didn't think of people in intimate enough ways to realize it was this obscurity that bothered her, she only felt that Jenny didn't care for her. In return she didn't like Jenny and that was that.
Switzer was as quiet as herself through the meal. Guessing his anticipation for the night, she smiled a few times.
Jenny gave her choices for evening entertainment: she could read in one of the upstairs bedrooms until it was time for the children to go to sleep, or play cards in the living room, or just chat in the kitchen and dining room. Martha heard mention of a fiddle, but heard no music that evening.
She wanted to play cards when she heard there would be a game. Not since she'd lived with her father had she played. Switzer mumbled something about reading and left the room with a disappointed look on his face.
"Here you go, little Martha," said one of the grandads, indicating a chair for her. Martha would have felt friendly towards him, but she saw his quick glance at her aunt and felt the politics of the situation. She sat down. One of the other players was Darren, the man who'd spoken against her the night before.
They played rummy for a few rounds without much talk. Martha did all right, but it was obvious that the others played just about every night. She got bored with losing and stood.
"Where are you going?" one woman asked, alarmed. She'd been sitting in a nearby chair the whole time, chatting with the players while she sewed rags together.
Martha just stared at her.
"Where are you going?" the woman repeated in a higher voice.
"I don't know."
"You just sit back down then," Darren said.
"Honey, go get Jenny," the woman said.
They all stared at Martha. Martha stared back. At first, she meant to hold Darren's gaze without flinching, knowing that a straight look was the best way to deal with anger. But something wavered within her and she began to study his throat, his meaty forearm and measured the breadth of his shoulders.
"Jenny!" he shouted. "Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked Martha, eyes narrowed.
Martha turned away from him. When Jenny came into the room, each oriented toward her. "What's going on here?'
"Are you going to let her wander around loose?"
Jenny sighed. "Come with me." She took Martha into the dining room and guided her to a straight-backed chair. "Sit here and just keep away from Patricia and Darren." And then she was gone again.
Martha watched the children play with jacks and miniature houses built from welded tin cans. They begged attention from adults and older children. The elderly women sat together, as if they could only find interest in each other, occasionally patting a child. The room smelled of damp diapers and old, flaking skin. The women chattered about the people they used to know.
Martha sighed and wiggled in her chair.
"So you're Harry's?" one of the grannies said, noticing Martha's presence.
Martha nodded.
"You look a lot like him, yes," she said. "But last time I saw him, he was so changed, you know. It was the first time in …" She calculated. "… eighteen years.'
Martha had not dared speak about her daddy. But she found her restlessness disappearing as she leaned toward the granny. "When did you see him?"
"Oh, it was just last summer. I remember because I was thinking the weather wouldn't be too bad for him at first."
"Weather?"
"At that prison. In Dakota." She lowered her voice and peered around the room as if she were about to tell Martha every confidence she'd stored up for several years. "I think myself that people eatin' people ain't so bad—maybe killin' 'em is. We tried to tell 'em years ago that there were too many people, and that things were going to be bad one way or another. They thought we were just anti-Establishment, you know? Well, we didn't know that the weather—"
"Then he's not dead?"
"Last I heard he was alive. I used to know him a long time ago. I was a friend of Jenny and Harry's father a long time ago." The granny smiled.
"Jenny told me he was dead," Martha said slowly. It was easy for her to believe it had been a lie.
"Oh, I don't think so," the granny replied helpfully. "She probably didn't want you running off after him. He talked about you a lot."
"Sharon," said the other old woman.
The granny continued in a cheerful way. "Jenny just knows that you can't go see him. These days family doesn't count for much. It never used to, I thought, but it's even worse now. Why, half the folks that live here don't know if their relatives are dead or alive, and most of 'em probably don't care. Just another mouth, another bed. They'd take a stranger sooner, if he was useful. When I w
as young, we all believed in love and peace and helping each other.…"
"Sharon," said the other again, resting her bony hands on the sagging flesh of her companion's arm. "These people here, they're like rats. You can't turn your back on any of 'em, and they're still better than some. Remember that."
"Watch me, Sharon and Candy!" shouted one of the children. "Watch me!"
Just as the conversation had involved her, it left her again. Martha began to shiver. She turned her head slowly, gazing intently, as if to see through the walls of the house the bell that imprisoned her.
She stirred, hearing a muffled tap at her door. It was an inadvertent sound, followed by more movement brushing against her door. Then the bolt-lock slid.
"It's me." Switzer's voice.
Martha sat up and drew her knees to her chest. He crawled onto the mattress and pulled the door closed quietly. "Waring may have heard me. I couldn't tell if he woke up." He spoke softly and put his fingers on her thigh. "I brought something."
She couldn't see him in the darkness, but sensed that he reached within his shirt. She felt something smooth and hard on her arm. "What is it?"
"An apple. We can share it. I could only get one this time."
She took a couple of eager bites and realized that she had eaten her half already. Reluctantly, she passed it over. Her mouth felt rough and dry from its tartness.
"What did you do to the bell?" she asked.
"I tied the clapper with cloth." He searched for her hand with his. Finding it, he put the apple core in her palm. Martha ate it. He rubbed small circles on her thigh.
She pulled her shirt off over her head, elbows knocking against the boxes around her. "Hey, Switzer."
"What?" It sounded as though he were undressing, too.
"Did you know that my daddy was sent to Dakota?"
"Yes."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Sci Fiction Classics Volume 1 Page 25
