Cottonwood

by R. Lee Smith

  “Nice party,” Sam said again, cheerfully. “Where did you go? You missed all the fun when—”

  Sanford punched him right in the soft plates between the eyes. Not a killing blow, not even by half, but enough to make himself felt, by God.

  “What the fuck was that for?” Sam bellowed, grabbing at his face.

  “That you can joke of cooking us while standing here in front of Baccus’s house!” Sanford spat, and little T’aki came up shrilling, “Her father died in a fire!”

  Sam froze, hands still raised, but motionless. He looked back at the blackened shell of Baccus’s home, then at Sanford. “I didn’t know that,” he said awkwardly.

  T’aki skreed, palps fully extending and rattling, furious in his small and earnest way. Sanford snatched him up and thumped him down inside their home, then swung on Sam again, shouting, “Did it ever occur to you that she risked her life to feed you, even you? Don’t you ever get tired of pissing on people? Zhu’kwe!”

  He stalked into his house, banging the door on Sam’s silent, staring face. He picked up a broken audio-speaker, threw it down again with a curse, and then sat, staring at the empty chair where Sarah liked to sit.

  * * *

  She knocked on doors all morning, looking for her clients, seeing burns and broken walls, trying to find out who’d been killed. Most of them weren’t home and while this was nothing new, in the wake of Samaritan’s words, their absence took on such sinister implications that when the first door did open on someone she knew, she burst into hysterical tears. Jules Verne immediately shelved his usual sneer of greeting and pulled her inside and, in some consternation as to how to take control of the situation, poured a glass of water over her head. It worked.

  “Oh for fuck’s sake!” he snapped, when she was halfway through her fourth babbling effort to explain herself. “No one died! Who told you someone died? We just got shot at, that’s all. I think a few people got their shells cracked and U’iqa’pta lost half his arm, but—oh what the fuck, woman?! It’ll grow back when he molts!” And he threw more water on her.

  Eventually, he went outside, where she heard him sending out some of those high, buzzing calls, which were distantly and not-too distantly returned. When he came stomping back, he pinched her arm between two disgusted fingers and dragged her to the Heaps, where he turned her over without a word to Mr. John Byrnes.

  He listened without too much obvious impatience as he stood there streaked in hot garbage-slime, covered his eyes once and rubbed his throat twice, and finally muttered, “Ko’vi the father, give me strength.” Then he looked at her. “No one’s dead,” he said.

  “But—”

  “We haven’t found any bodies and I know they didn’t take anyone away. They never even got out of the vans. They had their fun and they left. Sanford took his kid into hiding, but he’ll be back, if that’s what’s working you over.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to say she knew they were safe at least, but she didn’t want to have to tell him how she knew—that she’d saved two people, left all the rest to get shot. She dropped her eyes, stared hollowly and with shame at his cracked, filthy feet, and said, “People got shot. People’s houses got burnt.”

  He made one of those ear-splitting snapping sounds. “You can’t do this every time they hurt someone,” he said. “Get yourself together.” He raised his hand, buzzing and clicking. Someone passed him an old thermos full of water. He gave it to her. “Drink this. I swear to your God and mine I will smack you if you say you can’t.”

  She took it meekly and looked around. Hundreds of yang’ti kept working, sorting their recycled junk, cleaning up their treasures, standing in line, just relaxing. None of them appeared to take any notice of her at all, any more than they appeared to see the half-dozen IBI soldiers standing around with guns, but as she drank her warm, stale water, she realized they were looking at her. Not all of them, but a lot, and not just the ones she called her clients.

  “You all right?” Byrnes asked impatiently.

  She nodded.

  He clicked, staring at her and sometimes scanning the crowds that choked the marketplace surrounding the Heaps, and finally said, “Okay, I’m going to say this one time and you’re going to shut up and swallow it: People die here. That doesn’t mean the rest of us stop living. We get to have good days between the bad ones. We get that. You—” His blunt, alien finger thumped down on the top of her burning head. “—get that. Hear me?”

  She nodded and forced down a little more water. When the thermos was empty, he took it back and dragged her over to the shade of a used clothing stall. He sat her down without asking her and stood over her, glaring and clicking to himself.

  “You going to get in trouble over last night?” he asked at last.

  “Probably,” she said glumly.

  He snapped his palps and stared over his shoulder at the crowds. “You got a list of the people you’re missing for that stupid census thing?”

  She looked up, startled. “Um, yeah, I think so,” she said, pulling her briefcase onto her lap. She hardly had the paper in her hand before he took it away from her and stalked off.

  Sarah wasn’t exactly surprised when her Mr. Fletcher came out of the crowds several minutes later to make his report, but it didn’t make her feel the way she’d once thought it would. Mr. Woodrow and Mr. Kurtz were waiting before he was done, and by the time she’d finished with them, there was a line. They didn’t stay to chat. She didn’t expect them to. There were only so many hours in the day and they needed their food chits, but they didn’t swear at her or even at the intrusiveness of the questions. Mr. Gordon waved at her before he walked away; Mr. Wells gave her an awkward sort of tap on the knee.

  She was done before noon. Done. This stupid list she’d fought and stumbled over for two months, and what was IBI going to do with it except use it to find more effective ways to run their little prison? Sarah sat in the shade in the middle of the noisy market and felt like crying.

  “Stop that.”

  She wiped her dry eyes guiltily and snapped her briefcase shut, then looked up into the sun with Mr. Byrnes standing black and faceless in front of it. He handed her the list of clients and said, “Sanford’s back. He and the kid are fine.”

  She nodded and said nothing.

  Mr. Byrnes turned around and took a few steps towards the Heaps, paused, and then came back. “Twenty years from now,” he said brusquely, staring straight ahead, “no one is going to remember how that party ended. But everyone’s going to remember it happened.”

  “It was a stupid thing to do,” whispered Sarah.

  “Yeah, it was. You did it anyway.” He walked away and disappeared into the mountains and valleys of garbage.

  Sarah stared after him for a long time, then got up and headed back down the hard-baked road to her van. She’d left it parked in front of Verne’s railroad car with the door wide open and the keys in the ignition. Someone had left a dented can of ginger ale in the driver’s seat, where it had baked all afternoon in the Kansas summer heat. She picked it up, thinking to put it down in the road for whoever wanted it, needed it, and then went ahead and opened it. She took a hot, unpleasant swallow and climbed in behind the wheel. A few people waved at her as she drove to the gate. She waved back. A few people threw trash and swore at her. She waved at them too.

  She was in the right mood for self-flagellation by the time she reached the office, where news of the riot seemed to be a joke that all IBI’s soldiers were in on. They called out to her in the halls—“What smells like burnt bug?” “Nice party, Pollyanna!” “Hey, throw another bug on the barbie, it’s Fowler!”—and then went laughing on their way.

  She wrote a thorough incident report, from the genesis of the idea (her own), to filing for authorization (which had been all legal and above-board), and finally the event itself, making certain she mentioned Piotr, although she cast him in a far more heroic light (Mr. Lantz tried several times to warn me of the consequences of such
a gathering. He advised me in the strongest possible terms to cancel. I disregarded his advice.) Finally, a broad description of the riot itself and her ignoble flight, leaving Piotr Lantz and the brave men of the International Bureau of Immigration to mop up the dangerously violent and unpredictable bugs. She felt like throwing up when she was done.

  “Ah, Miss Fowler.”

  She jumped in her chair and swung around. “Mr. van Meyer! You startled me!”

  “My mother would say this is the reaction of a guilty mind,” he said, folding his long hands on the cubicle wall. Piotr was nowhere to be seen.

  “Your mother would be right,” she told him, and showed her incident report briefly before setting it in her Outbox.

  “Ah.” He took it out, running his fingertips over it without reading. His eyes moved over the census report that had been beneath it with more interest. He reached, thumbed down through the stack, looked thoughtful.

  “I still feel that I owe you an apology, Mr. van Meyer. And I owe Mr. Lantz one too. He tried to warn me and I brushed him off. Then he had to ride in and save me. I feel like a fool.”

  He tsked, watching her. His expression was sympathetic enough, but it never touched his eyes, which stayed as cold and unblinking as a snake’s.

  “Was anyone hurt?” she asked.

  “Nee, nee. A small thing only, easily controlled. It is not necessary even to get out of the vans. No one is hurt this time.”

  She nodded, took a deep breath and said it: “Do you want me to resign?”

  He studied her as the air took on more and more weight, seeing every nervous shift, every shiver. “It was suggested,” he said at last. “But I am idealist. I believe there are some who can learn from their mistakes.”

  She looked at him, knowing his eyes were a trap and the trap had teeth.

  “And here you offer,” he mused, gazing into her. “I think you do not want to leave us, yet you offer. You must. Do you know what this is, Miss Fowler? This is integrity. Honor. Rare and precious…and not to be trusted.” He lapsed into silence, perfectly still, and then said, without warmth, “You impress me.”

  “I d-do?”

  “I can count on fingers of one hand—” He raised one and expressionlessly bent down three fingers. “—how many men I say this of. You impress me. In you, I see great things. So.” At once he animated, grandfatherly and smiling, reaching out to stroke an affectionate hand down her hair. “It is suggested that you must be removed and I say to these people that you must stay.” His fingers twitched over onto the stubbly side of her head, caressing her scar. “And you do wish to stay, ja? In spite of all things.”

  “I like my job,” she said, fumbling out her cap and putting it on. “I want to work here, I do.”

  “Ja? Ja.”

  “Mr. van Meyer, this is the most important work I am ever going to do in my life, I believe that, and I’m not just…just…”

  “Blowing smoke up my skirt?” He smiled. “I know you are not.”

  “But I know that I screwed up and I understand if…if…”

  “It is a small matter, Miss Fowler. And it is enough talk we have made about it. Now you do better, ja? No more.” He straightened up as if to go, but then turned back, smiling. “I am surprised to see you in office. I examine all checkpoint record when I come into building—old habit, Miss Fowler, like old dog, difficult to change—and I thought I see you pass Checkpoint Seventeen?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  He waited, still wearing that same expression of polite surprise.

  “I had to go to work,” she said, genuinely puzzled.

  “And this is so admirable,” he replied, his eyes boring blackly into hers. “So soon after so dangerous a thing as you see only last night, to go back in among them. Did you have no fear there must be reprisal? If bug were injured, as is only sensible to think, would he not blame young Miss Fowler who arrange the tragedy?”

  “I didn’t think of that,” she said, her heart beginning to pound. Old dog, nothing. This was an old dragon and he didn’t miss a trick. “And they didn’t say anything, um, especially hostile.”

  “Nee?” He glanced over at her Outbox and thumbed through the census reports again. “Indeed, they would appear to feel quite friendly toward you.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” And because that sounded so defensive, she added, “They were mostly just out at the He…the recycling station. Working. Like nothing had happened. Maybe it just wasn’t that big of a deal to them.” She could feel herself flushing, feel her stomach knotting up in sour revolt against the words in her mouth, but she made herself say them like it didn’t matter. “I drove through the causeway first, to see if I could clean up, but there was nothing left.”

  “I see. Nee, there wouldn’t be. The bug take everything he can. If you had stay, in his mood, perhaps he take you too.” He gazed at her, tapping his index finger on the wall of her cubicle, then smiled and waved that off. “But you are safe and all is well. It is very glad I am to see you, Miss Fowler. Good night.”

  “Thank you, sir. Good night.”

  He waved that off as well, and left her for his office. Piotr Lantz still wasn’t anywhere to be seen. It unnerved her.

  Sarah straightened her Outbox again, made sure the incident report was on top, and gathered up her things to go. She thought she’d gotten away with it, that this really would be an end to the whole mess, in IBI’s eyes at least. She wasn’t there in van Meyer’s office to hear him on the phone saying, “I think she is penitent, nee? Nothing more is necessary. It is enough.”

  Sarah made her way out of the quiet building and across the empty parking lot. The sun was still bright and oppressive, but it was getting late. She could see the lights coming on along the containment walls and see the columns of smoke rising on the other side as those who had the means cooked whatever they’d scrounged up for dinner. The smell was at once diabolical and yet comforting. She stood for a moment beside her van, thinking of T’aki and Sanford sitting at her kitchen table and how weirdly normal that had felt, in spite of the circumstances. But there was nothing to see here and nothing more she could do, so she climbed up behind the wheel, took another sip of blisteringly-hot and now flat ginger ale, and drove away.

  * * *

  She stopped in at the village store for groceries, picked up a sandwich from the deli, and ate it in the cute little manicured park, watching the sun go down over the containment walls. The smell of the Heaps gradually won out over her appetite; she fed half her sandwich to the hungry IBI ducks and drove home, thinking that she would call Kate…not to complain or anything, but just to talk. About Brookings, about life, about anything, as long as she heard a friendly voice. Maybe she’d find something worth watching on TV and she and Fagin could stay up until midnight eating ice cream straight from the carton. That wasn’t pathetically lonely, was it?

  She parked in the empty garage—You should hang up papers, or at least get a chair—and went around to collect her groceries from the back of the van. Really too big for just her…ate up too much gas…President Dufries was going to make all whole-gas models illegal next year anyway…but if she traded it in on a smaller car, where would she put all the aliens she was smuggling in and out of Cottonwood?

  Smiling, she went into the kitchen. She put her bags down on the counter, called Fagin, opened up the fridge, and something black came down over her head and cinched tight.

  Her hoarse yelp of alarm ended in an explosion of white dots as she was slammed three times into the freezer door, then thrown to the ground. She kicked—not so blindly; the sack on her head was tight-weave, but enough to breathe through and enough to see, very fuzzily, the black shape of her attacker against the light from the open refrigerator—and he grabbed her foot and drove his fist against the long muscle of her thigh.

  The pain was exquisite, an instant charley horse. She yelled again and scrambled back, straight into the wall, hard enough to knock her jaws together. Taste of blood in her mouth; she’
d bitten her tongue.

  The black shape came swooping down, grabbing her, throwing her. She landed, rolled flat on her back and kicked again as he came at her, the kind of lucky shot that only happens in the movies. Both feet hit square in his stomach—hard stomach, no give at all; this was a flak vest—and sent him flying into the dining room table. She rolled onto her hands and knees, launched herself into a run, and banged into the arm of the sofa.

  She went down and he came after, kicking and stomping on her. His boots were huge, hard…combat boots. She rolled, screaming and thrashing, but his boots kept coming, like she was a cockroach he was trying to kill. She felt her ribs crack, screamed and curled, and caught the boot in her belly over and over until something like fire exploded in her guts and she couldn’t scream anymore.

  It got quiet. She thrashed on the floor, both hands slapping and knotting at her stomach where lava churned, hardly able to breathe for the agony of trying, but unable to lie still. She knew he was still there, just standing and watching, but if she’d had a gun in her hands, she couldn’t have found the willpower to aim and fire it. All that mattered was her stomach and the venomous nightmare thing eating its way out of her.

  Then he had her by the ankles, dragging her out into the center of the room. He dropped her, walked two steps in his heavy boots, and dropped suddenly atop her, his knees on either side of her chest. She shrieked, knowing only that he was on her, his weight like an acid spear in her broken guts. She scarcely heard the low purr of his zipper.

  Light, splashing in the living room window. His hand slapped down over her mouth and pressed, muffling the worst of her hoarse, spastic cries. A car outside, in her driveway, idling. Someone got out.

  He said one word then, his first word, his only word: “Fuck.”

  It was enough.

  Someone knocked three times, light and cheerful, on her front door.

  He got up, letting her snap onto her side in a convulsive curl, and ran out the back.