At the hospital he was told she had died. When the ambulance pulled in, she was already gone. A constant inflow of patients arrived and the nurse was at first kind and then increasingly short with him.
Outside, standing a few paces from the hospital entrance, he felt insubstantial, as if his body were made of layers of old burlap. He stood there and swayed as people rushed around him, and then he continued toward home.
He walked in the middle of the street. By now the freak rain had darkened it, the big drops falling sparsely. He turned at 20th and walked the bridge that spanned the freeway and watched I-84 below as the thoroughfare bore the military vehicles returning to base. His skin was numb, though the rain kept working at him, each one a surprise, chipping away the exoskeletons he’d piled on top, fashioned of fear and longing and necessity. His mind was numb too, a robotic insistency propelling him homeward.
At 21st and Flanders he stood transfixed as a large family scattered every dish they owned in the yard to catch the rain. They had flower vases, teacups, overturned drums, buckets, frying pans, sheets of plastic laid across cardboard boxes, and as the six of them streamed to and from the house, each time with some new vessel, they laughed and shouted at each other with glee. In the pans were mere drops. They would not net but a few cups, but he stood transfixed by their joy all the same.
The air was fresh and electric.
As he walked blindly toward his building, his shoes slapped into a tiny dirty puddle that had formed. It was a tactile sensation that bore repetition, and for a moment, upon first being cognizant of it, he stood where he was and tapped the same foot in and out of the puddle. Each time was a small pleasure.
At home, he paced his building. It became his new occupation, and he practiced it for days. Tamping down each floorboard with his footsteps like a blacksmith works a sword. Tempering them in his search to rest his mind. The news talked about Maid Marian’s death endlessly, and this required an infinite amount of pacing, of climbing the building’s stairs, of looping around his roof, leaving only for rations when need became dire.
In this way, for some time, his building became an island. Walked persistently by the castaway for no other reason than the act of standing still invited pain. A week passed, or perhaps two, lost in the meanderings of his building.
In this failing city run now by a semi-hostile National Guard, the future yawned uninviting and endless in front of him, and so he thought of it little. He only walked.
He watched as much news as he could manage each night, sharp slivers of it entering him before he was compelled to turn it off. With the mayor hospitalized, Commander Aachen appeared regularly in his stead to read in monotone, devoid of any of Mayor Bartlett’s charm, joyless in his delivery, until it was clear, but never stated, the mayor would not be coming back.
Zach studied the face of the older man as it filled the frame of his television set, his blond hair like bits of old hay. He was a dull reader. He seemed to believe that the intricate order he set up post–city council was somehow a bootcamp for the city that would quell its desires and set it straight. He wanted it, Zach saw, being on the television and in charge. He was not their accidental guardian. The newscasters appeared lifeless, changed since the city had changed, and he suspected they were under censor. They had heard little to no news from the outside world. The city slept on in a post–Maid Marian coma. Guard jeeps coursed up and down its veins, redirecting and taming and quashing.
Zach slept twelve and fourteen hours at a stretch, going to sleep at sundown and waking midday the next. It was a sickness, he told himself, that he was trying to sleep out. Many times he pondered infinite sleep as a cure to what ailed him, and he considered the various ways to obtain it. When he awoke there was little he could think to do but begin pacing again.
After some weeks, in a vacant stride through his office, he passed his desk. Upon it there was a clean, white sheet of paper and a pencil, untouched for some time. He continued circling around the building, and each time he landed back at the desk, with the blank paper there and its implied question, the paper a window to climb through. Outside a large, National Guard truck rumbled past and stirred up a cloud of dust.
Dear Sherwood Nation, he wrote.
Zach tried to think of a way to pivot off the first line. He felt like he owed everyone a last word to hang on, or an apology, the guilt of his silence weighing on him. But there was so much to say and he could think of no way to say it. Long time no see. How’s your family? Do you miss Maid Marian? Do you ever think about . . . He stood from the desk and for two more days he paced, avoiding the blank page.
No, he realized, there was nothing to say.
Instead, he would go there. He would go talk to them. He would find the others, the water carriers and the volunteer leaders and the Rangers, he would find everyone who remained.
He folded the paper into his pocket. He would use it yet. And then he left his building and walked north.
Commander Roger Aachen of the National Guard, protectorate of the city-state of Portland, sat in his office in Big Pink, the namesake-tinted US Bancorp Tower that overshadowed the northern edge of downtown. On the thirtieth floor there’d once been a restaurant, and there he had set up office, in one of the booths with its sweeping view. Below him were the dead river, all of Northeastern Portland, the former site of Sherwood, and several bald, brown mountains beyond.
At the moment, he was busy removing staples from a series of reports, with a sad disappointment for and frustration in his report-preparer, Major August Gonzalez, who he was coming to realize could not properly grasp—much less learn for himself—the proper way to staple a pile of papers.
“You see, Major? How upon opening?” Here the commander vigorously opened and closed the top sheet of the report several times, eyeing the major who stood before him. “The paper begins to tear if you’ve stapled it parallel with the top edge?” He paused to see if Major Gonzalez offered some defense for himself but none was forthcoming. “Think about the natural fold one makes when browsing a report. Think about the arc and reach of a human arm.” Here the commander mimed turning the page of a stapled report, first away from himself, as if he were throwing a gut punch, and then at an angle to the left, in the manner of a Frisbee toss. “You see how much more natural that is? How the arm does not spring, but pivots, rotates? The staple at an angle is stronger, with its deeper bite into the paper’s flesh.”
“Yes, sir, I’m sorry sir.”
Roger stared at the major and was not convinced the young man understood. He needed to signal his comprehension more forcefully, if so. Did he realize he was giving him—handing it to him—a metaphor for how one might approach anything? A strategy, if you will, for life.
The major was a handsome man, the commander observed distantly, and despite the incident here, he continued to look like what the commander felt a military man ought to look like. Pressed and clean, with a sharp jaw, and just the hint of having been hard at work.
Major August Gonzalez cleared his throat. “As to the content of that one, sir,” he pointed to the one the commander was removing a staple from presently, with not a little difficulty, “we might discuss the new—with your permission, we’re calling them micro-nations?”
“Shit,” Roger said. He’d accidentally torn the entire corner from the paper in attempting to remove the previous staple and held his hands open over the disaster, looking up at the major to show that this was the younger man’s doing. “We can’t have a discussion about content with the shape these reports are in! You see? Now what? It cannot be reattached.”
Major August Gonzalez took on the stoic look of one who has come to retreat early and regularly into the solace of an internal mantra. Were the commander to ask him to return and redo the reports, as he expected he would, it would not be the first time. He began to suspect the commander might be stalling in his inspection of the reports. The previous reports had detailed National Guard defections, which happened after the US Governm
ent stopped supplying rations for the Guard to distribute, after the commander was officially discharged from the National Guard, after he, Commander Aachen, disbanded the city council.
Now, Major August Gonzalez felt confused about whom he actually worked for. It felt like the National Guard, but the National Guard had lopped them off, like a gangrenous leg.
“This one talks about Richmond . . . the micro-nation.”
“A particularly inept name, is it not? Richmond.” The commander pronounced it in a shrill French accent, the sound more akin to the squeal of tires. “But hardly rich, these people.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Optimistic thinking, maybe.”
“Probably, sir.”
“These reports,” Roger gathered the now staple-free stacks together into a large heap and handed them back to the major, “will have to be redone.”
“I have paper clips, sir, if they can make do?”
Roger stared at the major with a sad look, and wondered if the man would ever do anything great in his life, or if his trajectory was dead set on a repeating cycle of middling successes. The thought depressed him.
“What is your father like, Major?”
“He’s dead, sir.”
“Ah,” Roger said.
“If I may, sir, these micro-nations, Richmond in the southeast and now Sherwood again, sir? Which appears to be regenerating—and I’m afraid there are signs of others—their resources and techniques are more sophisticated than we’ve seen. With the Russian water tanker—we believe the brain-trust of the former micro-nation and a portion of AWOL Guardsmen—”
The commander was waving him away. “Please. Please, come back when these are human-readable. And a glass of water, if you will.”
After Major Gonzalez had attended to the commander’s needs he took the stack of paper to the twenty-seventh floor, using the stairs, where an enormous array of cubicles surrounded office machinery from some long-gone corporation. There he sat in his cubicle, put his feet up on the desk, leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. He liked it in here, this abandoned hive-like place now partially repopulated by the National Guard, with its labyrinth of desk-boxes. The stack of paper, with their torn corners weighed heavily on his hands, the product of a man who preferred excessive and excessively organized data in order to move forward in life. A man, he thought, who intended to play his chess game no matter that the board had long ago been scrapped and burnt by a citizenry who needed to keep their hands warm on a cold evening. Citizenry, Major August Gonzalez repeated in his mind. It was an apt mantra. Its many-syllabled rhythm calmed; it sounded like something wonderfully, mystically foreign. Sitta Zenree, Sitta Zenree.
He wondered why he was still here. Many of his fellow Guardsmen had simply vanished. Gone on an errand—say, the restapling of reports—and not returned, their uniforms left in unceremonious heaps in the elevator when it hit the ground floor. Major Gonzalez did not like to think of himself as a quitter, and in fact quitting came with great difficulty to him. He was an excellent cog, he knew, a perfectly functioning piece of machinery required in the building of something great. A cog that did not lack for insight or perception or raw smarts. In time, he would have ambitions, as they fit into the scope of the organization. And that was key. He loved the Guard. With the comfort of its structure and the numbing pleasantness of its rigmarole and the sense that he was part of a greater good. To protect, to shield, to watch over.
He rifled through the reports on various individuals, or what they could learn of them. Bea Gallagher, deceased; Leroy Wallace, deceased; Zachary Jefferson, location unknown; Jamal Perkins, Sherwood M.N.; Gregor Perkins, location unknown; Brandon Bartlett, house arrest; Renee Gorski aka Maid Marian, deceased. Really, these reports no longer mattered, he thought, in light of the new, more pressing issues. Still, it was important to process and to learn from what happened.
Major Gonzalez carried his laptop to the big printer, set it on top, and connected it directly with a USB cable. He reprinted everything: water status, past and future micro-nations, supply situation, Guard relations. When the print job was finished he found the heavy-duty stapler and angled it in the manner the commander had instructed.
He enjoyed stapling, with its decisive chunk through a stack of paper. And each time he did so, he inspected the job through the scrutinizing gaze of the commander to see if he could find fault with it.
“What’re you doing, Auggie?”
Major William and he had trained and risen up the ranks together. An ugly, flat-faced black man whose sense of humor and easy nature made him welcome company wherever he went, his ability to execute had guaranteed his rising through the ranks on par with himself. He had a duffel bag over his shoulder and hovered at the edge of the big printer.
August waved his hand at the reports and attempted to reply straight-faced. “Stapling,” he said, “what else is there?” He braced himself for a little teasing.
“That old man,” William whispered and did not smile.
“Not the first time on these,” August said.
William patted him on the shoulder.
“You?” August said.
“Taking my team on desalination inspection.”
Major Gonzalez continued stapling but was aware that William did not move on. There were half a dozen or so other National Guard higher-ups in the office working on various projects.
“So?” he said finally.
“Heading back up to see the chief?” William said.
“Momentarily.”
August compiled the reports into a neat, newly stapled stack and headed to the stairs. Major William tagged along behind.
“Come on, take the elevator, buddy!” William said and steered him. “Disrespectful not to. City’s got no power. It’s like leaving food on your plate when there’s kids starving out there.”
August chuckled uncomfortably. “If you say so.”
William held the door for him, and then shifted in front of the elevator buttons before August had time to punch one. He felt the elevator suddenly begin to descend.
“—Oops!” William said easily. “It’s a sign! Maybe you see me on down instead?”
“Got no choice now, do I?”
William went serious. “Lots of choices, Auggie.”
August watched the digital counter. 24, 23, 22.
“What do you mean.”
“Mmm.” William shrugged. “Speaking generally.” He dropped his duffel to the ground, unzipped it, and pulled out a set of clothes. He shook these out and eyed August. Then he began stripping out of his uniform.
“Willy!” August said, suddenly alarmed.
“Just wanted to say good-bye. Pull that for me, would you?” He nodded at the elevator force-stop.
August reached up and punched the emergency button. Floor 14, he noted. A most terrible wrenching fear had dug into his gut, and he couldn’t believe he was standing in front of his friend as he shed the career they’d been mutually working on for years. Major William was no minor player. In his hands he straightened the paper edge of the reports and could not find words to speak.
William put on a set of blue jeans and a black polo shirt, and, as per training, folded his uniform into a neat bundle and put it back in the duffel bag. “Got two sets in here.”
“Of what?”
“Clothes, genius-man. Attire. Civilian-style.”
August slid to the floor of the elevator and clutched the reports, careful not to sully them.
William kicked the duffel across the floor of the elevator. “Go ahead, put them on then.”
Major August Gonzalez closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the elevator wall. He thought of the number of people he would disappoint, his mother and uncles, his brother José, stationed in New Orleans, other friends in the Guard, Commander Aachen. “You look funny in street clothes,” he said.
“That’s where you are wrong,” William said. He adjusted his collar and August could see his friend, w
hom he could not remember ever being nervous, transformed. “No one has ever looked so good.” He snapped his fingers.
“Just like that?” August continued to grip the reports.
“Some would call this fashionably late.”
August snorted and with his right hand held the bridge of his nose. “Lot to throw away,” he said.
“Lot to gain! Don’t need to tell you that. A decision needs to be imminent, here.”
“Years of training and et cetera.”
“What are those reports telling you? Were you a gambling man, which I know you are not, where’s the odds?”
“Ah, Willy, shit hell.”
“Which side is right?”
“Not as simple as that.”
“Simple as you want to make it. The clothes, comrade.”
August squinted across the elevator for a moment and imagined them both walking from the building together as civilians and found it surprisingly easy to manage. “Alright.” Cross-legged, he stripped his shirt off and did not bother to fold it. Inside he found a red flannel lumberjack shirt. He held it up at William. “Really?”
William chuckled with pleasure. “Make it snappy.”
August did not change pants. He stood, put the reports in the duffel bag, and handed it back to his friend.
William pointed at the control panel. “Monsieur?”
“Yes, sir,” August said. He released the emergency stop. The elevator descended. “What do you think we’ll do there?”
Sherwood Nation Page 49
