by T. K. Malone
The cabin they’d borrowed, by nature of no one owning it, was probably too large for the two of them. It was also built on stilts for the most part—flat land being scarce at best around those parts. They lived in just the one room, and were close enough to the river to get water easily for washing and drinking. Teah loved its deck the most. She could sit out there with Clay and point out the stars to him. Or sit out there and smoke Saggers’ special blend, depending on how tired the boy was after a day at Jenny’s. She hoped Jenny was all right, she’d seen too much dying up here of late. Maybe The Free World had gotten it right, maybe it was too dangerous to bring children in the world naturally.
Lester’s coat was far too warm for the late afternoon, the sun still shining brightly through the thin white cloud. Why Saggers was interested in her she’d never know. She wore a dead man’s coat, way too big for her, and a dead man’s hat. Maybe she should tell him. Maybe that would put him off. Jenny had done what she could for her with the coat, but Teah had asked it be kept baggy. It just felt right. As they neared their place, she looked up at the forest’s canopy, following the trunk of a redwood. If there was a God, he’d have had a hand in making these. She’d told Clay they touched the sky, that they punched holes in it to make the stars.
“I don’t like Saggers,” said Clay, kicking at the ground.
No, she thought, there was something not quite right there. Something that didn’t add up. He had all the animals, supposedly all the little fields that were dotted everywhere—his secret stashes—but you never saw the man dirty, never a sweat ring on his shirt. No, something didn’t add up with Ethan Saggers. Maybe he made all his money from the herb he grew, but then, why keep it a secret? No one cared, and it wasn’t like lawmen—the stiffs—were common up here.
“It’s Mr. Saggers to you,” Teah said, and Clay kicked some more dirt.
“Can you tell me about my dad tonight?” It had been the same question every night of late.
“As soon as we’re washed and fed.”
“And the stars, can we make up names for the stars again?”
They reached the cabin and Clay ran around the back. He always used the back door, hadn’t quite worked out that the steps to the deck brought him to the same level with the same effort. Teah unslung her bow—it was scraping on her shoulder—and eased off her drawstring bag. It was good to be home.
She slumped down on her chair. It was just an old frame she’d found in the forest, a sheet tied around it, but it felt like heaven after a day on her feet. She kicked off her boots and finally lit one of Saggers’ cigarettes. Clay went and washed in the river, the sun all the time slipping behind the mountains, and Teah took out some cold meat pie Jenny had given her.
“What do you want to know about your dad?” she asked Clay when he got back and they began tucking into the pie.
“Everything.”
Teah laughed. “You know full well, Clay, I don’t know everything about anybody, so how can I tell you everything about your dad?”
“Something, then.” He jumped onto her knee. He was getting heavier. The chair made an ominous creak. It probably wouldn’t last much longer, she thought.
“Your father was called Zac Clay, and he was my everything.” She took a draw on her cigarette, letting a tear slip from the corner of her eye.
“That’s cheating,” Clay said, and then Teah talked and talked, and Clay listened until he fell asleep. They didn’t get to naming any stars that evening.
4
Teah’s story
Strike time: minus 4 days
Location: Aldertown
The morning air cleared Teah’s head as she watched her lines, hoping for another bite. The cold of the past night lingered like it always did this close to the river. A light breeze blustered along the water, around the gray rocks and over a string of stepping-stones, only to be funneled downstream by an overhanging copse and the stout redwood trees. Clay had long gone back to the cabin. He got bored easily, and this last year or so Jenny had been gradually getting sicker and so couldn’t mind him quite as much. And if her health wasn’t enough of a strain, her husband, Ned, kept wandering off for days on end. A good haul today and Teah could give the poor woman most of the catch. It would keep her and Clay in milk, eggs, bacon, and bread for another week.
It was too much of a coincidence, Teah thought, that Jenny had once scavenged in the mines and now she was ill. Lester had done the same, and he was gone. She wondered what was up with them, but even after nine, no, nearly ten years outside the Black City, folk were still wary of her, clamming up if she pried too much. Teah knew something was up, but Jenny clearly believed that if she didn’t talk about it, it couldn’t be happening.
Traps and fishing were Teah’s favorite kind of hunting; it was a little more passive than skewering a wolverine. The best spot was upriver from her cabin, where she could haul out trout and roach until her arms ached. It was farther away than she would have liked, though, but you couldn’t always get what you wanted. She sat there, traps set, line cast, and mulled everything over.
They had been long years since she’d left the city, and at first, Zac and Connor notwithstanding, she hadn’t missed much. Not the whirring of the drones overhead, now replaced by the songs of plentiful birds, of dippers, pigeons and quail, and by the knocking of woodpeckers and the hoot of owls. Nor did she miss the bustle of anonymous streets. She’d left all that behind, swapped for the swagger of nosy skunks and the scamper of flighty squirrels. Everywhere she looked it was a different life, every sound she heard telling of a better one, but once you’d tasted the city, it was in your spit; the urgency, the momentum, the missed competition. Then again, it was peaceful out here. She tipped her cattleman forward and settled back against the creases of a vast rust-colored trunk, and there waited for a pull on her lines. Yes, she missed the city, but only a little bit.
“They biting?” a voice startled her. Saggers was standing about ten yards away, his boot plonked on a boulder.
“Shit, Saggers,” Teah said, recovering as she admonished herself for not noticing his approach, but thankful it was only him.
“Is that anyway to greet someone who’s just run all the way here to warn you…”
Teah pushed the cattleman back. “Ran? You don’t look too out of breath.” His scrawny face was in the shadow of his own hat, his elbow now resting on his bent knee. It felt like he was staring at her, felt like he was grinning, weighing her up.
“I started off at a canter and slowed from there. Smoke?”
“Warn me of what?”
“Smoke?”
He was an asshole, was Saggers, but he’d never done anything to threaten her, apart from being Saggers. She looked him up and down.
“How long did you canter for?”
He walked over and sat against the trunk. Taking out two smokes, he lit one and passed it to her, then lit his own. “End of my fence,” he finally said. “End of my fence.”
She smiled, then remembered. “Warn me about what?”
“Well, there’s a thing. A thing that may disrupt your tranquil day.”
“And what would that be? Come on, Saggers, spit it out.”
“Thing is… You and me; our little chats; well, they’re always so hurried. It’s like you just want to get away from me, and that hurts a bit. I like your boy, and I like you, and I thought I should make that plain, but there’s something you should know.”
“Which is?”
He pushed his feet out, stretching his legs, but then immediately drew one back and embraced it. “Not what it is, but what it does. Makes you look suspicious, see? Makes you clam up. Hell, Teah, it just makes you plain unsociable. Secrets aren’t for friends.”
“And are we?” she said, almost enjoying his awkwardness.
“Friends? I’d sure hope so, and if we ain’t, I’d hope we could be.”
“You might not like me if you knew everything about me.” Teah was getting nervous. She didn’t like the place the
conversation was leading. Was Saggers going to come on to her?
“What? No, I’m just saying, you’re keeping a secret that everyone knows anyhow.”
“And what’s that?” She gritted her teeth and waited.
“It’s plain obvious you’re a gridder; just plain obvious.” Her heart jumped. Saggers shifted around to face her, his back now to the river and the rising sun, and so no more than a silhouette. “Thing is, you don’t realize it’s in the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you breath. Why’d you think no one lets you get close?”
“And that’s what you came to warn me about?” Teah asked, her hackles a little ruffled.
“Nope, but that’s what I’ve fancied sayin’ since the moment I set eyes on you. Thing is, you should have just said. Heck, we’re all hiding from something up here else we wouldn’t be here.”
“So what did you come up to warn me about, Saggers?”
“You really want to know?”
“It must be important if you cantered all the way to the end of your fence, then walked the rest.” Somehow, she was quite enjoying the conversation now; maybe it was because everything was out in the open for the first time—even if only with him.
“Well, I was in Morton last couple of days, selling my crop of…” He coughed.
“Your leaf,” she grinned. “Guess what? That’s no secret, neither.”
“Yeah, that.” He glanced at her and realized she was smiling. He scratched his head, shifting his hat with each rake. “I suppose it’s as obvious as you being a gridder, and I suppose no one cares whether it’s legal or not, seeing as the law’s so scarce around here. So, I was peddling my weed when I saw it.”
“Saw what?”
“The poster, up on the gun shop. A poster with the face of this missing stiff woman. It said she’d absconded. Promised a handsome reward.”
“Missing?” Teah tensed.
“Yeah, and you know what? If you were ten years younger, it could be you; easily you.”
She felt sick to the pit of her stomach. Fears that had long fled to the shadows of her mind now rushed to the fore. Saggers reached into his pocket and brought out a crumpled piece of paper. “Here,” he said. “I ripped it down.”
She held it like it was on fire. Relief pushed her panic back into the dark recesses of her mind as she prayed his actions would have been enough. Saggers took his hat off and put it to one side. He looked closely at the river, tracing its course, then started. “You’ve got a bite. Let me,” he shouted. “I never get any luck.”
For a mountain man, he made a complete hash of it. Lester would have rolled in his grave. Afterwards, she unraveled the poster and again stared at the young woman in the picture, wondering how that person had made the choices she had, choices this Teah had had to live with.
“How long was it up for?”
“Doesn’t really matter.”
“Why?”
“Everyone knows you’re a gridder, anyway. They just figure it’s your own business.”
“But I’ve never been down there.”
“Crazy lady with the cattleman hat. That shit don’t go unnoticed. To this day, I think that crazy-eyed mother knew it was you, just chose to move on.”
“Jake?”
“Yeah, that was his name. Wonder what happened to him?”
“If he went back to the mines, then he probably got sick.”
“Up the valley? Probably. They’ve stashed all sorts of shit in them there mines, or so I’m told—from the plants that supply the cities. That is, they used to; don’t know what they do with it now.”
Teah took a breath. His words hadn’t surprised her. Lester gone, Jenny on the way, and she didn’t believe that ghosts or goblins could make you sick. “The Free World dumping their waste; why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“The gridders, no, it wasn’t them, was whoever couldn’t be bothered to dump it in the right place. Guess the mines were just cheaper back then. Anyway, steer clear of them.”
“Can’t go up the valley; can’t go down the valley,” Teah muttered, stubbing out her smoke.
Saggers gave her a sideways look, long and hard, then made to say something but stopped. Instead, he looked at the river again. “Never was any good at fishing.”
“Never was any good at growing weed,” Teah said, looking that same way.
They said no more for a while. Saggers laid back against the trunk, tipped his hat forward and stuck out his feet. He closed his eyes but presently muttered, “Now, that I can do; that I can do.”
Teah carried on fishing and caught a few. A few more trout, nothing too grand, and then sat back along with him as they smoked, getting a little high, saying very little. It was the middle of the day by the time either had a mind to sit up. Teah brushed herself down and gathered up the fish. Clouds had gathered, smothering the sun. That cold tinge was back in the air, and she pulled Lester’s old coat around herself to stifle a shiver or two.
“I best be getting back,” she said.
“Walk with you?” he half asked, half pleaded.
“Is it on the way?” she asked, though she knew it was.
He picked up her drawstring sack, making the choice for them both. She knew something had changed in their relationship, something small, something subtle. Somehow he was no longer Saggers-the-letch, Saggers-the-awkward-one, but Saggers the man. He didn’t look so skinny any more, either, his face not so drawn. Was he Saggers-the-friend, though? She wondered.
The vast trunks of the giant sequoia chose their path for them. For the most part they walked in comfortable silence, Teah still prone even now to gawping in awe at the trees’ sentinel majesty, even after all the time she’d spent out here.
“Some live as long as two thousand years,” Saggers said, holding his hand out and draping it around a particularly impressive specimen. “Some three.”
She let out a breath that threatened to turn into a whistle. “And we went and dumped a load of nuclear shit among them.”
“Yep, but they’ll still be here when we’ve gone.”
Saggers looked up. “Say, what would you give to see from the top of this beauty?” then he gave her a look of horror. “I, er… I never meant it like that.”
“How did you mean it, Saggers?” Teah said, a coy smile finding its way onto her face.
“I meant, would you like to?”
“Can you see the city?”
He pushed himself away from the tree. “All the way to the ocean,” but then he set off walking again.
Clay was sitting in Teah’s seat, out on the deck. He looked up as they approached, clearly confused at seeing Saggers. “Mom?” he shouted, but Saggers just bowled up to him and knelt down.
“Son, how’d you fancy walking up to the stars?” and Clay nodded and smiled.
“Can we, Mom?”
“Are you hungry?”
“Not ‘specially.”
Teah turned to Saggers. “How long?”
“Oh, it ain’t so far. An hour or two’s hike. Ain’t like it’s at the top of the mountain or nothing. Tucked up around the bluff over there. Nice enough.”
She looked on, outnumbered. “Shall we eat first?”
Saggers shook his head. “Best to get going. The fish’ll keep for a couple of hours if we gut and hang ‘em. You got salt?”
Teah wondered what had happened to her plans for the day, not that they’d meant anything, and Clay appeared happy enough—learning how to gut fish, and to hang and salt them. Before she’d had a mind to think again, they were hiking up the valley.
Saggers was a natural with Clay, and Teah wondered if she hadn’t kept him away from male company for too long. Not that she’d done it on purpose. Their being alone in the cabin and Jenny looking after him had all just fallen into place. The men of the town were wary of her, and Saggers had seemed creepy at the time, although not so much now. Maybe he was just awkward around women, or maybe he was just a bit of a loner, like her. She wondered if, like her, he wa
sn’t now enjoying a bit of company.
They followed the river farther upstream, toward Lester’s old place. Saggers said he never used the trail that led up to it; saying it would take them too far away from where they needed to be. Scanning ahead as best she could, though, Teah couldn’t see anywhere that would make for a good view, anywhere where you could touch the stars, so the way he was heading seemed to make little sense. Still, it was a leisurely stroll, the air fresh and her mind at peace. Soon, they were a way up stream, still among the vast trees but now with the occasional rock face jutting out between them, the slope becoming more of a challenge.
The river had become more agitated, frothing with turbulent white foam, as though riled by something. The trees were now much smaller, more skeletal, their gnarled roots clenched over rocks and grasping the shallow soil. Tumbled boulders lay plentifully about, the rush of falling water plain to hear. Saggers led them onto a climb up a craggy rock face, helping them as he clambered up, the sound of water gaining in strength all the time. He encouraged Clay ahead of him, though, toward a rocky shelf, Teah falling behind a little way. Then, before she knew it, the boy was crouched upon it, carefully straightening to keep his balance before he gasped out loud.
He looked down, urging them both up to join him. Saggers made it there first, turning and offering Teah a helping hand. She took his firm grasp and pulled herself onto the ledge and sat on the flat rock. Clay threw his arms around her neck.
“Look, Mom; look at the waterfall.”
Cascading from some twenty feet above them, a curtain of near transparent water plunged into a deep-blue pool just beyond the end of the ledge, an idyllic scene that was well worth the trek.
“Is this your private pool?” she asked.
Saggers grunted, “Hardly. I found this when I was prospecting for…for viable weed fields. It’s mighty peaceful, but this isn’t what we came to see.” He pulled Clay to him and pointed at the pool. “See them stones, the ones crossing the water?”
